That Bias Against Not Knowing

 

If you've lived long enough, there is a deeply transformative event that has probably happened to you. I call it "breaking open". It's when your worst fears, your deepest separations, and the destruction of your most cherished beliefs, lead you to such a deep despair, you begin to question everything you knew to be true. You realize you just don't have ANY answers--you have NOTHING to offer, and a survey of your life reveals no value whatsoever.

The first time this happened to me, I was in a difficult marriage riding alongside an existential mid-life crisis. I didn't know what to believe anymore. I didn't believe IN anything--certainly not myself. I felt like there was no "me" there anymore. What finally returned me to a functional ego was a book by Dr. Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul. In it I found a sort of spiritual rock to cling on to while I rode out the existential storms of my life. In time, I found comfort in the embracing of that dark night, as it revealed to me the depth of my feelings, the breadth of my not knowing, and the cosmic panorama of who or what I might be.

The second visit to the dark end of the street, was the loss of my partner. Her death broke open my heart, where I could see all the ways and hidden recesses of my resistance to loving, and the terrible regret I now had that I never truly shared myself with her. It hit me much harder than I had expected, or I should say her death was not what hit me so much as the realization that I never let myself love her the way she loved me. The further shock was seeing how I lied about it, and denied my own heart. Why was I seeing this NOW after she's gone! I cried, I writhed in the remorse, and I went deep into the grief of how I had lost my own heart.

These two journeys laid me out spiritually, prostrate on the rocky shore of the threshold to divine communion--a kind of ego destruction where nothing is important, and yet it all seems to have impact.

What got me reminiscing about these adventures was a talk by Miranda MacPherson called, "Ego Relaxation". She describes her own "breaking open" of her spiritual practice that reduced her to an extreme state of not knowing. Not knowing who or what she was, not knowing if she had anything to offer the world, or herself.

She finally came to an awareness that these profound states of not knowing are also part of who we are. And, in fact, are a gateway to our own divinity. As corporeal beings living in this dualistic world of opposites, we form biases in favor of knowing. We avoid and fight our own ignorance, and take definitive steps to transform our ignorance into knowledge. Culturally, not knowing has negative consequences, and is all twisted up with trust issues and existential security.

We diligently seek "answers" when we don't know something, and mistakenly carry over that habit into our spiritual life where there is a whole other thing going on. We get confused between ego knowing and the awareness of self.

The ego says it knows what and who we are--it knows what we've done and why. It knows what love is, and is certain about its own potentials and purposes. These are all ego constructs, and they are the solid basis upon which we build our sense of what is real, and what we are willing to experience.

The conflict arises when we attempt to connect to the Universal. We don't reference ourselves as being everything, because then there is no individual-ness, no point of reference between who we are and God. MacPherson points out that this is where the real spiritual work begins. We can begin to acknowledge and relax all the ego constructs, we can begin to seek to de-construct all those decisions and choices about who and what we are, admitting the Truth that we are everything, and yet are nothing. Our life is created simply because we exist, and yet what we are is an ineffable single point from which all things proceed.

By laying out the ego and allowing it to be just as much a part of our being as the rest of our life, allows us a transcendence of the dualities of living. Our identity can be more truly seen as a loved and loving character, an avatar if you will, in this game we have gotten so caught up in.

Your identity is loved. Who you are at any moment is loved. And through that love is the eternal connection we all have to each other.

Finding Your "Shool"

 

Those of us who deal with pain on a daily basis, I believe are greatly hampered by language when it comes to incorporating well-being into our lives. I have noticed over the years that there is actually no word that describes a non-pain state, without using the word pain: PAIN-less, no pain, pain free, pain relief, etc., etc.

When we are in the throes of pain, the immediate cessation of it becomes all-absorbing, with our attention focused--stuck, really--on the experience of the pain. There is no "go to" concept we can focus on that is "not pain", other than focusing on what doesn't hurt, which, again, includes pain in the desire of it. It's no wonder it is so easy to get caught up in the "pain cycle'--the more it hurts, the more it traps your attention, which then leads to more of it.

Last week, I got into a fascinating discussion with a local Native American "medicine man", Jake, who asked me, "How is your 'shool'?"

After observing the blank look on my face, he continued. "Have you ever heard of the idea of 'loosh'?" Yes, I had, actually. Loosh is the energy of suffering--the low frequency energy of pain and agony, and it is said that it's an energy that vampiristic beings feed off of to increase their own energy.

"Yes," Jake continued. "We just turn that concept around, and what you have is a word for your sense of well-being. We like to use it to describe a spectrum, where low shool is where it is difficult to spot anywhere on your body or your life where something feels good; and then high shool, is where you feel fantastically alive and high vibe."

I nodded, suddenly realizing he was answering this question I'd had for years.

"When there is pervasive pain, usually the first thing we do is try to get rid of it, when the healing thing to do is to acknowledge with gratitude where in your body there is no pain. We call it 'finding your shool," he gazed at me and I realized that although my shoulders were aching and my knees hurt, my lower back felt really good.

"Yes, concentrate on that. Give that your energy and attention, and it will expand," he added right after my thoughts.

As Jake left the room, I was elated to have a wonderful tool with this shool thing. In Manifestation 101, we learn that what we put our attention on expands. This is the problem with pain, so we turn to external chemical means--analgesics, NSAIDs, and such nostrums, to just get our attention off of it. This is why the shool concept is so valuable. We can now rest our attention on those areas of the body that feel good, or at the very least, don't hurt, and by turning our attention thus, those good feelings can expand.

Jake also advised that we can increase our shool where there is pain, by noticing that there is some part of that painful area that feels okay, or even feels good. He said that in order for pain to exist, there has to be its opposite present--and that's shool.

