View From the Mesa | Thoughts about life, consciousness, personal healing, and spiritual evolution

The Responsibility to Heal

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

We are all connected. The new science of consciousness is showing that what each of us does, thinks, and feels sends out ripples that affect the whole of humanity. Most people are at least occasionally aware of how they are impacted by the energy, thoughts, emotions, and deeds of others. If they’re paying attention, they also recognize how even the smallest acts they engage in themselves affect the world around them.

Once acknowledging their personal impact, many people are making choices to live differently; their awakened experience leading them to see that even their smallest choices have the potential to help save the planet. As a result, individuals, families, and organizations alike are taking stock of the resources they consume and taking steps to reduce runaway consumption, not just to save money but to save life on Earth.

Those of greater awareness also review what they produce as waste and are becoming more conscious of how the physical dross they generate affects the common environment. They understand that there is really no “away” in “throw away”. It all goes somewhere, usually just out of sight of the “throw-ee,” but often where others have to live with it.

If the flapping of butterfly wings in South America contributes to hurricanes in Florida, what carnage do our errant human thoughts and emotions cause? More sensitive types understand well the impact that the emotional garbage of others has on them and how their own moods affect those around them. They’re making conscious decisions about ways to manage their thoughts and emotions, and taking steps to treat others as they would have themselves treated. They are walking away from people and places that harbor negativity, suspicion and abuse, and moving towards Light.

The truth is that everything we engage in as individuals; thought, emotion, belief, word, deed, or intent has an impact on everything and everyone in the web of Creation, even beyond our own tiny planet. (Except for crop circles, we just don’t get as many angry phone calls from our cosmic neighbors just yet.) The same is true when it comes to healing. Others are affected by changes in our personal physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, and we are, conversely, by theirs. Maybe you’ve felt it.

It has been said that none of us can really claim to be healed until we are all healed. As long as there is one person in our world who is sick, hurt, hungry, emotionally distraught, mentally unstable, or spiritually out of balance, we all suffer. As we learned from Peruvian Shaman Amaru Li last weekend, in his country’s cosmology even the state of our individual abundance or lack thereof is seen as a health concern that must be balanced for the whole of society to be fit.

It would be easy to use this reciprocal concept of unified health to declare victimhood. We could blame everyone else in the world for “infecting” us with their ills, resulting in our own state of imbalance or dis-ease. Luckily, there is a polar flip side to the situation: Healing is contagious. As each one of us engages in our own healing, healing multiplies and spreads through the web of life. You might even be able to sense this for yourself once you turn your attention to it.

Our innate ability to heal ourselves is a power that each of us have at our disposal. Just cut yourself and your body will grow new skin whether you think about it or not. The responsibility to heal yourself and your own “stuff” is another matter. It is incumbent for each one of us who wants to do some small part to save the world to pursue it. Are you taking that power and responsibility seriously, or waiting for others to “fix” your multifaceted health and the greater problems faced by humanity?

“Alright, alright! I want do my part,” you might say, “ so how can I go about healing myself?” Start with the understanding that healing is a journey, not an event. It’s not a one-time thing, but a process that can take a lifetime. Now relax and let yours begin right now with taking a deep breath and letting it out with an audible sigh. Just doing that will lower your blood pressure and clear your head and heart. Then embark on the voyage by asking yourself what’s out of balance for you and how it got that way, accepting your hand in manifesting it without judgment.

Exercise your right to heal yourself. Find out how you can help yourself do it. This may take getting what may be a new kind of an education; learning about your own health. You don’t even have to leave the comfort of your own home or spend a dime to do it if you have access to the internet, as there is an ever growing wealth of information available at the click of a mouse. Study up on whatever “conditions” you have and look at all the choices as far as what you can do yourself or in partnership with a doctor or other practitioner to rebalance them.

Seek out expert advice from many sources and ask a lot of questions. Look for the wisdom of others who have been “through it” and triumphed. Trust your intuition as to what truth is. When you find some things that look promising to help yourself, make a serious effort to employ them and give them time to work as you keep looking. Avoid those who want to “fix” you as you sit idly by. Instead of just money, invest yourself in your own healing.

Start with the cheap, easy, and benign stuff. Meditation, exercise, dietary changes, and stress reduction can go a long way. Take healing baths, or just sing in the shower. Engage in your own guided imagery about how you want to feel and be. Smudge yourself or use “energy medicine” exercises to clear your aura and energy systems of accumulated and intrusive energies. Practice acts of awareness to expand your consciousness and raise your vibration. You will see progress.

Commit to lifestyle changes that you know are healthier than the way you’ve been treating yourself. Let go of keeping up with the Joneses and live your own kind of life, building in what works best for you in terms of balance between work and rest, giving and receiving, fun and seriousness, protein and carbs, organic and conventional—paper or plastic!

Take advantage of what Nature has provided for your healing. Native American culture says that everything on this Earth was put here for our healing. Not to commodify, abuse, disrespect, or destroy, but to accept the help of each plant, critter, stone, element, direction, or Spirit Being as given, with gratitude, reciprocity, and respect. Go stand on tree roots and ground yourself. Spend time in the sun and absorb Light. Swim in healing waters. Collect and eat medicinal and life sustaining plants.

Recognize that you are much more than your physical self and that the imbalances that are causing you the most pain and suffering are likely on deeper levels. Learn how to tap into them and address them. Find ways to connect with others for healing support, whether it’s through a healing or prayer circle, survivor’s group, or with a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-massage-yours partner.

Get up and move in a healing direction in life. Find out (or just remember) what energizes you and engage in it. You’ll never know what doors will open for you until you try the handles. Very few are actually locked. Take a class, learn a craft, find a more satisfying job, or at least look into it. Do service for others, be creative, find your own kind of joy no matter how silly it may sound to others. You just may forget that you haven’t been feeling good.

Recognize that just by reading these words and turning your attention to the possibility of your own healing you have already started on that healing journey for yourself and our planet. (Admit it: Don’t you feel at least a tiny bit better already?) Keep it up and you’ll notice that not only will you feel better, but so will those around you. We call it “collateral healing”. This shining energy will radiate from you even when you’re asleep, and plant seeds of healing into the minds and hearts of others through the web of consciousness that connects us. Bon voyage!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged energy medicine, healing is a journey not an event, healing is contagious, Native American, none are healed until all are healed, personal impact on humanity, right to heal, take charge of your healing, use nature for healing | Comments Off

Namaste: Honoring the God Within From Within

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

“Namaste.” We’ve been hearing and seeing this lovely word a lot lately. Visitors blissfully say it to us and each other upon leaving our Mesa Creative Arts Center. Yoga teachers and students respectfully repeat it at the end of class. Spiritually minded people use it as the salutation at the end of their emails. It’s been used as a hip new name for everything from handbags and solar panel manufacturers to beer. (Yep, I Googled it…)

The word “Namaste” (Pronounced: “Na-ma-stay”) and the accompanying traditional gesture of hands pressed palms together vertically at the heart as if in prayer along with a slight bowing of the head is often the preferred non-contact greeting (No touching, please!) used on the Indian sub-continent for respectfully greeting another. While the literal translation of this ancient Sanskrit expression is something like, “I bow to you,” in modern times it has been interpreted variously as “The God (Divinity) within me bows to (greets, acknowledges) the God (Divinity) within you.” It’s good energy and it feels good to say it.

I use the two-handed gesture a lot in my daily travels, with or without the accompanying word out loud as a way to show people that I acknowledge and respect them and their lifewalk, whether it’s to thank a customer or spiritual teacher at our center, express gratitude to the helpful clerk in the grocery store, or to thank a stranger for much needed driving directions. (Spirit is my GPS!) Yesterday, “Namaste” came into my mind for a different reason from a self-exploratory quandary that popped into my head.

In one of my innumerable tag-team self-esteem wrestling matches between my mind, emotions, displaced soul energies, spirit, and random masked desperados (They seem to take turns teaming up with each other, but thankfully fight far less often these days…) the word “honor” came into my mind. I revered other people I admired, but was I worthy of honoring? Did I see or feel myself that way?

Growing up, it seemed so few people honored me, a good deal of why I kept finding myself on the ropes waiting for a tag to escape my internal grappling ring. (It’s all staged, you know…) It would be easy to blame my upbringing for my predicament, but as I’ve gotten older and wiser, I’ve come to understand the necessity to start all of my Holy Grail type quests in the same place: Right inside of me. Outside of my ego, am I really and lovingly respecting myself, I wondered? What would it feel like?

Certainly, I have gone out of my way to respect the consciousness, body space, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of others without judgment as much as I can. This I feel as a spiritual imperative. The central focus in my life with Kate and our work at The Mesa has revolved around it. The issue at that moment was whether or not I was extending that kindness and latitude to myself.

What, if anything did I honor about myself? My abilities as an artist? My gift for helping others with healing? My capacity to love others? Yes, I thought, I did honor those qualities within me, but they were essentially things I did, not ME, and not about my just-sitting-there, beingness. Was there anything within me when I was perfectly still that merited honor? I knew as a spiritual recollection that there surely was.

In that moment I could feel that if that were true, I was obviously in denial of it. If anyone else treated me the way I sometimes treated myself; making me work long hours for little or no pay, forcing me to skip meals to get projects done, blaming myself for mistakes and shortcomings, ignoring my bodily needs for rest, recreation and sleep, pushing down my emotions if I felt like a good cry, I’d likely feel insulted, resentful, and angry. If that kind of miserable treatment of me continued for any great length of time, I likely fall into total despair, yet I wasn’t nearly in that place because of something that remained, for the moment, hidden.

Just entertaining thoughts about all this made things pretty evident that I was not really respecting myself much of the time, and it raised other questions. What part(s) of myself wasn’t I honoring? What, if anything, might I possess that was intrinsically worth doing so about? Did I honor the innate Beingness of others? About that time “Namaste” and it’s meaning came firmly into my head: The God in me honors the God in you.

I’ve used the greeting often enough. Was I actually honoring the part, aspect, consciousness, spark or whatever-you-want-to-call-it of God within others, just giving it New Age lip-service, or being merely and requisitely polite? I wanted it to be from the heart instead of just “right thinking”, but muscle testing indicated what was happening unconsciously inside of me; I wasn’t able to connect with it. I knew instantly that lack of connection was a mirror reflection of the lack of recognition within myself. I was not honoring the God within, from within, for any number of conscious or unconscious reasons.

“Oh, yeah, there’s god in me alright,” I could hear my inner mind saying sarcastically, “…but not ‘the Big God’. That’s different.” When I was child, I was told that “God is everywhere”. At the time, I took it that God was like a spy. “He” could be everywhere, hiding in the bushes to watch if I broke a commandment or committed a sin. If I did, he might zap me with a lightning bolt or some other deserved misfortune. I was afraid of God and held “him” in the same fearful (not loving) respect I had for other authority figures. Why would I want to find that inside of me?

