Awakening Tips

Watch Your Thoughts

Dear Blessed One,

Watch your thoughts.

That’s all. Nothing to change. Nothing to do. Just watch.

Notice what is running through your mind. Most people aren’t even aware that anything is humming in that vast space above the shoulders.

Watch as a thought comes in and then watch as it dissolves naturally just from noticing it.

Don’t hop on the train and go for a ride with the thought; that just sucks you into a story. Notice the thought, and the next one, and the next one…

Eventually the mind will become very still and stillness is where you will find Yourself.

Thoughts are the veils to You. Free yourself from the veils that thinking creates; let them fall away one by one as you notice them.

Much Love and Blessings to You,

shellee

Watch Your Thoughts

Everything I ever thought I could be, I have always eventually become.

When I thought I was smart, I was truly smart and when I thought I was dumb, I was dumb.

When I thought I could do it, I found that I could. When I thought I couldn’t, I could not.

When I thought I wanted it, I worked ’til I got it and what I wanted, I always got.

If I thought it impossible, it always was and no one could tell me it wasn’t.

Because what I knew always was true and what others think works for me, doesn’t.

The message here is to watch your thoughts, it’s the first step to its being.

Think that you can, think that you can’t, and eventually your thoughts you’ll be seeing.

Shellee Rae © 1998

Deep listening from the heart is one half of true communication. Speaking from the heart is the other half.

~ Sara Paddison

Out of Your Mind and Into the Heart

Dear Blessed One,

Drop in, drop in, drop in…

Bringing awareness into the heart will boost your life force as it quickens your awakening.

What if life were experienced through the heart?

Don’t just look with your eyes but imagine that you are seeing through your heart with your physical eyes.

You can practice this any time, any where, and with any thing.

Look. Stop. Take a breath. Now bring your awareness into your heart, and look again.

Next, try this while you are listening.

Imagine that your ears are located in your heart and you are hearing from that place.

No thinking, no trying to remember what it is that you want to say at the next pause, just listening from the ears of your heart, fully present.

Then practice speaking with the mouth of your heart. All awareness on your heart as the words you speak flow from there.

If nothing is coming, allow the pauses while keeping your focus in the heart.

Breathe and let the words come through you rather than from you.

Keep it simple and start with just one (seeing, hearing, or speaking) working to shift its origin. After you feel grounded with one, move on to the next one.

Oh, give it a try. You may be surprised at the outcome. =)

Much Love and Blessings to you,

shellee

Deep listening from the heart is one half of true communication. Speaking from the heart is the other half.
~ Sara Paddison

Awareness is the Key

Dear Blessed One,

Due to some computer glitches, upheavals, and much busyness, we’ll just have to say goodbye to July and welcome in August’s Awakening Tips.

Sometimes life doesn’t serve us what we want. We ask for something sweet and easy to digest like bread pudding and are astonished when a 3-day-old unidentifiable, scrambled mystery shows up on our plate.

Well, that’s what life is, a mystery, and sometimes it’s messy. It’s important to chew well and watch for bones as we pick at our less than desirable servings.

It’s okay to have feelings about what you are dealing with. As a matter of fact, it’s more than okay, it’s preferable! Feeling the feelings as they come will allow whatever it is that’s going on to pass on through you. When feelings are repressed, they get trapped and a blockage is created in your energy field. The more the blockages, the less room there is for awareness, and awareness is the key to Consciousness.

• Remember, resistance causes friction and friction is what feeds suffering.

• Allow what’s here to be here…breathe, allow, feel, breathe again, and then let Creative Inspiration guide you to the perfect solution.

• When we’re not creating a story about what’s here (resisting), we’re able to recognize an opening to Source, the light within you that Knows.

Much Love and Blessings to you,

shellee

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.
~ La Rochefoucauld

Are We Listening?

Dear Blessed One,

This month’s AT is arriving late and without frills. I am on the road and my computer crashed a few days ago. I’ll be home 7/17 and hopefully
‘back to normal’ soon there after.
Grace guides us in all that we do. The question is, are we listening?

Have you set aside time to be still and touch into the vastness of who you are? This is not a place of thinking or attempting to figure
anything out. This is where you drop into the body, completely.

What do you feel? If you’re not feeling an emotion, what are you sensing in your physical body? Is there tightness in your jaw or belly?
What does that feel like? Stay there.

