meredith murphy | luminous being

re-instating wholeness in hard times

by meredith murphy

At times it's hard to feel your connection to anything.

Life seems hard.  You wake up even at the dawn of the new day with a sense of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, frustration, even anger.  This is part of life in our evolution--that these feelings come to the surface.  Are triggered by our relationships.  Are fed by what we think about.  Are deepened by our memories.

When we're in one of these experiences, it can feel all encompassing.  It can feel like there is no way out.  

When this feeling has gone on a while and as the mornings have come and gone, it has not lifted, it's easy to lose your orientation.  You might even begin to feel just angry and outraged by the whole thing.

All of this just continues to stir up the muck.  And yet, even knowing this, when you're in this space, that doesn't help.  It seems like nothing helps.  That no searching frees you.  You lose your faith in asking for help.  You stop calling upon angels and your higher self.  You may not even feel their presence anymore and again, you find yourself astonishingly, seemingly, not connected to anything.

In truth, you are one with the vastness of being, the divine realm from which you and all life is continually emerging.  Yet you don't feel this.  And it is feeling this and living as this knowing that is what we're evolving toward.  You know this and you are committed to this and the reality that you can't get there right now, only increases your suffering.

When we find ourselves in just such a depressing, frustrating state of being, it's really good to just slow down.  To not worry about the fact that it seems like we'll never be happy.  To not fuel the anger, but to sink into it.  To become deeply intimate with it all.  Yuck?  Why yes. Uber-yuck.  Yet it is by allowing ourselves to acknowledge what is happening, that we begin to reinstate our wholeness, and our alignment with ourselves.

When we're at odds with our feelings, we're at odds with ourselves.  When we feel unhappy about our feelings, we're fragmenting something that is actually whole--our experience. We're aggressive toward ourselves and our experience.  We resist it.  We hate it.  We fight it.

By starting with just acknowledging what is happening and being aware of it, we start to return to an experience of wholeness.  We start loving ourselves!  We didn't even realize it, but we weren't loving ourselves, in fact that is what perpetuated this whole mess!  Even though it might not feel like it, it's true.  By paying attention to what we are feeling.  By greeting what is happening to us without fighting it, by recognizing it--not by labeling it necessarily, but by feeling it consciously, intimately--we are actually coming into agreement with the moment and with our own life, our self our experience, our very being.  We're saying "Yes, I see that."  We don't have to like it, but we're no longer at odds with ourselves.  By acknowledging what's happening we stop fragmenting ourselves.  We're coming into clarity by doing this and we're coming into wholeness.

Staying with ourselves is the most important part of being alive. 

If we don't stay with ourselves, we're not loving ourselves.  We don't want to be conditional in our love of self.  We want to love ourselves in all ways.  When we make the same mistakes again, when we feel crappy, when we're unhappy, when we get angry over something we know isn't even about us.  When we don't even know why we feel bad, we still want to stay with ourselves.  Whenever we fall short of our own ideas of ourselves and what we think we ought to be, we're living in dis-harmony with ourselves and we lose the experience of our own wholeness.

In this process of awakening, many of us have experienced expansive bliss, had visions and insights that are radical and life-changing.  We've felt our bodies changing and we've devoted our focus and our life to the collective awakening and our own personal evolution toward embodying light and love.

To find ourselves in the muck after all this, can feel like an enormous disappointment.  Or worse.

Yet perhaps in this incredibly difficult state, we're might actually discover and be able to see our own divine embodiment progressing.

By staying with ourselves, we become the love we wish to be.  We say to ourselves, "I love you no matter what you're feeling."  We put the truth of our eternal, divine nature into practice by behaving toward ourselves and our lives with the compassion of knowing we are still pure, perfect, radiant love.  Regardless of appearances.

As we learn to love ourselves this intimately, this deeply, we grow the capacity to create a love-filled world.  Even more important, we cultivate the embodiment of wholeness as awareness.  We deeply support Gaia and our whole world, with this seemingly disconnected, personal activity of becoming better at being intimate with ourselves.

There is much in our experience that arises that we may not understand.  Yet we still stay with ourselves!  

We can see what is.  In doing this we can be clear about what we're feeling.  We can more intimately know our experience.  We can trust that in this close, attentive, love-filled relationship to our life, that we're doing the most important thing--staying with ourselves.  Learning to be whole.

Amazingly, by doing this, life settles.  It might not happen immediately, but life is in motion, it's not static, and merged with it, with our experience, we enable this to flow into a new arrangement.  And the more we love ourselves in this moment, even if that only looks like accepting, or noticing, or tolerating...all of it is a start to returning to wholeness.

Our mind is naturally peaceful, as is our being.  

When that feeling, that state eludes us, we can interpret this correctly: we are out of alignment with ourselves.  There can be, as we all know, peace in the midst of any and all storms.  So we don't have to change what's happening, we just have to stay with ourselves.  We can trust that if we stay connected and with ourselves we're reinstating our wholeness, feel the peace of not fighting things, pay attention to ourselves instead of wishing we were somewhere else (thus fragmenting our wholeness and our presence) and instead, go the distance, knowing eventually joy will return.  We can sidestep worrying and feeling bad and acting in faith, just stay with ourselves.  Like we stay with a good friend through hard times--reassuring and present.  Paying attention.  Noticing.  Gentle.

By slowing down we can see our experience more clearly and stop saying "no" to our life!  We can stop basically ignoring ourselves.  As we hang in there with whatever is happening in our life, and live saying "yes" to it we begin to notice the energy of freedom.  Realizing this is the ultimate submission to life.  Not fighting it, actually liberates our innate freedom!  And as we become one with it, returning to ourselves, then one with our life, we can gently, from within the wholeness of our being, allow a shift to arise.

