photo: hands shaping sunriseAscent: Live Your Fire … Insight and Motivation to Spark Your Growth
May 2012

Becoming … a Thread in the Pattern of It All

Part 11 of How to Live Your Fire

We hear statements like this all the time:

  • "I want to be the next …
  • "J.K. Rowling."
  • "Lance Armstrong."
  • "John Grisham."
  • "Twyla Tharp."
  • "Jasper Johns."
  • "George Lucas."
  • "Rachel Ray."

In whatever field we want to make our mark or contribution, there is usually a very visible someone at the head of the pack.

On one hand the world progresses as people set standards and records. Competition can be a good motivator. We work harder to perfect techniques or to best another's achievements and new discoveries are made, new ground is broken.

On the other hand, when we make someone else and their achievement our mark of success we can set ourselves up for constant comparison, a terrible trap. We set out for the wrong end of the trail and that creates immediate problems.

Consider:

Comparison sets us up for constant striving and negativity.

When we strive to be as good as or better than someone else we create a better than/worse than mindset in which someone always has to win and someone always has to lose. Mentally we're always in a race, a wrestling match to be top dog, because in the world of competition, to be second is to be the "loser."

Comparison sets us up to be disappointed in ourselves.

Sometimes our drive to be the best conceals another motive - to be wealthy, famous, powerful.

Sometimes we attach to our work the needs of our small or incomplete ego. We look at ourselves and are not satisfied with what we see, and so we create an imagined future in which we have achieved status and lots of people admire us … our purchases or our power announce to the world, "I am great, and now we all know it."

The thing is, ego needs are a huge hidden trap. There will always be someone who doesn't know or recognize "who we are" or who thinks our achievement isn't as significant as we think it is. Outer success comes and goes; to be on top today can mean being on the bottom tomorrow.

In the end we can achieve and still feel ourselves to be small and incomplete.

Comparison set us up to cover up or ignore our weaknesses and need for help.

Someone has said, "The problem with the self-made person is that they always make the head too big." Fearing we will look weak, stupid, or unable, those of us who are driven by comparison often ignore advice and fail to seek support because we're too busy trying to prove our ability to ourselves.

The person who fears being judged as "less than" has a secret mantra: "I really don't need your help." And by refusing advice, guidance, coaching, and mentors they hobble their own success.

Make this shift.

You can avoid the traps created by comparison when you stop feeding your own ego needs.

Stop asking: "What do I need?"

Start asking: "What can I contribute to this field, this genre … this community … this world?"

The truth is, we in the West have paid a heavy price for celebrating "the individual." We are experiencing a plague of narcissism, characterized by an inability to think and act, not just for ourselves but for the common good as well. Not that individual rights and achievements are bad, but every single one of us is also an important thread in the fabric of humanity and connected to the natural world.

Apart from this understanding, we are disconnected from the greater whole, working for our own tiny purposes. And it's the sense of connection that adds qualities such as depth, compassion, the desire to improve things for us all to our work … and ultimately leads to a deeper sense of fulfillment than we can ever achieve working solely for our own ends and personal glory.

Of course there is nothing wrong with working to improve your personal skills. But as the ballet master Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, "I never try to dance better than anyone else, only better than myself."

And along with making the effort to improve yourself, choose to do more with your life than achieving your own ego needs. Choose to make a contribution. Be the thread that helps to complete the pattern.

There is an innate wisdom within us that knows we are more complete when we work for ourselves and others. A wisdom that knows this is how we achieve "greatness" … and become more fully our true selves.

May 2012

Become

Part 10 of How to Live Your Fire

… to become what you are and live in resonance with your purpose… you have to start with inner focus.

Through this whole series, we've been moving toward our original authentic self - like a blaze, becoming our own living fire.

For some of us, this requires recovering our original self.

Our mistake, many of us, was in wanting to become someone or something we are not and never will be, never can be. At some deep level we came to believe that who we are and what we love is not enough.

It's this simple but critical error that plagues and drives so many of us our whole lives.

Wherever the voice came from originally that pumps the "not good enough as you are" message into our thought-stream day and night, it's time for that voice to go. Time to replace it with an inner plutonium for the body, mind, and soul:

Who I am … is perfect.

Who I am, what I love,

is an expression, an emanation,

an embodiment

of the great good

that exists in this universe.

You came to be, and you are… for a good reason and purpose. And if you want to become what you are and live in resonance with your purpose… you have to start with inner focus.

Go inside often enough, long enough to know and understand who you are.

Ask yourself daily: What is it that fascinates and motivates me? Go beneath the surface, to the core.

Watch how you react to this fascination.

What does your fascination drive you to do? — Study? Create? Build? Structure? Bring order? Nurture? Protect?

Give space to this interaction - what you love and what it causes you to do - every single day.

Give yourself fully to the work - your work, the work that isn't work for you.

Chores and maintenance are unavoidable. But beyond that, block, push away, fend off, or minimize your forays into work other people try to push onto you. (Usually, it's really their work and they just don't want to do it.)

If right now you are committed to a job or tasks that are not your true work do this:

Make an open space in your life to begin your work.

Every morning, take 5 to 15 minutes to think about, daydream about, and create a simple start-up strategy to help you shift your life energies toward what you know you want and need to do.

Make it simple. Include the time and place you will need for your work.

Begin your work… in miniature.

Create the first three steps you need to get started.

Take them.

Push open more space and time. Do the new work one step at a time.

Masterworks of every kind - from paintings to successful corporations - are created one brushstroke, one business contract at a time. Great novels are written at a pace of about 3 pages per day. Great works of social evolution are wrought one law, one change at a time.

Make a commitment to yourself to keep this mix of daily meditation and work going.

Restful focus keeps you fresh, steady and serene within… while exertion keeps you creative and productive without.

You need both. And one more thing:

Be patient and reliable.

When you make the change from obeying the outer world's demands and dictates, to obeying your own inner voice you are in the service of your own vision… working for your self.

Give yourself time, give yourself the chance to grow by steady accomplishment.

You will see your aspiration — which is to say, yourself — fully realized.

Seed Word
Single word meditations to ignite you.

To encounter a word ~ truly encounter it ~ is a wonder... a joy... possibly a danger. You meet its sound and meaning. You meet its naked energy. And then you're either done for or... you're finally started.

May 2012

Become

 

To "become" you don't have to change or acquire anything. You only have to be, simply, yourself... and with patience and kindness grow into the more fully realized version of you.

Therein lies the trick. Fortunately, it's a simple one:

First, turn out, send away, and banish all voices and choices and motivations that are not yours. These are the seedfires someone else has planted in your spirit, to turn you into their version of you.

Then, find and stay on the path of training and growth — the way a flowering or fruit-bearing vine uses the support of a trellis — to grow into a natural magnificence.

Prune... and keep pruning away... that which does not allow you to achieve the beauty of fruition...

