On the three kinds of freedom and what role each of them plays in the human search for an authentic way of living. The first is “freedom from” – which is an important first step, to rid ourselves of the conditionings and authority figures we carry around in our heads.  But unless we discover “freedom for” – a creative way to express our individual uniqueness – we will not find the fulfillment that comes with participating in life.  And ultimately, Osho says, there is a state he calls “just freedom”.

Osho – Freedom The Courage to be Yourself

The freedom from something is not true freedom.
The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about.
My vision of freedom is to be YOURSELF!

It is not a question of getting freedom from something.  That freedom will not be freedom, because it is still given to you; there is a cause to it.  The thing that you were feeling dependent on is still there in your freedom. You are obliged to it. Without it you would not have been free.

The freedom to do anything you want is not freedom either, because wanting, desiring to do something, arises out of the mind — and mind is your bondage.

The true freedom certainly comes after choiceless awareness, but after choiceless awareness the freedom is neither dependent on things nor dependent on doing something.  The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is the freedom just to be yourself.  And you are yourself already, you are born with it; hence it is not dependent on anything else.  Nobody can give it to you and nobody can take it from you.  A sword can cut your head but it cannot cut your freedom, your being.

It is another way of saying that you are centered, rooted in your natural, existential self.  It has nothing to do with outside.
Freedom from things is dependent on the outside.  Freedom to do something is also dependent on the outside.  Freedom to be ultimately pure has not to be dependent on anything outside you.

You are born as freedom.

Freedom from is ordinary, mundane.  Man has always tried to be free from things.  It is not creative.  It is the negative aspect of freedom.

Freedom for is creativity.  You have a certain vision that you would like to materialize and you want freedom for it.

Freedom from is always from the past, and freedom for is always for the future.

Freedom for is a spiritual dimension because you are moving into the unknown and perhaps, one day, into the unknowable. It will give you wings.

Freedom from, at the most, can take away your handcuffs.  It is not necessarily beneficial — and the whole of history is a proof of it. People have never thought of the second freedom that I am insisting on; they have only thought of the first — because they don’t have the insight to see the second.  The first is visible: chains on their feet, handcuffs on their hands.  They want to be free from them, but then what?  What are you going to do with your hands?  You may even repent that you asked for freedom from.

Basically you are totally free to choose, but once you choose, your very choice brings a limitation.

If you want to remain totally free, then don’t choose.  That’s where the teaching of choiceless awareness comes in.  Why the insistence of the great masters just to be aware and not to choose?  Because the moment you choose, you have lost your total freedom, you are left with only a part.  But if you remain choiceless, your freedom remains total.

So there is only one thing which is totally free and that is choiceless awareness.  Everything else is limited.

“Liberation can be gained only by practice, never by mere discussion,” SN Goenka has said.  A course in Vipassana meditation is an opportunity to take concrete steps towards liberation.  In such a course the participant learns how to free the mind of the tensions and prejudices that distrub the flow of daily life.  By doing so one begins to discover how to live each moment peacefully, productively, happily.  At the same time one starts progressing towards the highest goal to which mankind can aspire: purity of mind, freedom from all suffering and full enlightenment.

It is now a week since I left the beautiful surrounds of Blackheath, Blue Mountains where I attended a 10 day silent meditation retreat to practice the 2500 year old Indian meditation technique known as Vipassana.  I first heard about Vipassana some months previous whilst talking to a friend who suggested I attend, she had known of a few people who had gone on this retreat who had gained much insight and clarity into themselves and felt sure that it would be most beneficial for me to attend – she also assured me that I would definitely, at some point, want to leave!  Being someone who loves a challenge, I was up for the experience and wanted to sign up – but a few things needed to happen first.

The next few months proved to be extremely difficult for me.  I had made a decision to rent out my house, leave primary care of my children to their dad and move to Byron Bay, in northern NSW, some 8 hours drive north of Newcastle to seek my life’s purpose.  This decision came after visiting Byron in September 2009. I had a very strong feeling that this was somewhere I needed to be and although at the time I felt it could not be possible, in November 2009 I made the firm decision that this was where I had to go, no matter what!  After a brief visit in December I returned to Byron Bay again in early February to meet up with my new housemates and to get a feeling for the area.  It was on this visit that I knew I was on the right track.  I had such a feeling of being home and peacefulness embraced me as soon as I landed on Byron’s soil.  The energy of this town can be felt as soon as you are here.  The locals describe it as being in the “Byron Bay Bubble”.  Life slows down and you move at a very different pace.  You feel very different on many levels here.  It is a town built on Black Obsidian rock – its power lies in its ability to absorb and transform negative energies, thereby acting as a protective stone. Ultimately, it brings about solid comfort, through truth and peace. The Aboriginals say it is a place where you come to heal and then you are meant to leave – hmmm, I’m healed, but I wonder if I will ever leave.   

On my return to Newcastle to pack up the last of my house, I’m due to head back to Byron Bay but feel the calling to kick start the next chapter of my life with a 10 day stint at a meditation retreat.  10 February 2010 I arrive at the doors of the Vipassana Meditation Centre in the Blue Mountains.  I have butterflies in my tummy.  I’m more nervous about sleeping in my tent as there is heavy rain predicted and the area has just experienced 2 weeks of downpour so I’m worrying that I’m going to be cold, wet and get no sleep being out in the elements.  I’ve forgotten about the silence and the meditation at this point, just give me a bed!!!  Thankfully, I do manage to manifest myself a bed in a dorm room with 9 other girls.  This so takes me back to the school camping trips – without the talking of course. 

There are clearly people that have done this before starting to arrive with their luggage.  They have this calm, relaxed looked about them.  Others are clearly out of their comfort zone and me, I sit and observe and await further directions, relieved that I have a nice cossie bed to sleep in and eager to get started.  I notice a very tall girl arrive and I instantly feel a rapport, even though we have not yet spoken.  We end up speaking and I find out she is one who has been here before – she’s known as an ‘old student’.  I’m grateful, I want to know so much before the lips are sealed for 10 days!.  “So is it good?”I ask.  Her big brown Serbian eyes nearly pop out of her sockets!  “Oh Yes – it’s amazing!!!!” I was relieved, this is what I wanted to hear.  I felt like I wanted to talk to her for hours yet we were both well aware that shortly we would be stepping into Noble Silence and that would be it for the next 10 days – we talked very fast and I felt reassured that at least I had connected with someone who had experienced this and she seemed quite together, high spirited and happy, how hard can it be I thought and if the end result is that, bring it on!

After meeting with a few others and sharing conversations over a cup of tea, the bell is sounded – this is a sound we would all grow very accustomed to hearing over the next 10 days.  We are all lead up to the meditation hall for further instructions.  It is early evening and everything feels different yet ok, even sleeping in the dorm felt ok, the no talking at dinner was weird yet it was a new experience and I was open so I felt pretty good, at this stage!  Off to bed in silence we go ready for the first day of meditation.  I’m very excited and can’t wait to get going!

Day 1 commences at 4am and I spring out of bed and head for the showers.  I had no problem getting out of bed at this time and was always eager to start the day – I wanted to learn and get this technique down pat and get to that great feeling that I’m assuming everyone gets to at around day 7, 8, 9 or 10. I don’t remember where I got that from but I’m assuming this is how it works.  Day 2 and Day 6 are meant to be the difficult days and then it’s bliss – so basically I’m prepared for a few crap days and then it’s all going to be peachy!  Ok, let’s get to peachy quickly can we please !!!!

So I’m thinking at the beginning this is so like school camp, cool!  I decide the first morning to meditate in my room – 2 hours of observing the breath going in and going out of the nostrils – I find it difficult as my mind keeps wandering here, there and everywhere, there is no silence in my head, outside – peaceful, in my head – it’s going nuts!  When is breakfast?  What am I doing here? I wonder what that girl does for a living?  Wonder what her issues are?  My toe nails need another coat of varnish, oh damn, I left my tweezers at home.  No phone, that’s nice.  I like it here, truly, it’s beautiful – I was so ready for a rest after all that packing up of my house – bla bla bla bla …

The food – oh my goodness – I have not eaten this well in MONTHS!  Start the morning with warm oats, which is so nice as it’s rather chilly in the mountains in the morning …  stewed prunes , nuts and seeds with yoghurt and fruit.  Oh I feel I have died and gone to heaven!  Beautiful breads with all the spreads you can imagine and tea on tap!  All you can hear is the tapping of the spoons on the bowls and the stirring of the teaspoons in the cups – we do not speak, we do not look at each other, heads down or heads looking straight ahead at the amazing view from the balcony of the food hall – mountains and valleys and a sky that is forever changing – you could never get bored looking at this scenery – exquisite.

