Version 2.0
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Venture forth blithe spirit,
for this universe is your home.
This abundant world of natural resources
invites you to play
and marvel in what you may discover.
This brief pilgrimage,
Feel it all,
take it all in,
venture forth.
And remember, you are gifted with the ability to discern
and become increasing aware
and awakened to this unknowable bliss.
(C) 2011 Howard McQueen
It is seemingly but a flicker,
Many of you may already know of the photo of the day site, which awards one photo each day. Here is today's photo.
Enjoy!
http://www.earthshots.org/2011/05/world-from-above-by-pranabesh-das/
Version 2.0
(C) 2011 Howard McQueen
You and I, we have an evolutionary opportunity to learn to intentionally over-ride and re-interpret our fear-based survival programming.
When we are terrified, we can be so closed down as to be petrified. No doubt, this is an ancient self-preservation technique - staying hunkered down in the presence of great danger.
Test pilots develop a level of split focus, staying cool enough to report the reality of chaos and malfunction of their aircraft as they almost certainly plummet to their death.
As you and I sit in our own test pilot seats, when we become fearful and/or shut down, we can create another level of awareness that can independently witness and report on our experience. This independent reference point allows us to consciously create a quantum shift in our relationship with our life experiences.
You and I are the quantum interpreters, the test pilots of our life.
Now, imagine the amount of energy you will be able to harness and redirect as you learn to override all the imagined and manufactured programming stimulated by your survival programming.
;-) ~ ||| ~
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Being firm and gentle,
being fierce and at peace,
being Yin and Yang.
When facing a choice between OR & AND,
seek the wisdom and liberation of AND
If you hold the paradoxes of the world within,
you will grow your perspectives
to encompass all of the human condition.
Then, there is no longer judgment
AND there becomes understanding, compassion and love
for all who struggle with the entrapments of our conditionings.
~ *** ~ |||
From the Don Miguel Ruiz Daily Email Archives
Miracles happen when you forgive. You are born with the capacity to forgive, but you learn the opposite behavior. You learn not to forgive, you practice not to forgive. When you learn to let go of your pride and ask for forgiveness, miracles start to happen in your life.
(c) 2011 Howard McQueen
When sex is chased after as an intoxicant,
the practicing of sex energies self-inflicted addictions.
When sex is expressed as a celebration of union,
body, mind and spirit are reunited
as an expression of healing and integration.
The physical, emotional and energetic bodies,
are flushed, rinsed and washed clear.
Sex can be practiced in so many ways,
with so many outcomes.
May you be so fortunate to find in your expression of sex,
the celebration of union.
(C) 2011 Howard McQueen
Yesterday afternoon I crawled into bed
feeling like all my friends and family had died.
Not quite knowing it, I came to realize
that I felt, deeply, situationally depressed.
I felt this in my eyes,
as a deeply draining vacuum,
sucking the life out of my vision for a future,
without any room or possibility
for any joie de vivre.
Back into this moment,
this time around
the inner voice of intuition asks of me
"when have you ever felt like this (before)?"
And the answer within returns
"About ten years ago,
when my wife, at-that-time
was diagnosed as clinically depressed
and I followed suit and became situationally depressed."
Like cloudy weather,
circumstances in our life are bound and determined to repeat,
offering us the opportunity to intentionally make a choice.
Do we follow at the beck and call of surface circumstances?
I choose to get out of bed and make myself a cup of caffeinated chai.
As I walk past my now current wife,
who had fifteen minutes ago, with a worried look, tucked me into bed,
she asks
"What was it contributed to your abrupt about-face and turn-around?"
We both talk through all the stressor-triggers
currently running within our life circumstances,
and we realize these for what they really are - just surface conditions.
We both agree to work through what lie underneath these
and know that life will flow on
and our love will grow,
and deepen,
as these surface conditions shift and change and dissove
and fall away.
Version 2.0 | 05/02/2011
(c) 2011 Howard McQueen
Self organizing,
self deluding,
self destructing,
and sometimes,
self clarifying.
Consciousness churning and mutating,
the relics of a survival-based operating system.
We as a species are running old, corrupted code.
It is up to each of us to reprogram,
to birth new pathways
responsive to a love for self,
knowing that all that is reflected back to us
is but an aspect of self.
Appreciating all the reflections of self
begins to create a love that unifies and heals
and reconnects our head, heart and gut.
There is absolutely no need to change
or to blame
any of the the circumstances as they exist outside of us.
Become at peace within
and struggle no more.
