Listening inward, listening outward, really hearing, leading to really appreciating, genuine compassion, and integral learning.  ~~~~~~eventually being in harmony within one's self and other beings.

I want to say yes to living my life more congruently with my vision and dreams, to "be" more of who I am and to support others in doing the same.  I say yes to a supportive community that taps into the power of relationships and the organic evolution of cooperative inquiry.  I want to say "yes" more to "what is" and hold it in the light as I dream of "what could be" at that same time.  .........Yes........a dynamic tension of creation in the moment.

For me, the greatest gift I can give someone is to be totally present to who they are and what is happening for them in the moment without judgment.  In such an act, I also have to be totally present within myself to be totally present for them, to be unconditionally AWAKE and loving WHAT IS in the moment!  :)

I think we are all different in how we have experienced the world and how that has molded us into who we are in the moment.  It gives us a different slice of the big picture so to speak.  It is a great thing to celebrate and hold reverence for as it is not normally possible for us to experience everything all at once!  In another respect, I also see the potential for us to all draw similar possibilities from within.  We simply choose to express them in different ways that are meaningful to us.  In that sense, we are all the same at some level and we all are creators of our lives in the moment!  A beautiful aspect of being part of something greater.  So, in that respect, I feel that what separates each of us from others is mostly a level of perception on how we choose to see each other, through our individuality and intentional expression of what we have or the common potentiality of our creativity.

 

Have you ever noticed that the moonbeam over the ocean always ends where you are standing?  I had the luxury of experiencing this tonight as I connected with the very full moon over the bay area in Rhode Island.  It was magnificent.  Imagine light originating from the sun, reflected off the moon's surface and traveling all the way to my eye through the form of a ray in a path leading to my very feet.  The ray seemed to follow me wherever I walked along the shoreline.

The experience opened my senses and reminded me of something that I once heard in a teaching that spoke that the world within us is just a miniature of the world outside of us.  It led me to think of how our state of consciousness or our state of perception, if you will, is related to how we see and what we experience in the world.  At the moment, mine was allowing me to experience a sense of gratefulness for my being in that moment along with a mixture of ALL my emotions at once in the midst of a connection to ALL that was around me:  joy, gratitude, love, anger, frustration, hope, the water, moonlight, moon, swans, other water birds, fish, water, land.....etc...and did I say gratitude  I felt all of these different vibrations at once in total acceptance of them as part of myself and none over powering the other.  Except for gratitude, I was consciously enjoying my connection to gratitude in the moment and that one I allowed to come forth a little stronger again.  I related my experience to the acceptance of all the humanness and "animalness" that I am, in as much open consciousness as I could hang on to in the moment.  How glorious! 

How did I come to such a perceptual state?  Well, I had been struggling with my place in the world for some time now.   I have felt such a sense of purpose for my living my whole life that it has drawn me into a lifestyle and through ventures that the mainstream, rational person may not have sought or risked.  In some ways, it has been a challenge, both socially and financially.  In other ways, I can't imagine going against this sense of purpose that I seem to cling to.  Indeed, the sense of purpose has led to healing some parts of me and those healings have then led to a desire to help others heal the same ailments, and my journey continues.  Is it all a projection of the perception of myself, feeling that I need to create a life that heals others from being cut off from tapping into one's inner sense of being and awareness as well as outer sense of connectedness to Earth as a piece of the larger system and then acting with and being in that new sense of awareness?  Is a fulfilled life simply a figuring out way of being, a skill of tapping into the different aspects of our awareness/consciousness/perceptions, that creates an image of the world existing in complete balance and harmony with all its components and then learning how to stay within that perceptual state for longer and longer periods of time until we no longer have to consciously hold it there?  Until it becomes habitual.....  How simple and yet profound.  If we experience the world as a projection of our own state of being, then perhaps, shifting our own state of being (sometimes no small feat) is the answer to the state of the world.  In that moment, in the presence of the moonlight, I was able to tap into a sense of awareness that helps motivate me to keep practicing so my body-mind-spirit can thrive in a fuller sense of consciousness again and again.  The meaning I created in the moment supported my sense of purpose.  I am no different than any other human that is creating meaning in the moment to support my purpose.  And the image of the world that I'm creating through the projection of my perceptons/consciousness in the moment feels so right!