Awakening Tips

Love to Love

Dear Blessed One,

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love there is life.” So simple a statement one can miss the true depth of it. Where there is life there is also love, which is what oftentimes gets missed. Love is what’s here. It’s our natural state. It is what’s at the core of all life.

In Taoism, wu-wei is an important concept. It literally translates as no doing or no trying, which is not the same as no action. Taoist tradition says that those who are in harmony with life behave in an unforced and natural way. A person in wu-wei spontaneously and effectively responds to life – effortlessly. Movement and action comes from a much deeper place than the mind, and is as natural as the body surrendering to the seductive rhythm of a song.

When we stop trying to think our way into something else it’s easy to see that love leads the way, then we can effortlessly follow where the impulse of life is taking us.

Plants, animals, and humans grow without trying. Planets rotate around the sun without “doing it”. Ease of living is what happens when the ego is no longer in charge.

Relax into the natural nature of be-ing; stop trying to be something you are not. Notice if you are following the past, someone else’s ideas or beliefs, and check in to see if they are counter to your beingness.

What is love wanting you to know more deeply about yourself? How does love want to express through you right now? Life is bringing situations, people, and events into your field for your greater good. Love at the beginning and end of all things is guiding you. Truly.

What would it be like to mark one day of the week as Love Day? A practice that might happen on Love Day:

Bring awareness into your heart for that entire day (or as much as you can), and ask what you can do for love. Do this with all your decisions, appointments, errands, meetings, and movements. What would it look like to consciously bring love into all that you do? What would it take to keep the heart open, shining love on everything for just one day out of seven?

Ask not what love can do for you, ask what you can do for love. Then follow that.

Give up all notions of what love is and what love isn’t and just love to love. Recognizing the love that animates all life and moving from that as your truest center quickens one’s awakening, enlivens the spirit, diminishes the ego, unleashes joy, and blesses the world.

“Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.” ~Leo Buscaglia

Love to love – that in and of itself is the gift, for the giver and the receiver.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
~Rumi

There’s No Place Like Home

Dear Blessed One,

Are you living in someone else’s reality? Seemingly controlled by rules, beliefs, and ideas? Trapped in an invisible prison?

Our limiting beliefs are like the invisible cell the hypnotist creates. The audience can clearly see that there are no confining walls, even though the hypnotized one is anxiously trying to get out.

Our conditioned ideas are the walls that are limiting us. They show us how impossible it is to get out but they’re not real, they’re imagined. What can make it even more concrete is that most of the people around us are under the same spell, and they’re seeing the walls too.

Unlike the audience who can clearly see there are no walls while watching the hypnotist’s mysterious show on stage, many of our family and friends struggle with the same invisible prison. All that is needed is for the hypnotist to snap their fingers and the walls will disappear.

Here’s an opportunity to snap your fingers and snap out of it – question everything! Yes, everything. A 12-step friend used to say that to me in my early days of sobriety. I said to her, “Question everything?! What the hell does that mean?” She said, “Very good grasshopper, you’ve got it,” and walked away.

As limiting thoughts come in, ask yourself if it’s true. Pick it to pieces by asking, “Who made up that rule? What else is possible? Do I have to believe that? Am I giving up my freedom to create what I want by believing this?

Just because it’s always been that way, doesn’t mean it can’t change. Until you take full responsibility for your life, you’ll never know real freedom. Check your choices. What are you believing that’s keeping you trapped? Keep questioning it until you get to the root, then you can pull the weed from your magnificent garden.

Awareness is key. Be intensely aware! Acutely aware! There is no better book, movie, or drama than your life – be there fully! Challenge whatever you think is “real”.

You are amazing, magical, holy, and infinite. Abandon limitation, and return home to limitless joy, peace, and stillness.

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”

~Richard Bach

It’s All Grace

Dear Blessed One,

Where is Grace not? Who defines Grace?

Grace is the opportunity to be here in a body and experience Life and ALL its undulations. God does not give “unmerited favors”, or merited ones for that matter.

The conditioned mind often says, “No, not the bad things, that’s not grace!” I have seen, heard, and experienced over and over the grace of some of the most challenging life situations. My greatest growth has come from my deepest pain. Great awakenings can come from the deepest sleeps.