Our sense of proprioception is greatly affected by pain. Limping is a good example. We change how we feel movement in our body by avoiding the movements that trigger pain. In the Feldenkrais Method, the practitioner slowly and gently moves the body into those areas where there has been a proprioceptive avoidance of pain, demonstrating that either there is greater range of motion than was thought, or that the proprioceptive reaction is no longer necessary--basically allowing shool to expand in the area.

This goes much deeper into what it means to hurt, to suffer, and to eventually start defining ourselves by our state of pain--changing our social behaviors, altering our physical movements, and justifying the pain by accepting it as a part of who we are in the world. This is all a result of pain fixation, and not realizing that there is shool within the pain that is the gateway to healing.

Again, back to Manifestation 101, Joe Dispenza said it well: "You have to feel whole before your healing; you would have to feel abundance before your wealth; you would have to feel awe before the mystical moment; you would have to feel love before your new relationship; and you would have to feel empowered before your success." So, I would add you would need to feel shool before your healing.

Living in Possibility

Have you had this experience? You wake up in the middle of your sleep cycle, and suddenly everything about existence makes sense, and meaning washes over you in a timeless wave of knowing. You are caught up in a cosmic moment of understanding and feel suspended in time and space with your whole life laid out in front of you like a three-dimensional mandala. Well, this happened the other night, and, of course, upon officially waking up later, I had trouble remembering the dream and the experience. But it returned slowly over the last couple of days.

As I contextualized the experience, it became about living in the unknown, but completely without fear, knowing everything was in its right place and correct time. The tendency, when confronted with uncertainty and larger unknowns is to start doing what's been called "predictive processing" with the mind. This takes the form of worry, or obsessively computing and conjuring outcomes based on known data. It's actually a bad habit, because when actual outcomes start showing up, nine times out of ten, they are nothing like what was computed. Yet, for some reason, we keep doing it--probably from a sense of disempowerment and a feeling of being out of control, where at least you can control your imagination by creating scenarios.

Deep down in the behaviorial DNA there's a gaping fear of not being, and I think what we may think of as a terror of the abyss or void, is actually excitement about infinite possibility. Excitement and fear have been shown to fire up the same neurons in the brain, and most of what goes for fear of the future is learned. This lies outside the purview of a perceived existential physical threat, but we tend to lump anything "unknown" into a threat, hence the fear of the future.

The irony is that, as non-physical entities, we cannot NOT BE, but the over-identification with our personas, body, and other identity markers we use to interact with others sets us up for "losing it all" or just plain "losing it". Now, I've been there a few times in my life, and it really seemed real at the time, and for some time after that, but as events sauntered on and perspective was gained, I can look back on these "losses" as necessary wisdom teachers.

As I have begun to embrace this "living in the unknown", I have started to re-frame it as "living in infinite possibility." The habitual tendency of the mind and emotions to worry has now become a signal to observe how past perceived traumas have left their mark and sculpted a terrain of avoidance--much like keeping your hand away from a flame, or not moving when in pain. These areas of avoidance get activated when circumstances appear threatening due to perceived lack of information. I have started to simply let all that go, and instead embrace the excitement of not knowing what wonderful infinite possibilities are precipitating all around me to become gloriously visible at some point.

Along these lines, I've been experimenting with spending money--a big area of past trauma for me--and have started to notice that everytime I would spend, say, 50 bucks for groceries, 50 bucks of income would shortly show up--within a few hours or days. In two cases, the amounts were nearly exact, which made me start looking at this in the first place. I had no idea beforehand where these monies would be coming from, and in most cases, when I am scanning for sales or income sources, I'm completely surprised about what shows up instead.

By letting the unknown be unknown, it takes the limitations off of what is possible. Just declare it: "Show me something amazing", or "I don't know or care how, just show up!" and then remain mindful in the moment, observing the coalescence of events and circumstances as they unfold to answer your intent.

I've also noticed that worrying doesn't seem to have any affect one way or another on the manifestations. The problem with worry is that it is a way of stressing the body and is debilitating. It's better to re-frame worry into excitement or curiousity, spot the past trauma, observe it, and then remain mindful in the present. The sage and I Ching master, Wei Po Yang, when asked about what he had learned from a lifetime of studying the I Ching, said, "To worry is preposterous." Why would he say this? Because all of life is in support of being, and only when we cut ourselves off from that support by low self-esteem or self-destructive programming, do we repel that support.

Life makes life, and even death makes life, so either way, you're gonna be alive one way or another. Why not accept the excitement, the support, and the love we all have inherent in being?

Healing You

I've commented before in previous writings that I have a semantic aversion to the concept of "healing". From a non-dualistic point of view, "healing" becomes a matter of judgement about how we feel about our bodies and lives, and has little to do with the reality that how we express in our given incarnation is perfectly who we are being. No harm, no foul.

That said, from a day-to-day experience of life in linear time, we most certainly become aware of dysfunction and pain leading us to look for a way to "heal". At the core of these dysfunctions, pains, and unwanted conditions, are inevitably unconscious patterns we've created in response to experiences--usually traumatic or extreme in some way, either physically, mentally or emotionally.

The deep-down reality of the situation with disease and dysfunction is that we created or adopted--many times unwittingly--negative experiences that, because they were negative, we decided to block them, or denied them, or shoved them down into a dark hole of forgetfulness. The problem with doing this, is that the energies of the experience are still active and reactive in the present moment, even though we've quite thoroughly forgotten their origin or intensity.

Complicating matters is that every time these reactive experiences are activated, it affects the entire field of consciousness, and this is what I am addressing in this essay.

The harsh or ecstatic quantum truth is that we are all connected as conscious and unconscious energy vortexes. All of our perceptions and experiences, whether conscious or unconscious, affect the entire quantum field of life. On the day to day, we don't really observe this directly due to social mores, cultural memes and contrivances, yet we are all affecting each other with every thought we experience, every intent we create, and every action we take. And, this includes all that previously created and sequestered reactive energy we've placed in the denial box of the "unconscious", waiting to be triggered at any moment.