When we've been feeling badly, or disoriented, confused or filled with despair, finding the subtle energies of love and grace can seem hard--like learning to taste the rich flavors of food without salt!  

When we come into full presence with our experience, we re-instate our wholeness.

As we speak to ourselves with love, reminding ourselves and remembering that all is well, that we are one with everything, that it is our innate state of being to be in peace, to know ourselves as love, we give ourselves company.  And we experience comfort.  By slowing down, by allowing ourselves to settle, we allow this memory of our true, luminous nature to surface.  It arises naturally.  And organically, without effort, we plant within our consciousness, the seeds of eternal joy as love.

the deeper current available to us all

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

― Rumi

living the new paradigm: accepting the generosity of life

by meredith murphy

Life is ripe with opportunities.  It's endless.  Each morning we awaken and it unfurls in our presence.  

We call forth our experiences with our expectations, feelings, focus, intent.  

The opportunities to discover pathways to joy, innate wisdom, happiness, relief, communion, abundance--they're continually available.  They are ours to claim, and all we do is turn within and call them forth by paying attention to that desire.  

We are here now.  All that came before is just memory.  All that lies ahead is just plans.  All that distracts us in the moment is thoughts.  Beyond plans, memories and thoughts are countless invitations to the good stuff!  Life is offering us endless generous openings.  Are we living with this awareness and allowing our experience to ascend?  To rise up, to soar even?

It's time to shift into living in the present and commanding energy to your liking.  It's time to expect more...

I'm personally (naturally) expecting wonderful.

You?  

 

mirror, mirror

More and more it is so obvious...

This is the real conversation to have with ourselves in the mirror!

What would it mean to realize we are each, our own, dream come true? To look nowhere but in the mirror for all that we wish to know, for the love we wish to feel...to gaze deep within to the opening to everything that resides inside.

Ah...! Abundant love and happiness. Yes!

exhilaration! i am movement.

by meredith murphy

The New Human exists at the fulcrum of vast inner movement and the reflection of this in manifest realtiy.

To begin to know this experience, I claim my true nature: I am movement.

As movement I feel exhilaration! I don't know exactly where I am going and at times this has held me back, but no more. I don't always see the big picture of why I am drawn to certain things, but I trust myself and I allow myself to move into, toward that which I am drawn toward, that which I love and which I feel like experiencing--not slowly gingerly, but with heart and enthusiasm--running freely, the wind in my hair, kind of movement.

I am invigorated by nature and life.

I am embracing my innate innocence and sense of adventure.

I have let go of needing to see all the steps in front of me.

I am just flowing, moving toward life in each moment. Trusting. Confident. Strong. Joy embodied.

Beautiful!

*

Movement supports our body as we allow the intense energies we're experiencing to elevate our experience. I've doubled my daily walk time with the dogs and am also beginning to think about rollerblading again and/or running. The more we participate with these waves of energy cooperatively, merging with the energy, the easier this is. I'm noticing that the more I move physically the better I feel and using all this energy to exercise is also flowing the energy it in a wonderfully positive way for my body!

To get into this flow of movement, I had to cultivate it.  It grew gradually as I noticed any kind of movement energized and opened me up and so I kind of kept at it, little by little.  I had so much inertia after all this inner stuff for so long!!  Eventually more and more movement became part of my day and the whole thing got it's own momentum. I know it will continue to expand as I am appreciating it and noticing the delicious ways I feel! 

I am a big fan of stillness and inner movement.  For me, I simply came to a point where my inner movement was SO VAST! My life in manfiest reality needed to come into balance and also move with more acceleration and expansion to reflect this.  

I needed flow in all of my life, not primarily on the inner planes where it was.  

All of this amazing, vast inner movement, NEEDS to come forth in our manifest reality!  The inner movement so many of us have created, in manifest reality, will expand our world!  I see the reflection of our inner "ultra-marathoner" emerging in our manifest reality as a powerful gift, balancing and harmonizing our world and revealing the New Human--who moves on inner planes and creates and shifts energy in big ways day in day out.  This most naturally will be reflected in the outer experiences we have and are.

I am an embodied being who was covering enormous distance within and yet my outer life was not moving so dramatically and I sense that's what's next...to have created enough alignment with our I AM presence, that we are able to elevate our seat of consciousness and reflect the inner reality by letting it flow into our way of being in the manifest world.  My outer life was kinda stuck... I am not just talking about exercise here, I am talking too about literal movement--to new places, creating new things, new relationships, manifesting my ideas and releasing them and creating more and more and more...about overall acceleration and letting it create more movement in manifest reality as a natural allowing of my energy to expand and be unified and harmonious.

In addition to all the inertia from so much stillness, there was a part of me that wanted to plan and organize my life...like I used to in the old paradigm.  For so long there was a part of me that wanted to KNOW and in this wanting, I hesitated.  Waited. I tolerated not knowing decisively and let parts of my life not move.  The thing is--now that we are moving beyond patterns and habits, there is less "known" about life in the long-term sense.  We can focus upon the essence of things we wish to experience--joy, happiness, vitality, love, abundance, freedom--and generate these.  The particulars are dynamic.  As we release patterns and habits, we become more FREE.  In this freedom life is spontaneous.  Dynamic.  In-flux.  And we don't need to see all the steps.  I've known this for a while, but it's different to know this and move slowly then to know this and RUN HEADLONG into life.  !  Running takes real trust and confidence.  And for me, really it is a leap of faith I'm embracing.

