Now Is The BEST Time

If you want to know where you are in cultivating presence and whether your quiet-mindedness holds up only because you know there will be something to relieve you of having to hold that “pose, ” now is a great time to test whether you are as far along as you thought. And no, this isn’t a competition. It is a test, and while it is easy to say where you think you are, the actual boots on the ground experience will be what actually gets to tell the story. And don’t beat yourself up over it if you feel you came up short.

I say this because in the beginning of my work, because so much was happening so quickly, I thought I was further along than I thought. I didn’t realize one release does not cure the whole system. It is one step, one erasure of something from the past. This is painstaking work. Be gentle, be kind, but also be honest with yourself.

Why?

I knew her before and after awakening. Her reaction to her awakening resulted in her going through all manner of meltdowns, most were in front of me. In each case she would say I was at fault for her preterbations emotionally. That of course wasn’t true, and as an observer it showed to me the sheer volume of emotional junk that she was dealing with and how she was going to deal with it going forward. I was able to see pretty clearly how she thought she was further along than she actually was. Everytime there was some release or some shift, a grand pronouncement was made. Everything was suddenly better I am healed!

On the one hand it was congradulations on the change, but the reality was there was still way too much remaining for her to be able to behave and feel without ripple, without upset, without problems. Let me be clear, we are human, and we are not going to be perfect. We also must rid ourselves of the old patterns in order for the presence of the higher self to come forward to aid and guide. It (the higher or core self) helps a lot, but you are still human and you are still having to deal with duality. So it is a balance. Each release makes something easier (whatever you were repressing). It doesn’t make the whole thing better necessarily. You have to want it. Repressed emotion will ALWAYS make you want something different from what you THINK you want.

What???

Be honest. Be true to you, no one else. Have compassion for yourself. This isn’t a race. Didn’t get everything you wanted to get done in this life? You can do it in the next one. Sure, challenging yourself can be fun, so do that if it is your bliss, but go easy on yourself. And still be honest, too. This may all sound unusual, but it is a good prescription. We have all time.

I wonder if she got to where she hoped she would be? I suspect she still suffers from that problem of overstating the cure. I think I served as a test for her development. Ten minutes with me would reveal all of the places that still needed work. Our connection meant that I could feel all the places that needed work. She was a real “fixer-upper.” I could feel her blocks because they were not mine, but I could feel them as if they were mine (except they weren’t-and this made it possible to know all of them).

In a similar way this pandemic can be the same test to see where you are in your work. Just wait for it until you start feeling hard or rough. Where did that come from? Ask yourself, your inner wisdom, to show you where it comes from and then wait. It might come in meditation, when falling asleep, taking a shower, who knows. It will show you if you trust it and are willing to place yourself in a blind spot. You are receptive, blind to what you think it might be. Sssshhhh…..

The blind spot is an ability to not know while letting another part, your subconscious perhaps, maybe it is superconscious, to do the work for you. It has the peculiar quality of feeling as though you yourself didn’t get the answer but something else did. I think it is you, but that is for another time. But it is imagining the problem having a string tying itself to some part of you deep down. You grab that string and it leads you down into the watery depths where the core self resides, or at least the source of this issue in you. This works only because you are going blind, only because you keep your rational concrete mind in ignorance. Then, once you reach its end, you just feel. Don’t rationalize now. That will not work. Feel. Sense. No judging. How did it start? Was it in another life? If so, it may show itself as its released. A feeling might bubble up. Let it go. As it does it might reveal its origins. If it doesn’t, that is okay too. It is gone, that is good enough. Some part that was hard is now easier. It is like a walkway made up of tessera, that is, mosaics. One piece might stick up more and you find yourself tripping over it over and over again. After you do this, it is easier in that one place (within you). So doing this work is like repaving a rough walkway of small mosaics. After a few years you notice a difference. It takes time. It is a labor of love. When you return, you will have a smoother foundation for a new story that will be easier. I promise this is how this works. When you reincarnate your foundation will be so much easier you will wonder why you didn’t discover and started using this sooner.

So what bugs you the most? Selfish people? Duplicity? Dishonesty? It will take looking into yourself first to turn that hard feeling into bliss. But you can do it, and I hope you do. You are worth the bliss it will bring.

-All My Blessings-

~Parker

Advertisement

Find Your Zen

How you feel is a choice. If you can see how feelings are just like thoughts you can see how you choose them moment by moment. You can then begin to choose different thoughts and feelings. This can lead to big changes after a period of practice. The first step is in observing your thoughts, getting in the habit of stepping back and watching yourself. This takes time to cultivate and isn’t the focus of this article.

If you have trouble with your feelings getting the best of you, take a cue from my cat Georgette. She is now 17 years old and she is rocking being present and being in her bliss. She is happy right were she is.

If you feel like you have lost your bliss let me know what’s not working, maybe our mechanic can help fix what ails you during this pandemic.

I have found that many people are confronting hard emotional material during this idle period. We are so used to going all the time. May I suggest that you use this time to quietly reflect. Learning how to silence the mind could happen at this time. Learning how you can use breath to assist you in shifting how you feel is of great benefit. You wont be changing the world until you change yourself….

Breath work is a singular technique incredibly useful in changing how you feel. It shuts down your busy mind and helps bring you to silence, calm, and if you are able to slow down enough, enter into something called Presence.

You want a breath that is deliberate, slow, with pauses at the top and bottom of each breath. The rate of your breathing should be about three seconds in, holding your breath for about two seconds, with an exhale at that same rate, with a one to two second pause at the end of the exhale. You can play around with this rate to find a rate that makes you feel most relaxed.

You will want to do this type of breathing for about 3-5 minutes at first, just enough to see how it is done and you begin seeing results.

If you don’t see any results at all, I reccomend placing all of your attention on your breathing and nothing else. Listen to your breathing. Take your mind off of whatever is normally occupying it. You may also need to do something that will relax you beforehand, like sleep or taking a warm bath or shower. You want to shift your mind away from the busy mind that you have become so accustomed to having. This will take some practice. It will take time. Once or twice is not enough. Trying this at the same time of the day can be helpful in establishing a habitual trigger that helps you to relax and quiet down.

Another version of this type of breathing is alternating nostril breathing. It is done the same way as our earlier breath except you close one nostril at a time to breath in and breathe out through one nostril only before alternating to the other nostril. I have done four breaths in one nostril before doing four in the other, as well as simply one breath per nostril. The point is in keeping the number of breaths balanced between each nostril.

You can also use imagery with your breathing. I often feel a shot of energy all through my body when I breathe like this, so I will think about my breathing and how it will stimulate my root chakra, sending a shot of energy through all of my other energy centers.

I might think about the energy ending up in a center I am thinking about only to find that the energy goes there, dutifully following thought. I then feel how that energy feels moving through my body, and I can learn a lot about the state of my own energy body, for instance by how the energy feels as it moves like this.

If a part of me feels tight or tense, I imagine directing breath to that location. It might take some practice, but it is feeling the energy generated through breath being sent to that location that does it for me The more vividly you can imagine it, the better it will work. Prana will go where thought goes.

If you slow down, focus on listening to your breath, and breathing nice and slow, you can find breathing rates that can bring calm and even bliss (if you keep going deeper). The clue that it is working is you will feel like you are out of your mind or body a little. You might feel weak-kneed and you might have a hard time focusing or remembering what you were thinking. This is the very state that you want. This is the threshold of the zen state, the practice called zazen, a cultivation of quiet single-mindedness. It helps bring peace. Be patient and feel free to ask questions.

I hope that this finds you well and my hope is that you will use this to help take the edge off of how you feel. Let me know how it goes.

~Parker