Self-Acceptance and Compassion Using Diligence

From time to time on the spiritual path we find ourselves in a mud puddle of negative thoughts. This can be especially true when we are living in such challenging times. There is actually a gift in this mud puddle of ours if we choose to look more deeply into the murky waters.

Thich Nhat Hanh would call this diligence. In exercising diligence we are able to choose which seeds of thought we choose to water. For example, we might have a common human thought of impatience...perhaps at ourselves or others or both. We also have a seed of positivity and that would be tolerance and compassion for ourselves or others or both. We can choose to water either the impatience seed or the tolerance and compassion seed.

Of course, this decision making process means that we need to be aware of how we are feeling in the present moment. And that process requires that we have a practice of mindfulness. Being mindful and observing what thoughts are moving through us allows us to be the witness of our mind and to not to be pulled down into the mud puddle. 

We can instantly choose the peacefulness of compassion rather than spend time swimming in the mud. Or we can swim in the mud long enough that our aware is triggered and then we come back to the present moment again.......with a smile knowing that we received the gift of feeling impatient and we now choose another more positive thought to water.

My new website is almost ready. I will be offering Mindfulness Classes to those walking a spiritual path. andrea@andreaavari.com or www.andreaavari.com

Abundance

I don't know about you but "The Secret" didn't do it for me.  I found it to be lacking in the connection with my heart.  All the pictures of houses and cars and piles of money just focused on the objectification of money and did not help me to increase my vibration in connection with the Source. 

If you are looking for a program that helps you to focus your perception on the Infinite Presence within and recognizing that you are That, then perhaps it would be worth exploring the book and CD by John Randolph Price.  It is simply called "The Abundance Book."   (The book includes the CD).   He has a 40 day program of meditating on 10 beautiful passages about who we truly are. You repeat the 10 four times.  I am only on day 4 and it has made a profound change already in keeping my perspective in connection with Source.  

Let me know if it helps you.  Perhaps that is part of the gift in these challenging times....the opportunity to really change our thinking patterns.  

Four Sentences to Remember

Show up.

Be present.

Tell the truth without judgment and blame.

Don't attach to the outcome.

From Angeles Arrien's "Four Fold Way." 

Powerful sentences to be with in our practices.  Just breathe each one in and hold in your awareness and release with the out breath.   Beautiful.

The Art of Making Divine Compost of Your Life

Andrea Avari Stevens, Ph.D. 

In the wake of welcoming ourselves into the New Year of 2009 we cannot help but notice that a decaying process is taking place.  Under normal circumstances this process would seem in ecological balance to the rest of our lives.  Death and rebirth are but sides of the same coin.  Each is contained within the other.  But to those of us willing to pay attention to both our inner process and the outer reflected world, the energy seems to be flowing towards the disintegration of those patterns and structures in a way that challenges us not to grip our minds and hearts in fear. 

Normally we try to keep the compost pile out of sight over in a corner.  A beautiful process that is sometimes stinky and not pretty in its slimy disintegration is not something we place at center stage.  We appreciate the good work of the bacteria and fungi in breaking down the organic materials we supply to our pile, but we give them wide stance to do their important work.  

And now the decay is in our faces.  If we turn one way, there it is.  Twisting our head another way, there it is in another form.  Some days it seems as though it is coming from every direction.  We can feel overwhelmed by the rate and depth of decay.  Or we can embrace it.  Just as a compost pile needs to be turned over for aeration in order to encourage the process, so we need to aerate our compost pile of fear with love and gratitude.  

Perhaps we have lost money in the stock market, our home mortgage and/or our job is at risk, or we lost money moving into other currencies.  Financial institutions are failing and we don’t know where to put our money.  Ways of managing money in the past no longer make sense now.  Then we turn on the news and see and hear about people from all corners of the world suffering in some way.  A subtle kind of anxiety begins to surround us as we realize that the labor pains of this decay are deepening in preparation for rebirth.  

What can we do?  Remember who we really are. Know that we are Source.  It is not that we deserve abundance and creativity; we are that.  In our compost pile is the key to a new way of Being for us.  If we calm down and appreciate that what is not needed anymore is falling away from us, our strengths for new ways of creating become obvious.   When you hold the flower you also hold the compost or there would be no flower.  

Be gentle with yourself and others.  We are all the same energy of love at the core.  Have gratitude.  Give what it is that you want to get.  Move your energy by giving whether it be a smile or a dollar.  Recycle your own energy rather than constrict around the decay.  Be that which you would want to see evolve from the decay.  Be it now….Do not wait for other signs of love and peace to begin….this moment is waiting for you to choose.  Check in with yourself often.  Release any self-judgment by drawing it into your heart. 