A fully realized you.

Today... and every day... do what it takes to water and nourish... tend and exert... and simply

become.

April 2012

The Flying Change

Part 9 of How to Live Your Fire

"The truth is, you can ... set your life energy free for much more creative and fulfilling uses."

There's always one situation that saps your energy, isn't there?

One relationship that doesn't work. One situation — whether it's your health, job, or caring for someone — in which the demands are never-ending and unrewarding. One problem you fix that a day later is unfixed.

Your life feels like it's on hold, because you can't resolve this one thing. (And you sure don't want this to be your life, do you?)

So let's say you're finally feeling "over it" but (pick one) :

___ you feel stuck or stalled.

___ you feel frustrated, trying to make it work.

___ you fear change, or at least it makes you anxious and uneasy.

___ you want change, but that feels like a lot of work.

___ you're aware that you get attention mileage by processing this situation with friends (a.k.a. complaining.)

___ you see no solution, and you're depressed.

The truth is, you can move yourself through and beyond stuck and grinding your teeth or complaining or depression and set your life energy free for much more creative and fulfilling uses.

You need what is called, in the world of horseback riding, "a flying change." Here's how it works:

When a horse canters it strides forward, leading with the legs on one side of its body or the other. Whichever side the horse leads with corresponds with the direction of travel.

When the rider decides to change the direction of travel he can do so with a subtle but crucial change. He shifts his body.

Beneath him, the horse senses the shift, switches his lead foot mid-stride and alters direction.

What a powerful image — and it reminds us that in our lives:

Subtle changes inside result in great and important changes in direction outside.

Shifting Our Inner Energies

If you're not ready for a change, no one can help you, really. You might want to put that money you're spending on a counselor into savings. And you may also want to stop wearing out friendships by reciting the same old litany of how bad life is for you.

But if you're really ready to change things up, here are some "flying changes" — inner shifts — you can begin to work on:

Quit telling yourself "I can't…."

Start telling yourself, "I can make a change."

Your boss or your job setting may never change, for instance, but you can change jobs. Even if it means losing some income, readjusting your lifestyle, or taking a monumental risk and starting your own business.

Stop endlessly trying to rearrange the puzzle pieces of an unworkable situation, telling yourself, "I can make this work somehow."

Start making a new plan - one that helps you achieve your own mental, emotional, and physical balance.

When you try to hold on, or force the situation to be what you want it to be, you're too often trying to rescue all the "equity" you've invested in terms of time and energy. You don't want to face the fact that your investment isn't likely to pay off.

Face it. Painful, maybe. Necessary, yes. … Freeing and rejuvenating, check and check !

Stop waiting for "things to change," or for "God" or "the Universe" to change things for you.

Start taking steps toward change.

Tell yourself, "I'm going to follow my bliss."

Yes, everything does change… in time. How much time do you want to give it? How much life energy do you want to waste waiting for change to arrive? And what makes you think that when it arrives it's necessarily or automatically going to make your situation "better"?

A bit of enlightened self-interest never hurts. And even if grace is opposed to earning boons and blessings (if this is your belief), grace is never opposed to effort.

Whether you believe you were placed here with a purpose or you simply have fascinations, passions and interests to explore…

Do whatever you have to, to stoke those seedfires of passion, fascination, and interest that are burning inside you.

Stop "disaster" thinking.

Start telling yourself, "Sure, some unpleasant things may happen if I make changes in my life. But just as likely, amazing things can happen, too."

When we give place to catastrophic thinking we're dead before we give ourselves a chance to try new things. And at the first signs of a problem we freeze, pretty much guaranteeing failure to move ahead.

The path through change is up… and down. It's rough… and it's smooth. Those of us who have travelled it know every scary and rutted inch… and we also know the satisfaction of greater fulfillment.

Stop believing in "walls."

Start telling yourself, "There is always a way over, under, around, or through any obstacle I might encounter."

Any time you hit a "wall" it will teach you something about yourself. And something about the path you're on. Keep learning. Keep moving ahead. Pretty soon, you'll be exploring territory in your life, growing in strengths, abilities and achievements you never thought possible.

Stop believing in "rules."

Start making your own rules.

Rules are necessary to keep social order. Boundaries and agreements are necessary in healthy relationships. Don't break or cross those.

But living by some imagined "rules" when it comes to personal growth and creative living is deadly. Because there are none.

When you make the creative rules you need to direct your personal energies, you become not only the explorer but the innovator of your own life. Find the relationships and situations you need in order to thrive. When it comes to production, find the time of day you do your best work. Find the setting you need to work in. Be the one to set boundaries to protect and preserve those relationships and situations… those energies… and that space.

Explore and innovate, until your creative and life-giving energies are directed the way they need to flow.

Shift the pieces of your life, and keep shifting if you have to, until you've mastered "the flying change"….

Seed Word
Single word meditations to ignite you.

To encounter a word ~ truly encounter it ~ is a wonder... a joy... possibly a danger. You meet its sound and meaning. You meet its naked energy. And then you're either done for or... you're finally started.

March 2012

;

 

;   is the symbol that tells us, as we read, one thought has concluded and something new, something more is coming… be ready.

But before the new is delivered, let's not miss the importance of the mark itself. It speaks of a pivot, a turning point. In itself, therefore,  ;  holds great power.

There are important pivotal moments in our lives.      

You've had them.  One moment you were committed to a given job or career, to an organization or institution, to a set of beliefs… and then some inner key turned, insight flooded in… and a new expanded vision enlarged your perceptions.

Many of us have experienced this:  We have become keenly awake to what's incomplete, unfinished, imperfect, possibly even negative or deadening, in something to which we have been giving our energies... for days, weeks, months, maybe years.

This is not the true pivot point. Not yet.

Seeing what needs to change is just the start. From there:

  • We can be stuck in the no-man's land of criticizing, disliking (or hating) where we are, but still be unclear about where to go.

  • We can set out on a more positive path (so we think) of "trying to fix" the imperfect, incomplete, or broken thing.

  • We can find ourselves caught in a "try hard/give up/try hard" cycle, pouring energy into the thing that needs to be changed.

When we come to pivotal moments where change is needed, what most often needs to change
is… us. We are the ones usually stuck in old ways of seeing, thinking, believing... and therefore, doing.

A great thinker has said, "We cannot solve a problem on the same level of consciousness that created the problem."

That is because we need to undergo an inner evolution before we have any new power at work in us, in order to deploy creative change that brings about the new.

And so it is that, at every pivot point, before the new can come, we ourselves are invited to change. To abandon old ways… explore… risk… try the new… become new.

Where do you find the need for change in your life?  There — exactly there — you stand at a pivot point.  With potential new powers to come.

The question is not:  How will you change it?  The question is: Will you allow the need for change to change you?

