We live in a troubled world but our own pure, pristine presence is not troubled at all.

It is your own authentic self and it is exactly the same now as it was five years ago or 50 years ago – unchanged and untroubled by any of the external events of your life.

I have a picture of myself when I was about a year old in my mother’s arms. She is smiling proudly, a beautiful young woman for sure. And in her arms is this adorable little child — I admit it — face and eyes filled with joy as I beam ecstatically at the world around me.

I realized, as I looked at the picture just now, that fundamentally who I was 78 years ago is who I am now and exactly the same is true for all of us. Try it, if you like. Take out an old picture of yourself and look at it for a moment. The form has changed, of course. But as you look at the picture for just a moment don’t you get a fleeting sense that “You” have not changed at all?

Difficult feelings are like a Colorado thunderstorm

I find – particularly in recent months — that as I deliberately slow down every now and again and listen to the presence of what is timeless in myself a remarkable joy fills me. Difficult feelings such as fear or restlessness still arise, but they don’t last. They’re like the thunderstorms I’ve become used to since moving to Colorado.

Denver is on the front range of the Rocky Mountains and our thunderstorms usually roll in on a nice summer afternoon from the mountains. But here’s the thing. With all their noise and bluster, their thundering and rain, they often only last 15 minutes or the like – and the sunshine that is endemic in this part of the country shines again as if nothing had happened.  Sometimes it’s even shining in the middle of a storm:-)

John Sherman, founder of a nonprofit group called the River Ganga Foundation, in Ojai, California, describes this process of connecting with our authentic self so well in his great little book, Look at Yourself:

Making contact with the reality of your nature

Writes Sherman: “Right now, in this moment, just look at yourself briefly with your mind’s eye. See if it is not possible, even as you are reading this, to catch just a glimpse out of the corner of your eye of the feeling of you, the you-ness of you, the profound and primal ordinariness of you. See how certain, how literally unquestionable it is that you are here, and how that presence of you here is certain in a way nothing else could ever be.

“If you do this once knowingly, you will without fail do it again… and again… and again… And the day will certainly come, without regard to anything else you are doing or not doing, without regard to anything else that is being done or not being done to you, when you will notice that the underlying fear of life is dead — an old and false notion about your nature snuffed out by contact with the reality of your nature.”

Some last words from my wife

My sweet wife, JoAnn, who is a down-to-earth soul, puts all this in a little different way.

“I’ve learned that what works for me, if something negative or troubling comes up in me is to stop and give thanks and focus on something more creative and positive. It was hard to put this into practice in the beginning but I’ve been doing it long enough now to know that it really works. But I have to be very deliberate about it.”

I have to tell you now that whatever JoAnn’s secret is, it sure works. A more caring, even-tempered, loving friend and partner I could never wish to meet.

How about you? How do you deal with difficult feelings? What gives you fulfillment and joy? Please share. I’d love to hear from you.

My love and blessings to you.

Picture credit: Nanda Sunu

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Are you connecting with your authentic self? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

I was thinking about life this morning while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Actually, I wasn’t thinking about it, I was experiencing it. Life as it truly is, endless, boundless, source of all beauty and all form. If I can find the right words, I’ll share my experience with you.

Eckhart Tolle, author of  ground-breaking book, The Power of Now, www.eckharttolle.com, likes to talk about the tremendous benefits that accrue when we stop thinking so much. He’s absolutely right. We discover peace. We discover wisdom. We discover who we truly are.  We discover Heaven in the here and now.

In any case, I had this wonderful experience of deliberately putting thoughts to one side for a little while, something I enjoy doing more and more in my life. I could have thought about something if I had wanted to, but I didn’t want to.

I was still conscious. I was quite alert enough to hear when the receptionist called my name. But for a precious interlude, maybe 20 or 30 minutes, sitting in the large medical clinic with a lot of sick people all around me — I surrendered to bliss. It wasn’t a bliss I had to manufacture somehow. It was a bliss that already existed.

My body and mind and heart were set free to simply commune for a little while with being. My own timeless being. With God, dare I say. With the beauty and glory of life as it truly is.