It all has its purpose, to shake us awake, open our hearts more fully, show us our deeper selves, and bring us home to center, where we no longer identify with the clatter of the outside world.

Come back to center and see if you can rest in that Still Point. Notice when thoughts arrive pulling at you like an incessant child. Watch how you allow the distraction to take you on a wild ride where one thought, like a fractal, opens to the ever-expanding, infinite web of thoughts or story. Rarely does resolution ever happen there; just an entanglement of conditioned ideas, old programs, and stories running, feeding itself like some obsessive, hungry creature.

Be alert and see if you can notice in the moment (or soon thereafter) that a thought has arrived. That’s the place of choice. You can use single-pointed focus on a mantra, the breath, a feeling in the body, or you can follow the rampant barrage of thoughts.

Great things happen in silence. Have you ever noticed that the most creative solutions and ideas come while the mind is at rest, perhaps in nature, meditation, or even exercise? When the mind is peaceful, we’re able to detect a more gentle Guidance, the voice of Love which is not programmed by fear. This is how wonder gets ignited, sitting in the silence of the inner world, not knowing what anything is for, watching, and waiting like a curious child.

It’s all Grace, even the most dastardly seeming things in life.

In the Nag Hammadi Library, “The Thunder, Perfect Mind” says, (http://gnosis.org/naghamm/thunder.html),

“For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband…”

Grace is the brave soul who comes here to be despised so that I (as God-experiencing) may experientially know that, struggle with it (because of limited human perspective), and in my particular case, come to the other side of it, more compassionate, loving, and now able to support others in their difficulties.

Be with the pain you experience, be with the joy you experience, be with the challenges and victories…just experience it all.

See if you can experience without labeling it while you wait for the miracle.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope…”

~Romans 5:3-4 KJV

Look in the Mirror

Dear Blessed One,

Look in the mirror…
Make deep eye contact with yourself.
Bring awareness to your heart and say, “I’m sorry for all the times and all the ways I’ve denied you(r) love. I love you.”

When I got sober in 1997, I began doing a ‘mirror meditation’. I would sit in front of a mirror, eye-to-eye with myself, and say over and over, “I love you.” My mind would scream other things, usually very obscene things, or simply, “I hate you!” Besides the internal rebuttal, I did some pretty crazy things, like hit the mirror (I cracked one), and spit at myself (I had some deep wounding). It didn’t take very long though before something began to seep through the facade of self-hatred. There was something there in my eyes that looked and felt more like love than hate, and the warmth that was radiating out began melting the long-frozen icecap of my heart.

God is here, emanating through this precious form in the mirror. There is no better way to connect with the source of All That Is than to look deeply within yourself. Many complain about the elusive nature of God, though God is always here, closer than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet.

I had a belief for many, many years that God was somewhere outside of me, and a story that “He” didn’t like me and that’s why I was being punished (well, I had been “bad” you know). When through meditation, initiations, and spontaneous expanded-awareness states I began to feel what I could only describe as God living and flowing through me, I realized that it wasn’t possible for God to dislike me.

Acknowledging the monumental inadequacy of words as I attempt to point to the unpointable; God is an ever-expanding, infinitely-experiencing, embodied, and formless, neutrality. The whole of life and non-life is God-experiencing.

A word that points to this Holy Vibration is ecstatic, and each experience unique and exquisite. The ecstatic resides in the longing heart that aches to end suffering (which is also where the ecstatic resides). It’s all allowed, and it’s all part of this divine and magnificent dance called life.

As sobriety evolved, and the fog began to lift from my mind, I noticed that I hadn’t consciously chosen anything that had happened in my life. It seemed preordained somehow, guided by some out of sight Force.

All the zigs and zags of my life have purpose. Even though at the time I had not yet fully realized that, there was a relaxation that happened deep inside which helped me to forgive myself and others for all the perceived wrongs that had been done.

You are perfect, I am perfect, and our imperfections are perfect. Just as the sculptor chisels and smoothes to create a work of art, the imperfections are intricate pieces to our development.

Recognizing the love that resides here in this body-temple was a big precursor for the continued awakening to the awareness of God in everything.

