Friday, November 6, 2015
Imagination
"...A wayfinder's Imagination doesn't dominate reality. It feels into Oneness, falls in love with "what wants to happen," and gives itself to the vision created by that love..." -- Martha Beck
The Vast Unknown: The Self
"...a deeper solution: the reclamation of each person's calm, present, vastly resourceful true nature. As the poet David Whyte wrote, "What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make enough plans..." -- Martha Beck
Our true nature, that inner Self, is the vast unknown for each of us. Growing up, we quickly learned to look to the outside for guidance on how to live our lives. We pattern our lives through society's models of parental love, romantic love, work, productivity, religion, tradition -- without really being aware of this vast unknown, the Self. The pull to fit in and to notice what others are doing are so strong. There are so many temptations in what we hear and see, and so we forget to pause and check in with our internal musings. There is a true Self that lives "inside," which contains our dreams, desires, aspirations, passion -- that only we can know. Sometimes we tell others, "You don't even know me." But we tend to ask for validation from them, and with all our hearts, we believe in the truth that "society" teaches. But the truth about yourself has nothing to do with this world. It has all to do with only you and your true nature. Listen to that inner voice. Pay attention. Give life to it. Dare to live the life according to you, not according to the love and acceptance of others -- not according to society's model of love and success.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Work, Work, Work
"...All of us have been taught to make things happen in the physical world. We know what it takes: setting goals, rolling up our sleeves, putting pleasure aside, and working, working, working, working. Then it helps if we work harder. Often we need others to help us work, so we must work to find them and work to motivate them with physical rewards (food, money, companionship, approval) and/or physical punishment (pink slips, prison, breakups, criticism). All of this is hard. It demands much time and effort from both the body and the calculating mind. As Genesis reminds us, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was though taken: for dust thou are, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Well, yes, but...We now live in a world where a great deal of value is created with pure information rather than physical matter..."
--by Martha Beck, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World
Grasping
"...It's the emotional quality of gripping, clutching, and needing that bespeaks an underlying expectation of loss and deprivation, and causes us to create nightmares in the world of Form. Desire without grasping is joyful and playful. Hunger makes food more satisfying. It's forcing ourselves to deny our hunger that will eventually make us ravenous and insatiable. Without attachment we can receive the messages from the Energy Internet that tell us our needs will be met. With that as our expectation, our actions bring wonderful abundance into the world of Form..."
--by Martha Beck, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World
Friday, September 25, 2015
Your Higher Purpose
Excerpt from Finding Your Way in a Wild New World by Martha Beck:
"...Usually they end up describing the same ultimate purpose as Alonzo's, something like "I want to live as long as possible, provide for my family, and be comfortable.
...This is a beautiful articulation of the ultimate purpose locked into the evolutionary programming of every living creature: algae, tapeworms, even politicians. Countless humans have put every ounce of their puzzle-cracking skill into living long and comfortably. As a result, today a record number of humans are living long, well-fed, comparatively luxurious lives. Yet many of us spend our time and money taking more antidepressants to boost the effectiveness of our current antidepressants. We have what every living being is programmed to want -- enough food and shelter to survive and reproduce -- but it doesn't fulfill all the needs of our true nature..."
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Playing Works
According to Martha Beck:
"...So despite our pathetically infantile teeth, claws, skeletons, and musculature, we dominate other species the way Peter Pan dominated Captain Hook: simply by refusing to grow up. We've proliferated and thrived because we never stop playing, and the way to cope with the increasing complexity of the wild new world is to play more. Yet most of us adult humans tell ourselves that playing is "leisure time" activity, not to be confused with "productive work" nor taken to excess. This will have to change as we adopt a new, Earth-healing consciousness. In fact I think we'd be far better off if we did virtually nothing but play. When I train coaches, I suggest that they eliminate the word "work" from their vocabulary and substitute "play" instead. What I'm doing now is wordplay. I try to play hard, and sometimes I play long hours. Some people would say I play too much, but what can I say -- it plays for me..."
-- from Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, by Martha Beck
"...So despite our pathetically infantile teeth, claws, skeletons, and musculature, we dominate other species the way Peter Pan dominated Captain Hook: simply by refusing to grow up. We've proliferated and thrived because we never stop playing, and the way to cope with the increasing complexity of the wild new world is to play more. Yet most of us adult humans tell ourselves that playing is "leisure time" activity, not to be confused with "productive work" nor taken to excess. This will have to change as we adopt a new, Earth-healing consciousness. In fact I think we'd be far better off if we did virtually nothing but play. When I train coaches, I suggest that they eliminate the word "work" from their vocabulary and substitute "play" instead. What I'm doing now is wordplay. I try to play hard, and sometimes I play long hours. Some people would say I play too much, but what can I say -- it plays for me..."