What changed so much of this is the clear indicators of how right-on this way of being is>>the incredible exhilaration of movement and joy just became the desired experience.

Life is accelerating, changing so fast now!  It's much easier to yield to my innate aliveness and to flow and dance with life enjoying the movement and also having the confidence that I can alter thing whenever I need to.  This is living based on the true understanding of reality that I have.  I am a powerful creator who can revise reality to suit my heart's desires.  Continually. I don't have to know what I want ultimately, I just have to know what I want NOW.  I just choose what's right NOW.  Later if I want something different I can do/choose that.

We are learning to live in Infinite Time, embodying our eternal, creative, limitless selves, which are continually changing/moving/expressing...holding onto NOTHING.  Why would we?  We're one with everything anyway...?  It's more a matter of where our focused experience and expression is right NOW. 

We are movement as life is movement.  

For me, I love running, sprinting, speed--things like skiing, bike riding, driving with all the windows down and the air rushing by me, rollerblading and skating fast--so that's my way of stepping fully into the nature of this true reality.  For others it might be different--maybe more like swimming, or diving, dancing, or flowing.  Choose your way of moving...what feels right to you, but I encourage you to tap into the incredible joy of motion with the increasing energy.

In light of our innate ongoing movement--wave-particle-wave-particle--it ought to come as no surprise then that hesitating feels irritatingly icky and moving feels incredibly fabulous.    

I AM/We Are movement embodied, I invite you to choose to cooperate with that.

Exhilaration is yours to experience!

And WOW.  It feels wonderful.

 

cosmic clues to happiness

by meredith murphy

This morning as I started my day to a mocking bird orchestra-in-one, and then a flock of naturalized parrots took flight, soaring overhead and squawking with such exuberance that all the dogs including our new puppy Lily stopped, turned and looked up, I began to ponder my song.

As a non-native speaker of these early morning songs, I can only marvel at their lyrical beauty.  Birds to me and to many of us have long symbolized freedom.  Their innate rapport with the sky alone is enough to create a sense of awe.  Their consistent singing, though is what really moves me.  It feels to me like the same commitment to being that trees and flowers demonstrate; a devotion to embodying the essence of each aspect regardless of location, weather, or any other mitigating circumstance.

Birds, I've noticed, sing even in the rain.  They sing when the local city workers are drilling and putting in new traffic lights, like this morning. They sing when it's cold and when it's scaldingly hot and hasn't rained in months.  They just sing.

I love to sing and although I typically don't start my day that way, I actually used to.  I typically start my day in quiet, listening, which I also love.  But I have not been singing much these last few years after giving my piano away when it lost it's tune and although I intended to buy a new one, I haven't and slowly as it often happens, music a great passion of my early days, just faded out of my daily experience.  

I remember being in college and going to choir after lunch while a student a Michigan State.  The incredible joy of making such beautiful sounds, breathing deeply and doing so with others, was pretty heavenly. 

Considering all the themes in life lately that have been urging us to tune into our heart's desires, I am wondering if perhaps it's time to take a hint from the birds and begin to do so--meaning to sing more, consciously and with the kind of simple enthusiasm for dawn, another day, for being alive and aware, to articulate my own affinity with the sky by wafting my own sounds on the breeze and letting my heart flow into song.  

I think there's a connection between music, the spheres, birds and harmony which is potentially the root of happiness: a no holds barred expressing of one's essence in the dance of life.

Singing is often associated with the breath, and there are all kinds of feelings about if one sings well, or not and who is a singer.  But in truth the birds songs I loved so much this morning were more about the innate ability we each have to just let our heart-felt participation in this amazing expansion loose!

These songs were just sung.  No rehersal.  These beautiful birds are being, not performing.  It was sharing, communicating, expressing perhaps, but there was no evaluation or judgment, just letting it rip with no thoughts--second or otherwise.

I can see where in the midst of this is some sort of cosmic clue: a recipe for happiness.  Something about love for everything and just being part of the game.  The birds don't have some idea of who they are or how they should sing that interferes or narrates the experience.  They just do it.  They do it their own way.  It's their thing.

When I sing with this kind of release, I feel great.  I am entirely extravagantly relaxed (all that breath pouring in and out) and happy.  It all becomes effortless and like the bird, I am free.  In a moment like this we just flow with sound and breath in a Oneness that's ancient and emblamatic of the nature of our being and all being.  Sound is, after all, vibration.  Vibration is the essence of life and light.  While singing we potentially release our identity as one being and become One with that moment of focus, with the harmony of other singers, the instrument, the dogs barking, the sound of the lawn mower, the tune on the radio, or even, sometimes a counterpoint to the silence.  

Our life is song as there is vibration created by our energy, from our intentions which take vibrational structure and although we don't often hear them, we emanate their themes.  We are continually, in essence, singing!

Singing has always given me joy and as I awaken I feel the longing for more of it again.  I sing to my dogs when I feed them.  I sing in my car.  And I can feel that this desire to sing is expanding.  It is I suspect a conscious, reliable pathway to the essence of my being, which is innately happy.  It's a way to dip into my connection with everything, to flow the energy of breath from my heart into sound and to allow my melody to take the essence of me to the sky.   The resurfacing of my desire to sing, however, is more than that--it's a sign that my whole being is longing for release beyond story and purpose into just expressing the essence I am.  

