Awakening Tips

Don’t Mind the Mind

Dear Blessed One,

Where are you? Are you tuned into the inner world while also experiencing the outer world? Are your words and actions in alignment with your thoughts and feelings?

Many are sleepwalking, having very little or no awareness of their bodies or their feelings. They are not here.

We’ve been trained to project into the future, long for or lament about the past, and multitask right out of the present moment.

While following thoughts, giving them our attention, we jump right out of body-awareness, and are lured into an imaginary world.

A thought is not self-sustained. It needs you for fuel. It needs your attention, your belief.

Don’t mind the mind. Don’t invest any attention or importance to it. It’ll begin to lose its power, and the grip loosens.

Just watch as the thoughts come and go. Thoughts are like the wind, let them blow on by. Let them make their noise like the wind through the trees. You’re going to get whipped around if you attempt to follow them. Bring total awareness to the one who is watching the thoughts come and go.

You are bigger than thought.

Bringing attention back into the body is another way to break the thinking-habit.

Ask yourself at any time, “What am I feeling?” Locate something in your body, a tension, an emotion, anything, and go there. Be with it. Sense all of its little nuances.

Stay present for all things. When reaching for food, ask, “What am I feeding?” It’s an interesting investigation that tends to uncover unconscious patterns, and in the seeing comes the freeing. Clearing debris from the unconscious can create an opening for discovering the subtle essence that animates all things.

Don’t make it a new practice, another doing, a means to an end. Make it the end. Not a doing while hoping for something else to happen as the outcome of a doing, but an inquiry, just bringing more consciousness online. Truly simply being here.

I simply AM!

Are you holding onto something that is more important than freedom? Take a look.

Awaken to the effortlessness of being…the recognition of that which doesn’t sleep or wake.

Die to who you think you are. You are the one you are looking for. Reeeeeeally!

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Every thought and every breath is a breath
and a thought occurring in awareness;
and we are that awareness,
that thought-less and breath-less awareness.”
~Mooji

Freedom or Comfort

Dear Blessed One,

It is possible to be free in every moment, in every situation, in every emotion that arises. Letting go of an idea that it needs to change for peace to be present is the key to freedom.

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortability of any situation turns down the volume of the experience. Surrender is not a giving up and melting into a puddle of ‘it’s just no use’. It’s simply a relaxing with what has arrived in one’s life. In that relaxed state, or stillness, guidance can come through showing the way to resolution, or response.

Reframing the experience from a fresh place rather than the patterned and programmed mind can create a whole new way of being with every experience in every moment. Curiosity can pop the circuits of victim, confusion, and desperation.

Everything that exists is here to assist your growth, shift, expansion, deepening in some way. What would happen if you faced every moment with this awareness?

What happens when one lets go of the need or idea for whatever is presenting itself to be different?

See if you can notice the programming that has been installed around discomfort. We’ve been trained to contract, to run from it, to distract, fix, to resist it. Can you consider the possibility that the discomfort you are experiencing is actually You guiding yourself to move in another direction, or to open you in another way?

See how the mind wants to create a story, a great drama about whatever it is that’s going on in the moment.

The portal to greater understanding and trust widens when we let go of a need to know what it all means. Tune in without knowing anything and wait for the soft urging of Self to point the way.

As a reminder, ask yourself in the face of every challenge, “Do I want freedom or comfort?” If your answer is freedom, exhale, let go of the reins, and say YES to life.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.” ~Charles C. West

Dropping Illusion

Dear Blessed One,

Who is the self that is looking for the self?

Find the one who is looking and then you will see the silliness of it all. It’s a cat chasing its own tail.

You are already here. When awakening happens, it’s not because the self has been found, it is because the seeker has dissolved in the light of conscious awareness.

Eventually the mind-made self sees what it’s doing, sees that the emperor has no clothes, the game of chase ends, and the seeker dissolves.