I’m sorry for all the times and all the ways I’ve denied your love. I love you.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“A psychiatrist tore a picture of the world from a magazine and cut it into tiny pieces. “Take these puzzle pieces,” he said to a young boy, “and put the world back together.”

~Steve Goodier’s “Life Support System”

This Is All There Is

Dear Blessed One,

If you were aware that your time here in this life were about to end, how long would your list of incompletes be?

Are you holding onto something for the right moment to set it free; be it an acknowledgment, a vacation, a forgiveness, appreciation, love?

What if this is all there is?

Most of us have no idea how long we’ll be here in form, though plan into the future as if it’s a done-deal. Some people neglect their own heart’s callings, and squirrel-away practically everything in hopes of having a big cushion at the end. Those folks miss the joy of living today by being focused on some perceived life in the future, which typically causes fear and anxiety as they try to make all the right decisions.

Simply stated, just do it. Do the very thing that you are being deeply guided or called to do. Watch for the opening and leap. Trust that life will catch you.

A friend often said to me (when I was in early sobriety), “Life is to be enjoyed, not endured.” I thought he was either crazy or on something because my life sure was painful, and challenging. I had a lot of ideas (programming) about how life on the outside should look in order to be happy and free. My outsides didn’t match the ideas I’d bought into, and there was a whole lot of suffering going on.

When I began relaxing my grip on some imagined future, it was much easier to follow the natural impulse of Life, and I began to recognize the beauty of just being here. All the pressure I was feeling from the future life in my mind that I thought was real dissolved.

You are the Infinite expressing in that amazing body the nuances of life in form! See if you can open up even more and allow the awareness of that to direct your movement in this world. Where is your heart pulling you? Where are your yeses? Are you resisting the gentle ushering of Life?

It’s been my experience that simple questions create openings and they don’t need answers from the mind. Just ask them and wait for guidance, synchronicity, something creeping into your awareness (usually more than once), and see if you can trust what comes to you. If you don’t follow the nudge, notice how it came and how you denied your inner knowing. When, “I knew it!” arrives, make note and perhaps the next time you’re guided, it’ll be easier to let go and be led.

The time is Now. There is no future. This is all there is, here, now. Each moment a gift, an exquisite blessing, an opportunity, divine, whole, brand-spanking-new.

Wow.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.” ~Meister Eckhart

Are We There Yet?

Dear Blessed One,

Imagine you are on a mystery trip travelling at 70 mph to an address when all of a sudden blinking signs warn you of road construction ahead. What do you do? Yes, you slow down of course. Eventually you get through the slow spot and are moving at a good clip again.

The excitement builds as your speed increases, and the mind is wondering about the mystery destination. What will it be like? Why have I been sent there? Who else will be there? What will I do when I arrive?

Further up the road as you are coming into a city area, there is traffic congestion and again you slow down, and again eventually you move through that sluggish area. All the while, whether road construction, heavy traffic, weather hazards, etc, you are still travelling.

During the times of adjustment to your speed for the road conditions you can fume about it, struggle and stress about it, or you can rest with what is arising in the moment. Ah-traffic. Oh-construction. Hmm-detour. You could even get curious about it and wonder what this pause in your path is for, or what it might be creating just out of your limited view, or simply enjoy the scenery.

There are many times in our lives when we hit walls, when the flow feels frozen, or we land in flatness, feel disconnected. These times are just as important (if not more so) as the times of joy, connection, flow, etc. They are times when the road is being repaired, the landslide is being cleared, a treacherous accident being avoided, and it’s important to slow down from 70 mph to a speed that’s more appropriate for the surroundings. You are still moving, it just might not look like you thought it would.

Finally, after the many miles, bumps, pauses, and detours, the GPS announces you have arrived at your destination. You are greeted in an empty lot by the One who sent you and you are questioned about all the details of your journey.

The One who sent you eagerly asks if you enjoyed the magnificent red woods along the avenue of the giants. Then with much enthusiasm points out the detour that took you along the jagged coast for amazing views there. Next you’re asked how you felt as you crested the summit and glimpsed that stellar vista. And if you stopped at the sweet mom & pop cafe, or camped at the elk sanctuary, and on and on the questions come at you regarding the many areas you passed blindly through, while focused on some projected landing point.