I can’t think of any greater joy in this world than being consciously aware of the balm of our own being.

Perhaps the frenetic drive we see in the world to experience more and more excitement, more and more sex, more and more pleasure, more and more of something or other, simply reflects the emptiness that is in us. The awful anger, violence, and division are driven by the fact that we do not know ourselves as we truly are.

When we give ourselves the opportunity to be still, there is space for beautiful, creative thoughts to arise, and there is also space to become aware of  useless, repetitive, or negative thoughts when they arise, so that they no longer shape our existence. 

Who said we have to roll over and accept the status quo which the egoic mind of this world and our own egoic mind continually try to force upon us?

Freedom is knocking at your door and my door every moment in these tumultuous days. We have the priceless opportunity while we yet live to discover for ourselves the true nature of life — our own true nature.

We have the opportunity to discover who we truly are beyond name or form. Not the caricature we may have created in our own minds – not the caricature others may have created about us — but an eternal, loving presence beyond words to describe.

We will never understand life intellectually. But we can experience it. We can know it. And when we do experience it, miracles happen.

A little time in Heaven — waiting in a medical clinic is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Introducing a conscious growth workshop that he will be holding in a few months, Steve Pavlina, at www.StevePavlina.com, wrote a number of perceptive, valuable comments, including the following:

“This workshop is for people of above average intelligence. I’m not referring to IQ here. By intelligence I really mean self-awareness.

“Do you have a strong sense of yourself as a conscious human being? Or do you merely go through the motions each day without ever questioning your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Self-aware people tend to be very curious. They ask a lot of questions. They wonder — about their lives, about their potential, and about meaning and purpose.

“I’d rather share this workshop with a group of 20 self-aware people than with 200 average people. I’m not saying that to be derogatory. The simple truth is that the average person hasn’t yet made a serious commitment to personal growth. Most people are still in the unconscious growth stage. They aren’t ready to take full responsibility for their lives. They do attract growth experiences, but they aren’t able to direct the process consciously, so growth is something that happens to them rather than as a result of their conscious intentions. Such people often live in victim mode, blaming external factors for their circumstances.”

I found Steve’s words most interesting and thought provoking. They underline, for me, how there are essentially two very different ways of experiencing life on this planet at this time. Two paths beckon before each one of us. We can live in victim mode, as Steve puts it, with our consciousness primarily oriented in all the limitations and suffering and disintegration occurring in the world and perhaps in our own lives.

Or we can choose to become increasingly aware of and enfolded in and aligned with the serene, timeless perfection that is present with each one of us regardless of background or circumstance.

Oh my. There is so much confusion in our lives, isn’t there? All you have to do is turn on the television, pick up a newspaper, do a bit of surfing on the web, and there it is — one huge ocean of confusion. It can make you sick in a hurry. You don’t have to get on a boat to be seasick. You can get seasick right here on terra firma if you allow yourself to be distracted even for a moment from your own still presence — the place within yourself where sanity and wisdom and true happiness hang out.

Joanne and I have a calendar which we really enjoy, which basically consists of a quote from the Bible along with a picture from nature. The quote for today is this: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14.26).

Yes, they are religious words, and some people may reject them out of hand for that reason without even thinking about them. But I find, as I wend my way through this particular human life, that there is a comforter with me, just as the quote says.

I will never understand the stillness that I feel within myself when I open myself to it, a living presence that does indeed “bring all things to my remembrance.” But the mere fact that I do not understand it does not limit its power or its wisdom or its robust beauty. I can experience it. That’s the point. I can experience it even though I do not understand it.

I think this is what Albert Einstein was getting at when he said: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious — the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

Yes, we can be a victim if we want. It’s pretty easy. I’ve had quite a bit of experience of that particular path. But we also have the choice, as Steve Pavlina so eloquently pointed out, to take full responsibility for ourselves and let our true nature and potential be known and revealed at every level of our experience.

The true comforter is waiting. We can choose, in this very moment, the path of true joy and strength available to us all.

A path of true joy and strength beckons you is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age