Fortunately I have learned enough about Spiritual Nature to understand this as a fallacy of belief from limited mental concepts given to me by society. It was totally a point of view—one that needed to change emotionally now that I remembered. I found my wife and spiritual partner, Kate, and told her about what I had been ruminating on.

A brief round of muscle testing showed a pattern. I was not honoring (acknowledging) the holographic nature of the loving God my Soul remembered; the wholeness of that presence in every Created thing, including Brad. All I was seeing was the rind of the fruit of Creation instead of the seed. While I mentally honored others as my brothers and sisters, I didn’t know a felt-sense way to honor the God in anyone or anything, especially within myself because I was looking for something markedly different. Kate was in a similar metaphysical boat.

We took turns using our little Guided Head Movement healings to help each other’s internal paradigm shift. The healing expression or mantra we used? “Honor the God within you.” We each could feel it as it shifted. Kate actually starting to laugh during her turn. We each felt wholly (holy?) different afterwards, a feeling that persists into the day and this writing with calmness and waves of tingling energy.

Muscle testing confirmed what we already could feel changing. We now more truly honored the God in ourselves, each other, specific people we tested by name (Yes, the difficult ones, too.) our cats, and even our houseplants in a much deeper way, because we acknowledged and “allowed” it to be present within us. It had to start from a change within.

As you walk through your week, think about those who irritate, annoy, tax, obstruct, befuddle, or disturb you. Can you find at minimum a tiny little spark of Divinity within them? Can you at least honor that and find a way to endure if not get along with them? If not, you might need to look for that same dormant God seed within yourself and start by treating yourself better. We honor that in you. Namaste!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Beingness, guided head movement, holographic God, Namaste, respecting yourself, right thinking, seed of Creation, spark of Divinity within, spiritual recollection | Comments Off

Who Are Your People?

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

Last night Kate and I watched an episode of the ABC news show “20/20” on the internet, having missed it when it had aired last Friday. The segment, entitled “Children of the Plains,” focused on the hard life of children of the Lakota nation living on reservations in South Dakota. As we sat in front of the computer screen, we were touched by how resilient and hopeful they are despite extreme poverty, crowded living conditions, limited options, rampant alcoholism, and family tragedy. I managed to watch with detachment and not cry over their plight, but many things were stirred up inside of me.

In one interview during the show, the host, Diane Sawyer, asked a tribal leader why the people stay on the reservation if there are no opportunities to find jobs there. His reply was mostly about the fact that they are taken care of there in terms of government assistance, a level of (meager) support they would lose if they left to find work. As the story continued, I understood something else about the situation that reaches beyond simple economics; they are with their people and their culture. If they left, they’d be just like most of the rest of us non-Indians, swimming in the so-called melting pot of America, separated from our cultural communities of origin and no longer enveloped on a daily basis in the ways of our ancestors from just a few generations before us.

This got me to thinking about how I felt with respect to my own life connections. Who are “my people”? What is “my culture”? During my fifty-some years I have silently asked those questions many times, feeling a sad missingness and lack of connection from having no real answers to them. Growing up, my extended family was not close-knit and I didn’t spend a lot of time with ethnic-type aunties and uncles, grannies or grandpas. I considered myself “American” when I was old enough to think about it, and felt no great connection to either my European Jewish heritage or (theoretically) Middle Eastern origins of my more distant ancestors.

I felt out of place in the “Oy-vey” culture of modern Judaism, but also an outsider in the largely Christian-oriented community I grew up in. I missed a feeling of belonging that even escaped me in my nuclear family when it exploded in my parents’ divorce. These factors were part of why I was so attracted to Native American culture from a young age, because Indians seemed to stick together, had distinct ways of living that resisted peer pressure “modernity”, and managed to maintain their culture even with the rest of us surrounding them. My own ancestors had wanted to blend in to America and went to great lengths to avoid standing out ethnically; modifying family names, leaving behind native languages and customs, holding on only to their religious practices, engaged in largely out of sight of their neighbors. Native Americans seemed proud of theirs.

What is American “culture” anyway? A nation of immigrants who often want to keep new ones out, we talk about how proud we are that we partake of tacos and Tai cuisine, blend African rhythms into our music, practice Buddhist meditation, and have welcomed all nationalities, races, creeds, and religions into the fold. In truth, much of what we have as a nation is the hollow commonality of materialism, electronic gadgetry, the belonging sense of professional sports fans, and xenophobic “patriotism”. (Yes, yes—there is good stuff, too…) In many ways our regional, political, religious, and class diversity divides us, rather than making us One Nation under much of anything at all.

Today, as I pondered all of this with Kate during our morning “meeting” in our living room, a deeper truth emerged about who my people are and what my culture is. The answer was not startling. From a spiritual standpoint, I recognized that ALL people are “my” people and any and all cultures that have ever existed are “my” culture. I just had trouble seeing and feeling it that way.

No wonder I have at times felt that I didn’t belong on this planet, because I was looking for a small, segregated sense of belonging like the familial and strongly ethnic groups I saw around me growing up. As much as I was drawn to cultures I did not grow up being a part of, I could never BE Native American, Japanese, British, African, Israeli, or whatever. What I recognized was that what I needed to feel I belonged to was there all along, rather than elusively lost to history. I didn’t need “my people” to find or include me, I needed to find my connection to them— all of them, in an emotional sense.

Certainly there are individuals who I had considered my kind of people, often joking that they are “from my planet”. They are usually people of high spiritual energy, creativity, and vibration. They are open, accepting, and came in all in sizes and colors. Sadly, we never seem to find much time to be with each other, and I would yearn for the kind of intimacy with them that I had seen within close-knit communities in other cultures I had visited in my travels around the world. Luckily, our connections are quickly renewed with a phone call, email, or intermittent visit. It was I who maintained their proximity in my mind and heart in the interim.

Kate was (not surprisingly) in the same boat about “her” people, and lamented the loss of flavor of her ethnic Scotch, Irish, and German cultural roots to American Pie blandness. We understood that we needed to find ways to make felt-sense connections to all of our human species and understand world culture as our culture, celebrating all of it. We did our guided head movement healings to shift the restrictive unconscious issues, telling each other to connect with and “find your people”. We both felt greatly expanded as the structure of our energy fields shifted and our old emotional ways of regarding categorical separation crumbled.

At the end of the “20/20” piece as she was leaving the reservation for the last time, Diane Sawyer was taught a Lakota expression, “Mitakuye Oyasin”, and its meaning, “All My Relations”. She was deeply touched. This important expression is a reminder that the time is now for all of us to recognize our place as world citizens, neighbors, and clansmen, and generate belonging where it does not already exist, even if we never leave our home town. It’s time for us to do what we can to help our species in whatever ways we are able, whether it is through charity, service, prayers, or simply by being conscious of our brothers and sisters as such. WE, are our people.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged American culture, connection to all people as brothers and sisters, cultural association, ethnic heritage, generate belonging, Lakota children, melting pot, Mitakuye Oyasin, Oy-vey culture | Comments Off

Planning for Our Future as a Species

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

We have now reached the dawning of the 7th Day of the current and last level of the Mayan calendar and moved into concluding Light. It is an amazing picture I draw in my mind’s eye of all of 7th Days going back to the beginning of Creation, one from each of the nine levels or “Hells”; each one simultaneously rounding up to individual and nested completion.

As things go along towards whatever kind of shift might be coming for humanity in 2012 or beyond, it strikes me that something inside me has changed. I no longer occupy myself as much with simple thoughts about how I can help myself, or even our Mesa students, friends, or healing clients. It’s not that I’m giving up on them at all, it’s just that I see my opportunity to help others as expanding rapidly outwards somehow, extending beyond our little “tribe” to the whole planet without having to leave where I sit.

The place I begin is with the recognition that something particular in the world needs to change and I must turn my personal energies towards it however I can to make it happen. It’s a simple idea: We need to work together for our common good and stop merely pretending we are. I’ve probably thought about this in vague terms before, but now as the Mayan calendar long count cycle is ending it is somehow solidifying energetically and spiritually in and around me. I’m feeling the call to help Humanity, my species, but how will I ever do that? There is a need for something new and I can help bring it about if by nothing else than by focusing upon it. Where intention goes, energy flows and I can start with that. I can “vote” with my consciousness.

Curious things happen out in Nature. Whales midwife and babysit each other’s young. Forest trees communicate with each other to ward off insect infestation. Horses in the pasture stand tail to head to swish away flies for each other in graceful symbiosis. I see the state of the human world and find myself wondering if I’m the only one who is asking the question, “If we are the most intelligent and creative species on Earth, possessors of computers, rocket ships, and opposable thumbs, why aren’t we acting together for the benefit of our species?” It just doesn’t make cosmic sense the way things are.

Technologically speaking, we’re able to cooperate to make cell phones, build skyscrapers, and photograph distant galaxies, but in terms of relationship are still very much stuck in ruggedly individualistic, every-man-for-himself mode. Yes, herd mentality can be a bad thing, but that depends on the level of consciousness of the herd in question. What if it was intelligent unity at work, instead of fear and distrust? The highest common good instead of “goody for me”? The “herd” would steer into green pasture instead of rushing headlong over the cliff.

We waste so much in endless competition that comes from “I-ism”. We think only of the short run, and not of the next seven generations. We use up resources to build grocery stores across from grocery stores as if there wasn’t enough food in the first ones to keep the locals from going hungry. In this way we replicate instead of innovate, continually and maniacally crashing together like bucks fighting over a doe for a quick and temporary fix of personal gain as our civilization mortgages its future.

This is exacerbated by the fact that so many of us are dealing with warring identities within ourselves and don’t know how to placate, soothe, cajole, unify, or just “play nice” inside of ourselves, let alone with our fellow humans. I guess I’m just getting to the place within my own healing where my inner parts realize their interdependence with each other and people outside the self, and I can no longer justify putting myself as alone or first. I can no longer accept meanness as business as usual. I can no longer indulge in separation or feel OK about another’s lack.

Taken together, aren’t we all smarter than this, I ask myself? Can’t we work together to find solutions that ensure the health, survival, peace, and advancement of all of us in equal measure? Strangely, I’m beginning to really believe we can. There’s a weird new hopefulness developing within me, despite what I see at the highest levels of our society; the chaotic, writhing, and imminent collapse of the existing institutions we have previously entrusted to steer our course. They are what doesn’t seem real to me.

What would I like to see instead? In my mind, I’m making new pictures of a near-future with the best and brightest of our kind coming together in benevolent agreement instead of angry debate. They are speaking softly; calmly and lovingly finding new solutions to our common problems and dire needs all inclusively. (OK, so I also see them wearing angelic robes…) The hearts of these gentle, dedicated, and selfless souls have been awakened to a new reality of connection, trust, and unity beyond survival level necessity, and their egos have been laid to rest. They have been entrusted with a future that is common to all and recognize the gravity of it.