The unlearnable truth of you is not the cultivated self. The conditioned, programmed, running-on-autopilot self is not your effortless, natural, present self. This is the man-made or mind-made self, the illusory self.

Watch as the mind delivers more ideas of what to do to find the self. How many ways are there to find the self? Countless, I’m sure. The mind is very good at keeping one quite busy seeking through many avenues, anything other than quietly being right “here”.

Stop looking. Be still, right where you are. Take one long conscious breath and see if you can allow life to move you in the next moment without thinking, “I should…”, “I need…”, “I want…”, “I have to…”, “I can’t…”, “It’s time…”, “I’ve tried…”. Take a look at that “I” and see if you can separate from it…for one conscious breath.

If there is no discernible movement during or after the breath, be with that, and take another deep conscious breath. Again continue to wait for the impulse of life to show you the next move for this form called “I”.

Detach from the litany of to-dos and allow yourself, if even for just a few moments, to not know anything. See if you can detect the Creative Impulse that moves through you, gently guiding you, rather than listening to the demands of the illusory self.

You cannot be here and be looking for the self because the self is already here. The challenge is to trust that, exhale, stop believing the mind, and allow life to show you in each moment the effortless magic of Presence.

Seeing and dropping illusion (sometimes over and over), will create an opening just big enough for the light of awareness to be recognized. Once that happens, ho boy, what a good belly laugh you will have.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” ~Iris Murdoch

Choice is an Anchor

Dear Blessed One,

I’ve heard so many people ask about free-will, question whether we have choices here, and insist that they’ve grown, changed somehow through the many choices they’ve made.

Whilst I’m sure more comfortable ways of playing the game of life are discovered everyday by using the plethora of methods of self-inquiry, shadow-work, energy-clearing modalities, etc., one must be careful to not get drawn into a game of chase.

Once I heal my childhood wounds, relationship issues, money struggles, obsessive tendencies, secrets of the past, then for sure I’ll be pure enough to awaken.

I’ve been caught in that game of chase. It’s a never-ending story. All the things I did or thought I ought to do to become clear enough, worthy enough, spiritual enough to awaken became one disappointment after another as I was left standing over and over again with my unstamped “Enlightened” card. Even though the techniques were helpful in various ways, the only technique needed to be here is to stop looking elsewhere.

Use as many methods, teachers, or gurus as you feel drawn to use. Getting your balance is okay, it’s all okay. Recognize when you’re getting attached to some method, or teacher, and then be sure to attach to one who is free, they will be your reminder to not attach to anything!

Just notice that you are relying on training wheels, and you won’t know what a wild ride you might be capable of until you take them off. Once balance is achieved, then you can ride anywhere with anyone ~ just for the joy of it.

Until the idea that anything has to happen to be here –complete, whole, fully alive, and awake– is dropped, the illusion of separation and suffering will continue. Free-will, choice, these are ideas of separation.

The idea of choice is an anchor. Life knows where it’s going, let It lead you.

When all choice is surrendered, then the Essence of Life itself moves freely through you, guides you, and carries you effortlessly through the dream of self. Then one is responding as a conduit of Life, rather than reacting as a separate entity attempting to conquer all the challenges of humanity.

Free-will, choice, these are just more clouds in the thought-storm. Be willing to let it all go, the idea of control, the joy, sorrow, suffering, the story, and then die over and over again to what’s being born in each moment.

Here, just here, there is undefinable magic.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.” ~Allan Watts

The Great and Fearful Teacher

Dear Blessed One,

June of 1997 I woke up in a hospital and didn’t know how I got there or why I was there. I’d been there for 4 days and didn’t remember anything. People came to visit, I carried on conversations with them and had no memory of any of it.

As it turns out, I had attempted suicide in an alcohol blackout.

Depression had always lingered in my field. I ran from it most of my life with drugs and alcohol. Back in the day, I wouldn’t have identified it as depression; my mind kept telling me it was just lingering pain from the dreadful childhood I’d survived.