Move your energy by breathing your composted energy in for transformation and exhale compassion and rebirth for yourself and all beings.  Step inward in meditation and extend your light of love to yourself and all others.  Step out physically and connect with others of like mind for support.  Love your compost.  Your unique flower is seeded within.  

Andrea's new website will be ready in the next few weeks.  She will be offering Coaching for the Awakening Spirit for those who would like support on their unique path of waking up.  There will be a free newsletter and messages from the soul as well as teleclasses and ebooks.  Her new book on creating soulful relationships will be published in 2009.  She is the author of "A Hit of Heaven: a soul's journey through illusion" which is available on Amazon.com.  

  

What is Love?

Timothy Freke, bestselling author and internationally respected authority on world spirituality, explains what Big Love is and describes how to experience the FEELING OF LOVE any time you want. 

What is love?

That is such a big question and so important. For me, my understanding of love is that love is how one must feel when we see through the veneer of separation that seems to divide us and connect with somebody (or with some thing or place or activity) as one with that person or thing. We experience this in our body - there's chemicals, there's good feelings, it's an embodied thing - and it comes from this recognition of oneness. 

I have a child, a little girl of 8 years old, and I love her to bits. Although she's separate from me and she has her own life and is a different person, and that's important, I also connect with her as one. So her joys are my joys, her suffering is my suffering, her dreams are my dreams... I love her. And that's what it's like for everyone that I feel that love with. So me for, love is how one must feel, and where it comes out - particularly with my work as a philosopher - is around a big sense of oneness one can have with life itself. You can come into a state where fundamentally you recognize that we are all one, we are all one with this moment and with the mystery of life itself. 

When you find yourself at one with All, you find yourself in love with All. Suddenly the teachings, that you'll find at the heart of every spiritual tradition from the beginning of time, around oneness and love, start to make sense. 

What the message is, is that if we can see who we really are, we can come into a state in which we are one with everything, and we find ourselves in love with everything. And then that expresses itself through our individual personalities in the way we live, because we live with love. Which means we feel connected with life, we feel embodied, we feel a love of what happens, but we also feel we want to be of service and ameliorate the suffering of life. Because love is much more than just a good feeling. Love is also suffering with others. 

In my own experience, this has made me want to step out and work with people who are dying, and to try and find areas where people are suffering and you can reach out and touch. So for me, love is oneness. "Oneness" on its own can sound dry - but it's not because when it's embodied, when it's a real realization, it comes with a feeling, and it's that feeling that makes it worthwhile. I call it Big Love. That's the word I use, because I love the word love so much. Big Love unites us with everyone and everything. And that completely changes the way that you live your life. 

How can we go about getting that feeling? Maybe some practices or some techniques?
Well, there's lots of things you can do to wake up to oneness and Big Love. One that is coming in through Love itself, is a technique that I use with people when we have our seminars, which is: 

Come into a stillness, come into a state with meditation, and focus on where you do feel that love quite easily. 
I mentioned my little girl, I could also mention my boy or my wife or my friends - people that when I focus on them, and I think about times that my love of them has been very obvious, I can focus in on those particular thoughts. And then the feelings start to arise from that and I can begin to recognize that feeling of love, that is so sweet and so powerful. I would go into Hell for this person because of that! That's how much I love them. 


That's a very powerful experience and as you focus in on it, you start to invoke it, as it were. And then having done that for a little while, once you start getting those feelings, then it become interesting to play... what if you try and expand that. Don't just stay where it's easy but start with somebody I have no feelings about. What about the postman, somebody like that. Someone I walk past in the street. A colleague at work I never speak to. Someone I'm completely different to because I don't have a relationship with them. Could it be that I can extend that feeling of love to embrace them also? I think it's possible. 
If you look at a person, here's a human being, they are full of joy and suffering just like me, they've got a journey just like me, and they are essentially the same mysterious being, their essence is also our one shared essence. If I connect through that, I can start allowing that sense of love to arrive. Now, it's a different sort of love because it's not personal, I don't know them as a person, it's a kind of impersonal compassion, but it's love nevertheless, and it's powerful and very beautiful. 