With measured patience, they are taking steps to ensure that everyone has enough clean water to drink. They’re making arrangements to make healthy food available for all. (I see them leaning gently on each other as they softly discuss…) Together they are designing the safest, most efficient transportation systems, integrating clean, safe, equitable energy production, and sketching out new, simple, more humane ways of dealing with the imbalances that cause disease. The rest of us surround them, eagerly watching, ready to willingly support and cheer them on; knowing they will succeed for all of us because there is no other way.

In my vision the Earth herself relaxes and accepts us, because our kind leaders have recognized her equality and will never again allow her to be hurt for anyone’s personal gain. They agree that no plant or animal, fish, bird, or bug will ever be disrespected or ungraciously exploited. The planning is done leaving out no economic, social, age, ethnic, or religious group, but thoughtfully and compassionately for all as if they were family—because they are seen no other way. Furthermore, the process is actually easy, with everyone in agreement and eagerly waiting to pitch in and help in implementing the plans, doing so because it makes total sense and is simply the right thing to do for each other.

Even if I don’t see it happening around me yet, I can feel the energy for this change building out in the Allness. It’s growing like spring grass out on the prairie, silent and undisturbed except by the winds of invisible optimism of more and more people as they wake up to a new reality of unity. It is buoyed up on waves of longing for togetherness instead of separation, and suppressed love yearning to be released.

OK, so it sounds like a Utopian dream, but I feel that as more and more people wake up to the understanding that there is more to life than selfishness and self-indulgence, they will acquire tolerance, and arise from their slumber of conspicuous exclusion. They will awaken to this new, shared approach to our commonality and soundly, gently, but firmly insist upon it.

I’m finding myself more and more hopeful that we will not have to go all that much farther down the road to destruction before we realize the madness of our ways, stop acting against our own shared good, and join together as the brothers and sisters we are. What am I going to do about it in the meantime? Keep dreaming, for that is how change will happen—by each of us sending out the mental, emotional, and spiritual blueprint for it. You already know what it would look like.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 7th Day, I-ism, Mayan Calendar, surviving the shift, what's best for humanity | Comments Off

Relaxation: A Healthy Necessity

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

Relaxation has been given a bad rap. I know that people talk about wanting to relax, but many of us never take the time to really do so. It doesn’t fit in with the American ethic of hard work being handsomely rewarded. Relaxation is often seen as a past time; something to do when all of the necessary tasks and important jobs are done. The trouble is that in our modern, 24/7 world, there’s always something else to do besides relax.

I’ve watched myself doing it. I’ll sit down to rest for a moment to check in with myself and take in Life, just long enough to remember something I had forgotten to do. Then I’ll jump up again to take care of it before it slips my mind again. Our society’s “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” attitude, coupled with the sensation that time is speeding up or even running out encourages workaholism and makes relaxation seem like avoidance behavior.

Relaxation is not a luxury. In order for us to maintain a healthy metabolic balance in our bodies and proportion in our lives, relaxation is a necessity. This is not something generally taught or encouraged by our society. Indulgence in purposeful relaxation as a priority is often seen as the providence of the wealthy, vain, or hedonistic. When we force our bodies into a constant state of physical, mental, or emotional “doingness,” they tend to get stuck there, resulting in symptoms like anxiety, insomnia, or unceasing tension-induced muscle pain. Deep relaxation from things like massage therapy or time on the Amethyst Biomat are the antidote, but how often do we take time for it?

When we are in a constant state of hyper-vigilance or plain old worry we run the risk of adrenal overwork (burnout), chronically constricted peripheral blood vessels (perpetually cold hands and feet), an under-functioning immune system, and worse. Our hearts and minds get overworked to exhaustion. We can become jumpy, grumpy, tearful, fearful, sick, unhappy, and one dwarf short of a load. Many of us are so under-relaxed that when we do take some time off, we experience something like “relaxation run-off”, the possible beneficial effects of slowing down not penetrating the hardened, cracked soil of our being the way a thunderstorm’s deluge bounces off drought-baked earth.

Young children know how to relax—or at least the still small ones do. They can fall asleep on the floor at a wedding reception with the band blaring polkas and never move a muscle. When their parents gently pick them up to go home and drape their limp bodies over their shoulders, their limbs dangle and sway as they are carried to the car; so deep are they in tranquil sleep that it seems their bones have evaporated. Complete and total relaxation has not yet been socialized or educated out of them because they do not yet comprehend the world of expectations, responsibilities, and guilt. They don’t have a care in the world beyond where their favorite toy resides. Sure, they can get worked up and throw a tantrum or two, but just watch the way children’s bodies bounce and move as they play and you will realize that they are greatly relaxed even when in action.

In my family, the adults rarely relaxed, even when they weren’t doing anything. My parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts allowed money worries, appearances, competition, and social pressures to keep them in a state of chronic, low level agitation. My dad was always at work somewhere late into the night and my mom cleaned and cleaned when she wasn’t at her part-time job. They were stiff and wooden in social situations because they were just trying too hard to be right and couldn’t relax into them. Lack of money didn’t allow for vacations for us, but even when they had time off, my parents couldn’t bring themselves to use it to unwind. For many years my mother used her one week of vacation to wash all of the windows in our house. Now in her 80’s, she is still so tense that she needs help to fall asleep at night.

My parents had forgotten how to really relax themselves and they didn’t like to see us doing it, either. With enrollment in school came increased emphasis on perseverance, toil, and achievement. Poor grades had nothing to do with learning styles, how the lessons were presented, or being unable to relate to the subject matter. If we didn’t get A’s we weren’t working hard enough. Recreation, slowing down, doing little, or (God forbid!) stopping for a while was equated with laziness, selfishness, or lack of character. Life became a performance and deep, blissful relaxation a thing of the past. To this day, my two brothers and I exhibit a behavior we’ve termed “combat-mode”, doggedly sticking with certain self-appointed tasks without breaks, food, or sleep until “mission accomplished” status is achieved. Rest, let alone relaxation is out of the question. It’s all too important, right?

Many of us adults have gotten so far away from true, deep relaxation that we no longer remember what it feels like or how to get there. Our children of 2011 have schedules that are so much more jam-packed than ours ever were, with afterschool soccer practice, French camp, and dance lessons that hardly allow them time to sit still. When they do, cell phones, video games, and other electronic gadgets keep their minds whirring. Activity is constant from dawn to dusk. Kids thus engaged come to believe that relaxing is boring and avoid it all costs.

We engage in things that are largely regarded as “fun” but can’t relax into them enough to recharge ourselves. The result is that we, and especially our kids, are getting more confused, disconnected, anxious, stressed, depressed, and ill, yet no one seems to know why. People can’t find ways to meet their mind and body’s clamor for the felt sense of deep relaxation, so they seek to turn off sensation as a substitute instead. This is achieved through numbing addictions or simple withdrawal from life. Sadly, both tend to make people feel less, not more, relaxed.

One of my teachers once suggested that the feeling of relaxation and love are quite similar and that they may in fact, from a spiritual standpoint, be one in the same. When we are able to truly relax, we feel the loving connection we have with Creation that is meant to sustain us. We feel good about ourselves and the world around us. Our bodies shift into joy and healing, rapidly ridding themselves of waste, killing off disease, and growing stronger. In theory, we could be in a state of relaxed awareness all of the time, even driving in rush hour traffic or looking at an empty checkbook. Being able to do so takes practice and a different perspective. This takes detachment, the ability to step back from emotion and deal with whatever life brings without being riled by it. I’m still working on it.

“Isn’t it a bit of chicken-or-the-egg situation?”, you might ask, as to whether stress keeps us from relaxing or lack of relaxation makes us feel stressed. The answer is that the question doesn’t really matter, only finding ways to get into and maintain relaxed states of being does. You could move to a beautiful, breezy tropical island where the natives are all blissfully laying around sipping coconut water all day long and still be tense. It’s all in your point of view as to what is important and necessary in life and what is not. Your health is. Relaxation is how your body, mind, and spirit renew themselves, but most of us rarely take time for it on a regular basis.

So how do we let go of anxiety, (over)achievement, and the stress of living in a tense and unbalanced world (and that’s putting it nicely…) and regain a healthy state of relaxation? It all starts with awareness. Do you remember ever being really relaxed? What did it feel like? What things take you out of relaxation? How could you change them or your response to them? Are you even relaxed when you’re asleep, or do you toss or dream fitfully? Are you willing to lovingly take time out for you, or are you afraid you’ll miss something, let others down, or be left out? (Google “rule number 6”…) Realize that the world will not come to a dead stop without your momentary lack of supervision and that Life is not a race.

The next step is to take relaxation seriously. Make it part of your sustenance and personal hygiene, just like eating healthy, nourishing meals or brushing your teeth. Learn the difference between allowing yourself to deeply relax and just “stopping activity”. Get help emotionally regrouping from traumatic experiences that have kept you on edge. Look for creative or recreational activities that are non-competitive and feel relaxing to you. Afford yourself the time and patience to sit in gentle silence, detach from the world, connect with yourself, and thoroughly breathe. That’s what meditation is, but you can spend your meditation time sitting on the edge of your seat if you’re unwilling or unable to R-E-L-A-X. Lastly, remind yourself that when you peacefully relax you are helping your (human)species by bringing Light onto the planet and being better able to take loving, productive part in bettering society. Who knows? You might gain a little spiritual understanding and catch a glimpse of enlightenment. “Ommmmm.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged adrenal burnout, Amethyst Biomat, dealing with anxiety, detachment, doing vs. being, hands and feet always cold, hyper vigilance, importance of relaxation, life as performance, meditation, overachievement, recharging yourself, relaxation and metabolism, Rule number 6, workaholism | Comments Off

Personal Power Dynamics 101

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

We have been talking with friends, students, healing clients, and members of our Mesa “tribe” about our important discoveries regarding how, when, to what or whom we had been giving away our power. Our new understandings from only last week about the issue have massively shifted our reality and brought about amazing personal growth. (See last week’s post on our View From the Mesa blog.) We have seen the insidious nature of how we have been indoctrinated, coerced, tricked, brainwashed, or just “reminded” to give that power away. It also has become much more apparent how little education is given to adults, and especially to our children about the workings of personal power dynamics, resulting in a yawning information gap about the subject.