March 2012

"Plutonium" of the Human Spirit

Part 8 of How to Live Your Fire

In our last two articles we looked at inner and outer forces that block our way when we want to live our highest aspirations.

The truth, as we've seen, is that when we approach these "blocks" they're not really there. They are chimeras created by our thoughts. We see a health condition or the need for training or money or… or… or… as obstacles. We see ourselves as hapless victims thwarted by life, or powerless and beaten down "failures." And so it's our thinking that holds us back.

As is true with the great, energetic currents of a river, we can also find our way over, under, around or through obstacles… even using obstacles to deepen and strengthen our innermost vision of ourselves and the energetic life forces that empower us.

This requires us - don't miss this point - to see ourselves as the powerful beings we are.

How we see ourselves — the patterns of our thinking, and even what we specifically think — is utterly crucial to how we will live our lives. Whether we will live our lives, in the inner and outer sense, or not.

It's no stretch to say that what we think, and what we believe, can in fact be a matter of life and death. Consider these breakthroughs in mind-body research.

Thoughts and beliefs are destiny.

When Dr. Candace Pert,* a neuro-scientist in Georgetown University's biology department, peered deep inside the human cell she wanted to know one thing:

What keeps our cells vital and functioning at peak?

What makes one cell open and receptive to nutrients so it can function well or to pharmaceuticals needed for its repair? And what makes another cell unreceptive, so that it ages quickly, dies, and is sloughed from the body?

Pert was leading a research team under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health and was already well known for her discoveries involving cell receptors - each one a structure that sits like a lillypad on the cell's surface, with micro-hair-like structures running beneath it connecting to the nucleus.

Pert wanted to know, "What makes this most vital structure, so necessary to our life and the quality of our life, really work?"

She'd learned that if a receptor is healthy and attracts the molecules of a nutrient or pharmaceutical, the molecule is "ingested" and fired inward to the nucleus. The cell is empowered and lives a longer life-span, operating at peak performance. But if a receptor is unhealthy, listless or unresponsive, necessary molecules will pass it by, and the cell will not be fueled with what it needs to live.

What baffled the medical world was a deeper question - What is it that causes the cell receptor to open and allow needed fuels and pharmacological repair "tools" to enter and vitalize the cell?

Pert's epochal discoveries reversed the bio-"mechanical" view of the human body that had prevailed for centuries.

What unlocks our cells, they found, are peptides. These biochemical messengers are what flood our blood and lymph systems, signaling every receptor on every cell in our bodies - billions of them - to close or open. Peptides are, in Pert's words, "the molecules of emotion."

In study after study, this startling set of facts emerged:

"The thoughts in our minds, that translate into floods of peptides… and this interaction is what produces feeling, producing every emotion in the wide range from bliss to sadness… peacefulness to angry agitation." Moreover, each flood of these thought-generated peptides "regulates every aspect of your body, from whether you're going to digest your food properly to whether you're going to destroy a tumor cell."

Ultimately, Pert concluded: "Every thought matters. Beliefs matter. Literally — thoughts and beliefs determine a great deal of our destiny. Most definitely where biology is concerned, and perhaps in all other areas of our lives, they are our destiny."

What are you fueling your life with?

What ancient cultures and healers had intuited, now stands on Western scientific evidence:

Our thoughts have power over us. Beliefs - those "programs" that direct our thoughts - have power over us.

Here in the scientific West, we are now ready to agree with what rishis, healers, and mystics of all faiths have known for centuries:

What we fuel our consciousness with matters. Consciousness determines our destiny.

What is the state of your consciousness? What do you tell yourself about yourself ?

Is it:

"I'm limited and incapable."

"I am helpless, a victim of terrible, thoughtless, and uncaring people and an empty universe."

"I'm no good, sinful, evil." "I'm worthless."

"Nothing good ever happens for me. I never get lucky breaks. I gave up caring about life."

Welcome to the consciousness-state of frustration that will generate fear and physical-tension resistance to every risk and challenge.

This type of consciousness causes you to "shield" against the sense of deep wellbeing - the "bliss response" — that releases hormones of healing and new growth.

When you have not discovered, and opened to, the great life energies within, you live in a ground state of fear, self-distrust (maybe even self-hatred) that armors you - mind and emotions, bone and muscle - against the healthy self-nourishment that creative risk, trial-and-error-and-discovery offers.

This braced-against-growth state is one in which your life forces will slowly wither.

You arrive at the inner state of ennui in which your energies becomes static. "Flat moods," pathogens, disorders of the mind, emotions, and body stick around a long, long time. And there you may live… if you want to call this "living."

Or… you can use "seed thoughts" like these as chips of plutonium to fuel your consciousness, and generate a different kind and quality of life:

"I am a strong wave that is moving out of the great ocean of ceaseless and creative energies that make up the universe." "I am the image of God."

"I am not under the judgment, or subject to the ultimate rejection of anyone. (Those who reject me are responding to fear and a judging mindset in themselves.) I am emotionally, creatively… free."

"Just as the smallest piece of diamond is still diamond I cannot be made less-than or reduced by anyone."

"My life - like an endless river - flows. I am not caught up in the energy-wasting dramas."

"The past with all its 'gains' and 'losses' is a memory, and is now a mental illusion. The future, too, is only a dream. I am fully alive now."

"I have every power I need at my disposal - to heal, be stronger, be creative, succeed at any given task." "I can remain alert to, and recognize the moments of 'chance' opportunity that are the pathway to achieving anything I need to accomplish."

Welcome to the inner state in which our thoughts and beliefs - the plutonium of our being - generate health, inner and outer wellness… and a deeply empowered river course for your life.

Welcome to the state of being in which you create your own life.

Today and every day - if you feel yourself sliding under fear-generating, deadening slabs of a negative or static conscious state - use these potent affirmations.

Sooner than later you will experience a change that starts slowly - like the trickling of an inner wellspring - and gradually fills and floods your whole being. It can take a little time to re-pattern old neuro-pathways and create new ones to carry the vital life energies released by these powerful seed thoughts.

In time, though, you will experience the major difference in every fiber and cell of your being. You'll experience for yourself the way thought does indeed open the pathway for your greater Self to emerge… laying open the river-course of your personal destiny.

* Dr. Pert is the author of "The Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine." Quotes in this article are from this volume.

March 2012

Encountering Blocks in the Outer World

Part 7 of How to Live Your Fire

Let's say you know what your most important aspiration is. You may even get started. And then… you run into an obstacle.

"I really want to do this," you tell your friends, "but…" You believe you don't have enough money… or enough time… or you have too many responsibilities… or a health issue… or a skill you can never possess.

Your friends listen and express sympathy.  Aaaaand… you're done.

Counselors and coaches, along with spiritual teachers, tell us that most of what we believe to be an obstacle holding us back is really pure illusion.

On the surface, calling these real life conditions an illusion is, at the very least, daring… if not arrogant. But before we get our hackles up let's take a close look at the illusory qualities of these "blockages."