Now if you allow that to arise for a little while you can ask: what happens if we take this another step? What happens if we try something much more difficult which is to say, could I embrace with that impersonal compassion, that Big Love, somebody that I really find quite difficult, or even someone that I've exiled from my heart, somebody who's hurt me or I've fallen out with? This is a difficult part of the practice but very rewarding - to look at what's holding me separate from this person, really. And I can see that everyone has their side of the story, this person has had an experience of life which has lead them to behave in ways which I may find offensive or difficult. But you can reach back into the person - to the little child that's inside everyone, who could be innocent, who's gone on this life journey and ended up in this mess, perhaps. 
I don't have to approve of them and what they've done or any of that, I just need to connect through everything which is in-between us, in love. And then you can love your enemies, as is said in the Christian tradition. Which is an incredible thing to say, a beautiful thing to say, "Love others as yourself," even to your enemies, because we're all one Self. That's the Oneness. So you can see through it now. 


So you play with that for a while, then finally (and this one is often even more difficult for people) do the same with yourself. What happens if I include myself in that big, spacious unconditional love? OK, there's a whole load of things about myself that I find really difficult, that I don't like and give myself a hard time about, but to reach deep within myself to that innocent child inside, to the essence of a pure being, and say there it is. Connect as one with it and hold "myself," just as I am, in a warm embrace... in that feeling of Love. 
That simple, four-part exercise, starting with something you find easy, then something which is a stranger, then someone who may be exiled from your heart, and then yourself. I find that a very powerful way to open from the love that we find easy to this Big Love. 
Actually each step is like a relief. Anything which you're pushing away, anything that you can't love - the barrier breaks down. And let me make it clear here, I don't mean like - liking and disliking is a different thing altogether - but love, in the sense that I mean the word, which is that which embraces everything just as it is. It's just unconditionally embracing things, because they are, or because a person is. 

The Greek philosopher Socrates said it way, way back. He said you come through personal love, through individual instances of love, until you expand and expand, and eventually you come to Love itself. And I think that is one way of describing the spiritual journey of awakening. 

Is that something you can do every day?
You can do it any time you like! I'm a great believer in integrating these things into your real life. So it's not something you necessarily have to make a practice of, although you can and I have done that, but it's something that if it's part of you, when you need it there it is. And the more you do it the easier it gets. But the key to all of this is that you're constantly moving beyond your separate identity to this deeper Self. 

I had my first awakening experience when I was 12 years old, and I'm now nearly fifty. During that time, my understanding of spirituality and awakening has changed completely - but the one thing that has stayed the same is that I know it's all about Love. That to me is the center. 

If the love isn't there, it's not right. When love's there it will be. It's as simple as that. It's the most important thing and it's the thing that everyone can get. Old and young... yeah, it's love. There's a lovely line in John Lennon's song Mind Games, "Love is the answer and you know that for sure." It's so audacious to say to people, "you know it for sure," but there's something in me that says, yes we do know that for sure. Actually it's the one thing we know. If we are connected to ourselves, then the one thing we know for sure is that this journey is about love. So how we can move into that, is such an important question. 

"Love is the answer," is an old message, it's been there since the beginning of time - people have been saying it, "Love is the answer, love is the answer," and it is, but also though, love is the problem, in a sense. It's important to get that too because so many of the terrible things we do to each other, in our everyday lives and around the world on a global scale, we do because of love. We love our family and want to defend our family and so we're willing to hurt somebody else's. We love our tribe so we're willing to hurt somebody else's. We love our religion so we're willing to hurt somebody else's. 

A love which binds us to separateness can actually limit love. There's something about love that must keep expanding and have no limits, because when it becomes caught in separateness it can actually become it's opposite and it starts to be destructive. There's so many examples but one which pops into my mind right now is the gentleman who was in a wheelchair, Amas in Palestine. He was loved by the people of Palestine and the Israelis bombed him and killed him. He was loved because he set up schools, he cared for the homeless, he cared for the disadvantaged, he loved his people and gave his life selflessly to serve his people. But he also killed Israeli babies and was able to do that because of how much he loved his people. 

That's the contradiction we get stuck in with love: when we limit it there are problems. The love of self, when limited, is selfishness. It all comes down to the question, is our love limited, or is our sense of who we are so expansive and so open that we can love everything and everyone, even with our enemies? Then, Love is the answer. 

So I'd say, Big Love is the answer because it frees us from a limiting, self-orientated attachment that could actually stand in the way of what Love truly is. 



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Holding the Light in Times Like These

Andrea Lee Avari, Ph.D.

“The times they are a’changin”, words by Bob Dylan seem as apropos today as they did years ago. But back then we were under the impression that all that was happening was outside of ourselves. There was a sense of “us” and “them” whether it was the Vietnam War, drugs, feminism, or living the hippie lifestyle. We knew ourselves by the length of our hair. And we knew who to blame for our discontent.

