Hi Folks:
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s (wonderful) book, ‘Eat Pray Love‘ she has a conversation with her friend Giulio about why Rome is a beautiful city, but it’s not ‘her’ city. Giulio says that each city and each person has a word to describe them, and if your word and the city’s word don’t match, you’ll never be comfortable there. It’s easier to type out the conversation than to try to explain it, so we’re including that section here (pp. 102-104): Continue Reading →
Hello Dear Ones! Glad you stopped by…
The past two posts: Poetry Corner and He Says/She Says have focused on the topics of Light & Joy and Being the Light. This mind of mine was enjoying the energy from these inspirational topics. As a result my meanderings today are still being directed to the subject. Perusing my book shelf for something solid to consider and discuss had me opening texts at random. Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth was the hands down winner.
Rather than attempting to paraphrase Tolle’s work, I thought to inspire you from the master himself. (Please note the italics are mine.)
When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you. The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived from something else, such as an activity or thing. You then look to the world to bring you joy, happiness. But it cannot do that. This is why many people live in constant frustration. The world is not giving them what they think they need.
Then what is the relationship between something that you do and the state of joy? You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are. This means that when you enjoy doing something, you are really experiencing the joy of Being in its dynamic aspect. That’s why anything you enjoy doing connects you with the power behind all creation.
The majority of my days and the hours within those days are filled to overflowing with joy in all I do, those with whom I interact and in all encounters wherever I am in any and every given moment. It is exciting, then, when I see Tolle describing the feelings I have, that the joy is coming from within me – rather than me looking to find joy from those around me and the things that I do. It explains so much. Source fills me with the gift of joy, the light of my being radiates out, touched with the joy of Source and illuminates me, those I interact with, and the chosen corner of this physical world we are experiencing. Rather than looking to find joy outside of myself and to soak it into me as a sponge would draw in water, the joy comes from inside of me – and it is unlimited. A sponge is limited in its ability to absorb. Excess dribbles out ineffectually. Joy radiating out from within is unlimited and reaches out to all within its scope. The gift of knowing the joy within, of watching the effect it has on those with whom I connect, fills me to overflowing with the greatest and deepest sense of rightness. The more I live my life in this fashion, the deeper the sense of joy – the richer the gift that I and those around me are blessed to experience.
Selfish? Not entirely – though there is that aspect to it. The more joy I allow in, the greater the joy I feel. The greater the joy I feel, the more I am able to share. The more I share, the happier I am and the richer my relationships and life experiences. It becomes a cyclical spiral of energy feeding in upon itself and moving the spiral upwards, higher and higher into the furtherence of more and more joy.
I stated above that the majority of my days and the hours within those days are lived from this place of joy lived outward into my reality. I’m not perfect at it. Better and stronger and more at ease with the connection to this way of being, yet not perfect. It is now easier and easier, though, to recognize those moments when I am not living life from a place of joy – of concious choice to be happy and to fill myself up from within with the power of Source – God, the Universe, All That Is. I get a gnawing feeling within my being – it feels like fear – that antsy, restless, nervous sensation that something’s not right. I get this odd churning near my solar plexus that is trying to convince me that I should be afraid of something. When I look at it, I realize there is no logical reasoning for such an emotion to be filling me up with trepidation. There is no anger inside me. Anger, for me, is a misguided response to the deeper and truer emotion of fear. It is almost as though I’m a little girl and I have an angry parent near me. Not knowing what I may have done wrong to cause them to be angry, I have a sense that I am about to be spanked or punished for something in which I took no part. It is the frightened little girl feeling that tells me that I am not connected to Source, not living from a place of joy.
Holding on to this feeling only feeds the feeling and leaves me weak and vulnerable and of no use to myself, let alone anyone outside of me. I get jittery, begin to question whatever I’m doing in the moment and have even second guessed myself to the point of immobility. It has taken many years of trial and error, questioning and listening to myself, and my Self, to help me to be aware of this feeling and to know what it is I can do to let it go.
What is it that works for me? I smile. I smile at myself. I smile at my Self. Knowing myself to be a perfect child of the Universe – not a human child with baggage carried into adulthood – is what has me remembering that I am a being of light. My inner light – like the light of a single candle – is perfect in its unique beauty. My inner light, like that of a candle, dances and flickers with its own personal response to the world around it. Put two or more candles together in the same room and none of them responds the same way as the others. Each dances and undulates and flickers to a beat, a flow, a reality of its own. So too does the light within each of us. We dance our own joyous dances moved by the music, the flow of the Source of Universal energy bubbling up from within us as we allow it to fill us and to radiate out to the world.
Knowing how amazingly wonderful I feel when I am connected to Source, how could I possibly want to return to the feelings of human weakness of fear and insecurity? Yet it does happen – the return to those yucky feelings. Oddly it can sometimes take hours for me to recognize that I’ve returned to this place of emptiness and restless lacking. Though I seldom go back to my past in thought – it may be helpful now in the sharing to tell you it used to take me months to get beyond this feeling of fear and restlessness. There was even a time when I spent years living in this zombie-like state. I shudder at the remembered life before this one.