The important thing to realize here is that for every unwanted condition, denied energy, and latent trigger, lies the opposite, that when addressed and brought to present attention, causes a discharge, and so is no longer unconsciously reactive. What initiates this process of mindful attention can exist anywhere in the quantum field of life. Meaning that your "healing" is inevitable due to the increasing and expanding conscious present awareness of all sentient life in the universe. This is why it is possible to "be healed" by another person, animal, or entity.

Often it is just a matter of asking for the healing, and in the asking, the "field of sentience" sends back the resolving energies causing the disease or dysfunction in the first place. Of course, if we believe this can't happen, or "know" this "isn't the way it works", that serves as a barrier and further isolates the unwanted energy within the dark cauldron of our Unconscious. On the other hand, to become aware and in allowance of the reality that our unconsciousness is waiting to discharge upon our request or demand, then healing occurs.

Nothing happens without our permission. My favorite book on this subject is Alice Bailey's Esoteric Healing, wherein she makes this exact point. As a healer, without the full consent and trust of the client or patient, no amount of moving energy or discharging it is going to have an effect.

Therefore, the seeking of healing requires that the seeker be fundamentally willing to re-perceive what energies lurk in the dark cave of unconsciousness, and to reach out to the Sentient Whole to find and remind how, why and where we blocked or denied the energies of an unwanted experience. And in so doing, let go of these blocked or previously unseen energies, so they may contribute once again to our life and to the expansion of general universal sentience.

Healing has always been an inside job, and in acknowledging that reality we not only open the flood gates of our own healing potential, we also open the possibilities for others to be healed, ultimately serving the entire conscious collective. And by reaching out with intent and purpose, we call in the keys to unlocking the prison of unconscious energies, and free ourselves as well as our beloved fellow beings into infinite possibilities.

Law of Attraction Quicksand

One of my favorite "observationalists" is the "controversial guru", Teal Swan. She consistently manages to dig down to the basic fundamentals of most any cultural construct, assumption or judgment. Kudos to Teal. Look her up on YouTube if you haven't already.

Anyway, in one of her videos she de-constructs the Law of Attraction. Most "new ager" types, or novices in the field of energy manifestation, will know of this Law. And yet, few understand the sort of trapdoor that exists in the application of the law that can end one up deep in a quicksand quagmire of self-doubt, depression, victimhood and negativity.

The unseen problem with this Law, is that we are dealing with TWO (count 'em) TWO points where the Universe is responding according to the Law of Attraction: 1) Your higher self, or multi-dimensional self; and 2) your temporal self, experiencing itself in a physical body in this time-space three-dimensional linear timeline reality.

This creates two completely different experiences. The higher self sees the BIG picture of the life stream it is living temporally, and the temporal self, down in the streets, can see only the past and now, with no ability to see the future outside of guestimates, judgments and conclusions about what should be.

The higher self sees the entire lifespan, with its growth opportunities and infinite potentials. The temporal self sees the present moment, with all its needs, desires and logistics.

Enter that pesky Law of Attraction that acts as a gigantic mirror of BOTH selves highest intentions, lowest desires and temporal feelings. The universe reflects back to the embodied you what is your dominate temporal state of choices, responses and feelings. Simultaneously, it reflects back to the higher self all the infinite possibilities it has available to it for the temporal self outside of time-space.

This is a perfect set up for suffering for the temporal self. The temporal self usually has a whole raft of what it will deem "acceptable" and "what is supposed to be". The higher self has no such viewpoint. It only sees the potentials for growth.

So, when those inevitable lessons of life come along, our responses to those lessons are reflected back to us on top of any actions we take. So you can end up in an endless loop of negative responses because the universe, per the Law of Attraction, is showing you more and more circumstances to match your negative responses to whatever the lesson is.

Of course, to the higher self, nothing is wrong. All it sees is how you're progressing toward the highest expression of yourself. If we are not onboard with that, then down into the quicksand quagmire we go. To the degree we are resisting the negativity that is teaching us, or testing us, is the degree those lessons will continue to be taught.

The solution is to be in allowance of all perceived "setbacks", "letdowns", "fears", and "shouldn't be happenings". Be excited and inspired when these events or circumstances occur, because you know in your heart that by allowing them and not judging them, they are changing you into a higher version of yourself. This response then takes away any necessity to repeat the unwanted or negative experience. The universe then reflects back circumstances of excitement and inspiration.

As the comedian, Bill Hicks, famously observed, "Life is just a ride". The trick is be enjoy and appreciate BOTH the ups and the downs.s

De-constructing the Bureaucracy of Self

Humans are funny mammals--funny tragic, that is. At our core we are infinite spiritual beings, and by the time you zoom in through all the levels of power dissipation, we're left with individuals with tragically limited personal power, separated and compartmented into a matrix of beliefs about who and even what we are.

I've been stepping up time spent in clearing meditations (see Two Tools), and as I shoveled on through what sometimes seems like miles of decisions, judgments, conclusions, choices and self-evaluations, the image of a huge bureaucracy came to mind. And this huge bureaucracy was making up who I think I am, or have been.

Let's see. We have The Shoulds Department, where I can wallow in suffering because things should be different--as if that's going to change anything. But it's great for copping out and not confronting the truth of a given situation.

Then there's The But Department. Here we have the thousands of employees that immediately yell out, "BUT" when any idea that might lead to more freedom or personal power is broadcast. This is designed to maintain the status quo so there is no failure should the idea actually attempt fruition. After all, the worst BUT of all springs from the fear of failure or success.

Ah, yes. The Conclusion Department. This is the shut-off valve for practically any access to infinite possibilities. I can search for answers here, and this department will spit out the immediate reasons why such and such is true. For example, I can ask, "Why is my bank account so depleted this month?". A typical answer from the Conclusion Department is, "You didn't work hard enough," or, "The economy is down overall, globally, so that's why." Oh, okay. So I'll work more hours doing what I've always done. Ugh.