I was working with a client the other day whose habit of giving away her power started when she was a toddler. Her original traumas had “gained interest” over the years, leading her to be increasingly fearful, dependent, self-deprecating, and depleted. We have been working together for some time and have resolved many of her issues but the underlying specifics of her feelings of victimhood and powerlessness had eluded being pinpointed. Wilma (not her real name) had trouble letting go of frightening or painful experiences and would hold on to them emotionally for days, re-traumatizing herself by rehashing them in her mind. She saw herself as totally inept and others as always “yelling” at her, either to correct, criticize, or simply ridicule her. This was terribly upsetting to her, in part because she saw herself as “doing the wrong thing” by reacting the way she habitually did; kowtowing, deferring, feeling stupid, and ashamed. This showed her to be at least minimally aware of the possibility of consciously choosing a different response to criticism, but Wilma didn’t know how to do so. She just got upset and spiraled downward.

On top of the pain of being reprimanded, Wilma was doubly intimidated by raised voices, having what largely amounted to “shout-a-phobia”. Sadly, her husband of decades (let’s call him Phil) would consistently loose his cool whenever she did something he felt was “stupid” and shout at her. Wilma couldn’t bear it. She would just fold up like a like a spring-loaded umbrella and usually, … call me for help. The most recent incident was no different, only this time I had a new way of helping Wilma. I would teach her “Power Dynamics 101”. I started in on explaining the whole issue of giving away personal power, but quickly realized that she simply couldn’t relate to the way I was using the word. So many people like Wilma see themselves as being totally devoid of any real power, so how could they recognize themselves as giving any away?

Thankfully, Those Who Teach and Guide me beamed me an expression for one of the major symptoms of power squandering, a feeling that is a marker for giving up power that Wilma could absolutely relate to; that of losing her composure or peace of mind. The sensation is always a red flag for loss of personal power. While expressing emotions is a normal part of the human condition, from the standpoint of spiritual enlightenment as soon as we find ourselves getting anxious, worried, sad, afraid, angry, resentful, indignant, negatively excited, or “worked up” in any way, shape, or form we’re giving away, leaking, or outright hemorrhaging power. Otherwise we would remain dispassionate; open, calm, and collected.

Wilma got the concept instantly and it was apparent on her face. She recognized how she not only dutifully relinquished her peace of mind in the moment of an emotional drubbing, but that she usually continued to do so for hours, days, or weeks after the fact as she rehashed it in her mind. Intellectually, she understood that whenever we become aware of our peace of mind slipping away or feel it is being “taken” from us, we don’t have to give it up. The big issue for Wilma was just how to win that tug-o-war and hold onto it, along with her self-esteem and basic human dignity.

I asked Wilma if loud noises like fireworks, a loud truck going by, thunder, or other high-decibel sounds were inherently upsetting to her in and of themselves. She seemed surprised at what I had asked and said they were not. We discussed her fearful feelings when Phil shouted at her and I reminded her that fear is an anticipatory experience—a purely emotional occurrence, one that goes with foreseeing having something bad, dangerous, or deadly happen in the real world before we actually live it. “You’re experiencing the lion pouncing on you and how much it will hurt before it actually does,” I said. This prompted Wilma to remember something I had told her long ago and she started poking sequentially at the air with her finger. I knew she was groping for an acronym I had taught her: F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”). If it wasn’t the loud noise itself that hurt her, what was she was fearfully anticipating? What was the object of her dread that she presupposed might come next that she was so deeply afraid of so as to totally cast off her peace of mind and jump in the lifeboat?

As an example, I told Wilma how in my family shouting was often a prelude to physical punishment. She told me that her parents never hit her. Then what else might be the follow-up to a shouted reprimand that she so dreaded in advance even though it never actually came? Some kind of lesser punishment? Feeling shame? Being shunned? We made a short list of some possibilities and wrote them down. We used some Kinesiology (muscle testing) to zero in on the culprit and came down to one, fear of abandonment. Wilma had been in the care of a maid during the day when she was little and the woman would start in yelling at her and her older sister as soon as her parents would walk out the door. If they didn’t eat the food she served them, the woman would force lemon slices into their mouths. Wilma and her sister would often run down the block after their parents in tears to try to get them to stay and protect them. They felt abandoned with their tormentor.

Wilma became a withdrawn and timid child who survived elementary school by virtue of the close knit comraderie of small classes in a private school. Later landing in a big public high school left Wilma feeling cut adrift and socially inept. The ordeal became so terrifying for her that she ended up being institutionalized while still a teen. When I mentioned that experience and asked if she hadn’t felt terribly abandoned in the hospital she replied, “My mind was already there.” “In there,” she continued, “they had all the power.” Being institutionalized had doubly sensitized her to avoiding abandonment at all costs, to the point of becoming a “please-a-holic,” serving up her power (and dignity) to others on a plate.

Wilma was able to admit that what frightened her so much about her husband’s yelling sprees was the possibility that he’d eventually get so fed up with her self-described bungling that he’d leave her. Each time she’d let the fear take away her peace of mind—and her power. She confessed that she saw herself as being totally incapable of fending for herself if Phil were to walk out or die and that the prospect terrified her. She felt controlled and victimized by her husband, and his loud, angry, and all too routine yelling made her avoid his company as much as possible when he was home. Giving up her power and deferring to Phil’s control wasn’t nearly as draining to her as giving up her peace of mind to her own fear of abandonment when he yelled. Wilma felt Phil’s yelling was unjustified, but was also punishing herself as the trigger for his outbursts.

I told Wilma that Kate and I had long ago come to understand each other’s anger and fear as manifestations of old power draining issues that we didn’t have to take personally. We learned to keep our cool (peace of mind) while negotiating a way to help each other mutually resolve things, instead of just jockeying for power. Our devotion to each other allows us to keep lines of communication open in the face of heated emotions no matter what and help each other heal. By doing so, our relationship moves to higher levels through our challenges instead of being wedged apart by them. Wilma and her husband just weren’t at that level with each other and may never get there. Still, things could change.

I asked Wilma if she could see that Phil’s shouting was an act of giving his own power and peace of mind away. She had never before been able to view things that way. “When he loses it and yells at you, something is going through his mind or emotions that he is also afraid about or he’d be able to retain his composure,” I said. “What you’ve done sets him into imaging something scary to him and he yells to frighten it off. Maybe he’s afraid he won’t be able to take care of or defend you, or your “mistakes” remind him of his own mortal fallibility. Maybe it scares him that you’ll take his decision-making power away like his momma did when you act on your own without him. Can you see yourself keeping your composure when he ‘goes off’ and reminding him of that?” All of this was news to Wilma. She had only seen the experience in terms of Phil demeaning her and robbing her of her peace of mind. Their relationship was a competition, not a union.

“So how do I change it?” Wilma pleaded. I told her that she could change only herself and how she responded to Phil’s yelling. She could also gently teach him what she had learned if he was willing to listen. I reminded Wilma that her new awareness of the situation was already working for her. She’d be seeing similar situations through new eyes when they arose in the future and could make the conscious choice to hold onto her power when they did. “I feel like I can’t stop giving my peace of mind away when Phil yells,” she countered. I agreed that it wouldn’t happen just by thinking about it because something was stuck, deep inside her psyche.

I asked Wilma to think about her internal safety program that would click on every time she heard raised voices, was criticized, or reprimanded. I pointed out to her that she had been conditioned when she was very young and impressionable to give up her power to the angry maid or face the consequences she so cruelly meted out. She had connected this with feelings of abandonment from her parents not being there to protect her and felt defenseless. I gave her an analogy to consider:

“It’s like that toaster oven over there,” I told Wilma, pointing to counter of the little kitchen in our healing center. “There is a switch on it that has positions for bake, broil, or toast. If it’s set on toast, whenever you push down the lever, it will toast what’s in there no matter how you want it cooked. Your emotional switch is set on the ‘toast’ or ‘fear of abandonment’ position and loud voices push down the lever. Luckily, we have a way to reset your switch.”

Though still a bit skeptical about my “woo-woo” techniques after several years of experiencing them, Wilma acknowledged that they had changed her life for the better. She knew what was coming next, having already experienced the benefits of several YES/NO guided head movement healings I had done with her in previous sessions. The operant expression for Wilma’s power abdicating issue that we chose to use to remediate the issue at hand was, “Stop giving your peace of mind to fear of abandonment.”

It only took three sets of head movements to get Wilma’s unconscious system to shift. I could feel her whole energy field move. Still laying on her back with her eyes closed, she began to repeatedly touch her lowest ribs at her solar plexus. When I brought her attention to it, she said she hadn’t noticed that she was doing it. “I don’t know why I’m touching myself there,” Wilma said. “I never do that.” “I know,” I replied, “So why are you?” “It feels different there, … calmer… ” she offered. I told her that our solar plexus and diaphragm are the seat of fear in our physical and emotional bodies, pointing it out to help her make a connection with the feeling. I then asked her to think about Phil yelling at her and she was astonished to realize that her fear was completely gone. I suggested several other situations where she routinely gave up her peace of mind to yelling, criticism, etc, that usually caused her to feel afraid and give up power just by thinking about them. “I can’t make it (the fear) come back,” she exclaimed. “That’s weird!” When Wilma got up and sat back in her chair, I noticed that her face looked different. I no longer saw the frightened little girl I always saw embedded there, but a new maturity.

The kind of unconscious power game Wilma and Phil have been acting out is deeply embedded in 3rd Dimensional reality and ego-based existence. It’s like we’re all playing this giant game of dodge ball, yet no one realizes we’re engaged in it. We’re taught that it’s polite or prudent to defer to certain people and give up or give in instead of hurting feelings, making enemies, resisting overwhelming odds, or creating a scene. We can give up our power to life’s bullies, disaffected life partners, or “the powers that be”. We’re also encouraged to grab power by the way our society celebrates competition instead of cooperation.

While these are clear cut cases of relinquishing power to others to fit in or stay alive, we also give up power needlessly by wasting it, sloughing it off into the ether through negative emotions. We can get worked up or lose peace of mind (part of our power) when we think about the future of our chaotic world, view crime stories on the news, fear foreigners, or see litter on the side of the road. We waste power and procrastinate when we give in before the fact to fear of failure or rejection before we start. Giving up our power is a choice, one that can become a conscious one. When it does, we will see that we never have to give it away against our will, retaining our peace of mind even if a gun is pointed in our face. Once your see the power game for what it is, you can choose to stop playing, take your power back, and eventually walk away from the game. Maybe we can all someday learn to play a new game, one where power sits on the bench.

Here are a few things to reality-check about with respect to what/who we needlessly give away our power to when we are confronted by them or engage in them. Surely, there are many, many more. Do you recognize yourself as giving up your peace of mind or personal power to:

Failure (when it happens)?
Fear of failure (before it happens)?
Your parents (even if deceased)?
Shame?
Your anger?
Other people’s anger?
Doubt?
Your boss?Fear of poverty?
Abuse?
Ignorance?
Change?
Indifference?
Rejection?
“Sin”?
Mistakes?
Bible thumpers?
Computers/Technology?
Aging?
Multinational Corporations?
Grief?
Illness?
Money?
Guilt?
Ridicule?
Judgment?
Fashion?
Customer “service”?
The Past?
Jealousy?
Fear of confrontation?
Noisy neighbors?
Powerlessness?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged deferring to others, F.E.A.R = False Evidence Appearing Real, fear of abandonment, fear of loud voices, giving up personal power, list of things we give our power to, loss of composure, loss of peace of mind, resolving victimhood, trauma gains interest, Yes/No guided head movements | Comments Off

Taking Back Our Power From Those Who Care Less.

