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(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

When we make the investment to be fully in the service of relationship,

 be it friendships/stewardships with fellow humans,

 be it friendships/stewardships with animal companions,

 be it connections/stewardships with nature

And,
 the nature of the relationship is a balance of giving and receiving,

we actualize our capacity for connectedness.

When we honor this connectedness,

 by being transparent and fully present

we further actualize and begin to manifest

a contagious and unifying authenticity.

Staying in our authenticity allows our false pretenses and the biases surrounding our assumptions

to wind down,

and disengage their spell-binding influences.

We realize, in any given moment,

so many possibilities may become manifest.

Each is a signal for us:

 to dance with 

 to sit out the dance

 to pickup an instrument

 to invite some new partner into the dance

 to improvise by painting our feelings on a canvass

 to ... 

There are so many responses our authenticity

will encourage to blossom from the heart

into forms of expression that pluck the heart-strings of others.

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

Friction in life is essential.

Stressing over one's various forms of friction brings suffering.

How we are in relationship with friction, i.e.

how we interpret friction places us in an adversarial or ally relationship with friction.

Do we use friction to navigate our experiences?

Do we use friction as an aid to centering ourselves inwardly?

Are we dedicated to uncovering the peace and harmony carried within friction?

Being human is an experience of recognizing our many boundaries and how we feel threatened.

There is a balanced and healthy way to care for our boundaries.

Care is needed to deconstruct defensive walls built by our ego.

Care is needed to sufficiently anchor us into the fabric of this world, 

lest we retreat into depression and hiding, or prematurely slip into the gravity of boundary-less oneness.

We are a recycling work-in-process,

challenged with the frictions imposed by constant changes in our circumstances and environment.

We over-complicate and introduce confusion when we expect that reaching any particular destination (or goal) exempts us from the ongoing paramount need to evolve and adapt.

For almost always,

 the most fundamental,

 the most pivotal,

 the most infrastructure - adaptations,

are how we form sustainable relationships with what we believe are our boundaries.

How we learn to constructively decipher the feedback contained within friction

allows us to remain

 - vulnerable and not impregnable

 - open and not shut-down

 - vitally connected and not numb and withdrawn

The wisdom of building a relationship with "pain is a teacher" is heightened and rewarded

when we realize that friction is an ever-present stream of feedback,

enabling us to navigate and gain mastery in returning to our center.

As we rely upon and actualize this, we build a core confidence to trust in returning.

This innate elastic ability to return from being lost, confused, frightened and numb

brings forth a generosity and grace to open and share ourselves.

We begin to realize that life is a pilgrimage and we, its pilgrims. 

We begin to learn to unclench our compressed ball of grief and sadness,

and see that under this is the anger and need to control and manipulate,

all in the name of reaction to the feedback contained within friction.

When we truly realize friction as a flow of information on "how to evolve", 

we can choose to consciously realign,

begin dis-empowering old patterns of heightened opposition.

Ultimately, friction becomes a servant to an open-hearted

proactive intent to dissolve conflict,

fully disrobe and disarm

and live (and love) cohesively

in this dynamic, work-in-process unity,

i.e. community of humanity.

 - 

Version 2.0

© 2011 Howard McQueen

Many of us
 are seeming blessed with:

  intelligence
  good looks
  the gifts to gab and entertain
  parents and/or elders who invested in their dream for us
  a skin color and features well-suited to mark the check-box “white”
  born to live in the plentitude of the US of A

Many of us
 with a modicum of effort and struggle:

  navigated into the safe harbor of a rewarding career path
  rose to a level of financial comfort
  enjoy the flow of excess money (or credit)
  entertain ourselves with indulgences in the habits of:

    eating out
    traveling
    surrounding ourselves with the ten-thousand things
    constantly feeding our appetites for security,
     that coddle us with creature-comforts.

Many of us
 try so hard to belong to contrarian, counter, or gatherings to try to evolve the culture: 
 we sometimes earnestly work to clear roads to becoming authentic

 and, much more often, we like to pretend we are in the company of
 those few exploring the vanguard edges of human potential.

For a growing few of us
 what was once just a distant, aching emptiness
 has gained the critical mass of an urgent, ever-consuming immediacy,
 which calls from within

   to drop the charades
   to stop the people-pleasing habits (like the over-used and falsified exuberant masks of humor)

AND

just settle up
with becoming
simple
flawed
and true to our authentic self.

In this inward exploration with Self,
we discover, amidst all the strewn pieces,
the grand interconnectedness.

