I just finished picking a card from Colette Baron-Reid's daily wisdom pack: see her website if you want to learn more about her. It was the horse. Unfortunately, when I went to my blog icon on my screen so I could share what it said, I forgot that I would lose the information about the horse which I wanted to post here. It would be nice if Firefox would open fresh new windows instead of replacing websites that one is looking at with new websites that one opens. That way, when someone stupidly clicks on their blog icon, they will keep the original information and have the blog form. I should have opened up a separate web browser and used my bookmark instead. Oh well, the gist of the horse card was that I needed to get into the saddle, relax, and allow the horse to take me where it wants to.
I returned to Colette Baron-Reid's website and tried the wisdom pack, again, but it is all Owls this time. I didn't realize until this second visit that all the cards in the fan are the same and they change. Nevertheless, I think that Colette Baron-Reid is one of the better psychics around and is deeply spiritual in a manner that appeals to me because it agrees with what I think. To my mind, I am being a little unfair. Everybody is entitled to their own form of spirituality and their own belief systems, but if those belief systems don't mesh well with mine, I have difficulty incorporating those oposing ideas into my thinking. Having said this, I know when an idea or belief is good and worth pondering and I am entirely open to having my thinking reshaped. But if, for example, somebody were to tell me that the only way I will wake up is to attend Catholic mass regularly, I won't believe them because I am over anything Catholic (as of a past life I think) except to realize that a lot of great spiritual teachers are ex-Catholic so they must have received an excellent foundation upon which to build their spirituality.
I own and have read Colette Baron-Reid's book, Remembering the Future, and I used to regularly listen to Colette Baron-Reid on her Hay House Radio show. There is metaphysics and there is spirituality. In my mind, the difference is that with metaphysics, one explores tools and techniques for creating mystical experiences. With spirituality, one is attempting to find God and allow It to run one's life. Many authors and teachers are still using metaphysical approaches to spirituality, and for the most part, I am trying to move on from that. Colette Baron-Reid has a more spiritual approach, as does Caroline Myss, and that is one of the reasons why she "works" for me. I am sure that one can achieve enlightenment through practices of Yoga, burning incense, and placing the correct crystals in the correct parts of the house, and this is because I had those two moments of waking up at a time in my life when I had no idea what was happening to me and when I was really not practicing anything spiritual, although I love nature and gardens and can spend hours looking at the ocean, enjoying its change in colour and texture, and thinking about its molecules and their journeys around the planet. I expect that when I am staring at the ocean or a mountain or my garden and being absorbed by the beauty of them, I am meditating.
Hay House Radio which is an On-line radio stations is wonderful and full of interesting radio hosts like Wayne Dyer, Byron Katie, and Cheryl Richardson. But it was better before it became financially challenged. I assume it became financially challenged because suddenly one needed a paid membership to download from the archives. I cannot believe that a radio station that wants to help people, would suddenly charge money to download its programmes unless it were in financial difficulty. It is my belief that information pertaining to spirituality should be free and available. One can still listen to the radio shows without becoming a member and they are repeated throughout the day. When membership was free, one could download shows from the archives as long as one had signed up with login, etc, and there was no money involved. Downloading was useful because one could listen to the show over and over again and take it with one on an mp3 player. Sometimes, information needs multiple listenings in order to "get it." Hay House Radio is what I listened to day and night after my dearest sweetest husband of more than thirty years left me for a new sweetheart in Australia and they now live in Germany.
After my devestating marital breakup, I managed to contact both Caroline Myss on her show, and another Hay House show host and they both, as well as two other psychics that I went to in person, told me that I didn't need "him" around and that I was better off without him. It was very helpful to download those two shows and listen to them repeatedly as it is amazing how much I missed hearing when speaking directly with these two hosts. I have tapes from the other two psychics and I can listen to those again, if I want or need to.
In retrospect, it is a good thing that the ex- is with her and not with me as I am free to create a wonderful life for myself, if I could only find a way to provide myself with adequate income. I hated being dragged off to Hawai'i by ex- as I was not allowed to work in the U.S. and I was really not allowed to volunteer unless it could be proved that there was no American available to do the volunteer work. I wanted to be in Canada, my homeland, and close to my parents, sister, and children, and where I had the choice to work and where I didn't have to beg my way across the border in order to go home which is what happened upon returning to Waimea every time I visited my parents and daughter in Canada.