In present time as we are growing our spiritual perspectives every day, we can see that all changes really occur within ourselves. The duality of “us” and “them” was and is an illusion. The global crisis is a reflection of our own inner natures. Self-responsibility asks us to observe how we know our power. How do we see money as a tool of power? How do we see ourselves as the locus of abundance? Do we still see ourselves as undeserving of abundance in some degree? Or do we see that as we are Divine in nature, so are we abundance itself?

Or do we react in fear using only our linear mind to try to figure out how to protect our money. Do we feel victimized by the “crisis situation”? Do we feel as though something has been done to us? Do we look to blame others for our fears? Do we think that our safety lies outside of ourselves? It is important to remember that our power lies in our remembrance of our connection to our soul and therefore, to spirit. Power lies not in the paper money, the gold, the stocks and bonds, the bank but within our own beings. External power is a reflection of that internal process. If we don’t like what we see, we must look within ourselves.

We can know that we are safe by simply remembering who we really are. Zoom our perception out of the small picture of our egoic self ,“I”, that part which is worried about what to do about our money. Breathing the relaxed breath and focusing on our higher selves we begin to feel the loving energy of our soul. As this energy moves through us, we calm into a more peaceful state. In this vibration, we are much more able to access our intuition. This connection assists us in feeling what might be appropriate action to take in any situation, if any, resonates with us, giving us guidance.

Now is a time of the crumbling of the old structures of organization. Many of these structures were built upon unbalanced power, a dominating, patriarchal force that did not seek equanimity for the highest good of all. Because of the continuing influx of light upon the planet, the shadow of lower vibrations is losing strength. Death comes before rebirth and so the new structures are not yet formed. This process can lead to anxiety.

We are learning to trust ourselves in a deeper manner. We come bare and naked to the place of non-attachment and surrender ourselves to that which is. We have become comfortable and habitual around our way of living. We are being asked now to release old ways of being which can confuse us into fear.

As banks close or merge, corporations decline, our accounts diminish for one reason or another, our jobs may be at risk, retirement dreams are imploding, the stress of all the challenges can wreak havoc on our relationships. If we are stripped of all our assets, do we believe, in our hearts, that we will be still be safe? Security is self-love. It is not a fully packed IRA. A new learning for us is to know that we are co-creators of our lives. We are in school to remember to release any degree of thinking that money is power and security.

So what can we do? We can learn to be more present in our Now moments and use all of our senses to see, feel, smell, taste, hear the joy that is within and without us. You might have thought it would be a more grand solution but everyday joy lifts our spirits, connects with our souls, and lights up our smiles. Everyday experiences of joy zooms us out into the big picture of who we truly are. We remember why we are here on this grand experiment called life. It is to love and to live in joy.

Our perspective is our own choice: the furry caterpillar that is crawling across the road and rides to safety on our finger to find his/her fate among the grasses on the other side of the chosen path; the rainbow on the far off island that seems miles wide in its brilliant colors, shining all the way into the water at the edge of the shore. Have you seen the starlight reflecting on the still ocean at night? A beautiful shelf of mushrooms is growing vertically out of the moss on a side of a tree in the driveway. I can feel their peacefulness in doing what they were born to do. We can all have that peace.

But the ego says, how can I find joy in these things when I am worried about my house, my bank accounts, my job, my health insurance and all the other things that are swimming through my head? I need to not waste my time on silly caterpillars and it is important that I figure out what to do. The empty space of soul asks us to surround these worries with welcome. If we do not repress them, we can allow them to be as they are.

With an attitude of lovingkindness practice, we will find that the intensity of their demand for our attention diminishes. In that quiet growing peacefulness, we experience what we can learn from this “terrible” worry. Instead of misery, we can find a calmness in our hearts. In that calmness we accept what is.

We are not in control of all that is. We can be responsible for our state of consciousness. From that acceptance we can feel our perceptions shift into that place of knowing that we will be taken care of, we are safe, and we can find our way out of anything. Focus on the Divine within us and let it expand.

The Universe inside us will show itself to us through our own intuition and decision-making. Perhaps guidance speaks to us through a passage in a book or another person interacting with us. Something new will happen because we have loosened the reins on rigidity of things having to be a certain way. The Universal Energy of divine vibration is now free to create something new for us. The Universe wraps our gifts in surprising packages and perfect timing. What might it be?

Is the Practice of Positive Thinking a Distraction from Soul Work?

Andrea Lee Avari, Ph.D.