-- from Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, by Martha Beck
Monday, September 14, 2015
The Ancient Way of Healing
I've been reading this book called Finding Your Way in a Wild New World written by Martha Beck, the ultimate life coach.
She writes:
"...I also knew that the true nature of humans -- indeed true nature broadly defined -- has always been limited by survival pressures, including those the sociologist Max Weber called the "iron cage" of rationalization. As long as people keep making money by rational means, Weber wrote, society's iron cages will keep imprisoning them, obliterating their desires and differences, turning human workers into mere components of the great financial machine of society...
...The fluidity of our civilization is creating the opportunity. The means you'll use to realize your "right life" may not be as obvious. I believe they must come from ancient traditions, created and used by wise healers in many different cultures and places. These ways of mending were developed to fix any precious, complex, broken thing. Our culture, while zooming far past previous societies in its ability to manipulate the physical world, has lost or deliberately discarded these ways of repairing what is broken in people and in the world..."
Try out this concept by Martha Beck. Go to Youtube and look for videos about ancient/aboriginal cultures that still practice their way of life from a long long time ago -- whether they are singing or dancing or performing some kind of drumming ceremony, for instance. Your brain has memories of the past, even way back to the time of the dinosaurs. It's in your DNA. You can ask them for help, for healing. Go to the American Museum of Natural History and meditate on the dinosaurs and images of former tribes. You can look for images of ancient China for example, and just be quiet for a few minutes. Your heart will recognize the images that go back in time, lodged in your brain for thousands of years. You are in essence accessing the ancient way of healing. Back then, humans had the capacity to heal without medication, and their wisdom was based on the healing powers of plants, animals and the sun and the stars. They practiced oneness with the universe and believed in the collective consciousness of humans. They were very connected with their environment; and the plants, animals and planets were sacred to them. Their relationship with earth was very respectful, whereas modern society is based on humans competing with each other and doing everything in the name of money without regard for nature and the well-being of others. The balance between nature and humans has been disrupted in epic proportion. And humans, like us, feel that destruction within us, because we are not meant to live the way we do today. So it is our goal to go back in time, internally, and ask for help.
Don't worry. The goal is not to totally give up the present, but merely to balance the imbalance. In fact, cross-pollenation of the past and the present is what creates magic. Dig up old photos of your grandmother or great grandmother when she was still young and use it as a book mark while reading Forbes magazine, and notice how it rearranges your brain.
Happy experimenting!
She writes:
"...I also knew that the true nature of humans -- indeed true nature broadly defined -- has always been limited by survival pressures, including those the sociologist Max Weber called the "iron cage" of rationalization. As long as people keep making money by rational means, Weber wrote, society's iron cages will keep imprisoning them, obliterating their desires and differences, turning human workers into mere components of the great financial machine of society...
...The fluidity of our civilization is creating the opportunity. The means you'll use to realize your "right life" may not be as obvious. I believe they must come from ancient traditions, created and used by wise healers in many different cultures and places. These ways of mending were developed to fix any precious, complex, broken thing. Our culture, while zooming far past previous societies in its ability to manipulate the physical world, has lost or deliberately discarded these ways of repairing what is broken in people and in the world..."
Try out this concept by Martha Beck. Go to Youtube and look for videos about ancient/aboriginal cultures that still practice their way of life from a long long time ago -- whether they are singing or dancing or performing some kind of drumming ceremony, for instance. Your brain has memories of the past, even way back to the time of the dinosaurs. It's in your DNA. You can ask them for help, for healing. Go to the American Museum of Natural History and meditate on the dinosaurs and images of former tribes. You can look for images of ancient China for example, and just be quiet for a few minutes. Your heart will recognize the images that go back in time, lodged in your brain for thousands of years. You are in essence accessing the ancient way of healing. Back then, humans had the capacity to heal without medication, and their wisdom was based on the healing powers of plants, animals and the sun and the stars. They practiced oneness with the universe and believed in the collective consciousness of humans. They were very connected with their environment; and the plants, animals and planets were sacred to them. Their relationship with earth was very respectful, whereas modern society is based on humans competing with each other and doing everything in the name of money without regard for nature and the well-being of others. The balance between nature and humans has been disrupted in epic proportion. And humans, like us, feel that destruction within us, because we are not meant to live the way we do today. So it is our goal to go back in time, internally, and ask for help.
Don't worry. The goal is not to totally give up the present, but merely to balance the imbalance. In fact, cross-pollenation of the past and the present is what creates magic. Dig up old photos of your grandmother or great grandmother when she was still young and use it as a book mark while reading Forbes magazine, and notice how it rearranges your brain.
Happy experimenting!
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