It's a reflection of the changes within and the transformation that is flowing within all of us.  It's becoming self-evident that my song is vital and important as is yours.  And that each of us choosing to be our own undistorted melody is the essence of the new song...the song of harmony, peace, love and happiness on the inner planes, mirrored in the manifest reality. 

I may not be able to fly, but as I realize that I am consistently singing, I can own my ability to tune the air to my song.  I consciously realize that I am continually broadcasting, and everything that is, hear's everything I transmit.

With this in mind, I choose to be the essence of me: an enthusiastic sharer.  A joy-filled being who loves to translate into words, paintings, stories, experiences, or sounds, what I've felt, discovered, know and love.  That's me. That's my song.  And there is no end...there's more where that came from, I am infinite and limitlessly expanding with everything that is.

Each day that I let myself just be myself, without judgment or concern, I sing my true song.  There is the ultimate alignment of being as essence.  There is ease.  Life opens up as I do.  I become one with the morning with creation and claim my own connection to the sky.  And instead of pondering my song, I simply close the gap by being me: I AM my song.  

luminous being: entry into 2012

by meredith murphy 

I am still humming with awe at my entry into this auspicious year of 2012, and astonished by what can be accomplished by forgiveness--especially self-forgiveness--on this journey of remembering and re-assembling as light. 

Recently I traveled to Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies.  I went to gather energies and experience the Archangel Michael vortex there for the dawn of the Lunar New Year.  I was thrilled to be returning--it had been 28 years since my last visit to the Canadian Rockies, and I booked a room with a view of the lake in the beautiful Chateau.  

Even before I travelled there I was craving silence.  I'm not talking about quiet, I mean silence.  Like "not talking, no sound, hours on end into days just being" kind of silence.  I kept thinking about the character in "Eat, Pray, Love," who took a vow of silence and walked around with an I'M IN SILENCE name-tag on.  I knew that I needed a deepening that was available in not talking not reading not engaging the mind or the voice, in letting go of the need to communicate things.  So I let my friends and family know I would not be talking while I was there and I entered into a silent communion with myself in this sacred place.

What I hadn't anticipated was the intensity of the emotional release and spiritual clarification I would experience.

My first day there I felt the affinity with this place at this time--as the layers and layers of snow and the miles of gently touched mountains were vibrating with the feeling that was surfacing in me.  The photo above is a photo I took while hiking around Lake Louise and back toward the glaciers on Mt. Victoria.  I walked quietly and mostly alone, save for a few cross country skiers on the lake, for several hours, back into the forest behind the lake, past frozen waterfalls, and small spots where fresh water still ran, not frozen, and then I just stopped, standing in the stillness, merging with it all, letting go.

The potent combination of the gentle yet pristine energies with silence, initiated a review of my life and my feeling about me, that left me emotionally exhausted, physically drained, and energetically cleansed.

Ever since arriving in Banff and then Lake Louise, I found my heart opening and all kinds of things moved me.  At my first glimpse of the foothills, I had a powerful release and had to pull my car off the road, while I let the unarticulated emotions flow through me.  

This feeling of emotional release only intensified as I arrived at Lake Louise and checked into the Chateau.  Everything moved me!  I recognized the undiffrentiated oneness of reality expressed in other people, in families eating breakfast, in the dog sleeping in the lobby, in the kids skating, the foreign visitors taking photos of the ice sculptures and most of all, in the mirror.  My eyes teared up, my heart chakra burned and opened wider, it felt good, but intense.  I wept and cried, sometimes so much so I had to get up and go to the bathroom and blow my nose, or back to my room to just lie down for a good release/cry, and often with no specific idea about why--just this deep feeling of unity and beauty.  I felt the incredible joyous happiness of loving everything and everyone and not needing to get away from anything--everything felt good and fine and actually, like a long-lost, previously unreognized soul-mate.  It was amazing.

Then the clearing triggered by all this high-vibe energy began.  The day following my long walk, all kinds of unpleasant ideas about me and my life surfaced for review and release, for love and most of all for forgiveness--some of others, but mostly, self-forgiveness.  Old and long-seemingly forgotten impressions arose--of many people I disappointed and those who disappointed me.  The combination of this amazing place, and the simple act of not filling up my attention with things, allowed things needing my attention to just come forth.  

It was painful, and challenging and unexpected.  I knew enough to let it flow. To remember I was not these feelings and to try and enlarge my perspective (unsuccessfully).  I knew the point of this was to forgive myself--for all the ways I wasn't who I wanted to be throughout my life.  I am grateful that even though I had very strong difficult feelings, I also knew this was the energy of a powerful place working on me and I trusted this most relentless and agonizing experience. I wasn't feeling grateful particularly while it was happening, but there was a sense of trust.  I was amazed to realize how alive these feelings were.  How much they still hurt.  How difficult it was to let them flow through me.  I felt the pain of the times I fell short of my own ideas of who I wanted to be, when I wasn't able to do what I said, or wanted to do, when I fell short of ideals of other people who I love, when I broke promises, spoke sharp words in anger, judged and criticized someone else, held myself back out of fears of not being good enough, but mostly it was the times I felt I let other people close to me down that hurt the most--and all of this came up and ultimately looped back to how I felt about me.  In the midst of all this, I began to feel dismayed and as if my trip was a waste!  Yet, even then, with all this going on for hours with seemingly no end, my heart knew otherwise.  I just kept breathing.  I knew not to reach out to friends or anyone else--I knew I would be fine and more importantly that there was a great gift in letting myself experience all this with surrender and awareness.  