Today, the joy I feel in the knowing that I now have it within my ability to release that restricting series of limiting emotions adds to the joy of my days and the minutes and hours of those days! The source of that power, that ability is not mine. It is in drawing the joy, the light and the love of Source, of God, of the universal love of All That Is up from within myself and allowing it to first fill me and then to radiate out through my eyes, my words, my actions.
Light and Joy. What a way to live!
In Light and Laughter and Love,
Marcia
Greetings:
A long time ago Marcia and Mike lived in a world where they both believed there were positive and negative forces in the Universe. In that world it was common to practice (and to teach others) than when doing any meditative or astral work one should create a bubble of white light around him or herself in order to protect the meditator from those dark forces. This idea came into focus for them one night at a talk given by a very interesting gentleman. His talk had all of the right words, but the underlying energy behind them was really not good. Mike’s response to this was to create a circle of loving energy surrounding all those present; although he had his eyes closed at the time, Marcia saw the speaker’s response to this was to step outside of the circle, remove some herbs from his bag, and with few words…well, you get the idea. When Marcia and Mike went home that night everything was fine, but the next day Mike woke up with a high fever, delerious. He couldn’t walk, could barely stand, and he spent the next few days in bed while Marcia ministered to him.
It was shortly after this event that Marcia and Mike received some teaching on a New Way of Being. Rather than surrounding themselves with a loving white light, or drawing it in from above or below as others had suggested, they were told simply to imagine a candle in the center of their bodies. They were to simply allow the light of this candle to flow out from them, gently, in all directions. They were then to allow this loving light to grow and spread until they literally ‘became’ the candle, and this loving light was flowing out from their entire being. A candle doesn’t reach out to touch others with its light, it simply is itself, and in being itself its light spreads and illuminates. In this way the light comes from within, not from without, and rather than being a bubble of protection to keep away those dark energies, it simply transforms them into that same loving light. As the saying goes, “All of the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of one small candle.”
Well, time went by, their knowledge grew and their understandings of the nature of All That Is changed, and they began to see the world and the universe in which they lived as much bigger, more open and more dynamic than they had once imagined. As a part of this process they were able both to see the role they had once played in the event above and how their own beliefs had created it. Furthermore they were able to surrender their beliefs in those negative forces. As such, the idea of ‘being the candle’ no longer held the same significance for them.
Until one day, several years later, they came up with a different idea about ‘Being the Candle’.
Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View
The month of November introduced much that was new into my – our – life. I took on the challenge of, and exceeded, my own expectations with Nanowrimo (http://nanowrimo.org) writing a 52,885 word novel in a mere 28 days.
During this same time, Mike and I opened up our personal writings to the blogging world through https://www.wolfnowl.com
As a result of the emergence of our skills and talents to the public at large, if you will, the topic of copyright surfaced in our conversations. We, Mike and I, have differing views on the subject. It is because of this difference that we chose to tackle the subject through this newest blog idea:
He Says/She Says.
Please come back each Sunday to read up on whatever topic might have triggered our latest discussions during a given week. Sometimes we’ll have similar views. Other times…well, we’ll let you decide!
In Light & Laughter, Marcia
Since everyone has their own perceptions of, well, everything, we thought that once a week we’d post our views on the same topic – two different points of view on the same subject. I thought I’d start with:
The Perception Wheel
Our first understandings of the perception wheel came from the book ‘Seven Arrows‘ by Hyemeyohsts Storm. A shortened version of the story is here:
Imagine a circle with four people around it. We’ll call them A, B, C, D but you may substitute any four names you like. In the middle of this circle we’ll place an arrow.
Now person A looks at this arrow and, being a reasonably intelligent person, thinks to himself, “That arrow is coming toward me.” Person B looks at that arrow and, being a reasonably intelligent person, thinks to herself, “That arrow is going from left to right.” Person C looks at that arrow and, being a reasonably intelligent person, thinks to himself, “That arrow is going away from me.” And person D looks at that arrow and, being a reasonably intelligent person, thinks to herself, “That arrow is going from right to left.” But they’re all looking at the same arrow. Now if we remove the arrow and replace it with an idea, a concept, a Way of being, an understanding, a religion or a government, and if, instead of four people we have a thousand or six billion, we can see that everyone will see things from their own unique perspective.
There are two ways to deal with this. The first is to say, “Well, this is my circle and my arrow and you have to see the arrow the way I do or I’m going to take my arrow and go home.” That’s possible, happens all the time, but it’s also very limiting in terms of what can be learned from it. The other way is to say, “Well, I don’t see the arrow that way, but I understand that you do. Perhaps if we work together we can reach a new understanding that is common to both or all of us.” Understanding the perception wheel is the foundation for teaching and for sharing.
Mike.
Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says on Copyright: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View
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December 26, 2009
Update: Read Seth Godin’s view, here.
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