After breakfast we have a little break.  Some go for a lie down on their beds after the shock of getting up at 4am, or we can take a walk around our designated female walking area.  Males and females are segregated so as to not distract each other.  You are asked to dress conservatively, no knees showing and no shoulders, this took a bit of wardrobe planning on my part.  I tend to have lots of bits showing so dressing conservatively was a bit of a challenge.  Not even leggings are allowed!  I do find one male particularly distracting as he, for some reason, is allowed to wear a muscleman t-shirt in the meditation hall.  Can’t get my eyeballs off his very nice arms – stop it, stop it, focus focus.  I discover later that I’m not the only female to be distracted by his flesh : )

Another 3 hours of meditation awaits before lunch … hmmm, I wonder what is for lunch, as this is our last meal of the day, I can’t stop thinking about it.  At 8am the bell sounds.  There are 3 meditations per day where we are asked to attend the hall together for “strong determination” meditation.  After experiencing the meditations in the hall I decide that that is where I will meditate everyday from now on and not in my room as I will work seriously in the hall and the energy is lovely and peaceful, feel like I’m really working.  There was also this very distinct smell, like sawdust and honey.  I found out later that some students hated it, I LOVED it and couldn’t get enough.  Sniffing it up as I got a whiff from time to time. The mind at this stage is still all over the place and the body is starting to feel the agony of being seated in the cross legged position for hours on end.  Everyone, except for the older students are wriggling, trying to find their best position, it’s difficult – and this is day 1!!! 

There are four teachers seated on a raised platform at the front of the hall, 2 females and 2 males.  The female teachers are Grace, an elderly lady possibly in her 80’s and an Indian lady by the name of Sheila.  So still, they exude peace.  I want that, I think to myself.

Lunch exceeds expectations and I’m loving it!  I have not eaten red meat since this experience and don’t know if I ever will again.  I’ve only eaten chicken once since and could quite well do without it also.  I believe I’ve been converted to vegetarianism and it’s wonderful I have to say.  Feel so much better for it.  It’s funny observing everyone, checking out how much people have piled on their plates as this is the last full meal of the day.  We are informed by our teacher NOT to overeat, make sure we are only ¾ full, always leave a gap, not good to meditate on a full stomach.  After a scrumptious lunch we are given an hour free time, chill in our room, go for a walk, that’s it.  There is nothing else to do.  We are not allowed to read, write, exercise, yoga – anything!  1pm we are back in the hall for meditation – 4 hours this afternoon.  Of course you can get up and move around after an hour or so or whenever the pain gets that unbearable that you feel you may never be able to unlock yourself from your position and may have to be carted away.

5:00pm cannot come quick enough!  Yay tea time.  A piece or two of fruit and a cuppa.  The older students are only allowed to have a broth made of boiling water, ginger and a teaspoon of honey.  I felt very sorry for them as I crunch into my apple and half a banana, a real treat!  6:00pm it’s back in the meditation hall for the next 3 hours.  Yes, I’m getting it now that we meditate a lot – did I not really take this in when I read the course timetable?   At 7:00pm it’s teacher’s discourse with SN Goenka via video. Mr Goenka is a householder teacher of Vipassana meditation in the tradition of the late Sayagyi U Ba Khin of Burma (Myanmar).

Although Indian by descent, Goenka was born and raised in Burma. While living in Burma he had the good fortune to come into contact with U Ba Khin, and to learn the technique of Vipassana from him. After receiving training from his teacher for fourteen years, Goenka settled in India and began teaching Vipassana in 1969. In a country still sharply divided by differences of caste and religion, the courses offered by Goenka have attracted thousands of people from every part of society. In addition, many people from countries around the world have come to join courses in Vipassana meditation. Goenka has taught tens of thousands of people in more than 300 courses in India and in other countries, East and West. In 1982 he began to appoint assistant teachers to help him to meet the growing demand for courses. Meditation centres have been established under his guidance in India, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Nepal and other countries.

The technique which S.N.Goenka teaches represents a tradition that is traced back to the Buddha. The Buddha never taught a sectarian religion; he taught Dhamma – the way to liberation – which is universal. In the same tradition, Goenka’s approach is totally non-sectarian. For this reason, his teaching has a profound appeal to people of all backgrounds, of every religion and no religion, and from every part of the world.

I begin to “crave” discourse every night.  Goenka makes me laugh and it now serves as my only outlet!!!  Craving, I later learn, brings misery – you miss out on so much when you crave for something that is not in this moment.  However at this stage, I think the guy is really funny and on the serious side, his teachings were always profound and all the teachings seemed to just flow and be so right for that moment.  I could have listened to him for hours.  After discourse there is another 45 minutes of meditation, just when you’ve just about had it with meditating another hour, your asked to “start again”.  Can’t wait to get into bed, what a long day, I’m stuffed!  Thankfully I bring the ear plugs, we have two snorers in the dorm – ear plugs were my saviour : )

Day 2, 4.00am and another day begins and the same ritual applies.  I can’t quite remember when things started to get to me but I do remember thinking on day 2, gee we have a long way to go.  It was this day that I started to notice that a few people were starting to leave.  By the end of the course I believe about 7 women left at varying stages, I’m not sure about the men.  At this point I didn’t get it, you are told so many times when you sign up for this that it is a commitment and it’s serious and to leave during the course can be dangerous to ones self.  It’s 10 days guys, come on, how hard can it be! 

Day 3 and Day 4 are pretty much a breeze.  I’ve settled in to the way of life and really like it here – I often recall my friend Julie saying to me “Justine, you are so going to want to leave” and I’m thinking, Julie just so doesn’t know me, this is a breeze.  I’m starting to get the meditation, my mind is quietening and I’m feeling really quite peaceful, observing the plants, walking slowly and quite chilled.  A bit of yoga would be nice but hey, that’s ok and even the silence is not bothering me.  

Day 4 we begin learning the Vipassana technique and I guess this is where things started to shift for me.  This is where we start taking dips in the Ganges of Dhamma within (law of liberation), exploring the truth about ourselves at the level of bodily sensations.  Here I was thinking it was just about observing the breath coming in and out of the nostrils and this was going to be it for the next 10 days – I’m excited when things take a turn and we start learning something new and it takes a deeper turn.  The whole Vipassana technique we begin to learn is quite scientific and is a process of connecting mind and body.  Becoming so in tune with our bodily sensations that when we are triggered by an emotion, we no longer become reactive but remain equanimous, no matter what outside influences may hit us.  No craving, no aversion, total balance of mind.  The mind then becomes sharper and more sensitive, capable of detecting subtle sensations. 

Equanimity becomes the word of the week and becomes the most important part of the practice, along with total awareness of the body and it’s sensations.  My body is hurting now – a lot.  I have a disc degeneration in my neck and interestingly enough, about 2 days prior to attending this retreat, it starts to play up.  I can’t get in to see my chiropractor before I head to the retreat and wonder how I will cope and will it play up.  I am told by Grace that old injuries do tend to flair up during this course and it’s the body’s way of healing the impurities of mind within – yeah well that’s just great – I’m in agony and tears are welling in my eyes.  I see Grace during question time and I am reassured that it is just a sensation and it will pass, remain equanimous, persistence and continuous practice are the key – keep doing what you are doing, you are sure to be successful.  Oh great, now there are three words of the week that keep going around and around my head, equanimity, persistence and continuity – these words begin to wear on my mind and thus starts the downward spiral …

Day 6 arrives and I’m doing ok until after lunch.  Things are starting to bubble to the surface and this is when I want to leave, and yes I can hear Julie saying “I told you so”.   I am beginning to feel agitated during break times.  I do not feel like walking today and go to my room to see if just resting helps.  Perhaps if I just sleep my mind will stop.  I sit on my bed and begin typing on my bed spread.  I pretend that I’m on my laptop updating my Facebook profile, saying something like, yeah well it’s day 6 here at the silent retreat and I’m beginning to go nuts and I want out!  I start giggling to myself when I realise what I am doing.  This is insane!  I’m getting really agitated now so I decide to go outside for a walk.  The view now has become routine and boring and I feel like breaking the rules somehow.  I take myself down to a little spot where there is no one around and feel a song coming on – Kermit the Frog’s Rainbow Connection.  So here I am singing Kermit’s song in a whisper and I feel some relief.  Oh that feels wonderful I say to myself – just to sing, even if it’s just a whisper.  Then a flood of songs enter my head, all weird and wonderful and they take me to places and memories of the past – my mind is entertained and I’m off and racing with an explosion of colour, faces, people, emotions and memories – I’ve lost myself in the past and right now, it feels good – albeit briefly.  I’m starting to get annoyed with everyone around me.  They look miserable and they are walking so bloody slow.  I go for a power walk, thinking I’m breaking some kind of rule here, it fills me with some sense of satisfaction (oh blessed ego).  I rebel against meditation after sitting excrutiatingly for an hour with no success in quietening the mind, and lay on a bench in the sun whilst everyone is in the “zone”.  Alex, the ladies Manager who I nickname “the Gestapo” has a quiet word to me and I have to leave my nice bench in the sun and get back to meditation.  I don’t like her at this point and feel like giving her the finger, of course I don’t but my mind does. My rebellious nature is in full flight and I’m aware yet somewhat satiated by the sensations it brings. 