And, my favorite: The Judgement Department. Here I can dependably find all the self-evaluations, conclusions about others' behaviors, my body appearance, and of course, all the "hard data" about how I've messed things up, and how I could have done that better, but will never do it. Here I can cop out of trying to access any personal power, because, well, you know, I just don't have what it takes, I'm not good enough, and it's too much work, and no one cares anyway about what I have to say, or what I do.

We are complex beings. In fact, it is our complexity that limits us. We make things so complicated when we consider our infiniteness, our immediate access to total freedom, and our direct connection to Universal intelligence, that it looks like an impossibility that these desirable states are actually attainable.

We dumb ourselves down in order to conform to a set of arbitrary rules and laws. Why? To discover our infiniteness and our total freedom, apparently. The funny tragic thing about that is we can choose to break out of the bureaucracy of self and relatively immediately find ourselves shining like a star in Universal Oneness, unencumbered by the box we have called "life".

The Nature of Being Human

The other day, I found myself in a group visualization meditation with a prominent local psychic. She led us to an expansive garden and then asked us to find the tour guide for the garden, and ask the guide for a special message just for me. Immediately, there appeared a deep blood-red rosebud. The rosebud spoke, saying, "Humans' DNA is programmed just like ours: to bloom into a beautiful flower--to attain a higher state. It is the Law of the Universe."

As we came out of the meditation I was struck with the significance of that comment from the rosebud guide. Essentially, built in to the human DNA is the process of "becoming" or the ultimate evolution, which is spiritual enlightenment and mastery over life. It is built in.

In other words, it is the basic nature of humans to attain higher and higher states of awareness and consciousness. In scientific fact, it has been recently discovered and realized that the human brain operates in as many as 11 mathematical dimensions. These are apparently necessary to "step down" and assimilate the infinitely vast amounts of information inherent in every moment in such as way as to render it coherent to the extremely limited human senses.

Additionally, these dimensional operating modes are capable of accessing multiple universes and high states of consciousness. Psychedelic pioneer, Terence McKenna, made many breakthrough studies about the multi-dimensional nature of the human mind, where, with the help of such psychedelic substances as pure DMT and other plant hallucinogens, he brought back remarkable and repeatable experiences of advanced beings actually "hard-wired" within our lives, helping to guide us to our ulitmate flowering.

This jibes with recent discoveries that are leading some physicists to claim that the entire universe is conscious, and that every particle contains intelligence. Additionally, there have been several studies leading physicists to conclude that sub-atomic particles have the ability to shift instantly to parallel universes and travel instantaneously among them. This "quantum jumping" effect is what makes quantum computing possible--where the computer simply goes to a universe where the proposed problem has already been solved and retrieves the answer.

Some researchers have gone as far as suggesting that our own consciousness drives not only what we perceive, but events that occur in our local space-time. In other words, what we desire to see is what the intelligences of the universe deliver to us. Since most of us are buffered from total and complete knowledge of who and what we actually are, the illusion is created that life is "happening to us", when in truth, life is happening as a result of us.

After the meditation session with the rosebud guide, I noticed the guide continued to accompany me for several days. At one point it said, "Humans regulate themselves down. They make themselves less than what they are in order to fit in with cultural norms set by other humans who would control them. Release yourself from control, and become aware of the incredible and infinite power you have available to you as part of the original equipment. In another other word: Bloom!"

Riding the Waves of Feeling

I woke up this morning, and besides my normal waking fog, as I sat on the edge of my bed, there was some familiar terrain of feeling down deep. It was familiar in the sense of it seemed ancient and something I hadn't felt for a very long time. It was soft, powerful, all-encompassing and poignant--as if I had just arrived back home after a long absence.

This particular feeling persisted, and as I went on with my day, I noticed that almost everything I looked at, every smell, every sound, was triggering feelings I'd felt as a child, or at different times in my life--sometimes cascading with four or five opisodes firing at once. These have been intense enough to bring me to a complete pause, motionless, simply being and experiencing these intense messages from beyond, or unburied from deep within.

Many of these feeling phantasms were melancholy and brought about reactions of futility and sadness. As these continued to wash through me, I realised there was a juicy counterpart at the other end of this feeling spectrum: futility could be felt as high hopefulness; sadness could be felt as poignant joy. It became a matter of simple choice as to which end of the spectrum of these feelings I could feel.

For want of a better analysis, it would seem I've stumbled upon a kundalini event, where suddenly new spaces, new vistas of possibility have been revealed, and the gateway to these possibilities seems to have been flung wide open.

Lately, there have been astronomical reports about the sun's heliosphere contracting along with the solar minimum. The contraction of the heliosphere allows high-powered and high-velocity cosmic rays from galactic center to more easily penetrate the boundary between the heliosphere and our solar system, bringing new types of radiations to our planet. These have been shown to directlyl affect human consciousness.

Whatever it is, something is going on, and it's being felt by humanity either consciously or unconsciously, bringing a multitude of opportunities for all of us to explore the multi-dimensional aspects of our being. There is so much about ourselves that has been obscured, cut off, and made invisible for the sake of incarnation, cultural control and constriction of our senses and abilities.

When we begin to access previously shutdown perceptions and pathways to high abilities, it feels like a coming home, or a re-centering of being, just on the verge of overwhelming, yet completelly natural. It is the Second Coming of the Self, the beginning of an embodiment of everything that is.

Ask for it. Reach for it. It is there, and say hello to the infinite YOU.

A Dream of Fire

One of my spiritual practices is to review my dreams. I usually do this as soon as I come out of the dream into waking consciousness, as it's much easier to retrieve them then. I focus in on the feeling of the dream. This is the sub-conscious or unconscious energy that is coming to the surface to be released through the energy of the dream. I then clear the energy by noticing it.