Money. Let's say our aspiration is to get and stay fit. We can find ourselves insisting, "I don't have money to join a gym to get healthy and in shape." But not too long after we're pleasantly surprised to discover we can scrape together money for a week away at the beach.

Time. Maybe we daydream about fulfilling an aspiration — say, writing, painting. But before long it looks like we just don't have enough time for it. If we stopped to look at the things we're doing, we find we're involved in a lot of boring, mindless, routine activities… possibly including a lot of escapist non-activities like TV viewing, playing games, small-talk conversations.

Responsibilities. We get excited by the success of others — especially when they've accomplished something we want to do. We see ourselves doing the thing we've always dreamed of doing, living the life we want to live. And then.... Then we look outside ourselves at what we call "reality" and responsibilities rise like mountains in our mind's-eye. We feel surrounded. Hemmed-in.

Health. Just when we get started on something new we get sick or injured. Wellness and stamina are often at issue. But when we start to get better, the first health issue becomes complicated by another, which is further complicated by a third condition….

Lack of training or know-how. Trainers and coaches and mentors can walk into our lives and show us a wide-open door to our future. But we can't accept their help. Or we feel blocked from building the solid teacher-learner relationship we need.

Perhaps, as you read the above paragraphs you started to feel a bit defensive. Stand by. By approaching these obstacles in a straightforward manner, we're not going to "blame the victim," as it were. Our goal is to show you a way through, and that is determined by the way we encounter and use our vital energy to work our way around obstacles.

Now let's go back and encounter these same obstacles. But this time we'll look deeper than circumstances - we'll look at the kind of energies we often bring to the encounter… and how to move ourselves through what's blocking us.

Money. Being wise with money is a good trait. However, many of us treat money as if it's a barrier against "the worst thing" we can think of happening. Unless we're careful we can also allow money to become a sort of shield we hide behind. But money never kept anyone "safe." Not really.

If we unconsciously use money as our barrier against "the worst things" it also too easily becomes a barrier that prevents us from allowing ourselves to let go and go for "the best things." In effect our own grip on money-as-protection can become a barrier that prevents us from growing.

Do this: Instead of viewing cash as a protective, like a barrier that you just amass … see it as plutonium that can empower a more fully realized you. Isn't that also a really wise use of its power? Release some of its energy — and your own, of course — into personal development.

Time. Time itself is empty and demands nothing of us. We are the ones who fill in the minutes, hours, days… years… on the time-card of our lives.

Too often, we can fill in all those blank spans given to us with uncreative nothing. We might bring nervous, agitated, or restless energy to our days and fill in the blanks of our "time card" with frenetic pastimes - running from one thing to another imagining our days are full when they're only "filled in." Or we bring the static or listless energy of boredom to our days and we "kill" time. Or we can bring the stalled energy of deferral, imagining we'll have time "later" to live life empowered by our dreams and aspirations.

Do this: See time for what it is. Time is similar to money in that you can invest it in many things — hopefully, in your own evolution. But unlike money, you can't hold onto time — every second that passes is gone for good. Time can only be used wisely right now.

Today, grab hold of 15 minutes… or 30… or seize hours if possible. Each day, direct your creative energy through as many oncoming chunks and blocks of time as you can. You'll find that time is never an obstacle, it's actually a vehicle.

Responsibilities. Many of us say we'd like to be free of responsibilities - but our track record proves otherwise. As soon as one ends we take on one or two more duties. Or we're given an out and we just won't take it because "no one else can do the job as well" as we can.

Some of us might have to admit we're addicted to responsibility. Being "the responsible one" can be a hero's mask we wear in hopes it will bring us something we want - which could be, say, the respect of others. Maybe we just need to be in charge too much. Maybe we need to be needed. Whatever it is… when we've abdicated our own lives completely to live for others it's probably time to give it up. Even selfless giving — a great trait to have — can be rebalanced alongside personal accomplishment.

Do this: Redirect some of the energy we give to "seizing the reins" and use it to renegotiate and/or delegate the over-full roster of duties we've taken on. We need to redirect some of the energy that goes into perfectionistic thinking, and some of our worry energy, too - redirect it by letting go of demands and fearful clinging, so it can flow toward ourselves more creatively realized.

Health. Health conditions and injuries, in themselves, cannot hold you back when you want to accomplish something. Yes, read that sentence again.

When we're not well we tend to hold our energy "in reserve." True, illness is limiting, draining, and can be energy-consuming… but one of the very best things you can do is to slash every time-waster out of your life and redirect what you still own of those precious energies toward creative and evolutionary tasks. Science and spirituality agree that the positive mental energy you generate and the happy sense of accomplishment it brings is a great regenerative.

Paraplegics wheel-chair themselves through marathons. Cancer sufferers hold public office, start organizations. Rachel Carson wrote the epochal book Silent Spring, navigating all the steps of writing and publishing while wrangling with a terminal illness. This precious energy isn't held back "in reserve," it's used and focused.

Do this: See your vital energy, however limited you may feel it to be, as a fuel. An eighth of a tank of gas. Use this precious commodity for the most important creative thing you can and want to do, to take you to the one most important place you need to go… which is always to your life lived at its creative best.

Lack of training or know-how. Help for us is everywhere. But sometimes we have the mistaken idea that genius and accomplishment are solo acts. Sometimes we may be a wee bit too stubborn to accept help or advice. Like the little kid pushing away the hand that would help, we want to do it "all by myself." Geniuses in the worlds of science, business, art, fitness — everyone who is accomplished has mentors. Sometimes we're afraid of "looking silly or stupid" because we dont' already know how to [fill in the blank with your aspiration].

When we refuse training or mentoring, we withdraw our energy from the great additions of energy that could support and catapult us on our way in favor of trudging along through trackless wastelands on our own, running into dead ends. We can waste energy trying to prove something... just for our own benefit. And when we are fearful of exposing what we don't know we have already eclipsed learning and growth.

Do this: Direct your energy toward openness and accepting support from teachers, trainers and mentors... and away from the fantasy of the self-taught, self-made person. Open yourself to the creativity and know-how you can gain from people who are ahead of you on the same life-path.

Most especially... whatever your perceived obstacle is, you will find great benefit if you make an important shift in your core vision of yourself. It's crucial that you stop seeing yourself as blocked.

Use this meditation as a day-opener:

See your life-energy as the great river it really is. See it as emerging from a source, cutting a course through this place and this time. See it moving toward a future destiny.

See yourself as unstoppable as a river, flowing around every obstacle in the way of your current - in fact, growing deeper and more powerful because of obstacles.

See it as the most important thing you can do - not just for yourself, but for the world you live in and for others who are witnessing your life - to ride this current of life that is you and to direct its energies no matter what the outer world seems to place in your path.