There are two aspects of the Vipassana technique.  The first is breaking the barrier between the conscious and unconscious levels of the mind.  Usually the conscious mind knows nothing of what is being experienced by the unconscious.  Hidden by this ignorance, reactions keep occurring at the unconscious level; by the time they reach the conscious level, they have become so intense that they easily overpower the mind.  With this meditative technique, the entire mass of the mind becomes conscious, aware; the ignorance is removed.  The second aspect is equanimity.  Where one is aware of all experiences, all sensations, yet does not react, does not crave or feel aversion and therefore does not create misery for oneself.  This all starts to make sense and the pieces of the puzzle do start to come together slowly however I’m finding it pretty intense with all these sensations of pain, agitation, boredom etc flooding my existence.  There is no escape.  I cannot hide in a book, I cannot talk to anyone about it, I cannot write to express and get it out.  It’s all jammed up in my head and I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life.  There is no escape, nowhere to hide, nothing to distract me, I’m faced with it all and I’m so uncomfortable.  I am pacing like a caged lioness.  I walk to the border of our designated area and get a taste of what one might feel when one is put in jail, I mean you could hardly call this beautiful place jail, but I’m a prisoner of my mind and I feel like I’m going slightly mad.  My only comfort, and it’s hard to get to this place when we are not in meditation, is trying to stay present.  I know that it works and I have experienced it so with my moments of madness, I try to maintain the stillness, watch an ant, I look at the leaves on the trees blowing in the breeze, watch the birds fly from branch to branch – momentarily the madness stops. 

As we learn in the evening discourses, you come to a course like this to develop your own wisdom.  To do that we must understand truth at the experiental level.  I am slowly getting it, the pieces are falling into place.  So much confusion exists because the way things appear to be is totally different from their real nature.  To remove this confusion, we must develop experiential wisdom.  Outside the framework of the body, truth cannot be experienced; it can only be intellectualised.  Therefore we must develop the ability to experience truth within ourselves, from the most subtlest to the most grossest levels, in order to emerge from all illusions, all bondages. 

Everyone knows that the entire universe is constantly changing, but a mere intellectual understanding of this reality will not help.  You must experience this within yourself.  I know for myself my experience of losing someone close for example forced me to face the hard fact of the impermanence of life, and one then develops wisdom, to see the futility of striving after worldly goods and quarrelling with others.  But soon the old habit of egotism reasserts itself and the wisdom fades because it was not based on direct personal experience.  I had not experienced the reality of impermanence with myself.  Everything is anicca (impermanent, ephemeral, changing) arising and passing in every moment; but the rapidity and continuity of the process creates the illusion of permanence.  The only way to break the illusion is to learn to explore within oneself, and to experience the reality of one’s own physical and mental structure.  This to me explained so much.  It hit me so powerfully.  I knew it intellectually, now I was on the path to knowing it experientially. 

The next 3 days for me (7, 8 and 9) were a rollercoaster of emotions, sensations, feelings, memories, thoughts, frustrations, internal battles, bliss and peacefulness.  I had so many experiences over the next few days it really is too difficult for me to recall.  It was a jumble of insights, awakenings, confusion, understanding and clarity.  The meditations became deeper, some were very deep and I would float out of the hall and feel like I was floating on clouds and no one could hit me and nothing could penetrate my bliss.  Other meditations and break times felt like I was tormented by memories of the past mainly and things I had done and said to people that I was regretful for, the decisions I had made by being reactive and unclear and how I got to where I was made so much sense.  I started to make a list of all those with whom I wanted to make amends when I got out of “prison”, I mean the “retreat”.   It was not a remorse or total devastation, it was just a clear understanding of so much.  I was calm and accepting and forgiveness flooded my heart.   

The evening discourses seemed to get deeper as the days went by, everything made so much sense to me.  I would catch myself having an internal conversation and see so clearly how the ego operates and the tricks it tries to play to make us believe in the illusions that we create in our mind.  I would be off on a tangent and then I would be aware of what was happening and I would just laugh at the absurdity of it all.  I was truly tapping into the illusion of self and I saw it so clearly. 

As the understanding of anicca  (impermanance) develops, another wisdom arises.  That of anatta (egoless, no-self), No I, no mine.  Within the physical and mental structure, there is nothing that lasts more than a moment, nothing that one can identify as an unchanging self or soul.  If something is ‘mine’, then one must be able to possess it, to control it, but in fact one has no mastery even over one’s body; it keeps changing, decaying, regardless of one’s wishes.  Then the third aspect of wisdom develops: dukkha; suffering.  If one tries to possess and hold on to something that is changing beyond one’s control, then one is bound to create misery for oneself.  It is common for one to identify suffering with unpleasant sensations, but pleasant ones can equally be causes of misery, if one develops attachment to them, because they are equally impermanent.  Attachment to what is ephemeral is certain to result in suffering. 

When the understanding of anicca, anatta and dukkha is strong, this wisdom will manifest in your daily life, we are taught.  Just as you learn to penetrate beyond the apparent reality within, so in external circumstances you will be able to see the ultimate truth.  You come out of illusion and live a happy and healthy life. 

So with all this understanding and everything starting to make sense and fall into place, Day 9 I’m well and truly over it and I want to talk now.  So do others, as I learn on Day 10 when noble silence ends.  At lunchtime on day 9 I was overcome with a fit of the giggles as I was observing everyone with their heads down all looking pensive and miserable.  Giggles turned into loud laughter and I had tears rolling down my face.  Quite honestly, it was like having an amazing orgasim, I was in heaven at the experience of laughter.  A few joined in but many were still obeying the strict code of noble silence conduct.  I guess rebellion is something that gladly I will retain as part of my playful side J – let’s call it my inner child wanting to come out to play!

Day 10 is my birthday and what a birthday present – the end of noble silence!  What a special birthday it was – it truly was blissful hearing about others experiences and connecting with people you shared a room for 10 days with but had never spoken to.  To see the faces of people light up with smiles and the clarity in people’s eyes was incredible.  We all felt in awe of what we had all experienced.  We laughed a lot!  Many fart stories were shared as most of us had not eaten so many prunes, lentils and chickpeas in our lives!  We were spoiled rotten with food and were even served with dinner – we all realised after that meal and having to meditate soon after why they did not feed us in the evenings … you should have heard the tummies grumble this night.  Discourse was amazing and Goenka rounded it off nicely with his final teachings.  There was so much love and bliss that was felt on the last day and I have to say, I still feel the calmness and stillness of mind today.  Meditation has been more difficult to practice whilst out in the ‘real’ world however I know the benefits of being in the space and the freedom one can experience so practice and continuity remain.

What a brilliant way to begin the new chapter of my life.  I have found a Vipassana Meditation group to connect with and continue my practice here in beautiful Byron Bay.  I’m grateful for the wonderful friends and connections I made whilst in the Blue Mountains.  Even though we only really connected on the last day, we experienced the feeling of oneness and unity amongst us. 

In closing my story, I would like to say that this HAS to be experienced to get a true understanding of what I have shared with you.  I hope I have been able to give you some insight through my introduction to this meditation technique, which I have to say has totally changed the way I now experience life – and is an ongoing practice.   I also want to share with you a passage from the Discourse Summaries which for me, was the most powerful realisation of all and why I hold this technique and its philosophy in such high regard.  They want this teaching to be accessible to all so it is purely by a donation basis.  It is amazing how the vibration of gratitude is immediately bestowed upon you.  The accommodation, the incredible food (I was in awe of the food), the grounds, the staff, the meditation hall, the teachers, the helpers, it was incredible – all in service to others.  I spent thousands of dollars last year on lavish accommodation and personal development courses and programs and I am very grateful for those experiences however for this course to be available to EVERYONE, no matter what financial situation they were in, that blew me away.  It has been the most profound experience of my life.  It made me feel that this teaching was served with true purity of heart and a loving intention to help change the world in a profound, and simplistic way by helping one person at a time find their true happiness.  Awesome.

For more information visit www.Dhamma.org

Charity and Donation – not for profit!

 For a lay person, this is the first essential step of Dhamma (natural law, law of liberation).  A lay person has the responsibility of earning money by right livelihood, for the support of oneself and of any dependants.  But if one generates attachment to the money that one earns, then one develops ego.  For this reason, a portion of what one earns must be given for the good of others.  If one does this, ego will not develop, since one understands that one earns for one’s own benefit and also for the benefit of others.  The volition arises to help others in whatever way one can.  And one realizes that there can be no great help to others than to help them learn the way out of suffering.