Rather than saying, “Are we there yet?”, consider the possibility that there is no there, only Here. The clearing of conditionings, concepts, and patterns (which prevent you from recognizing that the destination is wherever you are) will free you from the box of limited living.

Allow the slower pace, the flat times, emptiness to be there. No thing to struggle with or fix, it’s clearing debris from your field so that you can see more clearly what’s here, and move more freely in That.

When we open our eyes with our hearts open too, we can easily detect the miraculous in every moment. Nothing better or more miraculous than Now!

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“The magical mystery tour is waiting to take you away,
Waiting to take you away…” ~The Beatles

That 4-Letter F-Word

Dear Blessed One,

Is your mind holding you hostage in the past? Creating over and over the same small, uncomfortable world that you’re wanting to get out of?

Fear, worry, and anxiety are products of the mind, created from the past. Worry is buying into an idea that something is going to happen that shouldn’t happen, or that something isn’t going to happen that should. It’s being attached to a particular outcome that the mind has created rather than resting with how Life is presenting itself ~ naturally. Attachment creates fear and fear can evolve into suffering due to the many stories the mind creates about possible outcomes of any particular event.

Worry is believing that you are separate from Life, and that you may be able to control the outcomes of this naturally occurring, organic experience, if only you try just a little harder.

All change occurs in the moment when the issue is recognized. Worry does not change anything but ones health. Not knowing what the situation truly is or what it’s for, creates an opening for the Creative Impulse to move you. Uncertainty always resolves itself in the Now, as one continues to move forward.

Life knows just exactly what Life needs in every single moment of Life…always has, always will. Fear or worry is some thought that Life might get it wrong, which of course is not possible.

What if it’s possible to be free of all those stories, and that crazy narrator who seems to prattle on and on about everything?

Some questions you might consider when the mind is throwing you bait:

– What are you afraid of?
– What is the worst thing that might happen if you let go and just allow life to present itself the way it’s presenting itself?
– How “bad” would that worst thing be?
– Is it true or is this just a belief?
– Is there some fear that Life might not handle this one? That something might happen that is not meant to happen? That Life might make a mistake if you’re not in control of things?
– Are the urges to control or ‘take over’ coming from a deep gentle feeling of guidance or is it coming from fear?
– When you think of taking control, do you feel a sense of lightness, or do you contract and feel a bit heavy?
– Are you saying “No” to any part of your experience (resisting)?
– What would it be like to let go of the reins, feel the burn of not being in control, stay with your experience without knowing what any of it is for, and wait for Love to guide you?

Situations come and go. People, animals, and things come and go. Suffering happens when we try to hold on. All is well! The Universe is big enough ~ you are infinite enough ~ to create an opening for solutions to flow into existence; sometimes it doesn’t look like we might imagine.

See if you can stay with your experience rather than following some story about it. If you’re listening to fear, you won’t be able to hear the voice of Wisdom.

What if freedom is just being here? Not arguing with what life is presenting in the moment. Saying yes to what it is that you (from a higher perspective) chose to experience in this moment. Not listening to, or creating another story about it. Just allowing whatever it is that is showing up to show up. Yes Life, even this. Yes, I say yes.

Does the flower have thoughts, judgments, or a story about how it’s flowering or not flowering? No, it just flowers. Life is inherently designed to be this simple. Just flower. Follow the natural flow of Life’s deep guidance. It is possible, plausible, and practical to be free. You are designed to be f-r-e-e!

I’m hearing more and more people using that 4-letter f-word. Hallelujah! and tears of joy, it sure makes my heart sing!

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Oh, the places you’ll go! . .
KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS! . .
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!” ~Dr. Seuss

What’s Here Without Reaching

Dear Blessed One,

Your purpose here is to live, to just let Life dance you in every moment. There is nothing beyond being here that you need to do. Yes, I know, it sounds crazy to state this so simply. However, Life does magically go before you and prepare the way. Life knows where she’s going and it’s easy to follow her lead when you are present.

You are the Awareness that is aware of every experience in Life. When attention is brought into the body, it’s not to say that that’s where “enlightenment” is, it’s to soften the distraction of the seeking mind that says you are not awake (and many other crazy things), and that something else must be “IT”.