Sometimes dreams can be so intense that they arrest your attention for hours, or even days. I had one a few days ago that still has me digging into all the feelings that cascaded through the dream into my waking consciousness. This was an apocalyptic dream of fire. I was watching TV and an emergency announcement came on that the atmosphere had been ignited, and that it was a matter of a few minutes before the entire atmosphere of the planet would catch fire.

I ran outside in time to see a huge, rolling wall of fire descending across a peaceful panorama of a country landscape. I watched as the sky above me burst into flame, and realized my body death was imminent, as I automatically held my breath in anticipation of being instantly fried.

Then, oddly, everything burst into flame around me--trees, grass, houses, barns, fences--even a pond went up in flames, and yet I was unscathed. The fire left as rapidly as it had began, leaving a disturbing view of burned-out devastation. I felt huge relief, yet, huge loss, and yet great hope. Then, it dawned on me that I had caused the atmosphere to ignite. I became desperate to find another person to see if they, too, had escaped the certain firey death. I walked for a little while and saw a small group of people huddled together. They seemed unharmed, and I asked them if they were okay. They nodded, then I woke up.

Once I processed through the emotions creating the dream, I started to zoom out for a greater awareness of my experience of my life. I realized that I had been asking for big changes for several days before the dream, and that desire got translated into a destruction dream, revealing my resistence to the "big change" I was desiring. It was as though "big change" was getting interpreted in my subconscious as an apocalypse.

I used to have a debate with my next door neighbor, who was a former Black Panther. He would echo the teachings of Malcolm X, "Social change only happens from violent revolution," he would insist. Indeed, a cursory view of history certainly provides several examples where this is true. And yet, I would argue that a peaceful and persistent campaign to win over the minds of the public was a superior way to create social change. My Black Panther neighbor was never convinced.

But that was back in the days before the Internet, fake news, and political propaganda on 1000 channels. I think my neighbor would probably change his tune--as far as non-violent social change. But, we'd probably agree that using such methods for the creation of an overall Utopia for humanity--because there was no immediate profit in it for the propagandists--would be highly unlikely.

National and world politics aside, I zoomed in on my own personal politics of change, and realized that usually, if an unwanted condition or situation arises, I first ask for it to change. Then, if it doesn't, I look for subconscious feelings that may be holding the condition in place, and let go of those. If things persist, I start looking for what reward I'm getting out of holding the condition in place. Failing that, I ask, "What if this is about something completely different than what I think it is??" That usually creates a chink in the fixed condition, allowing some cracks, and eventually the whole thing falls apart in the face of full awareness.

I hark back to resistance vs. allowance. Resistance to an unwanted condition inevitably gives it energy and further attaches it to my energy field. With allowance, the unwanted condition simply floats on by and fades off into the distance. Yet, we tend to resist what we have a vested interest in continuing. We take up arms in the defense of our resistance as if our perceived superior position will cause the "other side" to just give up, and it's one more victory for the ego.

The ego thrives on polarities, and so when we're in resistance to anything, it's pretty much guaranteed it's an ego trip. The ego uses the mind to justify, accuse, excuse, and all the other tricks to make us feel right because the other thing is so wrong. Feeling right is a false flag operation. It looks genuine and righteous, but only serves to preserve the unwanted condition, meanwhile soaking up and distracting all the attention you could be spending on creating greater awareness.

When we find ourselves in a polarity, immersed in judgement, justification and accusations, it's time to seriously check ourselves. Move beyond the polarity into a space of non-judgement where both sides appear perfect for existing. Send love and understanding, and notice what part we all play in maintaining the conflict. We can then no longer feed energy to the polarity. By employing this technique, we can avoid having to set the planet's atmosphere on fire.

The Universe is Listening to Your Every Thought

...Or perhaps more accurately, the universe is responding to your every thought and feeling. For the purposes of this viewpoint, I'm going to say that feelings contain thoughts, which seems more accurate. From our general "state of mind" we derive our thoughts, which are 99 percent of the time creations of others that we pick up as a broadcast and make our own. By then augmenting those thoughts with further emotion, we fall into resonance with these thought broadcasts.

Now that this has been established, I would also add the concept that all we perceive from all of our senses is one big moving form. It is listening to your broadcast, and changing its shape and more subtle characteristics. In this sense, we cannot be alone, because "the other"--that which is responding to us--is always present.

From where I stand, awareness of one's feelings and subsequent thoughts that we assign authorship to, is the Number One most important factor in having a fulfilling experience of one's life.

The complicating factor is our separate-self awareness (call it "ego"). We have been trained to believe that we are separate from not only other people, but from the physical world "out there" that has also been drummed into us as "reality".

To make it even more interesting, we've included a "sub-consciousness" that automatically responds to "external" stimuli with behaviors and perceptions adopted during stressful or traumatic experiences. It also is where the repetitive commands are stored and activated--those statements about ourselves (99% of which are not ours) that are mostly negative.

THEN, there's the "Higher Self" or "Soul" factor. This is the over-arching, general point of awareness outside the specific timeline of our life. Often, what this Self needs and wants is at odds with our "temporal" self down here in the streets where the boots hit the ground. As our temporal self, we say, "This is not supposed to be happening to me" when something we've decided is "bad" or "unwanted" or unpleasant happens "to us". Repeated often enough, and the Higher Self just doubles down, reflecting back more and more of that thing that isn't supposed to be happening.

This repetitive mantra of "This shouldn't be happening" gets lodged in the subconscious and plays over and over there, giving the Universe all the commands it needs to deliver yet more unwanted circumstances.

As spiritual catalyst, Teal Swan, has said, "What's happening is supposed to happane. How do you know? Because it's happening." The sum total of your feelings are reflecting back to you in 3-D ultra-high definition, and as you then react to this 3D broadcast with "This shouldn't be happening"--it's resistance, adding further energy to the unwanted circumstances. It's pretty much a trap--a cosmic Catch 22--designed to show you the mechanism.