In a course like this, one has a wonderful opportunity to develop this parami (helps to dissolve egoism).  Whatever one receives here is donated by another person; there are no charges for room and board, and certainly none for the teaching.  In turn one is able to give a donation for the benefit of someone else.  Without expecting anything in return, one gives so that others may experience the benefits of Dhamma and may come out of their suffering.

I received an email today from a Facebook friend who was concerned for me, asking me the question of whether I was tentatively holding onto happiness at the moment, despite all the big changes taking place in my life, and hoping I was truly happy and not treading water.

I found these questions thought provoking and was compelled to respond via this note, so thank you S for the email and your concern for my well-being, it is sincerely appreciated – and may I say you are not the first to pose these questions. I hope this can shine a light for you and all those others who have been watching my life through this medium of late, if you care. Perhaps it may shine a light on your journey : )

The last 6 months of my life have been somewhat topsy turvy, a series of events where a lot of the old ways and what I was trying to achieve in my life, had to go. I knew a lot of the old ways had to go for me to really move forward and at times it was truly difficult to do so. We get so used to certain people being a constant in our life, to behaving in certain ways that really ‘define’ who we are. I felt at times I could not move if I didn’t have these things by my side, who would I be without them, that would mean I would be alone, that would mean I have to be who I really am – am I truly ready for that? It sounded so frightening. Hiding behind my old patterns was so much easier, I had been doing it for many many years now and had gotten it down pat! It was indeed a very scary time and I felt very lost, alone, tired, afraid and useless. So yes, there have been some very dark periods however they were also very much part of the plan for my journey and my biggest lesson in all of this was that if I was truly going to embrace who I really am at my core, I would HAVE to let go of the old to allow in the new. It’s a universal law and cannot be done any other way.

My move to Byron Bay has not always made sense to me, I only knew it was a strong pull and something that I needed to do, at any cost – that’s how strong it was. I now know, since I have been here for a few days and plan to settle for a time when I return next week, that this change in direction was what I have been working toward my whole life. I certainly feel I have come home and I am at the beginning of living the life that I have always felt was inside of me. This in no way has been a running away from anything, I have often asked myself that question as this has been one of the, in fact THE hardest decisions I have had to make because it affects my children’s lives, not just mine. I know many have had their judgments about how this will affect my children and I do not feel it necessary to justify my decision to those who do not understand, nor do I feel it is anybody else’s business other than mine, their daddy’s and my two beautiful souls, Ella and Charlie. I have a knowing and understanding of where my children are at and the role I play in their lives.

So in answer to S’s email, yes I am very happy with the course my life is taking and NO I am not treading water – far from it. I have a peacefulness, a trust and a knowing that I can quite honestly say I never have felt before. I have not forgotten the journey I have taken to get here, all the people and experiences I have had along the way were all very necessary and I feel blessed. I feel at this time in our lives for all of us the energies of this planet are totally supporting those who want to create whatever they want in their lives, we are truly magical, we have just forgotten that we are. There is no need to be unhappy and stuck – it is merely a choice. What I know about that is that I wasn’t lined up with who I really am and now I am exploring that, fully – and I tell you it’s a beautiful feeling.

To those of you who have supported me in my low times, and you know who you are, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have all been my earth angels. I am always here for you, I feel that is part of my journey forward, being of service to others and helping them get on their way. I have done it, it was not easy, but when you come through the other side, it is liberating and I am so proud of what I have achieved. I know I have been a wonderful example of living ones dreams – my children will benefit from their mother’s courage.

These are truly exciting times for each and everyone of us. I would love to assist anyone who is trying to remember who they really are. Of all the personal development I have done in the last year, the best investment I made was $27.00 – The Vortex, by Abraham-Hicks. When you feel good, only good comes to you and everything is energy, so when you are vibrating the good stuff, only the good stuff comes back. It’s that simple – try it and you will see how powerfully this can change your life.

Love and Light my sisters and brothers. I love you all.

J XX

Our outer world – our apparently REAL reality – is actually an illusion, a representation of the reality, the belief systems, of those who live in the inner world.  Change the inner world, and the outer world changes simultaneously.  Change your values and your paradigms shift.  We DO create our lives.  You GET what you BELIEVE, but very few of us know what we really believe inside.  So we struggle to change the unwelcome aspects of our lives by grappling like madmen with the illusory outer world – tilting at windmills and doing the same thing over and over, only louder, longer and harder.  Fortunately, the psyche is very patient and benign.  It repeats and represents our negative belief systems as often as we need until we start to recognise a pattern, an indicator of the inner true reality, which reflects profoundly and unerringly our childhood experiences.

The most obvious place the inner world bubbles to the surface is our endless mind babble, especially in our internal criticisms of ourselves.  Also in our negative comments about others.  The ancient wisdom holds: we criticise something in another that we are unhappy with but unable to look at in ourselves.  The unexamined pain and frustration residing in our inner worlds is also revealed in our complaints about society – the “ain’t it awful….” And “THEY should ….” Negativisms that punctuate the conversation of the internally powerless.  The more integrated and self-knowing a person is, the less likely they are to be drawn mindlessly into any of these displaced releases of discomfort.  They recognise ANY movement away from the contentment and peace to be a tug from the inner world, an intention to bring to the surface something negative, a no-longer tolerable discrepancy, an ‘other-imposed’ belief which is ready to be understood and resolved.

Enlightened beings are generally pleasant and serene because they run all their “stuff” in their meditations.  Struggling-to-be-enlightened beings are learning to run their stuff in therapeautic situations and/or (hopefully) to deal with it themselves as they become increasingly skilled in their ability to interpret their own inner worlds.  The concomitant high level of self-responsibility brings with it a sad dilemma.  Communication patterns change considerably, and the type of people one can freely talk to becomes more limited.  Most dysfunctional families run intimacy patterns tht veer wildly between isolation and intense, dramatic interaction.  A lot of pent-up frustration is vented by laying blame, either overtly by aggressing, or covertly by withdrawing.

If a struggling-to-be responsible person declines to either engage in laying blame or to be the dumping ground for someone else’s displaced anger, the intimacy will become based on self-examination and self-revelation.  However, people with a lifetime’s training in displaced anger who are not yet able to look at the source of their pain find this level of communication sometimes too challenging.  This struggling-to-be responsible person can often feel very lonely.

The journey to internal empowerment, growth and health requires that as regularly and as thoroughly as possible the signals from the inner world be heeded and dealt with effectively.  The real world is the screen for our internal world movie.  ANYTHING that disturbs us is the outer manifestation of an inner distortion discharging itself.  There are NO accidents or coincidences.  Everything is information.  We are our own metaphor.  If the inner world is heavily charged with distress and it is not being attended to in the out world (denial), then one day the volcano will blow its top.

To add to the challenge, we are a society whose functioning is BASED ON denial.  Your courageous efforts to deal with reality – to look honestly as what WAS And What IS – will be met with disapproval.  “Let the past be the past” etc ….  This is the same hostility and threat that impacted on you when, as a small child naturally bent on comprehending your extraordinary new world, you struggled with the confusion of seeing incongruence and hypocrisy in the very people who are meant to validate and authenticate your experience.  Coercing you into a conspiracy of silence, denying underlying tensions that obviously pervated, acting out sham relationships – all these behaviours are terrifying and bewildering to a young child.  The child’s instincts are so finely honed, and the psyche truth of what is really going on.  If that truth is then distorted or denied, or the glaring discrepancy rationalised away by a significant caretaker, the child begins to go mad.  His or her internal truth has been invalidated.  Since the totally dependant child needs to believe that the caretaker knows better and more, the child is torn by the agony of abandoning an internal truth system that FEELS absolutely right, and taking on an external belief system that FEELS – and smells – absolutely rotten.

Invariably, the child is finally forced to accept the caretaker’s twisted denial-based reality.  The reward is minor: approval (or at least less harassment) from the caretaker.  The cost is ultimately horrific: despair, depression, rage, shame, paranoia (if you can’t trust “yourself”, how can you trust anyone else?).  The more the caretaker’s reality feels distressing to be in, the great will be the underlying psychological struggle to find out what your own reality really is – TO KNOW WHO YOU WERE BEFORE YOU WERE OBLIGED TO BECOME SOMETHING THAT SUITED THEM.  This is a courageous struggle indeed.  Because if you do go back and find your own truth, back to before the lies, manipulation and distortion started, back to that stage where you know your own feelings, you know where you begin and end, you know what you want, what you feel, you know YOURSELF – then you will be faced with the horrendous realisation of how much of your unique, precious life their conspiracies took away from you. Your denial of your true self, your tolerating of gross discrepancies between your inner knowing and your outer living, will have wreaked a sad and sometimes terrible toll on your life.

But the reward for this endeavour will be worth any pain suffered.  You’ll know who you really are, and you’ll like YOU – unshakably, absolutely, unconditionally.  Who you really are lives in the inner world of the unconscious, in the psyche.

