Investing In Consciousness

Whatever your current investment strategy (or lack thereof), the single most effective investment you can make right now is your investment in your own consciousness.

No matter what your choice of occupation, relationship status, financial situation or feelings - investing in consciousness will return abundant riches ... not necessarily in the ways you think but rather in the most powerful and fulfilling ways for your own evolution.

There is no time like the present moment to dive deep into the waters of your own awareness and consciousness ... to become aware of what is happening right before you and in you, deep underneath the noise of day-to-day existence. With so much chaos and disruption playing out on the world stage, now is the time to stop ... step back ... take a breath and ask yourself: “What’s really going on?” then be still and be aware and you will become conscious of more than you know right now. And the more you take the time to stop ... and breathe ... the more aware you will become and on it goes.

This is really quite simple ... nothing too complex or complicated about stopping ... and sitting ... and breathing ... and allowing ... and becoming aware ... yet the ego centric voice within will resist and you may find yourself too busy to stop; too engaged in what’s happening to step outside your mind and reflect on the whole; too tired or too energised or any one of a number of good and solid reasons why you just “can’t”!

Simple isn’t necessarily comfortable or easy. Simple challenges our competitive need to achieve through complexity and effort and winning. Becoming conscious of who you are and what’s really going on is challenging and confronting and relentlessly wonderful. It requires boldness and a willingness to open yourself up, to be uncomfortable, to not know and go there anyway, to immerse yourself in the wonder and mystery of BEING all of everything and in so doing, realising everything is all of you.

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"In its highest expression, the evolutionary impulse is experienced as the awakening of a desire to evolve at the level of consciousness itself. It is the deeply felt urge to rise up, to reach toward perfection. And it is also a nagging and relentless existential discomfort, a sense that I must find a way to become more conscious."

Andrew Cohen

Everything IS Connected

WOW! 2011 certainly has brought some unexpected and unprecedented happenings to all the “... passengers on spaceship Earth ...” (thank you Buckminster Fuller).

I have been pondering the deeper meaning of recent events and decided to share with you some of what I have found:

From www.highway7.com - what this 2011 Year of the Rabbit is about:

“According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves in a world that's full of destructive forces.

2011 Metal Rabbit is a time for the people - the people have collective wisdom and resolve and great strength in numbers. Go quietly amid the noise and haste, but be ready. It is a time for planning, negotiation, regrouping and strategy.

As an individual, or as a group, don't try to force issues in 2011... To gain the greatest benefits from this time, focus calmly on a plan B and be prepared for great structural changes in the economy and policy making at all levels.

In 2011, be aware and plan carefully for momentous events, but maintain your focus on home, family, security, diplomacy, and your relationships with women and children, for they are the way.

Make it your goal to create a safe, peaceful lifestyle for yourself, those you love and for your extended community in harmony with the environment, so you will be able to calmly deal with any problems that may arise.”

My take on this? Step back, take a breath and let go. Remember who you are and what really matters and choose to live in love - be loving, do loving action and when in doubt...ask “What would love do now?”

And for another perspective on what’s really going on with mother nature and on our glorious planet Earth, read what Carolyn Myss had to say last week in her piece “Understanding Our Relationship To The Earth”.

Thank you Carolyn ... you nailed it for me.

I am putting my loving soul to work ... how about you?

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"Now it is one thing to BE love - and quite another to do something loving. The soul longs to do something about what it is, in order that it might know itself in its own experience. So it will seek to realise its highest idea through action."

Neal Donald Walsch, Conversations With God Book 1

Response-Ability & Freedom

The dominant fear paradigm of victim/persecutor/rescuer is being challenged by people all over the Middle East as they take to the streets to protest against regimes that oppress, suppress and dictate to their citizens. The “revolution” in Egypt was brought about by the human beings who quite simply had had enough ... enough of being hungry, enough of being marginalised, enough of being told what to do ... enough of being victims, at the effect of a small group of people who seemed to hold all the power. While this shift is by no means complete or resolved, the people of Egypt got together and supported one another to be responsible for changing that which they would no longer tolerate. There was no overt outside intervention, no mighty western power rushing in to “rescue” (and then impose their own brand of control) ... instead what we saw was ordinary people, getting together and taking responsibility by supporting each other to step up, take action and be heard.

What happens next is what makes the difference. If the people of Egypt stay committed to being responsible; if they continue to respond from love and compassion to what they are creating and respond to the feedback as it occurs, then they will create a new paradigm of freedom for themselves and serve as a model for the rest of world. If however they allow their fear to overpower their willingness to respond, then we will see more and more conflict, turmoil and polarising forces fighting to determine who is right.