Your mind is going to want to take you other places and that’s okay. Don’t resist, just notice and then drop back into feeling. You can
practice this with other people, places, or situations too. Start with small things first. If something happens that stirs your feeling body,
be with that without reacting or responding – when you can. Sense how it feels to allow what’s there to be there without following the urge to
repair the false self (which is the part of you that wants to react when it feels attacked).

Feeling ‘what is’ is a great way of practicing presence. This practice is a magical way of bringing awareness to the present moment. Presence
is the key ingredient in awakening.

Listen in to the depths of your being. Be here, and when the mind takes you elsewhere, just keep coming back to this very moment in time, it’s all there is.

Blessings and Much Love to you,

shellee

Rest. No thing to do. Allow what’s here to be here. The more you let it have you, the less it has of you.

Who Are You?

Dear Blessed One,

Who are you?

Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard this question in your spiritual questing but have you found the answer yet?

Drop into awareness and ask, “Who am I”?

You are not your name, or profession, or any other thing outside of you.

You are not your thoughts, feelings, or emotions.

All of these things come and go. YOU never change.

Who is aware of these things as they come and go?

The awareness Itself is who you are.

You, who are Awareness, have gotten lost in the objects of life, forgetting who you really are.

Life is the movie and it’s quite an adventure. See if you can step back into Awareness, remembering that you’re watching a movie without getting lost in it.

From this place, your true home, a resting with life and all its twists and turns happens with no effort.

Resting with life dissolves all suffering. Life then becomes a journey that can be enjoyed rather than endured.

Pause, drop into awareness as often as you can and ask, “Who am I”?

Much Love and Blessings to you,

shellee

When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick; every time a stick is thrown, you run after it.
Instead be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.

~Milarepa

Be as the Clay on the Wheel

Dear Blessed One,

What if you were to completely surrender to life? Take a big breath, exhale, and then say, ‘okay, life, you’re in charge! I no longer want the driver’s seat’. It’s possible to live like that. As a matter of fact, not only is it possible, it’s so much easier! It’s what is meant by the over-used analogy of floating like a leaf on the river of life. Nothing to do, only to follow where life is leading you, even when it feels rough and out of control. Sometimes the form needs reshaping for a beautiful new something to be born.

I heard a story once of an Eastern village that was well known for its delicate and striking pottery. The huge urns were the most admired pieces and famous all over the world. As the story goes, once the urn was finished, the final step was to break it. The artist would then put it back together with gold filigree, turning what looked like a disaster into something exquisite and priceless.

You are an amazing work of art. Just as the potter’s hands hold, shape, and fold the clay, your life situations are molding you to the next highest version of yourself. Allowing Life to do what life does removes the idea of victimhood and dissolves suffering. Difficulties are truly evolutionary drivers; they only become problems when we resist. Each experience is an opportunity to discover more about what lurks in the bowels of our beings.

Resistance is the mind telling us ‘it shouldn’t be this way’. When we can, as Bentinho Massaro says, ‘have the guts to let go of our arrogance that we think we know what’s better for life than life itself’, the pressure that is caused by thinking it needs to be different softens.

Relaxing into life’s undulations, opening up to not knowing what the outcome of each experience might be, or what it ultimately means, creates a gap for curiosity to come in. With curiosity, perhaps even an experience of excitement, or at least intrigue, may arise. Life is the ultimate cliffhanger. We never know what this moment is shaping just out of our view.

As you begin to trust more and more in the wisdom of life Herself, remember that energy follows attention. Notice. Where is your focus? See if you can bring more attention to feeling and less to thinking. You can’t think and laugh at the same time, nor can you think and feel at the same time. Noticing when a story is running, then dropping out of the story and into the body as much as you can, allows awareness to meet Itself. This can happen in an instant, or there may be some more shaping, trimming, and firing necessary. Creating space between you and thought will illuminate the drama, the identification with story. Eventually, (or quickly) the witness and the One then merge.

Be as the clay on the wheel and allow the process of creation to happen. It’s happening anyway, why not let it? Once the cooking is done, you will become aware of what an amazing vessel you are for whatever the Potter is serving at the table of life.

Much Love and Blessings to you,

shellee

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
~ Kahlil Gibran

Allow Everything to Be

Dear Blessed One,

The fire of transformation is wild; make sure you’ve checked the expiration date on your fire extinguisher.

You are the infinite, formless, nameless One, dancing in a world and a form with limits. That’s bound to create a rub and it’s meant to! It’s the spark, the impetus, the fire under out butts to awaken.

Often times, dancing in the fire of awakening can make you feel like you’re going crazy (Bob Valine’s book, Dancing in the Fire has some wonderful personal examples of that).