There is a "way out" of repeating unwanted conditions, and further, a way to speed up, or actualize your desires. I'll put this into three steps:

1. Get onboard with experiencing the "unwanted" or resisted circumstances, feelings, or thoughts. Allow them to move through you in the certainty that you are "running out" these negativities--processing them through time.

2. Replace all feelings and concurrent thoughts of "this is never going to change", or "Not this AGAIN", with the joy and ease you'll feel when all these negativities leave your life experience. More accurately, by accessing these feelings, you are already experiencing the resolution to the unwanted condition--so it's not actually in the future.

3. Use the repetition tool to re-program the subconscious. Make it a point to consistently feel the joy and completion, the wonder and amazement and thrill of a desire realized. Do whatever it takes to get to this space of joy and fulfillment, regardless of outward appearances. You are literally dissolving these unwanted conditions by repeating feelings of joy and ease.

The Universe is ALWAYS listening. What are you always telling it?

Building a Ladder to Infinite Possibilities

One of the more amazing aspects to Life that quantum physics teaches us is that all possibilities--infinite possibilities--exist within every moment. We also learn that the subatomic intelligences making up the perceivable universe(s) are clumped together in forms that the mind assigns use and meaning. These subatomic intelligences are listening to our thoughts and watching our actions at every moment.

In the science of epigenetics, we find that the decisions, opinions, fears and other emotional states not only create gene expression, which changes DNA, but that these changes are passed down for generations unless acted upon or changed.

The way we view life--our Point of View--sets up a matrix within which the subatomic intelligences build their forms and sequences. By changing your conclusions about Who You Are, it changes the matrix, and thus changes the forms surrounding you.

Most of what makes up our lives are the conclusions and points of view we established about what we perceived as events that happened around us. These conclusions and points of view direct the activities of subatomic particle-waves. Unfortunately, because we are habitually inclined to conclude and judge what we see and feel, we end up inadvertantly doubling down on our situations, creating unchanging conditions, stagnation and premature death.

The way out of the conundrum of reinforcing fixed or stubborn conditions is to stop judging, stop concluding, and stop habitually asserting a particular point of view. Instead, ask questions.

The question is the signal to the subatomic intelligences to change their positions in the matrix of Self. When you allow your perceptions, but then do not judge or draw conclusions about them, it opens up the energy and space for change to occur. By "staying in the question", you "loosen" tight, fixed forms and start to allow new energies and new forms to come into being.

How do you stay in the question? The key is mindfulness. We must be able to observe the moment we "double-down" with a conclusion or point of view. For example, your employer passes you up for a well-deserved promotion. The conclusion? "It's unfair!" or "I'll never get anywhere at this place", or "I guess I'm just not worthy". Instead, ask the question, What else is possible? What about this is getting me to my greatest and most glorious life?

Now, by asking questions, the secondary habit is to suddenly receive an awareness or a perception or "answer", and then make that answer a conclusion about "how things are". This is where mindfulness comes in again. Instead of making these answers into conclusions, simply ask more questions. The goal is to remain in a state of "ask" at all times. By attempting this, you'll become acutely aware of the debilitating and limiting conclusions and judgments you're making about your life. And sometimes it ain't pretty.

Every time you replace a conclusion with a question, you've added a rung to the Ladder of Infinite Possibilities, allowing greater space, greater vision and higher awareness than you had before. Ultimately, you're climbing into your infinite life, packed full of potential and possibilities for realizing the life you truly desire to live.

Trumped: Moral Politics

In the shamanic world--a world we are addressing with the idea of a "Quantum Life"--we see everything as energy. There is "negative energy", the energy of the destructive, death and decay, of fermentation and marination; and then there is "positive" energy--the energy of the creative, life-giving, growing, flowering. Both of these energies create the yin-yang of the physical world that we perceive through our senses. There would not be one without the other. Hence, ultimately, the division of energies into "positive" and "negative"--making one good and the other bad--is an arbitrary judgment having nothing to do with the truth of Reality.

With all the controversy and chaos-making surrounding the election of a new U.S. president, it's important to embrace this "everything is energy" truism.

I've personally never agreed with the two-party system. At its core, it's divisive, and serves to divide into two camps populations whose beliefs run the full spectrum of human emotions, values and morals--hardly contained within two platforms of political belief.

However, to divide is to control--a divided electorate is a controllable one--and those in power have used this "divide and conquer" strategy since the dawn of time.

This is why I was not at all surprised at the rise of and election of our current president. The further the pendulum swung in one direction, it was surely going to swing in the other--it's the nature of the two-party system. And when it comes to liberal vs. conservative it's interesting to note how those concepts have evolved through the years. I remember back in the day when "liberal" represented more along the lines of hippies and free-thinkers; where "conservatives" were more about keeping a comfortable status quo and being frugal with money.

Nowadays, "liberal" has come to be embraced as "humanitarian" by liberals; and "convervatives" have come to be known as "self-empowered" by conservatives. Yet the Liberals define conservative self-empowerment as "self-serving"; and the Conservatives see liberal humanitarism as "Socialism". How petty and un-serving are both views, because they trap a certain moral code into an over-simplified cage of judgment and denial.

That said, our current president has come into power not as a "liberal" or "conservative" but as a disruptor--a "joker" card, if you will, bringing chaos and outrageous uncertainty to a political world that has been hypnotized to sleep in a gigantic inhuman monolith known as "the government"--and it's all driven by the engine of finance. Believe it or not at one time in this country's history, the people came first and the money came second. This has, over time, been reversed because money is power in this culture.