In this way you will live the life you were destined to live, when those seedfires came into this world with you. And you will become for the rest of us a testimony to the greatness of the human spirit, a torrent powerful, fully alive.

Next week: "Plutonium" of the Human Spirit

March 2012

Becoming Aware of Inner Blockages

Part 6 of How to Live Your Fire

Today… this minute… you have exactly what you need to live your fire. The thing is, most of us feel blocked and unable to move ahead.

What you may need to do is to start by removing what we at Ascent call "the fire wall."

The firewall is a barrier that's right between our ears. Though it's invisible it is as strong as tungsten steel when it comes to preventing you from being the person we want and need to be — and not tomorrow but today.

The barrier we're referring to is built of thoughts and ideas. Make no mistake, though they are incorporeal, our thoughts exert actual power.

Consider the results of an EEG or a lie-detector test. Both tests measure the real energy exerted by brainwaves, which are effected by thoughts. In fact, a whole new healthcare technology, called Electro-Dermal Screening, can diagnose and treat physical and emotional disorders by scanning and then altering the effects that various atomic-level energy signals, from foods, household products — and yes, thoughts — have within our bodies.

"Every substance we encounter, every thought we have, exerts energy," says Dr. David R. Hawkins, who researched and wrote alongside Nobel laureate Dr. Linus Pauling. A pioneer in the field of human consciousness and energy medicine, Hawkins says,

"Every inner state we have — from love and hate, to frustration and freedom — is misunderstood to be an emotion. A mere feeling. Actually, we exist in various states of awareness. These states are ways of being in the world — ways of seeing and thinking about ourselves and others. And these thoughts have real, measurable power."

This means that a thought like, I don't have the time [talent, money… you fill in the blank ] exerts an actual, measurable energy blockage. And once we've created that inner blockage we really do experience a block in relation to our time, talent, money, or whatever other resource we need to empower our personal fire for living.

It comes down to this:

The work of living our true fire begins at a simple, yet profound level of our being. And we begin by clearing our thought patterns of these blockages. When we do this we literally change the vital energy — what in the East is referred to as our prana, lung, or qi — that we experience when we so much as think about the thing we very much want to do.

Here's how it works:

Let's say you want to write. So far you've been telling yourself, I don't have the time, or I shouldn't take time away from my family or money-making to do this, or It's silly to think anyone would want to read what I write.

Be aware of what happens.

What you've done is to set in place an energy blockage that sends strong effects throughout your whole being… so when you do have time to write, you experience frustration… in real terms. You feel tense and agitated, your thoughts easily get tangled in knots. Anyone would give up!

Instead, let's say you replace the blockage-inducing thought with this: All the time I need is laid out before me. My family, friends, and work will not suffer because I'm doing this. In fact, others will benefit from my writing. I have the skill to clearly write my thoughts. The money I need to live on will come.

Again, be aware of what happens.

You will experience a smoothness in the energy patterns inside you. Some experience it as "relaxed open space." By releasing blockage- and stress-inducing thoughts, you allow the creative deep mind to open and work. Physically, you experience calm. In Zen terms, you are able to "do the work that is not work."

In short, you have removed the inner firewall and opened up the space inside. This allows the seedfire of your original, authentic self to be and grow. We feel as if we've stepped out of the pressure and demands of time and found our way into a timeless realm.

"When I clear inner energy blockages," a client said recently, "I can work on my creative project for hours… and it seems like only a few minutes have passed. And I don't feel exhausted, I feel energized.

"I get to be me, fully alive."

Seed Word
Single word meditations to ignite you.

To encounter a word ~ truly encounter it ~ is a wonder... a joy... possibly a danger. You meet its sound and meaning. You meet its naked energy. And then you're either done for or... you're finally started.

March 2012

Aware

Most of our lives we are distracted or bored. Our mind, and therefore our actions, are not directed but scattered. We rely on books, television, games, conversations, work, to pull us into a sense of focus and directedness. At the end of a day we feel as though we lived in a direction and accomplished… something.

But was it a day that grew out of the seedfire of our own personal aspiration? a day lived with creative fire? -- or was it a day that is now, like ashes, merely spent?

In order to live with fire we cultivate openness, places and times to just be. This starts to rid us of the intrusion of outer demands, agendas, ideologies. Next we can develop a state of mental awareness.

The kind of awareness that's needed is the state of vivid focus that comes when, say, we're walking down a still, forest path… and from somewhere in the treetops an unusual birdcall sounds. Wherever the mind was straying a moment before, it's now brought into sharp focus as you search the canopy of leaves to pinpoint the bird's exact location.

This is the kind of laser-like focus we need, in order to descend with the mind into our own heart and soul to reconnect with and vivify the seeds of native genius that lie within in each one of us. And it's the kind of focus we need in order to remain focused when we act on our intention in the real world, with its distractions, temptations to dissipate energy, and discouraging obstacles.

The problem is, every time we allow the moving mind to jump to something new we literally send some of our physical and psychic energy in the direction of that thought. And when we've spent a day with "monkey mind" (which we deceive ourselves by calling "multi-tasking") we feel not only exhausted but diffused… because we are.

To develop the strength of mind that's laser-focused, to turn our consciousness into a tool with which we carve our path of fire in the world, takes practice.

This month's seedword meditation - aware - is an actual meditation practice. Much as we would lift a weight to strengthen a weak or atrophied muscle, a meditation practice will help us strengthen our purpose and our ability to stick with a plan. This starts with our ability to focus.

Daily, practice an awareness meditation, like this one:

  • Imagine that multi-tasking and lack of focus has scattered your mind in pieces, like many shiny spheres of clear light.

  • Visualize these spheres scattered wherever the various foci of your life are right now… with a child or partner who's away from home… with a project left unfinished at work… with something that happened yesterday or a month ago… with a dream or hope for the future.

  • Imagine drawing these spheres of clear light together into one small, shining sphere that you can see six feet in front of you, just above eye level. Focus on it for a minute. "Dissolve it" into a space of clear, open awareness.

  • Rest your focus in this open awareness… as if you're looking through a clear lens into vast openness.

You will find this to be more challenging than it may sound. So be prepared for your mind to wander and skip away, with these instructions:

  • Every time your mind wanders to a thought, memory, or image, gently return it to this single, clear, open space in front of you.

  • Likewise, "notice" the sounds or distractions that occur outside you, and again gently return your mind to this focal point.

  • Set a timer -- perhaps on a watch or cell phone -- and practice for greater and greater lengths of time - starting with 3 to 5 minutes, working up to 10, 20, or 30 minutes.

Creative people, psychologists, spiritual directors… we all know that this simple practice steadies the consciousness, and this is a foundational practice that connects our inner energies with their outer expression.

Every time you practice you will build "focus muscle," as it were. You will grow stronger in a personal practice you absolutely need in order to find and live your fire in this world.