Thoughts come and go, awareness (you) does not. What’s still here when thoughts are not? Be still and know that you are God incarnate. Holy smokes! Stop pretending that there is something more magnificent than magnificent you.

Let’s consider the words, “human being”, which is really a misnomer since most people are human-doings.

“Hu” means God, “Man” means mind, and Being; the mind of God being here in form.

See if you can let that take the pressure off of whatever you think you should be doing in your life, even if it’s not yet your experience. You can’t get it wrong. This is God’s game and when you recognize what’s here without reaching, you are free. God BEing through people (and everything else), and as humans, we get to be conscious of It. Awesome.

Practice being here. Presence is the only thing needed to become aware of the magnificence of God in form. All the pain, bumps, zigzags, and difficulties in life are fertilizer for growth. Your expanded Self has called these things in to help shake you awake. They are typically experiences that will bring attention to the immediate moment, which is what is needed to recognize your Holy Self!

It’s easy once you get the hang of resting in awareness…just waiting for your Inner Guidance to direct you. We’ve been conditioned to jump into the mind and go into a whirlwind of thoughts to try and figure things out. I used to get headaches from working so hard in the thought realm, following every thought to the end, looking for a solution through all the things I thought I knew. It’s possible to be free of that churning.

When making a decision now, I wait for an inner yes. I don’t receive “no” or “maybe” anymore. If I don’t get a “yes”, it means life has something else in mind for me, so I wait. I wait for Life’s Impulse to show me the way. It comes softly through me, not from me.

Answers from Spirit come from stillness. Guidance doesn’t come from something that I figure out in my mind while listening to a barrage of thoughts from my past telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. Life, here, now, defines me, over and over again. When we shine the light of awareness into the body and listen, we can feel Life’s guiding touch in every moment.

Living free is counterintuitive to what most of us are taught. There doesn’t have to be struggle or suffering. One can wake up in the midst of the worst scenarios and be full of the Joy of Life.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” ~Robert Frost

The Dance of the Ego

Dear Blessed One,

Ever notice how clumsy, awkward, or foreign something feels in the early days when you’re first learning how to do it? It doesn’t matter what it is, typically there’s a period of time that passes before one feels confident, skilled, and comfortable in their new ability.

I’ve worked with many people over the years, supporting them in the challenges of life – be it relationship, healing, shadow stuff, or awakening. A common experience that I hear from people is a feeling of awkwardness, unsettled, or weirdly-not-themselves. “I must be doing it wrong!”, is the frequent fear. I always get excited when I hear of their self-consciousness because it’s a sign that something is shifting.

When we learn a new way to respond as we break the old patterns of reaction, there is an adjustment period. The whole system can seem a bit wonky; the foundation of the ego is being chipped away and this can cause a feeling of off-balance. It’s a new way of being. It’s throwing a wrench into the works and synapses are no longer firing in the same ole way.

Showing up in a new way creates openings for those around us to do the same. At times it can be challenging as we undo the training that has been done with those close to us. They expect us to act in a certain way and when that behavior or character doesn’t show up, it may be off-putting for the other. Just keep BEing. They’ll adjust, and potentially grow.

While BEing, see if you can be with the feeling of awkward. If you trust the person you’re with, talk about it. Name it and claim it!

“Hey, I feel like a total oddball right now, I’m not quite sure how to relate to anything that we’re talking about and I have a tight feeling in my gut that if it had a voice it would say RUN…”, etc. Once you get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, you can expand the practice from your network of close family and friends to people you’re not as familiar with.

It can be very healing to reveal the deepest truth in the midst of the experience. Just be a run-on sentence for a bit, continually putting words to what you’re feeling as you dance with awkward. Imagine you’re learning how to dance with two-left-feet, or walking on a trampoline with a tray full of beverages. Awkward, shaky. It can help lighten the experience by remembering to not take it so seriously. This practice allows for ego diminishment, or a softening of the ego’s grip.

I was out kayaking with a friend on Saturday and could see he was getting a bit too much sun. I suggested he might want to cover his legs with the (lilac and baby blue) towel I’d loaned him. I noticed hesitation, then he pulled it out and covered up…clumsily. I could see him shifting it, scrunching it, and accidentally dragging parts of it in the water before he voiced, “I feel like an old lady with this thing on me.” I smiled and said, “Mhmm, feel that.” The ego says ‘what will people think?’, and immediately wants to rebuild any diminishment that may have just happened.