We realize, be it through
music
painting
poetry
and in every simple, every-day expression of sharing life,

each life, fully-lived
is awe-inspiring.

This is when we discover we can drop all the “gaming the system” agendas
and simply be present.

Version 2.0

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

As we learn to contain our experiences with this world

 we also learn to harness the abundant life force

 and direct this force through us,

 into the service of our evolution.

When we acknowledge that living with others

 brings certain frictions,

 threatens boundaries,

 pushes buttons,

 we release ourselves from the role of servants,

 in service to the surface discomforts

 and all the inner armor

 covering over our intimacy.

There is a sacredness to being in service

 when we understand what we are responsible for:

 - our own inner feelings;

 - the ability to focus and shape desired feelings;

 - to create a sense of safety, especially when we are challenged with undesirable feelings;

 - to encourage inner and outer exploration;

 - to develop a willingness to blend our individual cultures into collective structures.

This is how we sign-up and joining in on the journey

 of sharing and synchronizing connection

 of dynamically creating our shared evolution.

What we focus on, we appreciate.

Let us hold in our hearts and minds

 the appreciation of all the small, interpersonal affinities

 that organically build trust and grow relationship.

Let us work at planting the seeds and tilling the garden of extending family.

This practice might be called social permaculture,

 creating yourself as a permeable and fertile container,

 allowing the feelings of free-flowing nutritional affinities

 to be shared, recycled, re-used and re-purposed

 in the service of sustainability.

This is the overarching chrysalis of transformation,

 the vibratory signaling of a transpersonal awakening,

 activating our consciousness,

 awakening our evolutionary DNA.

Cultivate harmony.

Learn to relax and release your discord.

Connect to others and begin a shared dreaming

 and actively out-picture the evolution of our family of Man.

This is a yoga to awaken us from our bindings. 

After writing this, I did a google search on Social Permaculture and found this useful link.

http://www.toolsforchange.org/resources/org-handouts/principles%20of%20social%20permaculture.pdf

Version 1.1

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

When we grasp for things, we sometimes clinch,

 and pull ourselves off center.

When we shrink and hide, we become adrift,

 out-of-touch with our center.

When we realize we are over-indulging

 the ten thousand arising thought forms,

 we realize we've been robbing ourselves of our presence.

When we hold ourselves in contempt,

 through repetitious judgment,

 we set the wheel of suffering into motion.

Into this Oneness we are born,

 cast into a separate form.

Form is fleeting, the experience of occupying form

 is utterly fantastic,

 and terrifying.

The opportunity is present to witness and express

 the fullness of the human family,

 without overlooking or speeding past anything.

We will be broken,

 split wide open to the raw elemental forces

 that shape, scour and ultimately separate form 

 from its animating life force.

Remaining in our center with all that comes our way,

 is the greatest spiritual gift.

You've been given another turn.

What a marvelous opportunity to bear witness to  ...

Excerpts from Douglas E. Harding's book "Open to the Source".  Mr. Harding founded the "Headless Way" as a way, using direct experience, to connect to source. 

My comments are not bracketed, while Mr. Hardings are within brackets [ ] 

The personal ego can be so full of need to do, so anxious, so churning [Yet, what's needed is coming up form the depths just when it should.  In Heaven you discover the quiet upsurge from the Abyss.]

[If we wish to find out what it's really like to create the world, we have only to desire nothing and pay attention.]

[Part of the price of involvement in the world is to have feelings, some of which are agreeable, som of which are disagreeable, and some of which are tragic.  I can't exist, ca't express at all, without this dualism:  the dualism of good and evil, eauty and ugliness, black and white, etc., which is the inescapable condition of expressing into the world from the place that is free of those dualities.]

Version 1.1

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Deep within,

our demons snack upon our essence.

They are the quantum parasites taken up residence within our being.

This breath of essence we refer to as I

has the challenge to remain present and fully consciousness,

or trip off and vacate our body, loosing our awareness in the quantum distortion.

Welcome to the home of the Parasite.

It has the nickname - Fear.

It's reactor and energy core,

the need to manipulate and control.

For when we fear,

we are urged to give away the ultimate, abundant resource.

It goes by the labels of peaceful presence,

loving interconnectedness,

the grand romance with unity, the mysterious collective existence,

the perpetual knowing that all existence is both fleeting and forever,

that we are born into and are heir to all that is Timelessness.

Peeking into the paramount paradox of choice,

we realize we need not hand over the reigns to the Parasite.

Call it surrender,

call it inner Jihad,

Call it the thousand deaths by suffering.

Do whatever it takes,

or undo in yourself what has taken hold

so you can choose to no longer relinquish the reigns

on this never-ending journey.