It’s critical that one has a good support team, preferably a person or a group of people who have experienced (or are experiencing) the stages of awakening. Who better to assist you as you pass through the proverbial eye of the needle?

Some things to remember as you are evolving into the Authentic you…
• Keep your life as simple as possible during the ramp up times…no major decisions or changes whenever possible

• Ramp up times are when your emotions are swinging and there doesn’t seem to be much going on as the reason for it

• Ramp up times can also be outside forces creating disturbances in the balance of your life (job, relationship, etc.)

• Loosen-up your life…wherever there is a “should” or a “have to”, see if it’s true. If not, give yourself the space to just BE.

• Spend as much time in nature as you can…even if it’s just sitting in your yard under a tree.

• Be still…quiet alone time creates openings to touch into the Self who is wanting to be known.

Keep in mind everything that is happening is all part of your process. Allow everything to be just as it is. The more you can do that, the less power you are giving to feed resistance; resistance creates suffering. Once we allow what is there to be there, it’s amazing how quickly it transforms.

Much Love and Blessings to you,

shellee

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.

~ Fred Shero

Question Everything

Dear Blessed One,

Most of us have not been raised with the idea, nor reminded along our life journey that we are holy beyond all measure. Yet, we are. There is so much here to discover…here, meaning right where you are.

When we can move through the clutter of our life situations – or perhaps better worded – the perception of the clutter of our life situations, we begin to see how magnificent and unlimited we truly are.

One of the exercises I began doing many years ago (as suggested by a woman I was working with) was a practice I call Question Everything. This was a huge step in beginning the unraveling of concepts, beliefs, conditioning, and unconscious actions that were blocking me from knowing the truth of Who I am.

I began to question everything as it came into my awareness, which is another practice that can be coupled with questioning everything. It’s quite difficult to question everything if one is not aware of what is actually running through the mind.

Practice awareness so that you are conscious of what is running in you (rather than on autopilot with white-noise humming in the background). Once you’re able to notice all the chatter, stories, and run-away thoughts, you can begin to question everything that comes in. As thoughts, beliefs, etc arise, ask yourself if you believe it, if it serves you in some way, if it’s feeding love or fear, and if you still want this in your life. If the answer is no to any of these questions or if you discover the thought is feeding fear, you can now choose to throw it out, or at least consciously recognize it and choose not to buy into the story anymore. This will free up so much energy, big energy that’s being leaked to non-important activity. That energy then becomes available to you. No longer trapped behind a bolted door, more of You is now available.

When I got sober in 1997, I began questioning the many things that were constantly flooding my mind. Each time I had a negative judgment or harsh words about myself, I would pause and ask things like, ‘whose voice is that anyway’, and ‘what would happen if I didn’t follow this thought to completion’. Another question that came later, ‘who would I be without this story’.

It didn’t take long for me to discover that clearly I was addicted to thinking. The constant mind activity was the very thing keeping me from dropping into the body and finding the great wellspring of peace that’s always been there, holding me and patiently waiting to be noticed. The mind-machinations felt so normal to me, at first I had an extremely difficult time in the unraveling process. It did become easier with constant vigilance. I realized that the difficulty and discomfort I was feeling was not because I was attempting to contract or flex into a new mode but rather because I’d been contracted for so long that relaxing felt uncomfortable.

An example that comes to mind…

I was talking on the phone with my sister and we were covering some big stuff so we’d been at it for almost an hour. All of a sudden I heard her making noises, “Ow, oooh, ouch, arrrrg…” and I asked her what was going on. She said she switched hands on the phone and was just straightening her arm. She had it flexed, or contracted for so long that it felt normal, until she began relaxing it. After moving through some pain, it didn’t take long for her arm to feel normal again. Most of us have been flexed for so long that we don’t know what normal feels like. Bringing awareness to the conditioned mind and questioning all of it begins the process of relaxation, the normal or more natural state for our bodies and minds.

This may seem so simple (it is) that you might question its effectiveness. Good! Question Everything. If you practice these two things (questioning everything and awareness) every day for the next thirty days, I sense you will be amazed at how much transformation takes place within you. It may look like the world around you is changing. What’s more true is the way you are now relating to life and its many wonderful expressions is changing.

Much Love and Blessings to you,

shellee

Hr

Just as a plant turns to the sun, your thoughts turn to the Power and draw It down through your being, causing It to manifest through your word. …we are using It whether or not we are conscious of the fact.

~ Ernest Holmes