The more environmental pressure bought to bear,
the more stress placed on the inner infrastructure programming,
and thus, calcified and unsustainable beliefs give way
and we learn to make our way
into the uncharted space
where consciousness may incubate
and evolve.
Billions of opportunities,
radical possibilities for this deeper love-infection to gain its hold.
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Sweet stream that runs through this valley,
and all life living upon this forest floor,
this small band of brethren do bow and honor you.
You who whisper and gently caress,
and call out to humans
“come in peace and learn again how I can sustain you”.
Let go most of your modern ways,
for they do not serve you, or me.
I, GAIA, mother of all life, will show you the natural ways.
Let the sun set gently on you each and every day.
Hear the echoes of children swinging to their delight.
Celebrate the bounty of harvest,
knowing that the cycle brings with it,
the ebb of winter’s shortness of day.
Come take of my wood and my clay.
Build your structures with this and fresh mown hay.
With all this natural bounty, make your own way,
while I send my stream waters
on to rivers and into the great bay.
I’ll wait patiently for all the creatures I open to and love.
You have a place in my heart.
Think of me often
and whenever you can,
return to me, again and again.
****
Know that Heart and I are gonna be missing each and every one of you.
H&H
© 2011 Howard McQueen
We seek safety in our delusions.
We are simply offered a chance to live.
No warranties while we are embodied in form.
What is now within your reach of experience
is everything
and,
but a drop of the infinite now-ness
alive in this moment.
Drink and breathe in what you can.
Exhale your moans, groans and ecstatic cries.
This is your opportunity to be alive!
Remember not to squander it.
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Resisting action,
without being in resistance.
Allowing the mind to be in service
to what most desires to unfold.
Not being hooked into anyone else’s business,
including that of the personal and shared ego.
What we most deeply focus on becomes manifest.
The juggernaut-minions of our societies,
showered with our worship,
continue on, due to momentum,
until we peaceably withdraw our support.
We believe ourselves to be so domesticated,
so beholding and enslaved to our consumptive habits,
so tightly gripping our possessions and our securities.
Is this what we really want to believe is Living?
Deep inside,
beneath the bruises and callous behaviors,
rests a spirit whispering to be awakened.
It is an indelible and undeniably pure state-of-being,
which, at the heart,
is unconditional compassion and love,
for all that has been loosed into this outer world.
We need not be fearful.
We need not suffer needlessly.
There is this long-standing invitation
to awaken
and fearlessly, fully participate
and live, even amidst those who are still fearful.
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Our inner space,
perhaps we can agree,
momentarily,
to call it psychic space.
Tending to this space:
Does it shape us
or do we shape it?
What is this space?
Ahhh.
The portal, the gateway of
and to
life itself.
Open your eyes, anew.
© 2011 Howard McQueen
I hear your words.
When your words land on me,
this is what I feel:
[I express my feelings with “I am feeling ...” statements]
Then, I agree to hold the space for you and your words,
without any judgments,
without any assumptions,
as we inquire, together,
into the nature of your feelings
and then, switch turns,
and inquire into the nature of my feelings.
You and I, we are many things to each other.
We are, especially, rabbis - developing an
ever-deepening understanding of human nature,
as it plays through us.
We are consciously dedicated to uncovering and discovering
what is mysterious and can only be experienced
if we become fully present.
This, my fullness of attention and presence
I offer you, dear lover and friend.
What a fantastic experience we are privileged to share!
(c) 2011 Howard McQueen
When we are connected to values that transcend
our sense of survival,
we encounter the possibility to become connected to caring, compassion, generosity, ...
Our intimacy with these trans-personal values
is put to the test when others we are connected to
trigger in us, our own survival instincts.
We often discover we want to meddle in the affairs of others,
thinking we are helping, thinking we are noble,
when we are but subsidizing and attempting to fix another.
We are best served
gently encouraging
ourselves and others
to take responsibility
and reclaim their helm.
The helm is both a solitary watch as well as a captaincy.
The captaincy is to your self-developed and inherited tribe,
your network, your community, your ...
Imagine the collective capacity and capability of a tribe of humans
holding core shared values and shaping these in a safe, durable and sustainable container.
This tribe would evolve a wisdom to guide its members through rites-of-passage.
A strength in inter-dependency would blossom,
as would a collective consciousness of co-operation and trust.
Personal and tribal challenges would be openly shared,
with the cumulative wisdom guiding right action.
We are not alone.
We have bought into the lies of separation and fear-based reactivity.
Reconnect with your tribe and your heart.
Invest your equities and your energies into tribal values.
A storm is brewing.
Lead your tribe to a safe harbor
and a sustainable way of living,
where spirit and cooperation will flourish.