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

I awoke the other morning feeling a bit like I didn’t know where or how to start in on my day. I had been up late the night before talking with an old friend from high school who had finally gotten a job after being unemployed for a couple of years. The last time I had spoken with her was almost a year ago when she had called me out of the blue after almost 40yrs. Many things had fallen apart in her life by the time Shannon called, and she was at the end of her rope. Her marriage to her “true love” had ended in a nasty divorce. She had lost her university teaching job because of cronyism, and faced extended unemployment resulting from being a woman in a largely male profession. I had talked on the phone with her for nearly three hours that afternoon as she listed all of the ways she saw herself as having been victimized by a whole list of people and life in general. Shannon had been agitated, angry, afraid, and more than a touch irrational, but reached out to me for help.

I did my best to explain to her the concept that no one could victimize her without her permission, saying something like, “No one can take your power unless you’re willing to give it away.” This was a new and unacceptable idea to Shannon and she argued angrily with me about it. I spent most of the remainder of the conversation verbally kickboxing with her as she persisted in denying any responsibility for her multiple predicaments. When we ended the call I had wondered if I had gotten through to her at all. She had come back into my mind lately when her photo had appeared on a web page about my recent high school reunion. When Kate and I returned to The Mesa after making drums at a county fair last Sunday, lo and behold there was a message from Shannon, telling me that she had found a great new job at a Midwestern university and thanking me for my help.

When I called her back, Shannon reiterated her thanks and told me all about her luck in landing the new job. At one point she said that she had written down something I had said that autumn afternoon when we had last spoken. “It was something about my power,” she said. “I kept it by my bed and read it out loud every night before going to sleep for a long time. It really helped me,” she added. I reminded her of the words I had said to her that day, and told her how pleased I was to have been of service. By the time I got off the phone and finished up with my Mesa “homework”, I plopped into bed well after midnight.

When I woke up I felt groggy, agitated, antsy, and wanting to stay in bed. I got up anyway, recognizing my plight. I was aware that something was working on me but wasn’t sure what. I found Kate and we began to hold our morning “meeting”, our routine of touching base with each other before we start our day. I told her how I felt and of a confounding dream I’d just had. I was supposed to be teaching some kind of class in an odd venue, I told her, one where I couldn’t see all of the students at one time. The students didn’t seem to much care what was going on, and I was rattled.

I lamented the fact that my dreamtime had been leaving me feeling drained lately instead of reviving me, and I didn’t exactly feel rarin’ to go into our day. Kate suggested that my problem was overwork. She added that we hadn’t had much “down time” lately and needed a vacation, but I saw it in a totally different way. “I feel like we haven’t had enough up time”, I said. “Sure we’re working all the time on our projects, but if you add up the number of person-hours we get serious students or healing clients in the building in any week, it’s not nearly enough to satisfy me about doing my spiritual job.” Kate saw my point and we talked about how most of the people we come into contact with aren’t interested in, or all that serious about following the spiritual concepts, practices, and way of life we teach. They just didn’t seem to care about it or us and it was frustrating.

Suddenly, something struck me. Before I had spoken with Shannon the night before, Kate and I had been looking for a movie on HBO and stumbled upon the tail end of “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”, a funny but simple film about a playboy (Played by Matthew Mcconaughey) who ruins his brother’s upcoming wedding preparations with his drunken womanizing. In one flashback scene, “Uncle Wayne” (Michael Douglass) gives the young Mcconaughey advice about relationships, telling him, ”The power of a relationship lies with the one who cares less.” At the end of the movie, the playboy has his epiphany and tells his brother’s bride-to-be that the real power lies with the one who cares more.

What is never mentioned in the movie, however, is the vital importance of not giving one’s power away to anybody for any reason. While it is a spiritual and loving thing to do to share our power with others by helping, caring for, or empowering them, there is nothing spiritual, loving, or actually beneficial in giving it away. That was the difference, I found myself thinking, it’s not about who cares more or less in our dealings with each other, it’s about feeling compelled to give our power away in lopsided relationships in order to maintain them. What struck me in that moment was that I myself was continually giving my power away to the very people and institutions in my life that cared the least about me and the important spiritual and healing work Kate and I had been doing.

I made a verbal list of those I dealt with in a wide range of relationships who cared little if at all about me or my endeavors. There were many examples in which I saw myself as somehow holding the short end of the relational stick, including; people that talked about it but didn’t show up at The Mesa, the egotistical, needy, and greedy in the “spiritual” community, family members who had simultaneously demanded things of me and ignored me, store sales people who wouldn’t even look at me, debunkers who poo-poo non-physical reality, and natural gas “Frackers” who were poisoning our region’s land, air, and water for money, to name just a few. These were all associations where I felt I cared more than the other party and was conscious of feeling at a disadvantage. I felt they were in control, and there was nothing I could do about it. It seemed they held the power and I felt weak as I gave mine away.

What is our personal power, anyway? When it’s used properly—spiritually, it’s our drive to create, get things done, solve insurmountable problems, live to the fullest, and promote life. It’s our energy with which we negotiate our spiritual path, fulfill our dreams, uplift and stir others. It is love freely given without expectation, and freedom of the spirit. Used egoically, power is power over. It is coercion, control, dominance, and the ability to hurt others with impunity. It is blind authority backed up by physical threat, forced separation, manipulated scarcity, and subjugation.

No one likes to feel powerless, but I understood immediately that I was feeling drained because I was giving my power away, and that doing so entailed physical and emotional consequences. How was I doing it? By imagining that others with whom I was in familial, formal, social, or tacit relationship were controlling situations and/or pushing my buttons so that I felt afraid, angry, hurt, guilty, beholding, less-than, victimized, subservient, compelled to plead or beg, or otherwise diminished by their lack of interest or concern with regard to our mutual dealings. I gave away my power by standing on my head to please others who cared minimally, and then by resenting their indifference or feeling indignation. (“Why am I the only one who…”)

I had lots of societal relationships where others cared less and I unconsciously gave up power. I’d back down from asking our landlord to fix our building because he rarely did. I gave my power away to corporate-cog “customer service” people who were rude or unmoved by feeling I had no quarter when they spouted the company line, or by procrastinating about calling in the first place. I got huffy when the phone company wasn’t invested in my line actually working, the bank limited services while adding fees, speculators forced up the price of gasoline or brought down the value of my retirement account, and when those who refused to see the world from a spiritually-based point of view called what I believed in ridiculous, fake, or evil.

I even found myself wondering who cared more about our relationship, me or God. When I was young my relationship with my Creator seemed a massively lopsided one, much the way I had felt with other authority figures like parents, teachers, coaches, and clergymen. At the time I needed them to care about me to survive physically, emotionally, spiritually, or socially, so I gave myself away in efforts to please them. I had been duly indoctrinated about the need to worry more about appeasing God than focusing on a co-creative relationship, and it had left me angry and bleeding power for much of my life. When I got older I realized that the God that I know has no desire or need for my power, but I still wanted to give it away because I couldn’t connect to God’s grace. I was still thinking too 3rd-Dimensionally.

Unconsciously, I had even concocted an internal reality where my physical possessions—things I had relationships with (Tool and tool-user, for instance.) cared less about their part in my life when they malfunctioned than I did about them. My computer never seemed very concerned when it wouldn’t send emails, or my car when it wouldn’t start. I felt I treated them as “equals” in our relationship and when they let me down, I’d get mad and lay my power (and sometimes my dignity) at their feet. Why didn’t they care more? Absurdly, I felt cheated by them and those who manufactured them. I was their lover scorned.

It’s my Piscean nature to be very caring and it was often confounding to me that it was so. Being an Empath and feeling the experiences of others as my own only served to heighten my need to care with great intensity. (“All hurt is my hurt.”) Not unlike many sensitive and caring people, I sometimes egoically assumed that no one ever cared as much as I did and my life was a constant power give-away. I had recognized that my little gas tank was leaking from power loss symptoms, but had been unable to see the hole. I had spent much of my life seeing myself as weak and maltreated and had gone to great lengths to heal myself. Yet every time I thought it was finally and completely out of my system a new level of seeing myself as “Mr. Victim” would seem to surface. I didn’t really want to stop caring so much, I just wanted it to stop hurting.

When I laid it all out, Kate recognized the power balance scenario immediately and we talked about its role within our own relationship. While we loved and cared deeply for each other, we each admitted that at times we had felt the other cared less about some mutual project at The Mesa, domestic planning (Like the “D-word”—dinner!), home repairs, time management, or some other aspect of our relationship. We saw that we had been routinely giving our power away to each other as a result, often wanting to blame each other for the pain we felt inside. As aware as we had worked so hard to become, we had misread this ongoing power struggle as inherent character flaws and been unable to remove this thorn in our relationship’s side.

Luckily, we had now deciphered one of the most insidious unwritten rules of 3rd-Dimensional relationships. We had broken the polarized code of deference; the giving away of ourselves under pressure. Instead we could lovingly compromise to get along while leaving out the internal loss of autonomy. We saw clearly at that moment that we always had a choice whether or not to give our precious personal power away to those who cared the least, but often felt compelled to give it up to keep someone interested in us, willing to help us, loving us, from harming us, or from walking out of our lives. We had been striving to practice equanimity, but had been seeing ourselves as “less-than” when others were indifferent to us.

We confirmed our unconscious participation in giving up our power with Kinesiology (muscle testing), each of us giving a weak or NO response on being told, “Stop giving away your power to those who care the least.” What was shocking was the result of then asking about the amount of our power we were giving away on a regular basis—fully 50 percent of it for each of us. Giving away half of your power is like pedaling a bicycle with one foot. You’re going to feel wobbly, exhausted, and take a long time to get where you’re going.

We proceeded to do our little guided head movement healings for each other with some curious reactions. During my healing my teeth spontaneously started chattering in what was likely a releasing of stored aggressive energy from feeling subservient in relationships. After Kate’s healing, she began laughing uncontrollably when we retested her to see how much power she might still be giving away. As we asked about lower and lower percentages, she laughed harder and harder, without knowing why. She was no longer giving any of her power away. We both felt great relief and renewed energy.