To make a very long story short, I got sober, did a lot of trauma-release work, eventually the depression was not so horrific, and I began to find new ways of dealing with it…

…until January of 2005.

I got knocked on my ass with a level of depression I’d never experienced before, and now sober, I had no way of running from it. This depression went on relentlessly until March of 2007.

In the midst of it, I thought for sure it would kill me; looking back, depression was my greatest teacher. The stranglehold it had on me was killing the remaining vestiges of hope I had that I might find something on the outside to fix my insides.

It was the beginning of the end of who I thought I was, what it was that made me happy, what my life purpose was, the meaning of life, etc…

I kept searching for something to fix me, heal me, or find what was “wrong” with me (and the world), while never allowing myself to deeply feel the great despair of losing all hope. Nor to completely feel what it was like to have no thing to prop me up, no solution to the seeming problems of the world or my life. It continued to wear me down, grinding off all the edges of who I thought I was, or what I thought I could withstand.

Then one night a friend said to me, “Have you considered just allowing yourself to feel depressed? Or if you can, even thanking the depression for its presence in your life?” It wasn’t long after that when I discovered there is great strength through vulnerability, through surrender. I decided to let it have me, completely dropping into depression without a need to make it any different, without a lifeline, or a backup plan. Incredibly, the depression left. I suppose it was done with me, perhaps it had completed its mission. There was a sense of death on the other side of it. Something had died, a something that was no longer serving me.

A few things I discovered from the great and fearful teacher depression…

Drama can only happen when we identify with thoughts. Drama, story, projection, it all falls away when we are just here. Even the nagging question of ‘what to do’…what to DO as we are BEING? Speaking, action, response, it all happens, guided by an unseen Force that knows no conditions, and that comes through naturally when one is resting, allowing all to be as it is.

All the questions of purpose, what to do, etc. come from the mind, which is not who you are. The mind can’t threaten the True Self, it only threatens the idea of who you think you are. The mind’s purpose is to wear you down and bring you back to the Still Point of Truth, which is not a voice rattling around in the head. It’s the quiet essence that comes through you and guides when the mind has ceased its chatter.

Freedom from the hypnosis of the conditioned mind is a freedom that can’t be taught or learned. Experiencing the joy of life through the sweet stillness of presence is a most natural and peaceful experience, no matter what is going on with the outside world.

Come and taste. It’s something that can’t be explained. Just touch it, if only for a moment, let go of the longing that keeps you out of the most natural state, and just be here.

Come back to the place that the mind imagines it’s lost. Drop every concern, struggle, woe, and see what’s always here.

People who have not yet discovered their free essence may say you’re mad because you no longer follow the conditioned mind. One person’s idea of madness is another person’s awakening. Once you know what’s here, the misperceptions of others won’t bother you anymore.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“How do you know I’m mad?” asked Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” ~Alice in Wonderland

Happiness Is

Dear Blessed One,

Did you know that your life is a prayer, that you are constantly praying to the Creator with your words and thoughts?

You don’t need to be on bended knee, hands clasped, and eyes closed or looking upward. You are so loved, so free to create, and so powerful that the Universe responds to you whether you are in formal prayer or not.

We are the creators of our reality. Yes, I know, that can be a hard pill to swallow for some people.

I had no idea when I was going through the great challenges of my past that I was calling these very things in to develop myself, and nothing else could have advanced me more profoundly. The great level of unconsciousness I was living at tossed me about like a small craft in high seas. Finally I capsized, and just before drowning, miraculously found some footing.

I then began to make changes in my life by exploring what I thought I wanted. It began with a wish-list like a kid to Santa Claus, mostly with the word “more” in front of the item(s), which was actually focusing my energy on lack rather than the abundance I was requesting. Slowly that evolved to, “I want to be happy,” and, “I want to wake up.”