And so it is for you and me and every other human being on this planet. If we are willing to BE response-able in every moment - to respond from love to what we are creating inside ourselves and outside ourselves; to step up and take loving action and respond to the fearful relationships, issues, situations and circumstances we find intolerable - then we will experience the profound peace and joy that comes when Love is the paradigm of choice.

You are love, I am love and in every human being beats a loving heart. The more you reveal yours, the easier it is for me to reveal mine. And when we do, we remember we are all connected, fear ceases to rule and we are truly free to BE love.

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"Responsibility starts with the willingness to experience yourSelf as cause.

It starts with the willingness to have the experience of yourSelf as cause in the matter.

Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. All these include judgements and evaluations of good and bad, right and wrong, or better and worse. They are not responsibility. They are derived from a ground of being in which Self is considered to be a thing or an object rather than context.

Responsibility starts with the willingness to deal with the situation from and with the point of view, whether at the moment realised or not, that you are the source of what you are, what you do, and what you have. This point of view extends to include even what is done to you and ultimately what another does to another. Ultimately, responsibility is a context - a context of Self as source - for the content, i.e., for what is."

Werner Erhard 1978

We Are Family

2011 has started with a saturated southern hemisphere (particularly here in Oz), a freezing northern hemisphere and almost every other weather “event” you can think of is happening somewhere on our planet. Whatever you think about the whole subject of climate change, you cannot deny that the climate IS changing ... rapidly, constantly and seemingly with more force and brutality than ever before. Words like “catastrophic”, “unprecedented”, “devastating” and “heartbreaking” inundate (couldn’t resist!) the language of those who keep us informed about what is happening as it is occurring. And it keeps on coming ...

Once again, people everywhere have risen up to help, assist, support, comfort and aid those that have been directly affected. Thousands and thousands of people have turned up in flood devastated areas to physically help, while a vast number of fundraising initiatives for the flood affected continue to be created and supported. People everywhere are behaving like “family”, even though many have been heard to say things like “I don’t know these people I am helping, I just want to help and do what I can” and then pitching in and doing whatever it takes to make things ok again.

That’s what family connection is all about ... particularly when there is a big crisis or disaster. Coming together, putting aside petty differences to help and support and do whatever it takes with and for each other because we are connected ... because we are family and because we can. Love, kindness, compassion and caring for each other rule the day and everywhere you can feel the amazing energy of loving connection.

Then once the initial crisis point has passed, the petty squabbling and ego-centric behaviours resurface and things get “back to normal” which usually means back to the fear-fuelled thinking and behaving ... until the next crisis or disaster. Interestingly, the bigger the disaster, the more people come together and the longer it lasts. But why wait?

The real opportunity every day for you and every human being on this planet is to remember we are always one family. We are always connected, all members of the same human race, all living on this glorious sphere called spaceship earth in the vastness of the known and unknown universe. And every single one of us is able to BE loving and kind and compassionate in each and every moment. Why wait for a crisis to reach out and help someone? If you are willing, you can make a difference to yourself and everyone you encounter, every day, simply by remembering we are all one family, we are all essentially love and then acting on that truth.

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"To put the world in order...we must first put the family in order...to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right."

Confucius

Joy To The World

Here we go again...

Another year has almost passed and many people are getting ready to wind down for a well-earned Christmas holiday break. Please note: I did not say rest ... because for most, restful is not what this next few weeks is really all about. It’s a time of busyness and getting everything “done by Christmas” ... a crazy notion that rears its ugly head every year about this time. And as the deadline looms, people become more anxious and joy, peace and love fly out the window.

Recognise anyone you know?

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can put joy, peace and love right back into the mix if you are willing to stop ... take a breath ... and relax ... and choose ...

Remember, this time of year (like every other time) is whatever YOU decide it is for you. It’s a perfect time to decide how you would like to be in relationship to anyone and everyone no matter what else is going on. It’s an ideal time to heal old hurts and resolve old conflicts - particularly with family - and it’s a time when you can choose a different response to the one you had last year (or last century!)

Of course you always have this choice and there is something about this time of year that makes it easier. People are more aware of the importance of being kind and acting with love and compassion - peace and goodwill towards all men - and this has a snowball effect ... the more you give love and joy the more love and joy you get to experience and the more you give, the more you receive.

Choose to give joy, peace and love to yourself, to the ones you love and to the ones you don’t this Christmas and experience the miracle of giving joy to the world.

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"Every time you smile at someone it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing."