February 2012

Living from the Center

Part 5 of How to Live Your Fire

Let's say you've come to the end of a week, and like most of us you're scattered and pulled in many directions all week long. Now you want some time for your self.

Unfortunately, ... the minute many of us get time away from life's main demands, like work or school, we can feel ourselves being pulled in every direction again. There are still so many little tasks to do, errands to run. And there are so many things we want to do.

Once again, we wind up running all weekend. At best, we may escape into a book, or TV viewing, or we may seek out a good conversation.

Sometimes we finish the weekend still feeling scattered – maybe even grateful to be heading into the office or classroom, just to feel focused again.

What most of us would like is to experience – whether we are fully aware of it or not – is a sense that we're strongly, deeply connected to our own reason for being. That we're centered in our own lives and not just running, doing, working, playing, blah-blah-blah-ing our way through life.

Why can't we settle down sometimes, focused in our core being, and just… be?

The reason is, most of us have become habituated to what Eastern wisdom calls "the moving mind" (or even "monkey mind") and "horse energy."

"Monkey mind" is the jumpy scattered mind that hops from thinking about, say, an errand we need to run… to a memory from the past… to an image of something we want in the future… back to the errand… to an interruption by a child or friend. It's what we experience when we have no deep, strong, core focus propelling us through this hour, day, week… or lifetime.

"Monkey mind" has strong and not very positive effects on us. First, we live with a scatter-focus that's hard to bring into steady focus. Not a lot of good mental work gets done. The mind generates scattered energy and we feel agitated and have a hard time settling.

This is where "horse energy" picks up. Our mind and our body are now in play, driving a sort of compulsive movement that won't allow us to "just sit still." We may even become addicted to our own adrenalin and love the "high" we get from getting our physical energy up and running all day until we crash in the evening. And when we do settle in... we reach for another distraction.

"Horse energy" is rewarded by our culture because it makes us look and, in a surface way of approaching life, behave in a highly productive manner. We burn up our "to do" lists.

And yet….

If we fail to harness and direct our mental focus inward… regularly, even daily… we will continue to live shallow, driven lives. We will live far from the center of our being, the deep open spaces of our soul. We will never allow our awareness to explore these spaces within, where reside the great creative purposes of our lives.

And so, we ask: Where were you this week? Where did you go? What did you really accomplish? Where are you now and where are you going?

Are you speeding through someone else's purpose for your life? Or no real purpose? Or are you moving apace with the solid core energy of your own purpose for living?

 

If your answer is 'no', then the best thing you can do is to slow down and recognize that you can bring your mind to a focused point, which begins to steady your consciousness and your total being. How, you say?

Next week: A simple and life-changing meditation.

February 2012

Just… be

All this talk about aspirations….

Finding the seedfire inside and helping it to grow.

Makes you feel like you should be dissatisfied with your life if you're not already. Makes you think that you should be up and running. Creating, founding, building. Changing the world… or at least your small corner of it. Doing something.

Not so. Not so.

If that's what we are up to then, in the immortal words of Flannery O'Connor, "To hell with it!"

Our purpose is not to create a sense of discontent in you. That's the cunning work of hucksters and ad men. ("You're a loser and you smell funny and no one will like you, unless you try and buy this magical thing we have and right now you don't.")

But our awakening to a life lived from a deeper level often arrives as a sense of being out-of-center. And if that's what you feel, then so you are. But here's where our path branches away from the voice of the outer world and the ad men and the "motivational" people.

It may seem counterintuitive to you, but we're not directing you out to conquer your personal world to prove your greatness and lovable-ness and indispensible-ness. By touching upon your sense of discontent, we're actually first looking for a way in. And that means walking our way through layers… toward what one writer has called "the white fire of a great mystery."

That great and wonderful mystery is… nothing less than you. And the fire is at your center.

Our work in this series is not to awaken you to a scramble you should be making to prove yourself valuable and unforgettable. It's to awaken you to the sense that is actually generating from a true homing beacon - much truer than the outer world's signals – that exists deep inside you and is signaling for your time and attention.

So, first we took you… just a little ways inside. To the level of what has been called the "subtle" or "energy body." This is the level of your being where you register reactions to life. Like the surface of water, where rain, wind, and all the flotsam and jetsam sloughed off by the passing world stirs and unsettles smoothness. It's where your inner sense of wellbeing and balance meets the outer world's prodding, poking, rankling, needling - and sends the message inside: "You're not okay, and you need to do something about it."

Lest there be confusion: It is important to start collecting your thoughts and directional ideas into notes and, possibly, journal entries. One day, maybe sometime soon, these will sharpen into plans and you'll be ready, really ready, to act on these notions of where you want your life to head. When you're fully focused and fired up.

But you will be making a wrong turn at this point if your response is to get busy and start doing things… right now. With your hair on fire but not your soul.

Unless you take the time and do some deeper exploration you may just become a copy of everyone else… the next so-and-so. A copy. A clone. Not an original.

What we want to help you find and live is… the authentic you… making your contribution to the world.

That's our purpose in this series. To help you get and live there. Out of the center of your life. We hope that's where you want to be and that you'll stay with us.

Seed Word
Single word meditations to ignite you.

To encounter a word ~ truly encounter it ~ is a wonder... a joy... possibly a danger. You meet its sound and meaning. You meet its naked energy. And then you're either done for or... you're finally started.

February 2012

Be

We feel pressured by life. We push back.

We feel like we're "not enough." We work harder, take on more than we can manage.

We feel overwhelmed. We feel anxious, and start to become ill.

We feel annoyed or angry or enraged, and blame other people for putting this work on us, or not carrying their fair share of the load, and making us tired and unhappy and sick and driven. We have given away our self, mind, body and soul, and all our energy, living at race-pace, wearing life like a sweaty, scratchy shirt, enslaved … passing our days and years in a mild insanity we call… living.

But in reality.

There is no place we need to go.

No race to run.

There is nothing we need to do.

No one to make happy or please.

Nothing to become.

What is offered to us is space. Open, open, open and luminous space. And a great, silent welcome to simply…

Be


Laying the Track to Your Future

Part 4 of How to Live Your Fire

Once we find our soul's "pulse" — that is, why our aspiration will give meaning to our lives — it's important to "track" those deep energies that motivate us over time.

Why?

First, deep aspirations can emerge strong and steady when we're dissatisfied with our life or our work. "I've got to get out of this meaningless job and get on with my real calling." But that energy can easily vanish when some surface pleasure, or a reward like a small raise, brightens the world again and distracts us. We are prone to accepting trinkets.

Too, our focus can easily shift from "I've got to change my life," and "I want to live a life of meaning," to "I just want to have a simple, easy and fun time of it."

As a species, we seem to avoid doing any more work than we absolutely have to. (That's just human.) And we know that changing the course of our lives will be work — so why not just squirt an extra dollop of whipped cream on the berries and forget all this live your fire business! Why live life at its peak, when you can live at its ease? (Settling for the quick and easy reward is human, too.)