What I didn’t yet know was that happiness is never caused by anything. It took some time to discover that true happiness is causeless.

If something on the outside (relationship, job, etc.) “makes you happy”, that’s the fulfillment of desire, not happiness. If happiness relies on an outside source, if it can be taken away, or if it can trigger fear of loss, that is not true happiness.

Happiness is not dependent upon something on the outside. It is a dropping of everything, of all the ideas of what we’ve been programmed to believe that will make us happy. Dropping illusions, ideas, and grasping will create an opening to discover the happiness that is our true nature. Happiness is a still point within you that desires No Thing.

What is your prayer? Do you know what you want? If you don’t know what you want, how do you know that you don’t already have it?

What are you reading, watching on TV, talking about, thinking about, worrying about, focusing on? Where attention goes, energy flows, and where energy flows, life grows. Bringing awareness and heart (gratitude) to the things you would enjoy experiencing has an energy to it that spins the universe into action.

Take full responsibility for all of it. Projecting and blaming others perpetuates the illusory dance of separation. Responsibility equals freedom. Come to the other side of the facade of all your beliefs, and reactions.

Just stop. All conditioning, and practices aside, what is the untaught way to recognize yourSelf?

The Holiest of the Holies is right where you are. You are the One you are looking for.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.”
~James Arthur Baldwin

The Tightrope

Dear Blessed One,

Are you hiding from your own Knowing?

You know that tug in the heart or the gut feeling you sometimes get when pondering something, the gentle undertone of some knowingness that is present?

That is innate wisdom guiding you, your higher self. What often happens though after we’ve been so wisely guided is the ego very quickly steps in, dredges up the past while analyzing what you’ve been guided to do (or not do), which invites doubt that then causes confusion, fogginess, or fear, and undermines the clarity you had just a moment ago.

See if you can recognize when this happens and say yes to your inner guidance.

Let go…
Let go…
Let go…
Life knows what it’s doing…let IT do it, and you rest.

When we listen deeply, it’s easy to tell the difference between ego and Guidance. Ego screams or demands and there is almost always fear or an emergency sense to its suggestions. Guidance gently points, and while resting with that, creative inspiration and ideas can arise that feel ‘right’ to move on.

When we listen to ego, things can get really messy very quickly (which can be a great way of teaching one to listen). When we listen to Guidance, there’s a sense of perfect unfoldment…a flow…no efforting.

The more we follow the gentle tug of our inner knowingness, the stronger our confidence in following that knowingness gets, and the more we’re able to trust when Life is showing us our next move.

It’s only F.E.A.R; false evidence appearing real. Because many of us have been trained to fear the unknown, often there is a lack of trust that we’re doing the “right” thing by just allowing Life to guide us.

Guidance is alive within – we only need heed it. Don’t take the bait when the mind lures you with potentially juicy story. The ego is just a frightened little creature that is very skilled at calling in many, many things from the past to keep us from moving forward.

I recall hearing this story of Charles Blondin who was the first person to cross a tightrope stretched 11,000 feet across the mighty Niagara Falls. He walked across, 160 feet above the falls, several times… each time with a different daring feat – once in a sack, on stilts, on a bicycle…

The crowd ooohed and aaahed as Blondin carefully walked across – one dangerous step after another – pushing a wheelbarrow holding a sack of potatoes.

Suddenly he stopped and asked the audience,

“Do you think I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?”

The crowd enthusiastically yelled, “Yes! You are the greatest tightrope walker in the world. We think you can!”

“Yes, but do you believe I can?” Blondin continued.

“Yes, absolutely! We believe you can!” the crowd answered.

“Yes, but do you truly have faith that I can?” Blondin countered.

“Yes, yes! We have faith, we do!” they all cheered.

“Okay,” said Blondin, “Who’s getting in the wheelbarrow?”

No one did. The crowd said they had faith but their actions proved they did not.