Remarkably, we also experienced an immediate shift in our life experience. When we sat down to have lunch I opened a letter that had come from our car insurance company. I had just paid our bill and figured that it was some kind of advertisement for additional services, but when I read it, it showed us owing an additional payment of $111. It really didn’t say why, so I called our agent. Normally, making this kind of phone call would have made me quite nervous as I anticipated having to give away power and feel bad about it, but I felt something new happening. I stayed calm and relaxed. I comfortably stood my ground. The agent not only ended up reversing the increase by determining that we did not belong in a new rate class, but told me of a brand new offer that would reduce our already-paid premium by $88. By the end of the call a rebate check was on its way to us. I thanked and blessed our agent for caring so much about us.

Over the course of the next day, Kate and I recognized that our relationship had greatly changed for the better. We were able to discuss prickly things calmly and considerately without feeling controlled or blamed and it brought us closer together. We promised to be more caring towards each other and apologized for the past. There was a different energy flowing between us and we felt empowered instead of drained. We reviewed situations where we had been giving our power away to family members, recalcitrant students, our critics, and strangers. We vowed to remind each other to hold onto it. We had paid attention to the Evolution of Creation and it gave us the tools to have an epiphany. We had experienced it as it is meant to be, its flow toward Enlightenment uplifting and encouraging us to change. Somehow, we had managed to get in sync with it enough to be transformed.

People and organizations who recognize the power-grabbing potential of caring the least regularly use it to disempower others, often feigning great concern to lull their victims. That’s how kings became kings, spouse abusers and con men work their victims, and businesses make tons of money by squeezing extra dimes from their customers. It’s why the Tea Party Republicans have wrested de facto power from the majority, claiming supreme patriotism while caring less about solving our common challenges through compromise. In the end, even they give their power away, railing against minority groups and immigrants they fear are “stealing” the country because they imagine them caring less about the USA than they do. Actually, many care more about their adopted homeland because they don’t take it for granted like the blustery GOP.

The world is full of individuals and institutions that care the least in our relationships with them, often because they are completely focused on themselves. Doctors pass out pharmaceuticals to “move people along” without caring whether or not our healing occurs. Teachers don’t care whether or not our children actually learn to think for themselves as long as they pass the standardized tests. Meter maids don’t care why we’ve overstayed our quarters or double parked.

People may not always love us as much as we love them, but choosing a doting partner is not the answer. The best solution is for all of us to care more, not less, and to find ways to share power rather than grabbing it away from each other or relinquishing our own. We will also benefit by letting go of the outmoded habit of seeing ourselves as victims of one thing or another and imagining that others don’t care when they actually do. In these ways we will achieve the equanimity and parity necessary for our long term survival, move forward on our common path to merge the 3rd-Dimensional polarities of power and powerlessness in our world, and attain higher levels of Being together—with No (Inner) Child Left Behind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dealing with vitimization, deferring to others, empath, evolution of Creation, guided head movement, holding on to personal power, Kinesiology, playing the victim, taking back power, The power in relationships lies with the one who cares less, what is our personal power, when others don't care | 1 Comment

Changing the Script: Acessing Our Higher Spiritual Vibration

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

We recently entered the 6th Day (Sept 5-22, 2011) and a new period of Light on the current Mayan calendar cycle. As we chug along towards whatever is coming for our planet as we get closer to some kind of “shift”, we see more and more people seeking advice from Angels, Spirit Guides, and other higher dimensional beings. While this is a wonderful thing that can bring great healing and upliftment, it is very often being done in lieu of using our own considerable powers to help ourselves.

A great reason for this lack of self-reliance is that most flesh and blood people regard their own corporal condition as evidence of far lower spiritual status. Their earthbound condition leads them to assume they can only personally possess a commensurately dismal level of whatever “good stuff” might be out there in the higher vibrational planes. This is because of a lack of understanding about who and what we are while wearing this lower vibrational mantle, our physical body. It is merely our costume for this incarnation.

At our spiritual core, all of us here on this Earth are higher dimensional beings, for those are the planes on which our essence came into Original Being. From the standpoint of Soul, we are not from this 3rd-Dimensional world in which we live, but have come here into lower vibration in order to learn and grow spiritually at the accelerated rate that it affords while taking part in a grand experiment for our mutual benefit. Many refer to being incarnated onto this planet as attending “Earth School”, where we take life lesson subjects like “Learning to Accept Love 101,” “All Things Gratitude,” “Letting Go of Fear 200,” or “Intro to Enduring Poverty”. Whatever our chosen spiritual “major,” it seems evident that most of us are minoring in Theater, taking part in an ongoing production of a drama entitled “Human Life Together”.

In the very beginning, the intent of the play was for all of us to learn valuable spiritual lessons through our participation on Earth, gaining experience and wisdom through a polarized trial and error process of right and wrong, good and bad, spiritual and material, generosity and greed, compassion and complacency, life and death. The dénouement was for us to become more, not less, spiritually attuned and create Heaven here on Earth. A generous “Free Will” clause was added into our tuition contracts that allowed us to custom tailor our drama curriculum. While the script of our passion play was originally written by the most spiritually brilliant author and is lovingly directed from the back of the theater by Creation, the action has been continually and consensually altered by the collective unconscious of the actors’ guild we call “humanity”.

That brings us to where we are now… Imagine being part of a theater company that has been engaged in putting on a production of the same play every night of the week for many, many years. There is a current version of the script to be followed. Everyone has to recite their lines correctly, stand on their marks, and react appropriately to the dialogue of the other characters in order for things to go smoothly. We act out going to work, being a family, and loving our children. We also portray soldiers at war, corrupt politicians in scandal, and social misfits. Otherwise, the action would come to an awkward, dead-air stop. For the actors to begin ad libbing, going out of character, refusing to say their lines, or (heaven forbid)walking off the stage in a fit of enlightened pique would throw everything into chaos, or worse yet, unpredictable change.

Over time, life’s polarities have separated most of the acting company from our spiritual roots and we come to enjoy the familiarity of assumed low vibrational roles. The trouble with making the script (and hence the play) once again more spiritual for all of us together is that it’s really hard to get the consensus of enough of our fellow thespians to do so. Many of us like the play just the way it is and are fighting tooth and nail to keep it from changing—at ALL. For some, their habitually rote and lazily comfortable parts have become all they care to know and they are lulled by the illusion of thinking they can tell how it’s all going to turn out by the final curtain call; i.e., the same way it was yesterday. It’s not.

Tenaciously, society holds on to the usual old production. Instead of stopping the play and resetting ourselves to something spiritually healthier, we continue to bumble and stumble in a “show-must-go-on” effort to keep things the same, and our daily performances persist. We’ve gotten too attached to the painted scenery and props, and believe that the stage money is really worth something. We’ve romanticized the importance of our acting careers and been sucked in by the fame, glamour, and attention of being on stage.

The trouble is that the Director of All Things and the stage crew (Mother Earth, Nature, the Planets, etc.) are dismantling the very set that we are acting upon. The scenery is sliding and the props are crumbling as we move closer to 2012, preventing the dialogue and action from continuing as we earthbound actors have assumed they always would. Still, we’re just not ready to close the show.

The most unfortunate bit of it all is that most of us have come to identify far too closely with the 3rd-Dimensional characters we play. For so long have we flawlessly played our chosen mortal roles that we think we actually are Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” or Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and stay in character all of the time. We’ve forgotten our true, higher dimensional nature and the fact that we still have access to it. We’ve come to believe that the stage is our home and the play, our life.

With all of the New Age talk about raising our vibrations, what seems to be most often forgotten is that we each started out at a very high vibration when our Soul was created. We were One with God, the highest vibration in Creation. We slowed ourselves down in order to come here to Theater School and got so wrapped up in the experience that molasses vibrates faster than many of us now do. People talk about elevating our vibratory rate like it’s a totally new venture for us when it is in fact more of a return to our natural order.

That’s what “The Shift” is all about, each of us beginning to head back along the way we came in the eons since we left the side of God. The grand experiment of seeing just how far away we can get from The Creator has ended. It had a good run and we’ve learned buckets from the venture, but the old theater has gone dark. It was officially closed by Spirit with the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. Remarkably, earthly players are continuing the production on an unlit stage as if nothing has happened. The good news is that we can remember our higher frequency and allow it to regenerate. It starts with the recognition of our longstanding acting career and seeking to remember the day we left for school. That starts with turning our attention to doing it.

I recently had a conversation with a Spiritualist medium and practicing hypnotist who teaches classes about past lives and the time we spend on the Spirit Side in between them. In our conversation, he mentioned that he often took people back to when all of the Souls were still with God, as a reminder of our spiritual origins. I mentioned that I had clear recollections of that time. His eyebrows went up.

I told him that I didn’t remember it as if I was there—not the way I often remembered distant places or events like the house I moved from when I was five or a special birthday, but had a definite feeling and psychic awareness of it that had come to me in pieces over time. I told him that our departure was an all-or-none group decision and that while wanting to stay, I knew it was for our highest good to venture out on our own. I reminisced about the grief and terror I had felt from the parting then and since, and the fact that I was aware of my longing for my eventual return since I was young. I was tired of theater.

The hypnotist seemed a bit surprised at this revelation. I likened remembering it to the experience of recognizing my wife, Kate, as my Twin Flame Soul mate when we first met. I just knew it and accepted it without being able to understand it or know why I knew. “Do you remember the moment of separation—what it felt like?” he asked. I replied that I recognized that I had a sense of the “before and after” of it but not the actual tick of the Creational clock itself. I told him that I had never really thought about that aspect of the experience before, and he asked me if I could turn my attention to it.

I gently reminded myself to just go to that very moment when I left God, without needing to know how I’d get there. Feelings and impressions immediately floated up into my awareness and I let the description come out of me without rational interference: “There was a kind of stretching sensation at first. Then there was a bit of a ‘pop’ in a way,” I said, looking for words to describe what I was getting. “Then it felt like when you are startled out of a dream into standing wakefulness, only parts of you are still in groggy sleep. I could feel a sense of movement, too… but it’s fuzzy.” “You were disoriented?” he suggested. “Yes, it was disorienting,” I replied, “Being with God was all I had ever known. Then that was gone and I was left with, um… this.”

I wasn’t at all surprised that I could remember, but just a bit at what I did. It wasn’t at all hard to do. I only needed to allow it happen and accept what I received. Spending the last twelve or so years of my life gingerly exploring the edges of my expanding higher consciousness by peering into the vast universe that is my own Being had returned me to it. (OK. Some days I seemed only half-vast. <wink>) Through meditation, healing sessions, trance work, ceremony, dreams, transmissions from Spirit, and yes, talking telepathically with higher spiritual beings I have recognized that much of my totality—energy and consciousness, reside elsewhere and here at the same time.