It’s so valuable to feel the squirm; let more of that false-self fall away so more of the splendor of your exquisite, infinite nature can shine through you.

Wahoo! as more of That comes through!

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

A Ch’an master contradicted himself (seemingly) a good twelve times in the space of an hour. Exasperated, a disciple laid bare the succession of contradictions before the amused and benevolent gaze of the master, whose entire response, simply said, without trying to justify himself in any way, was, “Really, how strange and marvelous! I’ll never understand why the truth is always contradicting itself!” ~Eternity Now by Francis Lucille

Under the Influence of God

Dear Blessed One,

Over the years, I’ve had many people ask me the very popular and unanswerable question, “What is God?”

Here I go with the best words I can find, in this moment, to share with you what God is.

– The Holy Vibration that animates all form and non-form
– The Still-Point experiencing Its infinite potential
– Prior to thought
– Checkmate ( no matter where you move, you can’t get out of God)
– Here ~ Now

God is not a belief; God is Experience(ing), and ever expanding. Ones personal experience of God truly is unutterable. There are no words that will fully express what God is. As soon as there is a thought forming of what God is, there is limitation. There is no way to express the magnitude and divine precision of God. We can only continue to point.

It is possible to experience your more expansive self, or God-nature. I know many of you have read my first book, Suffering ~ A Path of Awakening, and may know this blip; it seems like an appropriate place to retell it though.

Awareness has expanded so much at times that the local self seems like such a funny trick that I am playing on myself. An example: I went to Mount Shasta to pick up some class supplies and on my drive there, my awareness expanded. Gradually I became aware that I Am so Big. I am all of It and nothing is moving separately from the whole and it seemed so funny to have all my attention on this “little me” driving in this little vehicle, moving around in myself [formless] and not really going anywhere at all. I felt like I should have a sign displayed on my vehicle: “Caution, driver under the influence of God and may be in an altered state”.

How to get there? Be still. Go within. God is not somewhere outside of you.

Attempting to think your way to God-awareness will not work (as my experience has shown me). Quieting the stormy mind is a good first step to experiencing beyond the seemingly limited human self.

Notice there is conversation and activity going on in the head, a critic picking things apart, dissecting, rearranging, arguing, etc. Observe the constant narrator commenting on everything, saying what it is or isn’t, judging, analyzing, limiting, and on and on. Being aware that there is chatter in the head is the first step, and bringing your attention into the body is the next step.

Take a breath, acknowledge that you are thinking and then drop into the body. Find something, anything that you can focus on, physical or an emotion, and give it your awareness. Become breath, or sadness, or backache. Let it have all of you. Dissolve into your experience. Do it over and over as the thoughts intrude upon your body-awareness focus. Eventually the thinking mind will get quiet. It’ll say, “Hey, the last 100,000 times we interrupted, s/he didn’t listen so fuhgeddaboudit.” That’s the ego (or false-self) being right-sized.

This practice not only helps to heal old wounds, and move stagnant energy, but it will also train the mind to be still. The snarly tangle of thought-forms is the very thing that is in the way of experiencing the Peace that holds it all.

It seemed impossible 16 years ago when I began meditating that my mind would ever be still. I was so addicted to thinking that I would pause meditating over and over to think about something for a minute or to write it down so I wouldn’t forget (it was sooo important!) and then go back to my meditation. My mind was devouring me like hungry piranhas.

Whenever I considered dropping into the heart and allowing thoughts to pass on by, my mind would scream, “What?! Who’s going to finish thinking these important thoughts, if not me? The world will turn to chaos!” I had so much going on in my head that needed my attention that I couldn’t imagine not continuing to think through all these very important thoughts, to the very end, until resolution, and all the loose ends were tied up, all t’s crossed, i’s dotted, and on, and on, ad infinauseam. There did not seem to be an end to the train.

Today my mind is like a still lake with silent thought-clouds passing overhead. The clouds do not create a ripple on the water, nor do they leave a mark, just as the thoughts drift on by the unrippled mind. What a precious gift.

Much Love and Blessings to You,
shellee

“Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.” ~Victor Hugo