We can also find that our deepest aspirations seem to shift on us over time.

"Six months ago I was telling myself I wanted to focus on being a painter - I was really excited and confident about that - and now I feel excited about wanting to start my own business. So now I'm leery of moving in any direction, because my motivation keeps changing." We are indeed multi-faceted beings, with many interests that pull at our attention, saying, "Follow me… today anyway…."

The point is that it's easy to get distracted and derailed.

What we need is to find the steady pulse of our deeper energies - the motivations that appear and reappear over time. And we need to let our vision of a new future develop. Here's what we recommend:

A great way to track and steady your focus is to keep a personal aspirations journal.

This need not be a daily journal, one that you feel compelled to write in every sunrise… or feel guilty if you don't. It can be as simple as a dedicated file in your computer or a cheap spiral notebook. Its focus and upkeep can be simple, too:

Start it off by writing down your aspiration… as you understand it right now. And of course, write down its deeper pulse as you understand it… why living out your aspiration will give meaning and purpose to your life.

"Visit" your journal whenever the motivational energy arises… whether that's daily, weekly, monthly, or just occasionally. Obviously, the more often you "check in" the better, but don't force it. There will come a time when you will want to engage the force of will and take steps… but not just yet.

Strengthen your energy whenever you journal by answering questions like:

  • Will I need training to do or achieve this?

  • Can I do this solo or will I need to be part of a team?

  • How will I begin - what's my first step?

  • When will I start?

  • Who will this help or benefit? What will my personal contribution be?

The more concrete details we think through, the more we lift our aspirations out of "dreaming" stage and prepare to move them into lived reality.

And mostly, let your aspiration and its core pulse continue to emerge… or even to shift a bit over time.

Just as your eyes need time to focus when you emerge from darkness into light, the eye of the soul may need time to focus on what you need to do and why it's important to you, before it adjusts into clarity. If you track even your shifting aspirations, a solid direction will emerge in time.

Finally….

Journaling is a way we can allow ourselves to live into our aspirations before we start to actually work them out. It can help us to steady and strengthen not only our vision but our confidence and our determination - two important character allies every one of us needs.

Consider starting your aspiration journal today… and you will find that it helps you lay the track that will soon lead to living your life at its peak.

Getting Down to Bliss

Part 3 of How to Live Your Fire

Previously, we set aside time to search for inner fires that were once important to us.

What we find, given time and space, is that the seedfires of our original, authentic self are still there — like embers that haven't gone out even though the debris of our busy and distracting lives has settled over them.

Whenever you allow open space for reflection… what flickers to life in those undistracted moments?

Pieces of melody that seem to want be to sung or recorded? Story fragments, or even full-blown book ideas?

Maybe… images that want to be sketched. Designs to be realized. Shapes to be rendered. Structures that need to be built.

Or do "engines of change or industry" emerge - visions of an organization that can help, develop, support, train?

Let's say your 30-minute investment has allowed images of yourself doing something vital to emerge. We're getting somewhere. Take a bit more time to go deeper, from what you'd like to do why it would give you satisfaction.

Visit your dream again. Imagine you are outside yourself, watching yourself live your dream. See your imaginary self going through the motions - and then shift your awareness from this image that's front and center before you to what's going on in the back of your mind… or down in your heart, where awareness of our deeper connections resides. Take time to finish the statement: "I would feel deep satisfaction from…"

… writing words to create vivid and delightful pictures in people's heads… take them on an imaginary journey, adventure, or resolve a mystery… make their pulse rush… open them to perspective, insight, inspiration, wisdom… convince them of a viewpoint… clear misunderstandings and ground people in reality… make an important shift in their life.

… developing cash-flows that help build lives and opportunities.

… transferring a skill and observing people develop a competency.

… creating music that makes people move and dance... experience the transcendent… makes statements about life, living… shapes sounds into new melodies.

… refining or overhauling a system to smooth the way an organization runs.

… developing guidelines to help people function in an orderly way.

… inventing a device, or improving one that already exists.

… leading a group through challenges to ground-breaking achievements.

If we allow ourselves to move to this level and encounter our inner energies, we can feel the motivating force that pulses within the images of our dreams. We find that we like to invent, instruct, entertain and delight, create new shapes with sound or color or materials or organizations, improve life or living conditions, provide stability or means of livelihood….

We need to reach this level of self-awareness to keep from job- or career-hopping… skimming the surface of "the job world" and merely moving from dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction.

What we are feeling for — the way a doctor feels for a pulse — is both our passion and how we can express that passion in solid reality. Ultimately, it is your purpose, your reason for being here. It is the path of your own fire.

To find this path, and to venture out and live it, is the difference between being on a treadmill going nowhere and exploring your life's true journey. It is to find the adventure, joy and mystery of deepening and opening… toward the fully realized you.

Who's Got Time to Sit and Dream?

Part 2 of How to Live Your Fire

You do.

Today alone, you have 1,440 minutes. In a given year you have 128,400 minutes.

Consider each minute to be a gold coin that you get to spend as you choose. Too often, we have made choices about how we spend our time - minutes, hours… and years - without really knowing what we need to be doing to live a life of deep fulfillment.

The truth is, many of us wake up to the fact that we are bored or deeply unsatisfied after we're firmly entrenched in a life we believe we cannot change. But that belief is founded in an illusion. Granted, it's a pretty convincing illusion, and it traps us right where we are. We believe that undoing or changing our choices, even minor ones, will trigger something catastrophic.

It's true that changing the track of our lives may cost us, not only time to dream and find our true aspirations, but actual work - in terms of planning, making changes, possibly getting some training, moving, looking for a new job, building a new business. But what is worth more — protecting your "comfort" (or is it "discomfort"?) or "living your fire"?

In Part 1 of this series, we encouraged you to take just 30 minutes — like 30 gold coins in your possession — and invest them in your life.

Invest the time.

If it's not clear what your most important drive or aspiration is, think back to an earlier time. It may be that the exuberant pulse of life that once excited you was dulled by the censoring and undermining words of an authority figure. ("You can't be a musician. No one in this family is going to be a bohemian.") Or by dire warnings that induced fear. ("Surely you don't want to give your life to helping people — you'll starve.")

It is time to claim your own life and your own authentic adulthood by rebelling against "authoritative" voices that failed to recognize or affirm your life energies and that would have helped you emerge and become your authentic self. Without a little healthy rebellion, each of us is doomed.

Grab a pen and paper and complete this statement:

There was a time when I loved to ____________________________________________.

Let her rip !

As David Whyte has written:

At the center of this life
there is a man I want to know…
[who] wants to become real again.*

The question is not: 'Do I have the time to sit and explore my dreams and aspirations?' The question is: 'If the authentic life I could be living is at stake, can I afford not to?'