We also must remember that the word "democracy" was shunned by the founding fathers, who saw fit to not use it in the Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson stated, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

And as the years rolled by, the building up of polarized quantum entanglements of politics within this supposed "democracy" have at last culminated in a completely polarized electorate, unable to hear or even allow opinions of the other side. And then amidst all this extreme rancor, sits The Disruptor of a president. It couldn't get more dramatic; and yet this Grand Entanglement is revealing the true mechanisms behind the status quo established long ago by power-seeking men and women, who have lost the point of what it means have a functioning republic.

Out of chaos rises awareness and unheard of possibilities. This is America's greatest hope--to unite in the awareness of who the Controllers really are, and re-create a better world without them.

Again, everything is energy, and as individual creators, how we create the energy of our own lives is how a better world for all is achieved.

The Lie of Being Stuck

It's been a challenging last two months for me, where things seemed to spiral downward despite my best efforts. I was forced realize that my expectations of where I should be going and how fast, were being completely deconstructed.

Things seemed to "grind to a halt"--my income, my quest for a new living space, progress with building the business back after several setbacks. Despite knowing better, I came to to conclusion that I was just stuck--emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally.

One of my beloved mentors (an Access Consciousness facilitator) did a Facebook Live broadcast last night. She got my attention when she said "Hi Boyd" and I hadn't commented. The broadcast started me on what feels like a bit of a release from the "stuck-ness".

She said, "Being stuck is a lie. Just look at your skin--it's being rebuilt every day, the air you breathe has different molecules that have been all around the world; and your heart is beating and circulating all that new food and air and water you've been putting into it. That's just one part of the 'being stuck' lie. The other part is that by declaring that you're stuck, you've just made a giant conclusion about everything that's happening around you. This limits your awareness of what is actually NOT stuck. Start being grateful and asking things like, 'I'm breathing new, fresh air! What else is possible?' or 'Every day is a new day--what changes can happen here?'"

That pulled my head out of the perceived rut I'd gotten myself into, long enough to start asking, "What else can change here? What is possible I haven't thought of? What can I do to really change things?"

I finally got back in touch with the quantum world, where particles and waves are constantly darting here, there and everywhere--wave upon wave of changing conditions bringing new and fantastic possibilities now available to us all.

Yes, sometimes things do seem like they are moving like molasses in January--but that doesn't mean they've stopped moving! Besides, why focus in on the molasses, when unique snowflakes are falling, the elk are running, the wind is gusting, and the plant world is awakening with green promises of Spring.

As my shaman friend points out, "2017 is the Year of Acceleration--fundamental changes are shifting the very foundations upon which we have built our lives. What is crumbling and falling apart are all the slow parts that can't accelerate at the speed necessary."

So what seems like stuck-ness is actually an awareness of acceleration, making our life seem like it's standing still. Watch for the movement, watch for the new possibilities, and watch for that new vehicle coming to whisk you to the stars!

So What's the Big Deal with Choice?

You hear it floating around in memes and discussion groups on the Internet--and you may have even said it yourself: "Happiness is a choice". I'm always needing to correct the oversimplified grammar by insisting: "Well, choice itself is not happiness. You choose to be happy, and then proceed from there." Much better.

I've heard many folks say, "Well, it's just not that simple. Sometimes making a choice to be happy is just not available, or so unrealistic that it's unobtainable." Yes, there's that. But I would like to remind these folks that the quantum universe within which we live and have our being, exists solely and simply because of choices.

Quantum physicists refer to the strange motions and transformations of quantum particle/waves as "making choices" as to which way they go upon observation, or what forms they take instantaneously over vast distances. There seems to be a sort of meta-intelligence driving it all, and scientists apply that awareness to quantum particle states. This is because quantum particles, or waves, instantly respond to human consciousness--as though that observing consciousness is being answered by another observing consciousness. So it's difficult to call what quantum particles and waves are doing anything other than intelligent.

Hence, the entire physical world is in a constant state of "choosing" what to be, where to be it, and how to get there. And we either consciously participate in that choosing, or not.

So a better retort to the happiness-is-a-choice meme, is, Why do there appear to be limited choices, or no choices at all? Ultimately, I believe it boils down to judgements and conclusions. Judgements and conclusions are what make up our belief systems--what we accept as true, and what we accept as false.

When we conclude, like the Bruce Hornsby song, "That's just the way it is," there's just no wiggle room for any choices. Hornsby, mercifully, tags that hook with, "But don't you believe it"-- opening the door for new possibilities and new choices.

Choice creates new awarenesses, and these new awarenesses make possible more choices, until literally all the possibilities of life are available. So, the trick is to first, spot where you've made a conclusion about a situation, condition, or predicament, and just ask, What can change here? Sit with that question until you begin to get a download of quantum particles and waves drawn to you because of the question. These quantum intelligences are all about change, so when you start asking about it, they're right there with you all ready to give you that vital information.

Then, it's just a matter of choosing what to do next. The choice you make is usually the one that feels the lightest, or excites and inspires you. As you proceed, taking action from that choice, keep asking, What else can change here? Or, How does it get any better? Or, simply feel gratitude for the infinite possibilities of life; and soon, things will really begin to open up--all because you just asked a question.

In many cultures around this time of year, it is customary to renew family ties, exchange gifts and, in most cases, relive childhood issues with parents and siblings. What if it could be different? How could it be different? This year, try asking these questions. Who knows what wonderfulness could be in store?

What's Perfect About This I'm Not Getting?

If you live long enough, you'll have the opportunity to make miscalculations. Maybe a few little ones, or one or more really big ones. It's just part of Life on Planet Earth. The thing is, though, miscalculations only seem like they are while you're in the middle of them, or just shortly after them. Then, something interesting happens: perspective.

I was chatting with my brother today about hindsight--that perfect 20/20 vision attained long after an apparent miscalculation. "I coulda done it this way. Or, this way. I shoulda done it this other way and I'd be way ahead." These coulda/shoulda's serve more as self-recriminations than actual astute analyses. Ultimately, you make the choices you make, and the consequences of those choices are reflected in your daily life.