This is the call to awaken and light up the world.

****

Begin to harness and reclaim the energetic emotions surrounding your fear. These are your allies in disguise. Realize that you cannot be extinguished and only you can leave yourself seemingly diminished.  Cultivate courage and not give yourself away to your fear.

This great artistry, being present and alive,

at the edge of the mystery,
and cultivating connection to listen to and heed the
whispered counsel of our deepest, inner intuition.

In our speed to complete, compete and remain bound to reactive patterns,
we speed past the fullness, failing to harvest and appreciate the bounty life brings.

Slow way down,
catch the rhythm of another
while also softly beating your own drum.
Practice co-ordinating the creation of another shared,
co-created rhythm,
stopping regularly to witness the evolution.
This is living in the impromptu,
making up what is manifest
without knowing what will turn out.

We all know how to do this.
Why have we settled for the security of sameness and conformity for so long?
Where has it gotten us?

*** ***** ***

Musicians, impromptu theater actors and comedians, speakers and poets can sometimes honor this space.  Let us encourage ourselves and everyone we meet to begin laying down their own stale molds and start living generously within the impromptu ... 

Version 2.5

(C) 2010 Howard McQueen

Within this Wholeness that has been breathed outward,
there are a whole host of characters wanting expression.

There is you and there is me.
And, even when there is only the "me",
there is an "i" and an "I".

We are bound to become entangled and confused
in the perplexity of all these relationships

and the sheer need for expressiveness. 

I am remembering a golden rule:
In my anxiety and fear,
before I assess and begin to blame you,
let me remember to ask what the "i" inside of me
most needs to express.

This fragmented "i" is born of our domestication,
is infected with a man-made sense of separation.

If we fully identify
with this "i",
differences of opinion never resolve,
unresolved differences escalate into conflict and derision.
We call upon our intellect to stimulate fight and flight
and create vast perceptual gaps,

and then we find our relationships defined by these gulfs of separation.

By awakening within this perplexity,
we have the capability to encourage the "i" to say what it feels to be separate
and allow the space and silence for deeper truths to shine through.
It is in listening to this separation-speak
and not projecting it upon another
that we begin to cleanse our "i" of its sensations of separation
and all it's flight and fight reactive-ness,
this anxiety ginned up believing in and then acting out our projections of separation.

What is left are the deeper sensations signaling our belonging,

the warm desire for connection,

and so much more.

For some these signals may not be any stronger than a faint perfume,

for others, a near and ever-present intoxicant.

Whatever the strength or intensity,

be of a strong heart and bring forth your compassion and encouragement

when you hear the pain and confused signals carried in separation-speak.

© 2011 Howard McQueen

What feelings and intent will we fill our world with?
These are matters for the heart to help us feel,
so we may then direct our healing.

We are awakening to a constant choosing:
to live in and broadcast our heart-felt presence,
to honor, share and acknowledge this presence with all living things.
As we do this, we create a high fidelity heart-felt experience.
By consciously connecting and activating our own heart,
we gently also invoke the invitation to awaken the hearts of others.
This literally activates the vast web of interconnected Heart space,
and the quality of our earthly experiences rise in fidelity,
and the quality of intents we shape and contribute to the world
aligns with this rising fidelity.

Make no mistake, this is the long-awaited, much anticipated
grand evolutionary symphonic movement,
this musical flowering of the heart.
It is joyous,
it is heart-breaking,
it carries the cries of loss
and the ecstasy of interconnection
as we more deeply learn the interplay of love and compassion.
It brings forth a humble as well as a fierce courage,
one born of knowing from a depth-of-integrity,
how to be responsive in each moment,
and bring forward heart-felt intent.

The opening and ripening of the heart
is the invitation to fully show up,
to be present,
to claim and occupy
the vibrant, life-giving sacred space
set aside for our spirit and consciousness to fully download and embody.
It is awakening and allowing the free flowing of our essence,
as we shift away from the drama of the head-stuff of programmed fear and separation
into the in-the-moment dance, being present, holding and activating our interconnections
and remaining in communion with the mysteries that will unfold.

It is a call to upgrade your own personal operating system,
to cleanup all the old, unsupported, judgmental programming,
and create the space within to stream
ultra high-fidelity heart,
the super-charged,
vital life force flowing
from pure source.
It all begins with passing what you intend to create directly through your heart,
again,
and again … and again.

Refrain
This human family is awakening,
as we join in streaming in
the rhapsodic infectious musically emotive language
of ultra high-fidelity heart-felt intent.