The soul is a vastly beautiful energy that surrounds and permeates our body, mind, and heart. It is the droplet of Universal Spirit that is uniquely each of us as each individual human being exists. If you were reading the story of it all, you couldn’t put the book down. And what an incredible story it is…….just look down at the complexity of one of your hands. Unbelievably amazing! Think of your eyes, your liver, your brain……..how it all works in a flow of atomic synchronicity.

Taking it all for granted is the poison of its demise. The soul wants to shake us up and help us to remember that we really don’t know how we got here; we don’t know what we are doing here, or at the end, where we are going. There is a grand mystery operating in our lives if we want to pay attention and not keep falling asleep.

We want to be happy. We don’t want to feel negativity. And so we learn to focus on positive thoughts. We set our intentions and then sit back. We think we know “The Secret.” The soul, however, is waiting for us to experience all of life. Whatever experience it takes to awaken us to greater consciousness is grist for the soul’s mill. If we are only willing to mine the positive experiences and feelings, we have struck shallow dirt.

We are missing out on soul growth. The soul says, “come on, feel the full experience of living. What are you being asked to learn in each and every experience?” Negativity as such is just basic fear which is the absence of light. If we allow it to be in compassion, follow its course, then it transforms itself into a higher vibration of love.

If we are only willing to focus on the positive and turn our heads from negativity, then we run the risk of not exploring our soul work. Soul work means that we are clearing the fears that block us from living in our higher truth which is love, acceptance and compassion. It is the inner work that moves us into the empowered position for the process of co-creation. We have to “be” that which we desire and intend. Just uttering positive words with feeling will not create manifestation. Co-creation evolves from the deep translucence of our….. “being” not our doing.

In order to avoid stress related to the global economic situation, some people prefer not to think or talk about the distress. They believe that acknowledging the situation is entertaining fearful thoughts. Maintaining positive thoughts will bring positive results. That is true but only if we combine it with doing our own internal work of transforming fear to love.

Suppression of fear (and we all have a measure of it these days as we realize how out of control the global economic situation might be) is not helpful
for our emotional health. Some seem to think that if you allow fear as an emotion, then you will generate more fear. But what we resist does persist. Allowing the emotion to be, allows it to be transformed. The fear moves into acceptance. An empowerment comes into being that moves us towards the intuited appropriate action to take, especially in times of crisis.

So how do we accomplish this soul work? In everyday life events the soul’s vibration shows itself to us. If the state of the economy distresses us, it is helpful to remember that what is exterior to ourselves is but a mirror of our internal process. We might ask ourselves what old patterns and habits exist in us that smack of greed, fear of abundance, elitism. When do our actions suggest that we have forgotten that we are all connected as one soul? How can we each be more generous in deed or word to ourselves and to another; how can we learn to live more in gratitude for all of life whether we agree with parts of it or not? How can we expand our hearts beyond what we know now and be more loving and accepting?

Through the mystery of our daily emotional responses or reactions to our relationships and circumstances we can observe our soul knocking on our hearts to expand in greater love. We can observe when we react in fear and instead of withdrawing from that fear; we can move forward to ask what the soul wants us to learn from this experience that we deem to be negative. By doing so, we connect with our soul in knowing how to align our assets, financial and otherwise, with our state of being as we remember who we really are. We are love and we are safe. The more we heal our fears, the more we realize who we really are.

A problem-free life is not the aspiration of the soul. We wonder why we suffer but doesn’t suffering serve a greater purpose when it focuses our attention on that which we do not want to experience? When we observe our lives we can see that our greatest growth occurs when we have stumbled and fallen. We can feel the soul vibrating in every relationship and event that we encounter in our daily lives simply because it provides the opportunity to bring us into this higher consciousness of love and connection.

This transformation that is upon all of us on Earth now is an opportunity for us to remember who we truly are. It was not created to be easy; it was created to challenge us to release old thinking and old patterns that no longer serve us. We can move through this shift into a new vibration by bringing our fears and “negative thinking” into greater awareness. We can hold the fears with compassion and lift them up to the light of love to be released. We can love ourselves for who we are and know that at our core we are the light of love.

We can learn from each other but we walk individually into the sea of universal consciousness. When we arrive we meet ourselves and we remember that we are already swimming in that pool of self-realization; we laugh with that knowing in our hearts. The enigma of the soul is continually drawing us, urging us to learn to expand beyond fear into a greater and deeper love.


Copyright 2008 by Andrea Lee Avari. Andrea is the author of “A Hit of Heaven: a soul’s journey through illusion.” She is currently finishing her second book on creating soulful relationships. She will be presenting workshops in 2009. If you would like to be included in her mailing list for upcoming events, please email her at andrea@andreaavari.com. Her website is www.andreaavari.com.