The night after this most difficult day I went to bed early--about 7:30 pm--with these still unresolved difficult feelings and thoughts lingering.  I was exhausted.  I woke up in the pre-dawn hours about 4 am.  I got up to look out the window--I couldn't see anything except the lit ice rink, the frozen part of Lake Louise closest to the hotel.  The mountains and the glacier were hidden and the whole sky was dark.  I lay back down and tuned in, feeling myself.  I felt a little better.  I allowed the whole thing going on to surface fully in my awareness and I again chose to elevate my view, to look at my life and all these disappointing memories and feelings, from the perspective of my higher self and at last, with no effort, it came: an enveloping soft wave of love, and a moment of true knowing from within. Clear realization and soft feelings.  I just knew that I had done the best I could.  I felt the genuine relief of knowing my own timeless, infinite energy was simpy having an experience.  Many experiences.  I could see this beyond labels, stories, judgment and duality because the Oneness I Am was alive and well and coursing through my whole being.  I called upon the I AM that I AM and asked for the experience of self-forgiveness.  I was able to truly, deeply, forgive myself and let go of everything that lingered within me--all those memories and the stories, the enormous guilt and sadness.  I felt the roots of all this just dissolve--the interpretation that somehow I ought to have been anything other then what and who I was in each and every moment of this experience--of any experience, really.  I realized I was no longer comparing myself and my life with these expectations.  I saw how ridiculous it all was--this idea of needing to be something I'm not.  I felt how totally a-okay I really am and always have been while still knowing everything I know about me.  I held it all in my awareness and it just dissolved into love.  I saw everything in the light of the Oneness I AM.  I smiled outloud!  Everything felt very still and quiet, but in a totally different way.  I noticed: there were no thoughts, no sad feelings, nothing, but the quiet of the night and the glorious lingering feeling of peace.  I laughed.  Then I laughed again.  I kept laughing. And then, I said it outloud, "I completely forgive myself.  Yes!  I entirely release all of this."  Then I asked my higher self to clear out all these energies within me and I felt the appreciation of letting go of all these illusions! about me/my life.

I went back to sleep.  I slept deep into the morning.  When I woke up everything was, and is, still peaceful, new and quiet.  :)

Self-forgiveness is the ultimate balm for the heart.  Nothing I've ever experienced has been so transformative and made such huge, sweeping and lasting changes in my life in such short time.  If you think of it, a life review that took a couple of days and liberates this kind of joy is quite amazing.  All kinds of practices and ways of focusing can get us into clarity, calm, expansive spaciousness or a feel good state, but this deep return to wholeness given by forgiving ourselves eclipses all of those other ways of arriving at happiness--when we love ourselves as are ourselves just as we already are, happiness just IS.  Right now.  Continually.  No journey required.

When I returned and the experience had integrated a bit I saw that letting go of all these illusions about me, liberates a sense of non-Self.  A return to unity in awareness so that I no longer consider my value, my purpose, my origins, my unique possibilities--all of these are stories, layered upon the simplicity of being.  When I am healed of guilt and the need to please others, or myself, my heart now freed, is just open and life is and I live directly.  I create, I sit, I write down and put words to ideas.  I don't evaluate it or analyze it.  I express what I feel and I let it be as it is.  I feel a sense of resonance or completion when I've reflected the wholeness of an idea, but there is no judgement or thinking about it.  It's just knowing through feeling.

I have been fortunate to live much of my life with self-confidence, clarity, a sense of empowerment and joy.  Yet still, underneath it were these common threads of so many paths of the human experience, tying up my heart and holding me hostage to my own inner (internalized) critic.  Pushing me.  Inhibiting my flow in very subtle ways...interrupting my natural state and pinching me just a little bit off from feeling unabashadly, across my whole life, SUPERBLY great about me, which of course inhibits my ability to feel superbly great about ALL of me (which includes you and everything else...) 

For many of us, we work at getting here, seeking seeking seeking.  But as many great spiritual teachers have shared with us, that doesn't work--it actually comes from not seeking.  It's already here.  It really just needs to be released and revealed.  And for me, letting go of all these stories, was like the last turn of the combination lock that set me free.  Letting go of any idea of separation-- which breeds comparison and feelings of inadequacy, ideas that there is "A" way things ought to be, or should have happened.  How ridiculous is it to argue with reality?  How often we do so.  Clarity and freedom are experienced when we stop trying to be anything and instead we just let ourself be who we already are.

Without the stories evaluating and defining me, articulating my meaning and the purpose of my life, guess what?  Nothing falls apart.  Surprisingly I continue to be and feel like myself, only lighter and happier.  I discover there is not even relief in this experience, for there is no sense of the other to find relief from--it's dissappeared!  It's just easy and natural.  Now home, in California, with my cat Astra sleeping on the cushion next to me, I realize this is how she lives--with no idea of self.  Just being.  

We are everything.  We may not be able to cognate about it, or put it into words, but we can actually live as the Oneness we are, without having a definition of who we are.  We can stop paying so much attention to the flavor of our bodies, the particulars of our work, the ideas of who we want to be.  We don't need an elevator speech about our career, or a way to tell people what we're doing with our life.  We can go deeper, wider and beyond this and just relate directly to life.  We can show up without using stories or labels, or conventions to define who any of us are. We can drop the need to please or impress others by telling them in some careful way who we are and what we do.  We can stop defining people this way too.  So much of what we say about our selves is a cover-up to smooth out and make ourselves into who we want to be seen as.  It implies there is some need to do this, that there is something wrong with just being who you are.  That if you don't say these things, you will be misunderstood, not valued, not seen, not loved, that the real you just being there, isn't enough.  There is nothing wrong with who you are.  Or anything you've done or not done.  There is not a "thing" you have to do.  Everytime we layer these stories on top of our life, we complicate things and remove ourselves from direct experience.  We hide our most radiant essence from our selves and attempt to dress it up for others.  