The aggregate of what I AM (or You Are) is not all here on this Earth with our current character actor bodies but spread over time, space, and many dimensions. This is no longer theoretical to me because I sense it and work with it. The challenge is in accessing those higher parts of ourselves while grappling with the bonds of 3rd-Dimensional thought and a 3rd-Dimensional understanding of the physical Universe. To do so, we have to leave the stage through the open door of possibility. We have to wonder. We have to trust our higher perceptions and believe in what we start to remember about ourselves no matter what we’ve been told or by whom.

It is in that same way that we can each learn to take part in the ongoing human stage production without being hypnotized into believing in its ultimate “realness”. We can learn the lessons and move on without getting mired in the drama or fighting over control of the stage. The Evolution of Creation is increasingly supplying opportunities for us to experience our multi-dimensional nature these days as it raises the vibration of all things, thinning the veil between this world and what lies beyond.

By repeatedly turning our attention to and calling on the part(s) of us that still and concurrently reside in the Higher Dimensions (your Soul for instance) we can shed the self-limiting roles we have been playing, abandon the old script, and move on to spiritual improvisation. We can begin to not only tune in to our higher abilities and multi-dimensional nature, but also get glimpses of the big pictures of where we have come from and what Creation has in store for us. It’ll be a whole new kind of play. The curtain is rising.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 3rd dimensional thought, 6th Day, accessing higher dimensions, Earth School, evolution of Creation, Harmonic Convergence, Mayan Calendar, polarities, roles we play, soul's creation, soul's separation from God, spiritual status, Twin Flame | Comments Off

Am I Crazy, or Has the World Gone Mad?: Q & A

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

It’s easy to be angry at and afraid of the state of the world these days. A quick look at the news reveals big sensational stories of crime, war, poverty, and corruption across the globe. They seem pretty good reasons to be dismayed at our fellow human beings for acting out selfishness, greed, anger, or resentment and to be fearful of where it’s all taking us collectively and unconsciously. There are also lots of smaller reasons to be upset with the state of our society that never make the network headlines but turn up on the internet in droves. Together it all seems like a perfect recipe for a world gone mad.

Likewise, It seems hardly a day goes by without a couple of emails arriving in our Mesa account to tell us about albatrosses eating ocean borne plastic garbage, people harvesting sea turtle eggs on the beach, gas drillers despoiling nearby farmland, or some government agency trying to shut down small organic farms. Frantically passed along links to YouTube videos show interviews about cancer cures going unnoticed or being banned, while legal, mainstream products that cause disease remain on the market. How can that be?

Add into the mix the constant barrage of solicitations we get to buy what people pathetically try to convince us is “good for us” in order that they, rather than we, might benefit. Sprinkle that with a generous helping of Solar flares giving the appearance that our Sun wants to burn us up. Pour in a barrel of natural disasters that suggest Mother Earth is trying to shoo us off her body like so many ants. Fold in some religious nuts and whip it all together with the mixer set on the ever accelerating speed of the Evolution of Creation and you get, um… fruitcake! Some days it seems like the whole world has gone totally off its rocker, and spiritually and metaphysically speaking it actually has.

Multiple sources of chaos have emerged on our planet and they are causing an emotional and spiritual crisis for many of us as we see our own and our species’ survival being called into question. Severe weather, earthquakes, volcanic activity, economic problems, government grid lock, challenges to our ecology, and threatened food production all are causing stresses that are pushing people to a level of madness and irrationality that is unprecedented in human history. The fact that the dualistic Universe we live in creates a counter force to virtually any action we take to help ourselves only serves to make things feel like more of a losing battle.

Some we know are predicting that people will become homicidal or suicidal in large numbers as the Evolution of Creation continues to heat things up as planned. People are in fact already going crazy. They’re becoming delusional and dissociative because they are seeing their reality changing right before their eyes and are not anchored by anything real. The unenlightened masses want things to be like the old days and have no clue why that’s simply not going to happen. They see no connection between their choices and personal, let alone world outcomes, nor relationship between the realm of the physical and the higher dimensions of the Natural World. And, they are our neighbors.

Those of us who are spiritually sensitive can feel this aggressive and growing lunacy in the Allness, but aren’t always sure where the signal is coming from. Years of feeling “different” and blaming ourselves can cause us to overlook the blatant insanity of others and make us question the soundness of our own mental state. Sadly, most of the people we’ve heard asking the question, “Am I crazy?” lately are not those harming each other, Nature, and the Earth. Instead they are very ones who are beginning to wake up to the emerging new reality(or is that realities, plural?) of Love and Light and are letting go of the old one as it crumbles beneath their feet. They are people who are just starting to open to living life from a spiritual standpoint instead of strictly a material one and are experiencing unusual and often disorienting new things that they don’t understand. That’s when we get their desperate calls or emails.

Some are hearing gentle yet insistent voices giving them advice to change the direction of their life’s path when it appears there is no one around. Others are noticing auras around people, pets, or trees and wondering if their eyes are playing tricks on them. People are seeing spirits of the departed who need help crossing over, or fairies flitting across their garden, but doubt their own perception. A few have had a Reiki healing, held a crystal, or stood somewhere in Nature and felt physical sensations of “something” moving through their bodies. They have sat in mediation and felt themselves expand into pure Light or sensed their heart opening during a Yoga workout. Without something to relate these occurrences to, or someone to get an explanation from, these folks sometimes feel that they’re just plain losing it.

As a result of the lack of reference in their new and expanded reality, awakening seekers can view their changing level of consciousness (and themselves) as somehow defective because it is so vastly different from what they see others around them experiencing and from what they, themselves, have been living with for most of their lives. The trouble is that they’re comparing themselves to the large numbers of people who have gradually gone spiritually if not clinically insane trying to hold onto the old paradigm of conflict, separation, and scarcity(Basically, the “ducks”. See our Blog entry about Ugly Duckling Syndrome.) and are somewhat confused about which is which and who is who.

OK. Here’s a test that may help. Ask yourself what really constitutes being “crazy”? (Answer hint: It’s the ones on the RIGHT side of “, or…” <grin>)

Hearing your Spirit Guides, or heeding those who preach greed, prejudice, xenophobia, and fear?
Seeing auras, spirit beings, and energy fields, or denying that you are a spiritual being?
Feeling Gratitude about the good, the bad, and the ugly, or acting out resentment?
Healing with non-invasive holistic therapies, or poisoning yourself with expensive, ineffective, and dangerous pharmaceuticals you know nothing about?
Feeling energy from people, places, and things, or “rational” denial of feeling and emotions?
Opening a spiritual center, or opening another McDonalds or Wal-Mart “super store”?
Making efforts to personally connect with Creation and higher spiritual wisdom, or telling people they will be “damned” for their non-religious choices?
Meditating to relax, or “managing” stress with legal addictions?
Learning by experience and practice guided by Spirit, or buying credentials off the internet to become instantly more important?
Conversing with Mother Earth as a sentient being, or permanently poisoning the land for gas money?
Concentrating on raising your vibration, or concentrating on raising your video game scores, watching “Survivor”, etc?
Renewing, reusing, recycling, and reducing consumption to conserve planetary resources, or making a lot of cheap junk no one really needs to keep the economy growing?
Aligning with your Soul, or letting your ego determine how to conduct yourself?
Opening your heart, or closing your mind?

I could go on and on, but the point here is that you who are working for The Light with purity of intent need to get over the fact that we are in the minority just now and get on with it. Yes, what you’re doing is different from the norm, but take a hard look at what passes for normal these days. You’re not crazy and you’re needed NOW. The low-vibrational inmates are running the asylum. Be the new Voice of Reason. It’s way past time to align with Creation and do the work that needs to be done to benefit the All instead of the few. If we’re lucky, it will minimize the damage being done to ourselves and our planet through low consciousness.. We must take hold of our spiritual sanity and let go of the religious idea that our higher dimensional gifts are “evil”.

Spiritual newbies: Do not take it to heart when one of the “inmates” tells you that you shouldn’t talk with spirits, give Reiki, practice Yoga, help the homeless, be an artist/musician/dancer, quit your mindless job, use healing herbs, leave the church, give away unneeded possessions, hug strangers, pray in a Sweat Lodge, or heal yourself. Remember that it’s easier for you to see their shrunken reality than it is for them to look into your expanded one and have compassion for them in their ignorance. Call us if you need a reality check and we’ll remind you of who you really are— a bright spiritual BE-ing, intensely loved by That Which Created you, here on Earth to help change the world. (Whew!) Better yet, come by The Mesa Creative Arts Center and we’ll join you in some “hookey-bookie” healing stuff. It’s just our kind of crazy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged awakening seeker, dualistic Universe, evolution of Creation, lightworkers, madness, new reality, Reiki, sources of chaos, spiritual insanity | Comments Off

And a little child shall lead them: Lessons from a kitten.

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Brad Silberberg

A couple of Wednesdays ago just before our regular Meditation Circle, I was in our workshop getting things set up and chatting with one of our regulars when we heard Kate calling us to come outside. I ran out to the front porch, thinking that she was going to point out some unusual butterfly or breathtaking sky. Instead, I found her holding a tiny kitten that could barely have been a couple of days old.

I looked over the expanse of open ground around us, trying to wrap my mind around where it could have come from or how it had made its way to our doorstep with as yet unopened eyes. I had been on the same porch just 10 minutes earlier without noticing it, stopping to listen to what I thought was a strange bird call. It must have been his high pitched mewing I’d heard, which stopped shortly after it had started. I had scanned the sky and landscape, but not looked down on the concrete at my feet. Kate had come down from washing our dinner dishes and discovered the little male who was so young he still had the stub of his umbilical cord attached. There was no sign of its mother or any siblings. How did it get there, we wondered? It was a mystery, and we knew that all mysteries are sacred.

For the next two days we cared for the kitten, keeping him in a box with a heating pad and ferrying him back and forth between home and The Mesa so we could feed him with an eyedropper. We found recipes for kitten formula on the internet, rounded up ingredients, coaxed him to eat and urinate, and cheered when he did. At night we put his box in the bathroom near our bed, sometimes getting up in the wee hours when he cried. Most of all, we held, stroked, cuddled, and talked to him in an effort to console, comfort, reassure, and soothe him in his mother’s absence as he cried incessantly for her. In spite of our many pressing projects, loving and caring for this infant feline became our focus for the moment. His needs became our NOW.

Almost right away, I tried to make pictures in my mind of where he would eventually end up living, but no images came. It didn’t seem right to have him invade the domain of our Mesa cat, Sedona (she had already hissed at him) and unlikely that he would be accepted by the outdoor cats we looked after at home. I knew if he survived we’d have to find a home for him with someone who would really love him as we were quickly coming to and that might be hard. I also knew that after looking after him for the several weeks necessary for him to be strong enough to leave our care, we’d bond with him, making parting with him close to impossible. I decided I could only release the outcome.