* from This Life

How Strong is Your "Pulse"?

Part 1 of How to Live Your Fire

Like the pulse of an ember, you can feel the energy of your personal aspirations.

For some of us that living pulse feels like frustration, and maybe a bit of fear. We plan to start the new project… but fear that we don't have the know-how.

For others it feels like envy, maybe even depression. We see other people living passionately - the way we want to live — but feel stuck or thwarted in some way.

Or maybe that pulse is strong, ready to break out into a living fire: You — on Life.

Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, called that pulse in each of us the life-throb of ages, dancing in [our] blood*…. It's the seedfire of life, a sort of spiritual DNA, coded not only with our physical characteristics but our personal aspiration as well. To live from this level is to reach our highest sense of fulfillment.

Live Your Fire is dedicated to helping you find, plan, and develop your personal aspirations into reality. How do you begin? Here are some simple suggestions:

First, be clear.

Often, life's demands and distractions have sifted in like dust over that live ember within. It's not even clear right now what that inner energy is pressing us to be or do; we lost sight of our personal passion a long time ago.

If that's the case, set aside time to be alone and let yourself explore one or both of these questions:

  • What is my aspiration? Ask yourself this question several times, on different days. Write down any answer that comes. Don't censor anything. And don't worry if there are different answers on different days. Lost aspirations coalesce over time.
     
  • Who was I before I let other people tell me what to be? Going back to childhood loves and fascinations is like going back to the last place you remember, say, havingthe car keys that are misplaced.

Remembering loves and interests that life pushed aside, or that you or someone else talked you out of, places your finger back on the energetic pulse of your spirit. You sense who you really are as an evolving human being again. (Don't get hung up on who or what has blocked that evolutionary process. Blame is a trap. Stay with the energy that finding your "pulse" gives you.)

As you look for those strong, deep aspirations, keep in mind that an aspiration is not the same as wishful thinking. "I want to be a famous artist" is a wish, not an aspiration. You have absolutely no control over whether or not you become "famous." None. You do have control over whether or not you take lessons and work at drawing, painting, or sculpting… and become an artist, capturing form and beauty, making statements about your world. That's the seed of fire you can bring to life.

For this reason, an aspiration is far more powerful than wishful thinking. Why?

Because you have the power to make an aspiration happen. You can be the person your spiritual DNA has coded you to be.

First things first. Sit with these questions. 30 minutes a day is a minimal investment in your own life. (If you won't take the time, who's going to?) Be open to whatever the voice inside answers. Look for the seedfire that's within you - the part you can nurture into being.

Begin to tell yourself, "I can be the person I aspire to be."

Then post your answer on Ascent's Aspirations page, as a first step toward living in a new direction.

* Stream of Life

Seed Word
Single word meditations to ignite you.

To encounter a word ~ truly encounter it ~ is a wonder... a joy... possibly a danger. You meet its sound and meaning. You meet its naked energy. And then you're either done for or... you're finally started.

January 2012

Excite

Excite(ment) means "to experience a rising of the energies." Think of the hydrokinetic power of water pushing up through a rocky break in the ground. When it reaches the rim it spills or gushes, and something beautiful and life-bringing happens.

As 2012 approaches, what excites you? What do you want to do in the year ahead?

Many of us experience a rising excitement about a new creative idea. We hear ourselves gushing, "I'm going to "write"... "paint"... "start a business"... or "lose weight and get fit." We want other people to witness and affirm our potential: "That's a great idea!"

But then... the energy sinks. The aspiration vanishes. For various reasons the idea that excites us today subsides and, like subterranean waters, sinks back into hidden channels.

How many times have we done this - brought up an idea to friends or family, only to allow its energy to die down again? Or do we just hold it inside, because we know ourselves too well?

What holds us back is... myriad "reasons." What is it that backs you down?

"Not enough money"... "Too little time"... "I need to do more research"... "I need to be sure my work is perfect, or at least better, before I show it to anyone"... "I need a guarantee that this is going to pay off"... "Someone else's needs come first." After the excitement... we talk ourselves out of it.

The truth is, beneath our logical "reasons" lies the real energy that works against every creative emergence ~ a virulent, countervailing force that arises and backs us down.

Fear is the force that resists and kills creativity. Fear is an insatiable cavern that sucks our ideas and energies back inside. We feel safe. But that's because we don't recognize what's actually at risk: Our lives.

Every time we deny the life energy that wants to express itself through us, we miss out on our own true life.

And later, when others ask, "What happened to that great idea?" we offer our "reasons". Somehow we know that every one is a cover. We know we lost out to fear's resistance. We don't want to face the truth that what we're creating is a riskless life of non-creation.

Those who do allow the idea to surface and ~ in the mix of fear and thrill that occurs when we blaze a new trail ~ the creative idea cuts a pathway into our life. We make the time. The money comes (actually, it's already there, we were spending it on other things.) Learning a new skill (and feeling the vulnerability of the learner) is not as bad as we thought it would be. We like having our ego challenged and remade, because we experience ourselves becoming as great as our ideas.

In 2012, aspire to live in the direction of your excitement. Where does the current of your idea or dream want to carry you? Today, face your inner resistance - whatever fear is holding you back - by imagining the possibility of a new, creative, excited you.

Let the word "excite" drop from your head down into your whole body. Let your life energy rise, spill out, and blaze a new course before you.

Be excited.

Seed Word
Single word meditations to ignite you.

To encounter a word ~ truly encounter it ~ is a wonder... a joy... possibly a danger. You meet its sound and meaning. You meet its naked energy. And then you're either done for or... you're finally started.

December 2011

Explore.

Take a little time... soon... maybe later today or this weekend... to find free space and journal about the habits, small and great, that define your life right now. See your life -- each day, week, month, year -- as it is, with its comfortable streambed of habits and traditions. This is the sleek, set track through which the silver current of your spirit now flows, unconscious as a lovely stream.

What would happen if the stream one fine or not-so-fine Winter day understood that it was time ~ and maybe past time ~ to edge out of its banks... just a little? What if the first gentle, silver finger of water began to find its way in a new direction?

What would it encounter? ~ an obstacle? a sudden, surprising plunge? a buffering mound and a redirection?

Maybe all of these.

But as the Tao brilliantly counsels: "Soft water flows around hard rock. Who wins?"

Along with resistances, surprises, switches, the silver exploration would also encounter... its own inner force... determination... ability to dissolve and transmute and carry in its silver depths whatever meets it ... and continue to flow.

Eventually, the exploration would create a new channel... growing deeper still with each passing day, week, year... noisy with the ruck of the current and waterclatter of its own energy ... moving on and on in its own new and true course.

Place the word "explore" on the altar of your mind. From there, carry it like a burning torch down into your heart, your whole being. Offer it to God, the Universe... offer it to your self and your one true Life.

Be an exploration.

seed fire
 
It’s Your Life. Be there.