As uncomplicated and unbelievable as it may sound--somehow the truth is that just being genuinely carefree and happy you are everything. Ironically it's by not striving that so much is emanated and experienced.

Striving and goals are expressions of separation.  Does my heart have to have a goal to beat and keep me alive?  Do my eyes have to make an effort and strive to read the words I type?  No.  This is innate and just is.  The Oneness we are flows into everything, taking form as the information holographically structures everything.  We are holographic to the whole, which means we have access to everything while being this particular essence of All.

How do we "get there," then?  How do we re-learn how to just be and stop thinking and trying so hard?  For me it has been a long, gradual process of becoming more aware of how I relate to myself, and the linch-pin was actually to deeply and fully go through my past and see all the things I still felt badly about and then, slowly gently, forgive myself.  How do we forgive ourselves?  For me, this was triggered by silence...lots of it.  When we stop talking and we stop distracting ourselves with conversation and brain-food and activity, gradually stuff surfaces.  We notice what's underneath it all and I won't kid you--for me, this was hard.  We may find that we identify with the bad feelings the memories of all the times we "failed" to be who we thought we ought to be.  We try to reconcile the past with the now.  We wonder how others will view us now, if they only knew all the ways we were "less than great" in the past.  We feel the agony of holding ourselves to some standard beyond what we truly were capable of at the time.  The only relief is to let go--to bring love to our own self-perception and gradually, gently we let go of all the expectations that we have and have had, of ourselves.  Doing this, we are more able to forgive others.  (Bonus!) It is these expectations we have of ourselves that create guilt, that allow us to hold a grudge against ourselves (and others) and beyond them we instead relate to life as IT IS.  Not as we in our mind think it ought to be, or what should have been possible, or what we wanted to happen, we relate to life as it is.  Knowing that like the heart and the eyes, the human being--me and you--are just as we are.  (And together we are such a beautiful One!)  So, perhaps, then we just lighten up about it all.

What if, we give ourselves permission and stop thinking about everything so much and living a mediated experience--choreographed and narrated by our mind--instead, we become a direct expression of life?  No interference.  No running commentary.  No need to compare or evaluate. Just here, just now. Just being and not worrying about the results or the destination.  Allowing ourselves to say what we feel, to feel what we feel and to just be a free, fresh, innocent presence within our own life.  Noticing everything, loving and appreciating everything, not-engaged but fully present; curious and interested. Filled with love, expressing as kindness and tenderness and a sense of humor about the many variations of our own self--some in our form over time, some reflected in others.  

Having given up the need to be perfect, better, or other then we are, and having forgiven ourselves (meaning having released all the expectations of our own life where we argued with what was possible, what simply was) we finally become free.  Happy with life as it is, enjoying the process of being and growing and creating, yet loving all variations on the One theme...And just as we are, without making all kinds of improvements to ourselves, just by dropping the expectations that we be different than we are, we change everything.  

Now, at peace within and in this quiet, simple generous fulfillment of our being, we begin to create the inner reality of New Earth made manifest. Luminous being arises; as light reflecting the Oneness, we expand the lens of the Golden Dawn, love flowing through us, and the momentum and light growing toward that much anticipated morning.  Remembering, reflecting and re-assembling the One IAM/WeAre.

 

 

letting life flow through me

by meredith murphy

I AM a star.  As such I generate light through my focus.  As I AM the eyes of God, of Source, of All-That-Is, my appreciation flows endless amplitudes of light.  As I move into greater transparency with this vastness of my own being, I experience a foreigner's sense of living an Earth-life and it is as if I came here recently, new to this place and am freshly choosing how and what I wish to experience.

I do not understand many things anymore.  Things I used to understand.  I do not feel negative feelings about them, no--it is that really I just don't understand.  Or perhaps it is more accurate to say I do not resonate with things so I have no idea how to relate.  This is fine.  I simply turn my attention to that which I do resonate with and allow it to shape my life.

This is a very different way of being within the human template.  Yet it feels natural.  I like it.  I feel a little thrilling energy as I write this.  The clarity of what I am saying here opens me to a certain type of flow--and a jolt of energy, which I know as a "thrill" happens and this experience feels wonderful.

As a star, I have presence in many realms of focus and more and more I simply relate to myself as the sum of all this.  The particulars seem less important the way my atoms in my fingers seem no more important than the whole of my hand.  All of me works beautifully in coherent harmony and knows how to do this as a whole!  How amazing I AM.

In this experience that is now my lens of living in this Meredith-enabled body, I discover that much time and energy has been spent cultivating the costume here!  Relieved of this impulse, I find beauty in so many things I cannot imagine feeling the need for more or new...as more and new is already given so generously everywhere.

And so, wow, there is much to experience!  As the presence I am is wide-open, life is available in deeper, expanded, elevated ways.  I see now that so much of what we experience is dependent on our openness and presence.  As we are increasingly capable of an undivided presence, we experience more.  Of course endless wise souls have written about this, I merely add to their lineage my own direct experience which affirms this, and intend for my happiness to amplify the availability of this experience for anyone who seeks joy and ease.

I AM abundant and rich!  This is not a concept; it IS.

