Living with opposites

Living with opposites

The world is made up of opposites.

 Front and back. 

Left and right. 

Up and down. 

Good and Bad. 

Here and there. 

Happy and Sad. 

The list goes on. The duality of it all gives us an orientation but not only in a time and space dimension, yet also in our spiritual, emotional, mental and relationship dimensions.  In each aspect of our Selves there is a duality that is present. We can take one option or the other option but not both. It is in the "in between" that we really dare to live. The space where we choose to breathe and then manifest the choice. It is not the Here or the There, but the in between where we exist. It is not in the mind or the body, yet in the heart space where we feel the essence of creation before it is created. 

We are shifting. Of this there is no doubt. You have felt it. I have felt it. We have felt it. We as a collective of mass consciousness is feeling it. We may not know what to call it, yet we feel what it is. A shift. For the better. We are bombarded with a host of emotions too numerous to feel. Clouded by the fog of judgment we are led by the voices of others in what appears to be a chaotic world. Filled with empty promises we navigate the night blindly with fear. However the fog is the in between. This is where we open up our hearts and senses and make sense of the choices and evolve. We can choose to inhale the fog and breathe out a reality that is manifest with our heart felt thought constructs.

 No one said rebuilding a world is easy . Rebuilding our vocabulary is just as necessary. 

Frustration into tolerance

 Anger into understanding 

 Fear into  Love

Chaos into calm

Ridicule into patience

Things are shifting fast. We are moving from the old paradigms into new programming. We have to take our deep seeded emotions of fear from within and bring them  into the shallow waters to release them. The past gives way into the future but only through the present. There is no other way. We are the in between. Procrastination is transformed into the moment of Now as we convert the unseen into the seen. 

We become no longer the duality. We are renamed as the non duality. 

We are . 

I am. 

This moment.

 No other. 

We can become more than we are and become a trinity of the here, there and the in-between. It is in the embracing of a new identity that we can create from within the fog. It is the thundering of the awakened heart space that calls us in the night, guiding us with its gentle voice and leading us by the hand out into the light. All we have to do is pause and listen.

Do you feel your fog dissipating ?

sympathy and compassion

Sympathy and Compassion 

Sympathy is enabling.

Compassion is empowering.

Let that just sit with you for a while. See how it transforms and starts to apply to all the past experiences you have had. I know I did and WOW what an alarming realization. 

When I am truly connecting with someone as the conversation unfolds, it is actually a compassionate manifestation and never a sympathetic hand hold that is transmitted. 

When I am being sympathetic I am basically saying " yes you have  a problem and poor you ! " By choosing this response I find that I am disabling the person by allowing them to remain wounded. I do not let them grow and evolve out of their unfortunate circumstances and continue to allow them to wallow. 

Sometimes they need to wallow. 

They may need to process their sorrowful feelings, grind out those emotions and come out stronger at the end. Who am I to judge how fast they should do this ? Yet by my sympathetic response to their situation, all I do is essentially hold their head under water for a little longer. 

We grow up and out with a helping hand and not with a hand that bears no grasp. A compassionate response holds space for them to be heard. For them to acknowledge that they are not alone in their plight and help is abound in the form of a listening partner. The out stretched hand will hold strong when it is ready to be grasped. Silence and being still when a story  of woe unfolds helps it to coil out faster.  Like a spring it pounces out of the story teller along with all the rawness of the gut wrenching and resistance that accompanies a person's troubles. 

But it needs space to pounce.

Many a  time I find I oscillate into a sympathetic ear instead of a compassionate one as I find the story similar to my own, or familiar in some fashion and I no longer choose to hold space for my own story as I choose not to heal. And so I dive into the sympathetic "poor you" which is in fact my own identified " poor ME !!" 

Sympathy and compassion are daughters of the mind and heart. Sisters to the same soul. Both are dancers to a unique conversation. Yet despite their origins, competitors  of a different creation.

It is a fine line that is crossed in every conversation when one imparts their open wound for all to bare witness. The process heals faster with compassion and less with sympathy. 

three little words that may be the game changer next time you or I are in a tense and emotionally charged conversation..... " I hear you..."

Senses deprived

Senses Deprived

I had the opportunity recently to go into a sensory deprivation tank. What an experience ! It is essentially a large tank filled with salt water so that one may be buoyant.  I immersed myself into the tank. Lights off, no noise and off I went into a world like none other. In the noiseless dark I desperately tried to use my sense of smell to figure out my environment. Yet there was nothing to smell. In the piercing blackness all around me my eyes remained useless, so I shut them. My ears once submerged under water could only "hear" the still ness of noiselessness. I dreaded to taste the salty water so I did not. I drifted, I floated. Nothing to touch, nothing to sense. All was still. My outward body inactive. My inside bodily organs functioning at a slower easier pace to sustain me. I was going to be fine I told myself. I could hear the laudable chatter of my mind. Shouting, screaming, yelling to be heard. Its voice carried no where. The body could not receive its continuous argumentative  barrages and respond. This infuriated my mind even more. The din was deafening within a vacuum. 

Unknown periods of time went by till the mind was summoned to be still. It took a lot of effort. Surprisingly even more than when I go into meditation. My mind was determined to put up a fight, and it did. Silenced, it rested for a bit. In the depths a new sensation arrived unexpectedly. My heart beat. It came out to say hello. I hear patients' hearts all day long but never my own. I never really pause to feel my own heart beat. Its rhythmic drumming. Its palpable echo of kind support without question for every moment I have been alive. I paid it attention for the first time. Its conversation became louder at first and then settled to a more even pace  at a lower tone. I could visually see with my eyes open in the thick blackness of the dark my heart's chambers moving in accordance with divine mandate. Then I felt it. Unassuming, simple. Me. That which was  there since I entered the safe womb of my mother and began my quest on this planet.

 I am not sure who was more surprised to meet whom. Me meeting me or vice versa. The life force, the energy behind this physical form, was at last made known. It had a name. Love. Formless, powerful, complete. We stayed in each others company for a timeless and seemingly endless moment of space. Held together with deep respect for each other by agreements made eons ago. No discussion. No arguments. Just the moment of being was abound. At some point the meeting was to conclude. It was mutual. I returned back into the form of the physical gently and my mind took over its immediate control of incessant planning of the next step. Thankfully, an awakened heart slowed down the process with grace. Less traumatic on the senses I would say. 

I accidentally touched my eye with my hand and the water burned my eyes. Ahhhh! My finger moved the drops of dripping salty water off my nose....Ahhhh again...we can smell salt water. My tongue darted to stop this nonsense from going any further... Ahhhh again the salt water taste. We are on fire all my senses screamed and the mind said " We are outta here" 

Lights on, noises of the crazy mind returned,and  gravity was restored as I stood up. I was back. Back  into the the body I came in with. What an experience. "I would do it again " my heart said. My mind snickered "Not if I have anything to do with it" 

The clarity of thought was pristine. Refreshed recharged, I bid a farewell to Me who I had the pleasure of greeting. Tucked away behind the veils of my insecurities, doubts and fears, I knew that I was still there. The experiencer. The driver. The magic. The forever unchanging. Till we meet again.....

It was surreal how disconnected I was from me all this time behind my senses.  

There is only one message to be delivered to me from this experience and that was...."I am "