From the Ruiz daily email subscription feed:
"I am dreaming my life in this moment. I live in a world of illusion made by images of light. The story I create is a virtual reality that is only true for me, the one who creates it."
***
Reading this reminds me not to take anything or anyone too seriously, or too personally.
Today's message from Ruiz
"I co-create with God, and with life. Life creates what is real, and I create a story about what is real. The story is how I qualify, justify, and explain what I perceive. My story is my creation, and it's a masterpiece of art."
To have a daily message sent to you via email: Click Here
© 2011 Howard McQueen
Consciousness is this soup of preferences, expectations, desires and needs.
When not centered, there is confusion and anxiety.
When centered, there is an ability to shape all this raw,
often charged and competing energy into intention.
Is our intention reactive and coming from an unexplored and tumultuous inner place?
Is our intention responsive and conscious, coming from a well-explored inner place?
Often, our challenge is to hold this soupy array of seemingly polarized preferences, expectations, desires and needs, just like we want to be held: tenderly, compassionately, with unconditional acceptance.
Yes, it is a tall order, and,
It is ongoing.
It is not an achieving
It is a quality of being with ...
© 2011 Howard McQueen
We are unable to speak or write what is ultimately true.
And yet, words and actions can convey us, inwardly,
so we may experience close encounters with our source.
Our rational mind,
when drawn into the many sensations of separation,
constructs and replays all the many stories of our vulnerability.
Lacking a culture that supports the telling and interpreting
of these often harrowing stories,
we forget that each of us have an invitation
to experience the sacred rites of initiation.
It is in our willingness to remember and relearn how to create the safe place,
often found in the group relationship space of community,
where we can again become naked
and share these stories of our experiences ,
that stripped us of our innocence.
We as a culture are remembering the modalities
that are pointing us to the sacred rites of passage.
We are beginning to break sweat and release ourselves from all the fevers,
all the obsessive-compulsive distractions with technology, consumerism, our vanities
and all our attempts to create securities.
What we are left with, which is all we ever began with,
is the ability to connect and communicate.
We need but rekindle our desire to reconnect,
encourage ourselves to deeply listen,
then deeply and honestly feel our emotions,
and share whatever has covered over our purity and innocence.
This is the common, everyday therapy that restores our health and vitality
and brings light, trust and respect for safety
back into our external experience with the world.
There are a corresponding set of therapies that we each can practice, inwardly,
to set your own self straight.
All we need do is practice, practice and begin to gain a mastery of relating, honestly,
to this growing awareness we call ourself.
Everything external will take care of itself,
if we do this for ourselves.
© 2011 Howard McQueen
We are on this journey
of awakening from our ignorance.
So much of what we hold within to be true
has been corrupted.
We are, before, after and beyond anything knowable,
born from a source of pure innocence.
We are born into a world and culture bred and fed
an abundance of beliefs which seem so sincere
and which, upon a deeper inspection,
hold but limited and conditional truth.
As we train ourselves to not accept the surface skin of our beliefs as believable, or even remotely true, we engage in a deep cleansing and letting go of all of the inner corruption.
To gain access to what is corrupt within, you need only lend your attention to those words you speak which convey judgment. Know that your words are like an iceberg, and merely the tip of the iceberg containing the thoughts and your beliefs which generate all the judgment.
We have been trained and domesticated into eating and nurturing ourselves with the ignorance of our culture and our world view. We have fed and powered ourselves through our worldly experiences with this corruption.
Corruption is, at its very core, a violence which covers over, stifles and mis-interprets the pure innocence and unconditional acceptance conveyed to us at birth. This violence has been contrived by our fellow humans, infected with a need for a sense of power-to-control. It is these root corruptions that have infected our culture, that in turn have infected the belief structures we use to navigate this world.
Before any cultural conditioning, there is a pure source from which all things spring, including us, including our capability to become aware and to awaken from ignorance.
This source flows as a constant stream which prophets and wise elders have learned to drink and nourish clarity. This stream awaits you. When you rest by and drink from this stream, clarity arises and you see that there is always choice. You also pierce through and reconnect to your natural rights (and natural proclivities) to feel gratitude for being alive, for the capability and capacity to love, to nuture and to hold each other as one tribe, one family, one community. At our deepest core, we are each instruments, readied to be liberated to pursue our needs for connection.
Next time you find yourself, or your brother or sister communicating and caught up in the pain flowing from all our ignorance, show up and show yourself / them your deepest compassion and understanding.
We can, through the relationship of reconnection, one compassionate demonstration at a time, help each other release ourselves from our ignorance.