I AM cared for without concern, exactly like the "lilies of the field," and my awareness of this and my sense of self (absent the illusion of separateness thus any idea of "deserving this" is a non-issue) make this knowing a simple, nonchalant fact of life, a wonderful aspect of truth which I get to experience in human form.  I AM that which enables my human existence here as Source and I AM that receiving Source Energy as love.  I am grateful for the connection.  I am grateful for the blocks to knowing the truth of this experience being dissolved into clarity and delight.  

I wish for all beings to know the joy of life.

All that I AM now wishes to ease the suffering of others.  I have resolved my own unhappiness and fed my energy field to abundance.  I continue as an appreciative presence to generate energy and am nourished and resourced as I intend.  I AM a channel of love.  I don't need to "do" anything for this to happen--it's natural to let life flow through me--but my intention allows it to take shape as I AM.  So what I know can become part of reality, I intend for it to manifest and I create it within my experience; thus enlarging our experience.  I let life, in all it's infinite wisdom and abundant love, flow through me, as the aspect of creation I AM.  Shining on, as the One I Am here and now, as love.

Very happy to meet you in this lovely field of light!

are you discouraged by conflicting guidance about ascension?

by meredith murphy

Well, if you're feeling this, congratuations.  Your feedback system, your amazingly perfect inner compass is attuned and working well.  This kind of feeling is the emotional equivalent of a siren, or a flashing red light: it's a alert!  It's USEFUL.  It's telling you something like: you're disoriented.  You're out of sync with you.  Like maybe you've let THE authority on all this slip into the background and are listening to other people's guidance and advice?

Realize my lovely ones, there are many paths.

It's increasingly important that we learn to use our heart--to drop out of mental/thinking modes of "figuring things out" and use our heart and a sense of knowing that we feel in our whole energy body to discern what's true and useful for each of us.

And to do this as the ultimate authority on everything.  EVERYTHING.

Got it?  NO ONE knows more about what's right for you than YOU.  I think that bears repeating...

NO ONE KNOWS MORE ABOUT WHAT'S RIGHT FOR YOU THAN YOU.

Now I'm not knocking the great gift of encouragement, validation, or even using a guide or a person you trust to help you connect with expanded knowing.  These are all useful and valid tools on your path.  I use them.  Many of us do.  But again, you would use your own sense of what's right for you to choose this person and to evaluate what you experience when working with them.  That is discernment.  And if you agree with what guidance or insight comes forth, and any ideas for healing or growth you're offered, then you apply them again, with discernment.  Do they work?  Do you see a difference?  Does life get better?  More joyful?  More clear?  It ought to. Guidance is supposed to work and improve your experience.  To support you in feeling great and becoming more empowered.

And it's becoming more and more important as the diverse paths to ascension become articulated and sometimes are talked about with such wording and seeming authority as to make you wonder, "OMG--I'm not doing it this way?  Did I miss something?  Am I on the wrong path?  This isn't what I'm experiencing, am I out of it somehow?  Did I miss the chance to be part of this."

Ouch.

All of this is tough to feel, but again, it points to a fundamental mistake in orientation.  YOU have within you everything you need to find your way.  This is true for everyone, and actually so much of this path is about realizing this and then growing our own capacity to find what we need within.  So if you're listening and following your heart, using your focus and energy to grow in this inward clarity and connection, asking for inner guidance and listening, choosing experiences and people who amplify your inner clarity, expand your perspective in ways that feel right and useful to you, and support you believing in yourself, you are perfectly fine and actually doing and being exactly as you need to be to wake up and not just join, but help CREATE the party!

I wrote this today, because once again, I have gotten a lot of emails from readers asking questions about stuff being published and shared.  I too have noticed some pretty wild stuff being circulated following 11-11-11. Emails messages that say they're all about the new Earth but are still speaking duality talk as though some things are bad for us and we cannot possibly kid ourselves thinking we will ascend if we participate in them. Nothing is inherently bad. These are just labels and judgements. Please follow your inner guidance. It may validate what you're reading or hearing, but it may not.  It may be true in this moment, but not in another.  Life is dynamic and changing as are you, and what you need evolves and cycles, is fluid and changing in perfect harmony with the leading edge of you!

Trust that what uplifts and inspires you is perfect for you. It's about our own unique energy field and what will support us moving into wholeness and embodied divinity. There is not one path. So if you're wondering what's "good for you" and "what might get in the way of your ascension," ask yourself and listen.  Pay attention to how things make you feel.  THAT is your answer.

Things and activities are not good/bad...they're just different options.

Choose what makes you feel expansive, filled with love, hopeful, harmonious, balanced and gives you more joy. Listen to your heart. And if you find that challenging, make time to be in silence. Nature is so helpful in aligning me energetically...but what works for you?  Use what works for you. Be YOU.  You are the authority for everything, for you. Do not be distracted by what feels right for others, or what other Lightworkers even advocate passionately.

Bless everyone on their own perfect and wonderful path.  But live your own life.  That's how you eliminate the conflicting feelings about what's true and what's right for you.  You become your own authority on everything.  And amazingly, life from this inner orientation becomes increasingly clear. 

Trust yourself.   Claim what you know.

the confidence of innocence

by meredith murphy

Today I saw this quote/image* posted by a friend online and it was so in harmony with this opening into the Eclipse Passageway and what I had written this morning that I wanted to share it with you.