I've had the occasion lately to have made a string of apparent miscalculations regarding the business and personal finances, promotional strategies, all combined with what I thought I actually wanted. Without going into detail about the specific events, suffice it to say, after all the miscalculations and choices were made, I ended up: 1) homeless (except for my brother's hospitality); 2) significantly in debt to the bank, customers, and the government; 3) exhausted, disillusioned and flabbergasted as to how quickly my life seemed to completely fall apart in the course of a few short weeks.

All the old saws have been running continuously through my head: "Things need to fall apart so they can come together in a new way"; "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"; and my favorite, "What's perfect about this I'm not getting?"

My theory is that at the end when our life flashes before us--our deeds, misdeeds, intentions and aspirations, there comes a moment where there must be a glimpse of our life as being perfect. Everything happened the way it happened to bring about the greatest growth or realization of the greatest potential possible. If this death bed vision didn't happen, how could we let go? Regrets, "hind signt", and all the couldas and shouldas must coalesce into a vision of a grand scheme that both allows us to feel the exhilaration of completion, and the sublime re-assurance that a loving universe has done all it could to hold us in its embrace, despite our choices. At least, I hope that's what's going to happen when I finally kick the bucket.

With that end-times vision in mind, why not apply it to our situations, predicaments, and self-recriminations we experience every day? How are the choices I am making now contributing to the perfection of my life? Or, what about the choices I've made is perfect? It must be perfect because the overall shape of my life is a circle--the creation of a beginning, middle and ending, where all of it was laid out across this canvas of linear time at its inception.

Now, when I say "perfect", I'm talking about a result of the greatest good not only for me, but for all of humanity, the planet and the universe. This is way beyond my petty desires for how I would like everything to turn out. It's the perfection of a wholistic vision that is personal existence, that contributes all of its energies toward the creation of Universal Love.

Holding the question of how this perfection is playing out in my life when everything is falling apart, is the creative key to better outcomes, higher experiences, and greater self love. We don't have to know "how" this is perfect, or "why" it's perfect; just that it's perfection in the making, as yet not fully realized, and yet ultimately a complete expression of Universal Love.

Before I wax utterly cosmic, that ancient Taoist story comes to mind of the wise old farmer who owned a horse. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "May be," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "May be," replied the old man.

The following day, the farmer's son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "May be," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "May be," said the farmer.

The take away, for me, is that the ultimate universal perfection is unknowable while we are in the linearity of time; but the belief in the existence of perfection is what can give our lives meaning and inspiration.

That's why, when my friends and family send their sympathies and condolences about my situation, I reply, "May be"...

Asking & Receiving: What Could Go Wrong?

We've all had it drilled into our wooden little heads since we were wee ones: "Ask and you shall receive", and for many of us, the full meaning of that simple phrase has escaped our complete comprehension for most of our lives.

First of all, just asking does not imply that I'm ready to accept what comes as the result of the ask. "I've been asking and asking, and nothing is showing up", is a common lament (nowhere more common than in my own life I dare say).

"Well," says the lightly sarcastic voice of my guide, Marty, "Asking ain't receiving, buddy," in his best Robert DeNiro. "You have to be completely--and I mean completely willing to receive the result of what you're asking for."

Marty continues on, "What YOU do, is ask (a lot, by the way), and then when stuff starts showing up, the FIRST thing you do is judge it, come to a conclusion about its value, and then go back to asking. You see, the thing you asked for has just started to show up, and rather than welcome it into your life, you give it the third degree! No wonder stuff stops showing up--it's scared of you!"

I have to admit I do catch myself doing that now and then, but now that Marty has made a bigger deal of it, I see that my critical nitpicking was like putting a giant fire-breathing dragon at the entrance of my life with a big sign, "Perish those who enter this way." Yikes.

"The other thing," Marty says, sighing, "You gotta see how what is showing up is exactly what you are asking for. Rather than criticizing what's showing, how about changing what you're asking? Huh, bub?" Ouch.

And this is where I can use some other assistance tools, such as "What else is possible in receiving what I'm asking for?" "What else can I ask for that more closely matches what I desire?" Or, if I really want to gain some revealing awareness, "What is the lie in what I'm asking for that keeps me from receiving it?"

I see Marty is giving me his thumbs up. "Okay, that's a good start. Now, what we need to look at is how you're being a big know-it-all." Uh, oh. I've been accused of that by a couple of ex-wives.

"Look, if what you know is causing you to want something other than what you have, then that something is not something you know about, capiche? You want something different, and then when it starts showing up, what do you do? 'Eh, that doesn't work,' or 'I already know that,' or 'I've seen that before.' Uh, news flash: NO, YOU HAVEN'T!" Marty is looking at me like my high school English teacher did when I tried to correct her and I was incorrect myself.

"Again, say you are looking for a new, different, bigger, better way to promote the business, and then, your cute little blonde neighbor comes over and starts talking about how good she is at social media, and your response is, 'Nah, that doesn't work for my business', then you're being a big, fat know it all. Maybe she is the exact person to tell you the answer to your question--being the messenger of the universe and all. And instead, you start shooting her down and dissing everything. Is it any wonder you aren't receiving when you do that?"

Again, ouch. I'm seeing that when the universe sends an answer via a person and you interpret that what you are hearing from them is stuff you already "know", then you're not receiving what you asked for. Instead, pick their brain--find out what it is they know that you don't that is the answer to what you've been asking for.

"Bravo, mate!" Marty is chiming in with his best Australian. "Saying or thinking that you know something doesn't get you anything new. Being curious about what the hell you don't know is a much more fruitful path--in fact, it's pretty much the only path to discovery."

I'm nodding my head. Okay, this know-it-all nitpicker is choosing another way to be. I hereby proclaim to the Universe, I am ready--really ready--to receive! Join me, won't you?