The psyche cannot use language, only metaphor.  Hence the potency of dreams.  However, as a person “awakens”, looks inwards, and by self-examination becomes increasingly intimate with the mystical language of the inner world, three things happen:

1.  They become very skilled in translating themselves and so feel much less at the effect of their emotional states;

2.  The channels of communication become much more direct and there is an increasing congruence between the person’s inner and outer worlds.  They start to become more of WHO they are, and this invariably leads to a great leap in their personal power.

3.  The lessons are taught at vastly refined levels.  The person no longer feels the victim of gross and costly chaos in the outer world.  The demands for learning and change may be great indeed, but they are presented almost symbolically and can increasingly be dealt with privately.  These people develop a lightness and facility with daily life – a detachment from the bog of the outer world that most of the population squelch around in.  That bulk of the population doesn’t like these types of people.

The purpose for journeying into the world of the psyche is indeed to find the real YOU.  The real you is not some enchanting little essential self glowing with light who you will adore at first sight, no matter how much some New Age philosophers would like to believe so.  Certainly, there are many lovable aspects to your personality, but they are distorting experiences.  It’s analogous to your memories.  The happy times don’t need healing or attention.   They are there to be savoured at will, not burned on your mind endlessly tormenting you.

Unfortunately, one of the indicators that an adult has suffered a dysfunctional upbringing is that they DON’T HAVE MANY MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD – GOOD OR BAD.  When you go into the psyche to find who you were, you are seeking the parts you don’t know much about.  These will be like abandoned street kids: ashamed, angry, crushed, terrorised, despairing, heart-broken.  As you moved around your inner world and encounter these enduring proofs of early pain and negativism, you will initially be caught off guard and caught up in the emotions of these waifs.

The intention of therapy and personal development is to make you more able to move amongst their extraordinary domain with some insight and sense of competence, of being increasingly able to have effect on your emotional distress.  It’s the same as adopting a badly abused child.  For a substantial time you would expect the waif to exhibit all their outrage, and you would be patient with them.  You will learn to bring to yourself this same patience, compassion, steadfastness – the mark of a mature adult.  You were raised by grown-ups, not adults.  Children who just got bigger.  Have you ever felt that even though a child, you actually understood more of what was going on than any of the grown-ups?  Have you ever longed for an adult in your life?  Someone wiser, older, trustworthy, caring?  Do your parents fill this need for you?  Have you ever felt like a sham?

No matter how many spouses or mortgages you have, that you’re secretly just a scared kid pretending to be a grown-up?  How would you know how to become an adult?  Who would you model?

Remember that your inner world controls your life.  The blueprint of your life was essentially laid down in the years 0-7.  What happens after that, good or bad, is usually a repeat.  If you learned how to be consistently secure and happy, then you’ll do a lot of that.  If you experienced the emotional vampirism, coldness, physical emotional or sexual abuse, psychological manipulation, emotional withdrawal, tactile deprivation, humiliation or objectification, then YOU WILL DO THAT OVER AND OVER.  If, at the time of your torment, you were threatened never to reveal it or never to seek help, then the sense of powerlessness and hopelessness will be too unbearable and your memory might start to fade out the especially tortuous times.  Appalling memories can disappear and sometimes never return.  Additionally, the fear of resurrecting any of that information can be so great as to even impede your healing process because the original threat of punishment “if you tell” still holds too much effect.

Other forms of avoiding what you are both desperate and terrified to find is to get intellectual about the process.  People can go on for years (even in therapy) talking about their concerns and analysing them, but never going back and actually FEELING and RE-EXPERIENCING them as they occurred.  Making astute, rational observations of the dynamics in your family changes very little.  Feeling them hurt all over again once you’ve given in to the helplessness and the terror can quantum leap your life forward.  (This should be done initially only under qualified supportive attention).  GUILT is also common “I must be over-exaggerating/making it up….” and SHAME … “This is my frail old grey-haired father I’m maligning…”  and MINIMALISING …  “But every kid I knew got hit regularly. Physical punishment was normal”.  No, not normal, common.  One in three women has been sexually assaulted in one form or another, including incest.  That makes it common, but NEVER NORMAL.  Any more than cruelty to small, vulnerable children is normal.  If you were treated cruelly, then I regret to inform you that your parents were sadistic and cowardly at the very least.  Surely, they may have histories and stories and circumstances of their own, but in the end, they were grown-ups – persistently and repeatedly hurting small children.

To be continued ….. How to access your inner world

The ascension experience created so many things, within and without, that we gradually came to learn and know a different way of being. Just writing the word “ascension” seems so strange and out of date for me now, and I almost wonder if it was ever even real at all.

The ascension experience and plan was indeed created by ourselves at our soul levels. This fact alone, brought us together as one massive whole, thus creating in tandem, all the twists and turns as we came to experience them as one, all at the same time. In this way, we came together and felt together, we were oh so united, and we knew at our core, that something monumental was occurring, if even at times only at our soul levels.

In addition, the ascension plan always served to over-ride all other levels of creation, as it ran very high. For example, many of us were guided to move to specific geographical areas, or even found that we were simply unable to leave specific geographical areas, even though we may have had a strong desire to do so. We may have found ourselves in places of darkness, unable to get out, as at our soul levels we willingly agreed to assist the planet with the ascension process. Thus, it was never about attracting darkness because we had “issues” or the like, but simply because we were doing our jobs in regard to ascension. This is why our bags of familiar tools never worked in some instances.

Many of us gained weight during this time, and no matter what we did, we absolutely could not get it off, as we had agreed, again as a whole, to hold more light in order to improve our attempts to raise the vibration of the planet (I recently lost 30 pounds and am now back to my normal weight… another evident example that we are now done). We lost our jobs, our relationships, our loved ones, and much else, with seemingly no control over these situations as they were occurring at our soul levels and all because of the ascension process.

Oh, the ascension process….and how it seemingly took away our normal powers of creation and experience, as it took the helm of anything and everything. Normal spiritual practice, such as perhaps believing that we are always right where we need to be and never “going” anywhere, was even hard to integrate into this ascension process of “going somewhere” (even though we “got there” by of course not trying to go there! Are we there yet, are we there yet?), and even allowing the freedom to create whatever we chose as our personal experience was seemingly hindered by the fact that this “whole” created by the ascension process was anything but individual.

Taking all this into account, after many years of finally understanding the process and what it created, we also got used to having our hands tied to some degree. When many of us really “got” what was going on, we then, as loving and devoted spiritual beings, got on board to support our process. In this way, we became used to a very different way of being and living, and it was very much about ascension, as it ruled our roost and dictated our movements. It answered many questions and soothed our confusion, as after all, this process did not remotely fit in with much of what we knew about spiritual practice and creating, or utilizing energy in an individual way. So all in all, our freedoms at lower levels were affected in many, many ways.

Now it is all over. Over, over, over. We are done with the first phase of the ascension process. And being that it did not work anyway in regard to taking the entire planet with us, we are now completely free and clear.

This places us in a very different space than we have ever been in, in this particular lifetime. Up until now, our soul focus was ascension. Even from birth, as we chose challenging paths and dark situations in order to transmute these energies though ourselves, we have been on that ascension road for a very long time. “I always knew I was here for a particular purpose, but I just cannot remember what it is!” was a familiar mantra that many of us had in the beginning stages. Now many of us have come to know and remember that very real purpose.

The earth was created as a place for creating and experiencing. This is the highest level and most pristine purpose of our existence in this universe (and of course, just loving everyone and everything is coming more to the forefront now than ever before). The ascension process came under that umbrella, as we decided to play a game and experience it for something to do before we left the universe for good (we get to experience a very new universe when we are done, so there is never really an “end.”) The plan is really not over yet, as the only real change was that we were not able to take the entire planet with us. So even though we may feel a failure to some degree, as we are all angels at our core and dearly love every living thing on this Earth, we are none-the-less still able to continue on with phase two of the plan…creating the New Earth, and also, assisting those who have newly arrived at the dimensional border. (Those who chose to “cross over,” are very different than those in the other world that we left behind, in regard to requesting assistance with their process. So in this way, our services will still be needed, as they will be asked for and revered.)

So now, here we are in a very new space. So in this way, of course we may be feeling lost, confused, not particularly secure with things, perhaps having an identity crisis, or even wondering where the foundation under our feet has gone. In addition, we are no longer being guided, dictated to, placed (seemingly without our permission) within experiences created by our souls who were creating the ascension process, nor are we in our usual grooves. We are now in wide open territory on a completely blank canvas. We are very free, and it is precisely this freedom that is making many of us uncomfortable.