Mother Theresa

Being Safe Is Not a Feeling

When I was being trained and mentored in the early 1980’s I was determined to adopt the new paradigm fully in all of my living. I saw the power and possibility inherent in “I Create The Whole of My Own Reality.”. I loved the idea but very little real experience of being response-able for the whole of myself, let alone the whole of my own reality. I was anxious much of the time about opening up and sharing how I really felt, particularly when I didn’t like something or someone. At the beginning of my journey to consciousness and love, although I was eager and willing to be response-able, time and time again I would react, withhold and either run away or push away ... hard! The infantile not-good-enough stuff was a strong protective mechanism and I didn’t ever really feel safe.

Over the past 28 years I have worked with this paradigm, shared it and lived it as best I can every day. Some days are sweeter than others and yet I know everything is purposeful and beautiful - no matter how I feel about or even what I do. I have settled into this new paradigm of love, choice, truth and responsibility more and more as each day passes and I can honestly say that life is glorious and I am happy, content and relaxed for the most part.

Then whammo! Last week I created a powerful confrontation that lead to a breakthrough that took my breath away. It began in February when I withheld from one of my trainees how I was really feeling about something because I did not feel safe to go there. Over the course of this whole year, everytime we interacted, the feeling would resurface and I would withhold, push away and react in subtle (and sometimes) not so subtle ways. I kept telling myself ... ”detach, it doesn’t matter” ... and I would feel ok ... for a little while. I thought I was being clear and explicit in my communication and yet the feedback I received told me this was not so. I thought I was being response-able by responding to the content yet without shifting my context (from fear to love), nothing much changed. The result of all of my fear-ful behaviours surfaced in an intense and powerfully liberating interaction with my trainee, in the training room, on the final day of training.

The courage and commitment to love and truth from everyone in the room was palpable and full. We were completely embraced and held in love and encouraged to open up and tell the whole truth. So we both began to to express what was really going on, to open up and go to the heart of the matter ... and we stayed in the room. It was simply amazing. At one point I felt I couldn’t handle it and I said “I want you to leave!” I am so glad the courageous response was a firm and clear “No!” This enabled me to sit in my extreme fear and keep going to the heart of my truth and feelings . I have never felt so vulnerable and yet the more I let go and shared the more I realised I actually was safe and I felt safe. Not emotionally but rather the visceral, full knowing and awareness that I am safe. WOW! This is what I have been teaching and choosing and sometimes fleetingly feeling over the years - Fear really is an illusion - I am safe.

I felt peace and love in deeper measure than ever before. A profound awareness of connection, at-one-ment and joy poured from everyone in the room and I knew this was an experience over which I will never get and for that I am truly grateful.

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"Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other."

Euripides

People Behaving "Badly"

What’s going on in the world today? Why are so many people showing up behaving in ways that are completely antithetical to who we really are?

On a global scale we are witnessing ongoing conflicts and wars in many regions, people killing each other and being killed. On a local level we are witnessing increasing violence and deaths - on the roads, from drugs and alcohol abuse and the systemic physical, emotional and mental abuse occurring in many communities and families. Then we have the insidious “little” things that people keep doing ... lying, cheating, stealing, running away and denying responsibility for their actions and the consequences. We see it with our political leaders (Question Time In Parliament anyone?), with our business leaders and in our own selves.

Is it just the “human condition” (as someone recently assured me it really is!) or is there something going on that invites and encourages man’s inhumanity to man?

Well I think that ‘bad” behaviour comes from unconsciousness, disconnection and lack of awareness of who we really are and the fact that as human beings we are all connected. We are all brothers and sisters under the skin and the fact that we are being human is what makes us all the same. The notion of “us and them” is a devisive belief system guaranteed to foster fear of differences and the need to be right. It’s this very notion that keeps us stuck in conflict and polarity, fighting for what we believe is “right” and “good” against those we judge as “wrong’, “bad” etc. The problem with this belief system is that no one ever really “wins”. It’s a relentless paradigm of power and control offering no sustainable peaceful outcome. As long as we continue to see ouseleves as separate from each other we will continue to behave in fearful ways resulting in painful and inhumane behaviours.

The simple solution in this new paradigm of ultimate cause is to wake yourself up! and remember who you are ... magnificent, lovable, valuable, powerful, creative being able to choose. Simple and not so easy. It requires discipline and practise...and constant conscious reminding that you have a choice about how you show up, how you think and feel and behave in every moment no matter what went before. When you accept that you are love and so is everyone else, that you are connected to everyone and everything all of the time ... when you decide to live your life every day with this awareness you will experience the joy and wonder of being at peace while doing what you know from love.

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"A very effective way to become conscious of Being is simply to take the focus of your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body, where Being can be felt as the invisible energy field that gives life to what you perceive as the physical body."

Eckhart Tolle