Kate and I had experience with newborn kittens and had seen that they don’t always survive even with their mother’s presence. We knew this one’s chances of survival without her were slim. He seemed to be doing OK, but on Saturday morning when we woke up we found him cold and weak. How could his condition have changed so fast? I warmed him up against my body and gave him a healing. In my intention, I asked for help for him, but could not bring myself to ask Spirit for him to be kept alive. I knew he was going to die and I asked for his peace. I handed him back to Kate and left the room for a couple of minutes to take in what was happening. She held him in her hands and told him to find her own mother’s spirit on the Other Side. “She’ll love you and take care of you,” she told him, and felt his spirit leave. We mourned his passing and consoled each other.

We had seen people and animals die before and knew his spirit had been released back into the Allness to return as another beautiful kitten someday. We understood that everything is born, lives for a time, and dies. Still, we felt very sad and found ourselves already wondering what we were to learn from our all too short experience with the kitten. We knew it had not arrived on our doorstep “by accident”, so what was Creation up to? Were we in the middle of a lesson? We did a ceremony for the little kitten and buried him under the oak tree next to our deck. The flurry of activity that had started only 3 days before was now over, but the meaning of it was just beginning to unfold.

I had written an email to one of our Meditation Circle regulars to tell her that the kitten had died. She wrote back sending her condolences and saying that she knew that although the kitten’s life had been short, it had been blessed to be loved by the two of us while alive. I wrote back to her to humbly thank her and found myself writing something that surprised me as the words appeared on the monitor in front of me: “Thanks for your kind comments about the little kitten. He was only with us for a couple of days and we still miss him. He was a reminder of how tenuous life is and how the cycles of birth/death/rebirth work. We got a chance to love something intensely for a couple of days.” I found myself getting “choked up” and recognized the constriction in my throat chakra. A chance to love something intensely… the words hung in my mind for a long time after I sent the email.

I went to find Kate to tell her about what I had written. As we talked about the concept of “loving intensely,” I thought about how seldom it seemed we got the opportunity to let ourselves love someone or something as selflessly and intensely as we had that kitten. While mulling this over, I had several flashes of insight that triggered deep emotion. Certainly, that’s what our cats were doing when they rubbed and rubbed against us or had to be right on top of whatever we were doing. They were loving us intensely, but so too, was all of Nature. So many of us are unable to sense this because we are blocking the feeling of that kind of love out of traumatized habit. I turned my attention to it and could feel it there amidst the Allness.

Kate and I marveled at what we were beginning to see—a whole new view of what was already and always happening in the world around us. In that moment we became aware—or simply remembered that the hummingbirds want to love us intensely, the wind wants to love us intensely, the Sun, the plants, even the furniture in our bedroom wanted to love us intensely because that is what holds everything together in the Allness. We recognized that was exactly what God and Creation wanted to do for us, to love us intensely, and I could sense that deep inside I was completely unwilling to be loved that way. I was at best merely compensating, so traumatized had I been about love itself. Now aware, I had choices I could make.

I realized in a conscious way, maybe for the first time, that I also wanted to give out love intensely. I remember being that way as a small child, but I came to feel too uncomfortable about it to later do so. Maybe that started with the experience of wanting to love my birth family intensely and having them turn away. I wanted to love God and Nature intensely, but pretended to myself that I’d feel silly when, without proper guidance, I was really too self-conscious to let it fly. I wanted to love a lot of people intensely over the course of my life who didn’t or couldn’t accept it and my empathic sensing of their discomfort with the process wigged me out. I wanted to love shy newcomers to The Mesa, clerks at Rite-Aid, and strangers on the street intensely, but could sense they were not open to that vibration. Loving intensely is my Piscean nature, my soul nature, but it seemed like such a hard thing to do in our current societal state: 3rd Dimensional reality.

We human beings tend to have trouble dealing with intensity in general and many people seem to be increasing their avoidance of intense experiences, even intensely good ones. Their energy systems are too overloaded and underpowered to deal with them. In those moments that I talked with Kate after I wrote the email I recognized that as much as the two of us loved each other, we too, had been shying away from loving each other as intensely as our relationship as Twin Flame spirits afforded. (I felt the possibility of it when we first met and was frankly frightened by it.) Sadly, the trauma of our previous life experiences and coping habits made it such that we were sometimes having trouble with the high level of intensity we were already experiencing with each other. Could we imagine what it could turn into if we were able to comfortably ramp it up? We thumbed through the possibility in our minds.

I felt a deep sadness begin to wash over me and tears rolled down my cheeks. I knew it wasn’t just me who was shying away from intense love. So many people around us were too afraid or too self absorbed to consciously engage in it on their own. The way we humans have generally come to deal with each other, Nature, and Creation in 3rd-Dimensional reality was keeping intensely loving from being the norm. I saw that part of what the Mayan Calendar energy shows about the Evolution of Creation is that all of us are being guided towards unconditional love; loving everything and everyone intensely with no strings attached. This was true even as we approached the “darkest” part of the current cycle, the 5th Night (8/18-9/4/11.) I saw that the light of loving intensely no matter what could take us all through any upcoming darkness if only enough of us would choose to partake of it.

Kate did her best to comfort me and I collected myself so we could confirm with Kinesiology (muscle testing) what we more than suspected. Both of us gave weak or “NO” responses to the idea of loving or being loved intensely. We got ready to do our little guided head-turning healings to unlock the stuck emotional switches inside of each of us to remedy the situation. We started with Kate asking me to allow myself to be loved intensely, and moving my head from side to side as if I was shaking it “NO”. I could feel the deep inner resistance. It was so great that when she stopped and let go, I continued to slowly shake my head, squinched up my face, and began coughing. She then repeated the triggering statement and guided me in nodding “YES”, but I could feel the old pattern holding fast. We kept going.

During the second go round of guided head movements, I had an epiphany. As Kate had been moving my head, I had silently asked inside myself WHY IN THE WORLD I would be so obstinate in refusing intense love or any other love, not really expecting an answer. When she paused, I got a bizarre, but frank reply that I felt more than heard: I liked saying NO, and I always wanted to say NO before I said YES. Saying NO first gave me time to dodge, stall, and check out all the angles. It was a safety mechanism.

I was stunned by the smug compactness of this confession. It was shocking to me that I had been keeping such a secret from my thinking awareness. The good news was that this part of my fragmented and merely human psyche had revealed itself. (Had it meant to?) I instantly recognized the energy and my less-than-conscious implementation of the pattern in many instances. I saw times I wanted my NO’s to be heard and acknowledged before I’d acquiesce to YES, telling myself the principle mattered. On some occasions when I didn’t get to reject first, agreement sometimes didn’t emerge at all. In some cases, I was marginally aware I was getting stuck in my NO when I didn’t really want to be, secretly wishing for an opportunity to relent. It all seemed so convoluted in my spinning thoughts, but to my inner mind, it was in perfect order.

There were times it seemed so spiritually inappropriate to say NO that even though I wanted to say it, I held it in and would tacitly agree—just not with my whole heart, resulting in a kind of confused social dance; Goin’ Through the Motions. When alone, there was no one for me to disagree with or hold me back except myself, and I couldn’t blame anyone else for my wanting to say NO to whatever was at hand. I had “NO-itis”.

I was largely oblivious to my NO/YES pattern but Kate (much to her frustration) had witnessed it being acted out many times in our 9 years together. Trouble was, the format changed enough that she just didn’t recognize it for what it was. Now I was seeing it too, and realized that I could never go back to not-knowing or not-reconciling it. It was hard for me to understand where the pattern had originally come from, but it was instantly obvious that I wasn’t the only one I knew who practiced it. It was right there in the Allness.

How many people say YES when they mean NO and NO when they mean YES? Probably a lot, adding to our general confusion with each other. Saying NO can be a protective maneuver, as refusal at times avoids painful experience. Defiant NO’S get attention, more so than compliant agreement. Saying NO several times when we know we are going to eventually get to YES is a way to control things, too. It makes people beg and plead, increasing our feelings of power. Then we get to be magnanimous, relent, and say YES.

Saying YES right away can make us seem “easy” or a pushover, but metaphysically speaking, saying YES is much more powerful than the NO’s. Saying YES is a process of letting go and acquiescing to experience—just like allowing ourselves to be loved intensely. Wanting to reflexively say NO is part of our common experience from the linear, 3rd-Dimensional reality that we’ve all been living in and evolving through. I was hearing my pattern echoing in the Allness, as it had done for centuries.

It wasn’t lost on Kate and me that our inner upheaval was happening as the energies of the 5th Night were ramping up. Historically, the 5th Night is the darkest of the “dark” during every level of the Mayan Calendar and is a time of great discord, with breakdown of existing systems and institutions. It has resulted in destruction and major conflict in the world in times past, (WWII occurred during a 5th Night for example.) but the energies of this same kind of conflict and breakdown are also reflected inside each and every one of us during this period. This is not a bad thing, but allows us to make better choices for ourselves and as a species. That was part of the beauty of it. The energies of the Flow of Creation were pushing us to change and we were going with that flow—at first unconsciously and then with awareness. Our outmoded ways of being were being increasingly challenged by these unseen forces. Would they crumble under the pressure or hold fast?

It was time for me to say YES without haggling and I knew it. Kate repeated the triggering statement and turned my head again. I could feel the pattern breaking up. I yawned deeply, a sign of releasing energy. The old pattern of negating evaporated and with it my long ago chosen reality of not allowing myself to be loved intensely shifted. Kinesiology confirmed it. With my knee-jerk system of saying NO before I said YES held to the light of day, the second issue of not allowing myself to give love intensely shifted spontaneously, without the need of more head turning.

We worked with Kate’s version of the same resistance next, and had to clear each form (loving intensely, and being loved intensely) as separate healings. It didn’t matter why. We both felt very open afterwards and could feel a difference in how we felt towards the world. The energy between the two of us became more tolerant and loving, something we are still basking in days later. The Allness felt much friendlier too, as we accepted more of the love enfolded within it and looked past the “yucky stuff”. We know that more upheaval is already rumbling through our lives and likely to bring us to new breaking points. This, in the long run, is a good thing, and decidedly necessary.

It was just two weeks ago that we found the kitten on our doorstep, but the lessons from this mundane but miraculous event will likely continue to play out for weeks or months to come. Our short time with such a tiny being helped us resolve huge personal issues we had been struggling with for much of our lives because we chose to love him and to pay attention to what he had to teach us. He reminded us to listen to the Allness and watch the movement of Creation so that we would see miracles in commonplace occurrences and draw our healing from them. He helped us remember that life is a mystery and we are grateful for that. His appearance was an answer to our prayers, and we hope that somehow, we were to his. “Mitakuye Oyasin.” (All My Relations)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 5th Night, amimals, loving intensely, Mayan Calendar, saying NO when meaning YES, the Allness, trouble saying YES, Twin Flame spirits | 1 Comment

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