I remember hearing a story once about a dog who had been on a short chain in his yard for many years. One day he was forever freed to roam, and he just could not handle this new freedom, as it was so very different for him. Inmates who have been imprisoned for a very long time, have a very difficult time when they are released, and many proceed to commit another crime so that they can return to the familiar territory of what they have been accustomed to for so very long. This is all human (or dog!) nature. We are still human beings. We are used to structure. Even the cosmos has structure. Most of us are pretty darned savvy, and certainly are not really in the same space as the examples mentioned above, but our sudden change of internal programming can still take some getting used to, as well as a “soul recovery” process being warranted. So then, we are now in the process of identifying what we want that new structure to look like, and how and what we want to create, along with some of us still requesting a recovery time to simply just hang out and play for awhile. Because of all this sudden change at our soul levels, and because of the ending of a very intense but important phase, many of us are going to feel off balance, empty, and rolling around with no clear sense of direction.

Most recently, the earth moved itself into a very new groove in the cosmos. This created very dramatic surges of pushing energy for awhile, but when this phase was complete, we then felt a very new grounding and settling in. After this movement, things felt calm, serene, like we were home, and that perhaps we could now relax for a time. But we are still aligning in other ways. Even though the earth is now in that new groove or position, she is still “tilting.” This tilting is part of restoring a new balance. The tilting of the earth results then, in feelings of being off-balance from time to time, or even that things are going smoothly, and then they suddenly feel very “off.” This tilting creates an energy of “up, down, up, down.”

Through-out this process of tilting, a settling in or shifting naturally occurs as well. In this way then, the beginning manifestations and feelings resulting from the tilting slowly dissipate over time, as we become more and more settled within our new energetic spaces. This settling in and shifting process will also create and strengthen our new connections to whom and what we will be doing, being, and creating on the New Planet Earth. In this way, in time, we will not be losing our equilibrium so much. With all of these adjustments and new balancing acts going on, it is no wonder that we may experience feelings of no sense of place! But through it all, we will naturally gravitate to where we belong, and to what feels comfortable to each and every one of us.

Currently, there is an energy of fear running through-out, as so many souls are feeling lost and thrown about, with little or no security. When this occurs, strong opinions abound as an attempt to hold onto something. Where we currently are in regard to our energetic status, reminds me of the time during our most recent presidential elections here in the US. There were so many opinions and strong feelings, that it became challenging for me to read my mail. The same is going on now, with a new surge of attacking voices arriving in my boxes, with strong opinions of how things really and truly are, and how and why I am wrong, along with personal attacks and highly inappropriate advice and assessments in regard to the personal information I choose to share (some opinions are loving as well, but they are still most certainly opinions). One correspondence will strongly state one thing on a specific subject, and the very next correspondence will state the complete opposite on that very subject. People are viewing things from their own individual filters of perception.

In Stepping Into the New Reality, I mention much about the filters that each of us sees reality through. Filters are always much more dense than higher levels of being, and opinions are in the same league. Because we are now moving into our new stage of contributing our own unique purpose and stamp to create a new reality, our filters then, are very much in place in regard to who we are and what we are about. Much else within us has been spun off through the ascension process. We only need utilize these filters, or contributions, at appropriate times. And most, most, importantly, these contributions or individual purposes need to fit within a structure or whole and utilized together with others, if we are to successfully create a very new reality. Right now, with the fear creating a strong hold for so many, this has yet to occur, but it is just a phase we are going through, and it will pass if we are the wise souls that I believe we truly are. But know as well, that there are also many of you who are very content right now being in the eye of the storm and simply floating right where you are. Our choices and experiences are vast and different, all creating a beautiful and amazing mosaic of a perfectly orchestrated energy grid.

So now, we are in the space of no space, and also experiencing the ups and downs created by the tilting of the earth. It reminds me of an individual I know who recently ended her marriage, and is now in that space where her “new” has not yet arrived. Moving out of her marriage was a great step for her, in order to allow her to move forward. But she tells me that she has to continually be vigilant about staying out of the old, as she and her husband are very good friends now, and it can be easy to for her to fall back into that old groove.

Do we go back into the old, while we are still in the space of no space? Is that what we need to do in order to feel good? The discomfort many of us are feeling, stems from the fact that we are out of the old, but not yet into the new. We are still in the no space as things are still settling in and shifting.

We are indeed the rightful creators of the New Planet Earth. If we do indeed have new roles, being the rightful creators of the new Planet Earth are these new roles. There are no rules, guidelines, or frameworks yet in place that we had begun to become used to with the ascension process. I was telling a friend the other day, that this is like December 25^th arriving, only we just found out that there is no more Christmas, that there never was, and we now get to create something very new and different to take its place, or maybe not even create anything at all. We get to go to the highest heights of our imaginations and create whatever makes our hearts sing.

The palette is blank and empty. We have evolved enough, that we need no guidance to create on this palette. We are now our prior guides. We are holding so much light now, that we can trust that we will create something magnificent and wonderful, something that fits each of us to a tee, and know as well, that it will absolutely come about. We can utilize our own guidance, as we now have carte blanch and the free will to make it happen. If we created the ascension process, then we can also create something new and different. We are such powerful creators, that we even knew enough to change the ascension plan and tweak it a little, as it was not working like we had hoped and intended. We are indeed very powerful, and we are indeed at the helm. Perhaps we just need to restore our confidence, as the change of ascension plan that occurred in September threw us a bit off balance. But again, we knew enough to save ourselves, and we knew enough to continue on with the original next phase, if even with a fewer amount of souls on board.

I believe that some of us are still stuck in old spiritual practice, and also, still a bit in our old molds from the ascension process. New spiritual practice is all about being happy, joyful, and peaceful, under the new umbrella of creation and experience (now that the first level of ascension is over)….meaning that these feelings and emotions can be experienced and created in a vast array of scenarios, all depending upon who we are and the filters that we run our energy through. There is absolutely no right or wrong. In this way, there will be many, many variations present and at many differing levels of vibration.

In addition, another new and important role is coming to the forefront as well (I guess I wouldn’t exactly call it a “role”). With so much change and up and down energy now present, which can really hit us hard, we very naturally crave the feel good energy of love. With so much going on at times, it does not even matter what groove anyone is in, where we are in any so-called plan, or even what things are looking like. Above all of this is the energy of love, and this connects us no matter who, what, or where any particular situation is. As someone recently told me, love is the simplified version of our true purpose, and indeed it is.

This pronounced experience of giving and receiving love is really going to take over now as never before, as we have evolved to a much higher vibrating state of being. So even though things may get rocky, feel dark one day and light the next, and make us feel bi-polar at times, the love energy always serves to keep us steady, as it can never be affected. This is indeed the energy that over-rides all else. It does not really matter then, what our individual purpose is, or how we can help another, when all we really need do is simply love each other. We will find in times to come, that extreme feelings and actions of love and caring will emit from us like never before, and for me, this is when I indeed feel the best and in the most alignment of all. The energy of love will come to the fore-front like never before in times to come. This is indeed an integral part of our new space.

The umbrella energies then: Experiencing, creating, and loving.

All said, in some strange ways, we are still recovering from the ascension process. We are now very slowly and surely, undoing some of its effects in regard to trust, confusion, guidance, confidence, and most importantly, owning our new power once again. We need to restore our true and rightful power and feel good once again. We need to recover our dignity and grace, as the ascension process really socked it to us (not only with the change of plan, but with the past two to three years placing us in darker and more challenging spaces than we had been in for quite some time). We need to allow ourselves the precious time to allow this to happen…to align once again with our true and authentic selves before we begin creating the New World and before we begin assisting others who are on the dimensional border, attempting to arrive where we now are.

We need to come to realize that this is a new era now. We are now in a very new space of freely creating once again, and none of our new creations have to do with the ascension plan and its seemingly strange and confining rules. We can have positive and enlightening visions once again, and we can know that this time, they will indeed come about. And for our brothers and sisters, or others who have crossed over and are just beginning their process of awakening, aligning and ascending, we can offer them great love and caring, as this alone will be a purpose we will embody like never before as we lovingly watch and allow them their experience.

With much love and gratitude

Karen Bishop

www.EmergingEarthAngels.com

This is a post from Karen Bishop at www.EmergingEarthAngels.com.  I have been following Karen for about 3 years now and she has always been spot on with regards to where the energies of the universe are moving and how we are all coping with our new planet earth.  I loved this recent post that I received yesterday.  I totally identified with exactly what she was talking about because I am there.  Staying true to oneself is incredibly powerful and life changing.  You really will start to see massive changes appear in your life when you speak from your truth, connect to what it is YOU are wanting to create in life and when you start to become still within.  Honestly, when you start doing the work within, the world without looks completely different – it’s WONDERFUL….please read Karen’s post, I would love to hear whether you relate to what she is saying here :

This week we moved into the next phase of creating our heaven on earth, and I had to chuckle, as it manifested in some very strange and interesting ways. A bit bewildered at first, and then a little ticked off by the sudden change in energy, after realizing what was occurring, I could only indeed begin to laugh. I knew with certainty that we were creating this latest energy all by ourselves, but for awhile, I was none too sure why in the world we would be doing what we were doing!