Say YES Love, even this. Nothing to fight. Nothing to screw up. It’s not possible. It’s just the ego gasping for breath and panting out words reminding you to play it safe! It’s okay, you’re held, you’re whole, you’re safe.

Faith is in the wheelbarrow, and it can carry you across the tightrope of life one breath, one moment, at a time.

Life is holding you and if you fall, it’s only because there’s something shiny there for you to pick up and share later.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”
~Alan Watts

“Crazy” Stages of Awakening

Dear Blessed One,

About six years ago I was out walking when all of a sudden, in a whoosh I was moving in (or as) fluid, and entered into total stillness. I had to slow my walking and breathing because both were making too much noise in this amazing state. The sound was like being underwater breathing with an oxygen tank, except that I could hear my heart beating too. Nothing else around me had sound or relative substance to the dimension I was in.

I continued to float down the hill where I encountered three deer, a mother and her young ones. As we all stopped and our eyes met, instantly my heart became an inferno. Tears streamed down my face and I felt completely consumed by love. Like a deer in the headlights, I was frozen in place with these amazing creatures, experiencing infinite love for what felt like eternity, although was probably only minutes.

As the state slowly faded (leaving remnants of bliss), I flashed to a time with my older brother many years prior. I was sharing a story with him about seeing a couple of deer on a trail while I was out jogging. He smiled an enigmatic smile and said, “If you could sit in their hearts you would know something.” I’ve always wondered if the schizophrenia he was diagnosed with was not illness but misunderstood sensitivity, and just part of the “crazy” stages of awakening. Most modern societies sedate and medicate people if they show signs of insanity. However, many tribes recognize those same signs as the stages of awakening and take care of their people while they are birthed into a new way of being here.

My brother’s wise words struck me then and even more so in this more recent encounter. That’s how it felt – like I was in the hearts of those deer, although I’m not sure if I was sitting in their hearts or if they were sitting in mine – we were all in the one heart I suppose.

Like Prasad, this exalted state was such a sweet gift from Source. It gave me just enough a taste of the Divine to keep me from leaping off of a cliff; most of the time I was in such a burn that I didn’t know whether or not I’d survive. Unaware of what was going on, I was deep in the throes of awakening and felt like I was losing my mind. Little did I know then that losing my mind was exactly what was needed.

Even with all the years of work I’d done (12-step, shadow-work, energy-work, etc.), I was identified with much, still programmed deeply, and quietly befuddled by life and my purpose here. I just wanted to be free.

The burn felt intolerable. I’d be out jogging and everything inside of me was screaming, “STOP!” I had a sense of wanting to shimmy my body just beneath the grass and lie there silently in the soil while finishing the gestation period, or decompose and be done with it all.

I was in a spiritual community that met weekly and there were nights I’d be holding onto my seat and rocking in my chair, feeling like I was going to spontaneously combust while waiting for a moment to speak. Eruptions of anger, sadness, messiness in relating, and inability to motivate myself to “do” anything, especially the daily practices (yoga, meditation…), were the norm for me during this period.

That which no longer served the whole was being reduced, and it was painful. When the fire gets hot enough, those things that do not support our truest essence will burn off. I popped. I survived. You will too. Don’t go it alone.

I’m witnessing a lot of people waking up; what a gift to Mother Earth and to all of us here.

Be with what’s showing up, breathe, scream, cry, laugh, go crazy, and re-member.

You’re in the arms of the Divine…ALL ways.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.”
~Blaise Pascal

A Deeper Surrender

Dear Blessed One,

Surrender? How? Why? Who will be in charge!?
These were some of the questions that came up for me when well-meaning people would say it to me.

It took many years of life surrendering me (which is what eventually happens as we attempt to control life) before I was able to let go of the reins and allow life to have its way with me.

Surrender allows the most perfect, and situation-appropriate sharing to come through. When surrendered, the wisdom that is now able to flow can be received and enjoyed by all who are listening, including the one delivering it.