According to my first-born son, the ex- has just slipped on black ice while riding a bicycle, and is flat on his back for four weeks with a broken hip. I am wondering if it is actually his pelvis that broke. Anyway, it seems somewhat karmic that he should experience what it is like to be helpless. The first time I was incapacitated with a torn achilles tendon, he went off to France for work leaving me living in rural Victoria, in January, with goats to feed and milk, chickens, a home heated entirely by a woodstove, and three young children. It is amazing how challenging life becomes when one has to use crutches. Try carrying a cup of tea while hopping. The second occasion was when I had my bicuspid aorta replaced and instead of helping me while I recovered, he took off for Australia to unite with his new girl friend. During those three months, I adapted and learned ways to do almost everything that I was forbidden to do while my sternum healed. The major factor with open heart surgery is that one must not lift more than ten pounds, including using the arms to lift one's body which weighs more than ten pounds if one is an adult human, or drive a car because one mustn't torque the steering wheel, for the entire twelve weeks. I bused everywhere, used shopping bags and put 2 litres of milk in one bag which should equal about 5 lbs and kept the groceries in the second bag to less than the milk in weight. I stood on my toes when hanging laundry on the line to dry, and I found that if I placed an unopened jar between my knees, I could break the vacuum seal of the lid without the torque pulling on my chest.Yes, I adpated well.
Today in Practicing the Presence, I was reading that our relationship with God or oneness with It "constitutes our oneness with all spiritual being and idea." Apparently and according to Goldsmith, as we understand the meaning of this idea, good begins to flow to us. I suppose that when Goldsmith uses the word "good" he means what is good according to God or The Mystery. In Adyashanti's talk entitled Listening Within, he tells the story of a spiritual person who gives up his shop because he was robbed. When this shopkeeper relates the story to his guru, the guru tells him that what he should have done is to pick up the broom which is God, whack the thief on his backside which is God, take back his goods which are God, and put them back in his shop which is God ... or something like that. So as I walked Sadie around the block I was saying to myself, I am walking on the road which is God. This body that is walking is God. Sadie is God. The birds that are singing and flying around me -- we have a sudden huge influx of birds in my neighbourhood -- are God. And then I had difficulty with the litter and trying to accept that it too was God and that God was happy to have cigarette boxes, candy wrappers, and plastic bags all of which are God, in Its ditch which is God. Funnily, I felt a shift in my being as if I was feeling a little lighter which equates to happier. Maybe this was because the exercise was somewhat absurd, at least to a logical human mind, and my mind was making its presence known by finding humour in this train of thought.
Speaking of mind, I have noticed of late, long periods of mental stillness. The mind does seem to need to be activated in order to notice this stillness, but that's all it does: notice. There is no thinking happening, only an alertness and awareness of that which is happening around me. I believe that some form of mind or mental discipline -- ability to have the mind still itself -- is necessary in order to succeed at waking up. Maybe some of my exercises are starting to produce results?
Also noted while listening to Adyashanti was his explanation which attempts to help seekers figure out what they are looking for when they want to experience that part of themselves that is alive and real. He talks about focusing on the part of one's Self that is neither inside the body nor outside the body; to find that place that is between the inside and the outside of the body. That is it. I think I know what he means as recently, when I go looking for it, I have an almost rearing up like a horse experience in which a part of me that I sense kind of rears up and falls back into a part that is slightly behind it. When this happens, I feel a pulling back and a straightening up, almost as if my physical body is straightening up through the spine. I can remain in this state for a few moments as long as I am not doing anything else. If I am walking the dog, for example, I am not able to think myself into the state as walking is still too distracting. As it is reminiscent of my second sartori or brush with waking up, I think that I have been experiencing what Adya is talking about. But like much of this stuff, I seem to have found it before somebody told me that this is what to look for, only I didn't know I had found it and needed somebody I trust to help me see it for what it is. I really have to learn to trust my Self and not discount these experiences that happen to me or be so skeptical of them.
Namaste
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