Over the week-end of November 28^th and 29^th, more new and higher vibrating energy arrived for us. It could be felt as the now familiar leg and foot pain (as we are still grounding into the new Earth), lower back pain, sinus headaches or face pain, a giddiness (I could not stop laughing), perhaps feeling drunk or lightheaded, flu symptoms, and a need to nap or sleep.

Immediately after, it may have been difficult to sleep, and some tenseness or tightness soon arrived. As we prepare to create a new heaven on Earth, we also begin living and being in the higher vibrations. In this way, even though we may not be aware of it, we are creating more easily now. And as always, we create the fastest simply though the beliefs that we embody within ourselves.

So then, we moved into a new space, knew at our soul levels or higher self levels that it was time to begin having the life of our dreams, and thus, we moved into a new “take charge of our lives” space. We were beginning the stage of owning our power, so in some ways, we may have felt more powerful, more assertive, in command of our space, and now most certainly, owning the position of “the director” of our new reality and new lives.

The amusing and perhaps confusing part came as a result of our sudden “live our own reality” stance. Being that each and every one of us sees things through our own particular filters or perceptions of reality, or rather our particular gift or contribution to the whole, this is what we grabbed onto and infused a lot of our energy into.

So then, we may have had interactions with others who simply did not hear us, or we may not have heard others, or we may not have agreed or remotely understood where others were coming from. It was if everyone was living in their own bubble of reality, as each of us very suddenly grabbed onto our piece or perception, and held so tightly that we did not then interact or connect to the differing energies that were around us.

What happened was that we moved into the new space of creating our own reality…the reality of our dreams…and we infused so much energy into it, as this new space had newly arrived…that we became “over-done” with the whole thing. Too much of a good thing, so to speak. And in this way, this new situation may have felt like darkness to some degree, as we may have thought we had seen things that were not really even occurring, or even manifested things from our fears or accustomed experiences from the past. In addition, separation can always feel like darkness, and being that we were separate from each other during this time because we were adamant in our own filters or contributions, things felt very strange indeed. Up down, up down…this process has not been smooth sailing for awhile now!

(But there is yet another aspect to any feelings of darkness as well. As we finally begin taking our destined places as the stewards of the earth, and as we thus anchor in and ground more fully, we are naturally releasing any darker or denser energies that lie deep within the earth. These energies are not within us, but within the earth, and they are very old. In this way then, as they rise like a quiet cloud and begin to lift up and out, we may indeed feel them passing.)

So then, we experienced the actualities of our own particular mind-sets. In other words, we created what we believed to be true. I was having lunch at a local eatery today, and the “owner/cook” and I began to chat. He had asked what I did for a living, and I told him that I was a spiritual writer. He then proceeded to tell me that he was pretty good at telling people what their astrological signs were, as he could read their energy. He said I was a Libra or Aries (I am a Taurus). “Hmmmm…” I replied. He then asked me where I grew up. “Southern California,” I told him. He said I did indeed hold the energy of someone who loved the beach (I rarely went to the beach in all my years living there as it was far away!). He was seeing from his own particular box.

My next stop was at a new bank, as I needed to open a new account (one that would accept the foreign currency that some of you so lovingly send my way). I was thinking on the way, “I would sure love to interact with some different energies that indeed see me today.” As I proceeded with the new accounts representative, she took an amazingly long period of time getting to know me. She even took notes about my pets, any new activities coming up for me, how I felt about banks,  and how many grandchildren I have! “Do you always get to know your patrons so well?” I asked her. Her attentiveness to me was extraordinary. I had also been thinking earlier on, about becoming involved with horses again. “Guess what?” this unusually loving and friendly woman told me excitedly after we were done. “For opening a new account with us today, we are gifting you with a stuffed horse!”  Experiencing the actualities of our mindsets.

In addition, because of seeing things through our own particular filters, we may find that we are saying to each other, ”No, this is occurring because of this reason,” while another will say, “No, it is indeed occurring for this reason.” In this way, we may find that we strangely clash with others, or even that they are ignoring us, who we are, or what we are trying to tell them. We may seem to be stuck in our own boxes of individual reality now, as this new energy encourages us to claim our power and hold true to whom we are and what we are all about. These are manifestations of our power returning.

The experience of darkness can occur in regard to this new phase, when we encounter an energy that is holding very firm to a lower vibrating perception or way of running his/her energy. This creates that now all familiar clash of energies resulting from an energy which vibrates quickly, coming into contact with one that vibrates much slower. So even though we are in the new world now, and have left another world far behind, there are still many levels or rungs in this new world, allowing for variances in beliefs and perceptions.

As we are now entering the new field of finally beginning to create once again, I would like to address something that is since past, but that may also be affecting some of us still. Personally, I feel that this situation ran so deep for many of us, that it needs to be acknowledged once again.

When we experienced the “failure” of the original ascension plan, and when things seemed to be going awry for so long, it really hit us at our soul levels. Many of us had arrived on this planet for the sole (soul) purpose of hatching and experiencing the ascension plan, or rather assisting the planet in raising her vibration so that we could start all over once again, and then be reborn into a very new universe after we restored this one.

Anything existing at our soul levels runs deep. Very deep indeed. Soul level anything comes from the core of our being and existence, and always overrides any other form of creation. We had gone along for a very long time, with this plan embedded deep within our hearts. We had made decisions in our lives, all the while knowing and expecting that things would turn out a certain and specific way. Thus, we trusted with every fiber of our being that things were in divine and perfect order. We were wired for this outcome and gave it our all, from the moment of our birth. We never imagined that things would turn out as they did.

For many of us, we are still stunned by the outcome. We have not completely adjusted quite yet. We are still in shock and reeling from the separation of the worlds, and from the change in a plan that we were so certain would succeed. After all, we came from everywhere in the cosmos, with much representation, and most of us are old souls who have been around for eons of time. We are masters and old sages at creating and experiencing, and add to this the massive amount of souls who participated, and failure was thus not even a consideration.

So then, we went along trusting and knowing that our spiritual guidance would keep us on track, and produce an outcome that we expected. Some of you who have been my readers for a while, may remember that I had a brief first marriage a few years back. I was specifically told how and what would occur, even though I originally had doubts. My guides were adamant, and as things progressed in the beginning, they proved to be true. As most of you know, it did not last. I was then told by my guides that they had “miscalculated.”  Although I never commented about it in my writings, as I wanted to respect the privacy of my partner, this experience rocked my trust in my spiritual guidance, and it took me awhile to come back and to get back on my horse. This explanation is the same for much of everything that occurred in the past two to three years, and of course in regard to the ascension plan. At our soul levels, we “miscalculated.” Thus, the seemingly broken promises and outcomes that had eventually quit making sense.

I share with you this story, as I know that so many of you experienced the same. We did what we simply “knew” was right, and then the outcomes we expected with every fiber of our being, did not occur.  So now, here we are at a very new turn in the road…at a very new beginning. In this way, we may still feel hesitant to jump in once again, to begin to desire, to begin creating, and to trust that things will turn out differently this time. For the past two to three years, many of us have only known darkness, pain, getting punched around, having much of everything seemingly go wrong, and “waiting.”

Being that we are now experiencing the actualities of our mindsets, and being that we may still feel negative, cynical, and most certainly in a rut or habit of having unpleasant experiences (as that is all we have known for a few years), we now know that we may want to be mindful of what we are expecting to occur. So then, as we are now creating once again, what we expect is what we are now creating. If we can be gentle with ourselves, if we can learn to trust again, if we can know that we are again owning our power like never before, and if we can most importantly come together with our brothers and sisters to ensure a magnificent creating experience, I believe we can indeed find our new heaven on Earth.

So what has most recently occurred this week, is that we are gearing up for creating once again, but grabbing on so tightly, that we are in danger of creating in a box, without consideration and interaction with those around us. In time this will subside. We cannot create the new in this new reality, unless we unite with our brothers and sisters and combine our energies and talents.

In regard to the separation of the worlds, some of us also had great changes in outcomes in regard to whom we would end up with, and even where we would be residing or how things would look for us. We ultimately had predestined partners for this phase of the plan. The phase where we finally found ourselves in the promised land, or in our heaven on Earth. But being that the plan created some outcomes that were miscalculated, who our partners were to be, may have changed as well. Like musical chairs, we are now lining up with new and different things and with new and different individuals, all dependent upon who landed on this new and other side. The plan changed due to the fact that we all have free will. So then, some of our predestined partners did not cross over with us, as they chose to remain stuck, they were damaged or too overloaded by the challenges the ascension process created, or they did not grow or expand as they had planned.

In this way, we were then given very new “ultimate” partners. These new partners or connections are still very intense and very heartfelt nonetheless. But being that so much changed at the very last moment, or the moment of the final separation of the worlds, some souls literally jumped across the chasm at the very last moment. They grabbed on for dear life, and now, they have a lot of catching up to do. These souls are currently living on the dimensional border, and far from our reaches, but in time, we will unite with them it complete totality….in two years, or rather in 2012. Because they crossed over at the very last moment, many of them must still complete their soul scripts before they are free to experience their heaven on Earth and to then join us in all ways.