I can’t tell you how many times people have quoted me or reminded me of something I said to them and I usually say something like, “Wow, really, I said that?”

Rather than rearranging old thoughts, beliefs, and conditioned ideas of the past, then serving it again, life gets to meet each moment fresh and move unencumbered by the leftovers.

I gave my first book-signing in 2009 where 17 people attended. It might have been the first time in my life that I experienced what I would have defined then as complete surrender.

I walked up to the podium, quite nervous, not having any ideas about how to do it (had never attended a book-signing), and when I read the first paragraph in my book, I silently realized, “This isn’t mine. The book came through me, the book signing came to me, and none of this is mine.” Prior to that I had always arrived prepared for events with manuals, handouts, outlines, etc, and with a projected outcome. This event was organic and had a life of its own. The flow was incredible, the questions were marvelous, the answers were magical, and the feedback was surprising.

Afterwards, people came up to me and said they felt I had listened deeply to their questions, and that they enjoyed when I paused while waiting for the answers to arise rather than just answering from a practiced knowing or preaching to them.

This is life serving life. When we get out of the way, magic happens. Prior to the book-signing, I didn’t know that I could arrive not knowing how to do something, and be totally carried, have it just be done through me.

Since then I’ve discovered that miracles and magic happen all the time as I rest in a deeper surrender. Truly no-thing to do. Complete non-identification with what’s coming through allows me to stay in a state of deep rest and not-knowing, while life itself effortlessly responds to every person and situation I’m presented with.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“The essential surrender happens within you; it has nothing to do with anybody outside you. The basic surrender is a relaxation, a trust – so don’t be misguided by the word. Linguistically, surrender means to surrender to somebody, but religiously, surrender simply means trust, relaxing. It is an attitude rather than an act: you live through trust.”
~Osho

When Life Gives You Lemons

Dear Blessed One,

“Make lemonade” might be considered spiritual bypassing. I say pucker up baby. Life is giving you a great opportunity to know, and heal yourself on a much deeper level.

Where are those tight spots, rigid beliefs, attachments? What are you afraid of? How has the conditioned world clipped those magnificent angel wings of yours?

When I’m experiencing challenges, or not clear about what’s being expressed, I remember to first breathe deeply, and then to internally ask myself questions like:

What am I feeling?
What am I not seeing?
How am I limiting flow?
What am I most afraid of here?
What is life showing me about me?

Questioning is like bringing a flashlight into a dark room. As we move the light around, things in the room become illuminated. By bringing the light of questioning into the space, and then waiting to see what’s illuminated, we get a glimpse of what’s hiding in the dark.

It takes courage, vulnerability, and trust to completely let go of needing a certain outcome when tangled in a dark, cluttered corner.

It can be messy unwinding from the grips of beliefs, and fear, and that’s okay. Stay with it until the last little foothold softens. It can be humbling, and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s a way of quietly chipping at the foundation of ego. Recognize when the mind kicks in with a story or witnesses to build a case, and immediately drop back into the body. Stay with the feelings. This will thwart ego replenishment. Seeing hardened ideas, feeling deeply into old wounds, and giving space for that energy to move is a great gift to yourself (and others).

As we continue to expand, and awaken, there’s no room for dusty old clutter. It’s of a denser vibration and the new lighter you can no longer carry it. That’s the good and bad news. What’s no longer supporting your awakening will be in your face shouting for release. You don’t need to know what the ‘original offense’ was that created the trigger. This moment’s trigger is the opportunity to release it. Feeling is healing.

When life gives you lemons, pucker up, make lemonade, and celebrate this grand opportunity.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Surrender is not something that you can do. If you do it, it is not surrender, because the doer is there. Surrender is a great understanding that, “I am not.” Surrender is an insight that the ego exists not, that, “I am not separate.” Surrender is not an act but an understanding.”
~Osho