Today, I evoke the faith of a caterpillar who takes its step toward transformation knowing not what the process is or what the struggles will be, but remembering somewhere inside that it is a butterfly and knowing that is ready to fly. I know that the miracle is already there. I am the miracle.
~ Marianne Williamson

The thing which most resonates with me about this is the image, and the innocence and fragility of this beautiful striped caterpillar.  Yesterday during the Opening Event of the Eclipse Passageway we experienced a layered guided journey which transported us to a sacred grove and opened up a doorway to the innocence and dreams we had earlier in life, calling forth our ability to remember and the courage to revisit what Archangel Michael called, "our saved up wishes," so we might bring ourselves into greater wholeness.

The striking thing about this to me is this return over the last year of my life, of a profound and deep desire to allow my own innocence to arise.

Like many of us, I am sensitive and appreciative of innocence in others--children, flowers, my beloved animal companions...and yet how often do we consider that innocence might actually be such a vital aspect of our very self NOW?  As an adult?  As an awakening being of light, I am beginning to realize that innocence has a resonance that is similar to purity and optimism--it's implied by the true nature of our being.  Ironically, however, innocence has in our world become a tainted notion.  It is associated with naivety, which often even is used as a judgment to criticize someone as stupid, out of touch with reality, not practical, not capable.

This is a vast distortion of the true meaning and quality of innocence.

The literal meaning of innocence, means without guilt.  We associate "growing up" with a loss of this innocence. This too is a distorted perspective.

To grow, rather then to "grow up" is the natural mode of being.  To continually expand and express, to evolve and differentiate while also moving increasingly toward wholeness and oneness.  Seemingly contradictory, but actually and entirely the true nature of reality.

Innocence is your actual state of being--pure, perfect, without any guilt or sin.  There is truly no such thing as right or wrong, just choices, just different experiences, all taking place within the wholeness of being and ways of exploring and expressing to discover what brings joy, to extend that which you are in new ways and forms.

So during this eclipse cycle, I invite you to realize that you are pure, perfect, lacking nothing, capable of creating miracles as an extension of that which you are--miraculous and radiant.  You occur as a result of Divine Presence conjuring up this idea which became you!  Your very being is the result of divine creation--you ARE a miracle.

Once you realize this...you begin to slowly feel this truth in your being.  You begin to consider that perhaps it is true--that you are made up of divine energy and all of you is wonderful and beautiful.  You begin to get gentle with how you look at your life and to contemplate that perhaps, yes, all that you have done and been is just ways of exploring, expressing, discovering, extending, that which you are.  You soften up toward you. 

And as one grows into this realization, the knowing of your eternal nature nature arises.  You recognize this life experience as a version of you extended into this human form for even more exploring and choice-making, discovering and being.   All to grow and have fun.  To discover new pathways to joy. 

And the curiosity grows...the sense of wonder and amazement you had while young resurfaces expanded, and life becomes a daily opening into the possibilities of all that you might be and become, discover and create, feel, sense and realize.

You realize that all of your experience arises within you and then flows out into form and experience.  That certain forms and experiences stimulate your heart and your feelings of love and the devotion to these choices grows.  You begin to understand how to cultivate happiness and exhilaration.  You love peace and contentment and know how to rest in these.  The confidence of innocence returns.

As we orient more knowledgeably to our life experience here, we become more skillful and this skillfulness manifests visibly as grace, ease, humor, playfulness, lightness, simplicity, abundance, confidence, clarity, self-love, gentleness, generosity, appreciation, trust, optimism and innocence.

A deep sense of connection arises and one dwells nestled in love and companionship.  The presence of divine love is felt pervasively and deep peace settles in.

Disturbances to this state of infinite presence are simply that: disturbances. Not permanent.  Just interruptions.  Detours.  Decide to see them as such and they resolve even faster and with grace!  Like lightening in the sky, these states of our true nature being distrubed always dissolve, settle, revealing the clarity of expansive spaciousness.  Our true nature is this infinite ground within which all forms of focus and experience arise from and dissolve into.  Nothing good or bad.  All made of the same stuff--every experience, each moment, all forms.  You are eternal, undifferentiated spaciousness.  At the very core of being you are space!  Pure potential.  Everything and nothing.  Miraculous how this space extends into endless variations of expression!

Although glimpsing and tapping into this dynamic experience initially can be disorienting and destabilizing to your way of being, this is a positive sign!  It is the experience of discovering you have been used to living with boundaries to define you.  The fact that your life can be destabalized reveals to you that you have identified with these boundaries as though they were you--you're building your understanding on a part of the illusions which is temporary and will, like that lightening in the sky--dissolve and disappear.  That you've actually maybe been using your limits to create your sense of who you are.  Once this larger persepctive emerges, you begin for periods of time to let go of this limiting idea and learn to be in expansiveness without anxiety.  Doing this, you gradually grow into an enlarged template of being and your life experience is transformed.

How do we make this change? 

We cannot grasp this with our mind, the same way the caterpillar cannot create it's own transformation by following some instruction guide.  We're not given the full picture all at once, it's too large!  It unfolds gradually and we feel our way into this. We allow ourselves to be guided from within by curiosity and in trust and with innocence.  We exist and live in a state of simultaneous anticipation and abundant delight.   The truth of our being is reflected in the microcosm...in the caterpillar, and in all cycles and metamorphosis which we see.  The creation of the butterfly, the pearl from the friction of water and sand, of fruit from flowers, of rain clouds from condensation.

Like the pearl, we too first experience a sense of "damage" to our outer edges, which initiates this process of change.  The mystery is that this revelation that our identity is an illusion, initiates the expansion into knowing our true nature.

The miracle of life is that all of life is a miracle. Know this and know ecstasy and exultation of spirit.  The miracle of life now is not only within you; it's everywhere!

 

 

*posted by Blue Moon Shamanic Reiki