As the earth is now in her rightful place in the cosmos, we are also in our rightful places as well. So even though there has been so much change and restructuring, and great movement due to all the sudden changes, things are indeed lining up, if even in new and different ways. Our new and rightful partners will open our hearts once again. They hold the keys that only they can hold for us. And as they reach within the very fiber of our hearts, we will experience a joy, an excitement, a relief, and a gratitude that is near impossible to describe.

So now we are creating from our hearts. We are following the path of our hearts, if even it does not make sense. We can know with complete certainty, that if we allow our hearts to guide us and lead the way, we will ultimately experience our heaven on Earth in times to come.

With much love and gratitude,

Karen Bishop

www.emergingearthangels.com

In an awake and deliberately so-designed relationship, there lies the greatest opportunity for evolutionary leaps.  It is however, rigorous and demanding work to find the Self, especially in the mirror presented by the Lover.  The true Self got lost way back in the past when it was not honoured – or worse – deliberately defiled.  To go back and find it means facing all that stored pain again (something most of us have variously avoided all our lives).  Given that the Lover relationship is actually designed to bring that unconscious pain to our conscious attention, it takes guts to retain total self-responsibility and clarity and not blame the Lover.  And a lot of stamina to hold clear and steady as waves of pain it, APPARENTLY generated and directed at us by the Lover.

In an intimate relationship, ALL pain comes from trying to make the Lover do for us and to us what Mummy and Daddy failed to do, or from trying to enlist them to help us stop what Mummy and Daddy persistently did do.  The problem here is that whilst a kind and generous person might be willing to play out this rescue/pseudo-parent role for a brief time (often the Falling in Love period), no soul/being will “save” another soul/being.  Each being’s path is defined by his/her pain.  Their pain is their karma.  It is why they are here to DO, to learn about, to understand…sooner or later, the supporting person must step back and allow the suffering one to experience his/her pain and thereby uncover and heal a long-open wound.  THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN HEAL YOUR PAST PAIN IS YOU!

The purpose of therapeutic work is to outline some useful models for finding your way back, for finding the lost and damaged children, and for finding the salve of love – YOUR love, from you to you – which is the ONLY cure for the pain that won’t stop.  A Lover could help you with adoration and care, and somewhere, there will still be a nagging emptiness, a feeling they should be doing something more.  And for any minor or major deprivation you feel is occurring in their interaction with you, you will be tempted to hate them.  This is what typically happens in most relationships because most people don’t know that the purpose of an intimate partnership is to REVEAL your pain, NOT TO HEAL your pain.  ONLY YOU CAN DO THAT.

If neither party comprehends what the partnership is REALLY doing, then resentment rises.  Each of the sufferers feel abandoned, vulnerable and betrayed (as they essentially were as children) and the relationship is over.  It may subsequently drag on for years being a relationship, but each of the desperate, hopeful partners internally has now realised that THIS lover is not THE ONE – the one who will rescue, and stop the pain.  The wise, health-oriented psyche keeps setting our lovers up to reveal our pain, but all the while the trapped (unresolved) children keep fantasizing that these kind, interested grown-ups are actually there to SAVE US from the same.

Unless each partner appreciates that even the purest of intentions, this is what they keep doing to each other, the relationship will ultimately become a festering wound of unforgiveable disappointments.

A truly loving soul in a committed relationship with another is not in the business of attachment and enchantment, but rather in the business of separation and DIS-illusionment.  The Lover is the mirror, the most immediate way to see the real SELF.  This means first of all seeing the ‘unlooked at’, the hidden: the damage and the shame.  It takes a courageous human to keep looking at that horror and not want to smash the mirror.  Even more distressingly revealing than the mirror, your Lover holds for you will be the mirror your children hold for you.  Which is why so many abused people go on to abuse their children….

….to be continued….

If we have an incomplete (and by implication, negative) experience of ourselves as children, we live the rest of our lives trying to rectify that.  This deeply unconscious process is most apparent in our ‘partner’ relationship, because it is in romance that we strive to re-create the closeness and intensity of our first great love affair – the parental bond.  In our increasingly fragmented, depersonalised and alienating contemporary western society, we have taken to extremes the “significant other” role, and then played it out in the isolation and concentration of our primary relationships and the nuclear family.

Within the adult LOVE connection – as mythologised over the past few hundred years – we have been exhorted to seek that elusive experience of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, which can only truly occur between parent and child, as anyone with children will attest.  Absolute love is what IDEAL child/parent relationships are doing.  A blessed person who has been loved absolutely in childhood will go on gently, undramatically, comfortably (and usually permanently) to generate a MATURE LOVE for another adult based on respect and tolerance.  They will pour out unconditional love onto their offspring because their offspring are what the adult connection is devoted to.  In a proper, natural society, children count more than the lover relationship per se – because offspring are LIFE, are the future of the species.

The only real chance you had to feel loved absolutely was when you were a child.  If that was not your experience, then tragically you have missed out forever.  If you explore the pain of this loss, and you work towards healing it, then your relationship with your children will be so clean that you will receive that type of love again, because that’s how young children instinctively love, until society (and screwed parents) start in on them…But you will NEVER consistently receive that type of love from your lover.

Two adults themselves as separate beings, like overlapping circles, neither alienated nor enmeshed, precious in their childhoods, and so are no longer driven to find someone to whom they can entrust themselves absolutely.  The desperate drive to totally entrust to another once past childhood is can be called co-dependence and is dysfunctional.

Self-raised adults have relationships based on interdependence.  All primates are group dwellers and interdependent.  The tribe is the ultimate expression of interdependence.  Modern society is the ultimate expression of something trying fruitlessly to act like it is not interdependent.  And for generations, this alienating society has produced hungry, pained children on the inside who look like grown-ups on the outside spending their lives lurching from one co-dependent relationship to another.  The lover and love relationship have become the false source of belated safety and absolute care that should have been felt during those years you knew your life literally depended on getting it.

In a society that has increasingly abandoned its responsibility to the young and the vulnerable (the honouring of which used to bring the greatest emotional rewards), a curious compensatory, distracting focus has developed.  It is almost although, after generations of impoverished parental love, the unconscious mind of society has desperately turned to another possibility, another source through which to seek for that ultimate love experience.  We have been encouraged to believe at a cultural level that LOVE and the Lover are there to complete us, to guarantee us security, to bring us happiness – all unnecessary requirements of living in a tribal community totally committed to its children and the life force embodied within them.  However, as negative and destructive as our present situation sounds, Nature makes no mistakes and tolerates no waste.  The stress and perturbation of Alienation vs Enmeshment seems to be the catalyst for the emergence of complete, consciously integrated beings, and thereby is probably, in the great scheme of things, a required evolutionary shift.  If you have reached the point where you are driven to resolve your internal dilemma, then you are evolving.

I put on my Facebook profile a question yesterday … what does love mean to you?   It made me think of love in terms of our closest relationship, that with our beloved.  These were the responses and thank you so much to everyone who did respond xx

Q. What does LOVE mean to you?

A. A feeling of belonging; contentment; it leaves you speachless and the feeling of completness; butterflies in my tummy; everything; finding the piece to my puzzle – and I did; being for others; feelings emotions and acceptance; love is everything.

In terms of a romantic partnership, it is so nice to have a human friend who holds you as their object of attention and adores you right into your connection. However as Abraham-Hicks would share, there is an experience greater than this and it is independence.  How about we say to our lovers, “I love you, but I don’t live for you.  Because Source Energy flows through me. You are a catalyst to my well-being, but you are not essential to my well-being. Because I’ve got that figured out on my own. I have reached for thoughts that give me relief and I have relieved myself all the way into my full connection of who I really am. And now we can just dance and play together.”

Can you feel how you take them off the hook?  In other words, do you know how many lovers would flock to you if they knew that you would allow them to be as they are and you would not hold them responsible for your happiness.  That’s what everyone wants.

There is so much bondage in believing that our happiness depends on another.  It’s an impossible task to be what others want us to be!

The greatest gift you can give anyone is to be happy.  The greatest gift you can give to any partner, past, present or future is to be so connected with who you truly are that they are irrelevant to your connection. And when they are irrelevant to your connection, then you are going to have a really good time together.

This my friends is the way to true happiness within a relationship – it’s not what most of us have been bought up to believe.  I know seeing my parents interact that it certainly was not the case.  I grew up with some very screwy ideas on how relationships should be – I saw a tug of war and it’s all very hard and no one can be happy in relationships because it’s a power struggle and a hole host of warped ideas.  I now know that unless we are whole and complete within ourselves, unless we look inside ourselves for our own sense of self and happiness that we are very capable of giving ourselves, we will be forever in battle with the ones closest to us.

I would love some comments on this one!!!