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God’s NiteStalker A

April 25, 2010
As I was doing my early, dark morning walk up and down the hills of this Olympic Mountain town on the Puget Sound listening to the nightingales chirp their mating calls, a chilling thought occurred. In my imagination I saw infinite people of all ages and types walking around me, but with dark sunglasses on! What could it mean that people were walking in the dark with black sunglasses?

Then it dawned on me that they represented most of the people occupying earth at this time. Lost Souls not even having a clue had they done some ‘fact checking’ that they could enjoy the subtleties of what the naked, aware eye could only see.  ‘Fact checking’ would include things like a) knowing who you really are b) finding out how to love another as much as you could imagine c) what’s the research data on anything to do with religions, myth vs fact d) how to create positivity and calmness in oneself? These are a few of the questions that people with dark glasses seem to have a hidden curiosity about, but still refuse to look at facts and truth with the naked eye. It’s always, ‘I’m too busy’!

My experience from logging towns to Wall St., to dance clubs to spiritual gatherings, to the humans with the dark glasses on the street, is that almost ‘no one is home’! Few are curious for more than an occasional glance at what are the most important things in life. The ‘fountain of youth’ is inside to be found for embracing, and encompasses the secrets of life, and what is possible beyond ‘grumbling and needing more money’. Few allow the expression of that possibility being attached to chasing outer dreams with little regard for inner possibilities.

The mind is a ‘nitestalker’ trudging along myopically with ‘tunnel vision’ for the immediate, convenient satisfaction while being blinded to the nourishment of the soul with ‘soul food’ that comes hidden in the form of self love and it’s infinite benefits. To reach the mind and heart of this ‘closed being’ is like looking for gold in the Sahara Desert. For a desert to flourish with life, nurturing water is needed. So it is with the dry closed mind and heart.  To flourish, they both need to be nurtured to reveal love and truth. Walking into life with the heart and mind open creates an enduring bliss not seen by the preoccupied mind and the unattended heart.

Arhata

Married with Issues

April 25, 2010
Married people with issues erroneously think it comes with the territory. Generally it does because rarely do people resolve their issues. Marriage is an opportunity for two people to communicate together to help each other move beyond unresolved childhood problems.  Unfortunately, most go into putting ‘solvable issues’ on the back burner and turn it off while complaining and learning to work around each others problems which ultimately haunt the marriage.

Marriage is a ‘rental’ not a marathon to see who can last the longest, and call it a great marriage because of longevity.  In the past, couples were forced to stay together because of ‘dependence’ on their life style which, for the woman especially with kids, left her without any source of income.  Control and domination were common from the male until the slow rebellion and revolution of the female for freedom and independence in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Sadly, the ‘freedom revolution’ of the sexes went from one extreme of ‘dependence’ to independence totally by passing the ideal state of mutual interdependence.

Calling oneself fit for marriage is like someone calling themselves fit to be a surgeon without any preparation. People rarely fit in themselves with endless comfort, and when two merge who are both not enjoying the fit within their own skins, we have ‘chaotic marriage or partnership’! If people seriously injured and seeming to never walk again can, with great effort, later walk, people with emotional/mental injuries can certainly clear them. There are only excuses that serve the ego of denial and selfishness.

The ‘new marriage’ is one where couples seek or meet at a peak of consciousness that is maintained under all circumstances.  The conscious couple is not about ‘trapping’ a partner for life but for changing moments that have no end or beginning with expectations.  Communication, agreement, and a deep love serve to give to each other what is their destiny.  Parting is always with love and sensitivity for the other. Always there will be a parting even if it’s death.  Love overcomes internal problems and issues and leaves it’s ‘love print’ to guide each one through life in an inner euphoric bliss and joy.  Marriage is a love state of mind and being.

Arhata

Love Needs Surrender
APRIL 24, 2010
Love and a surrender are interdependent for their survival. One without the other is either on crutches.  Love is a popular word to toss around without any soul behind it to mollify feelings and an agenda. Love used in any positive way has merit but not much if it is an all consuming feeling beyond the understanding of the mind. Love without ‘surrender’ is little more than a ‘flat line’ expression of words that may have some resonance but yet barely above hollow.

Love to share with another has ‘risks and benefits’. Usually the benefits are in the beginning where some semblance of ‘submitting’ and pseudo surrendering are occurring. Real ‘surrendering’ in love isn’t ‘just getting naked’, and amusing the self! Real surrendering rarely happens on a love level but if it happens (and it can’t be willed), life changes inside regardless of who it was with. The risk is to miss ‘real love’ traded for falling in love that continues ‘falling’ to places never imagined. Love that just ties into the biological and emotional is doomed to fall to a ‘sort of manageable partnership’. Then love to ‘work’ takes ‘work’.  No surrender, no love that doesn’t take work to be even a semblance of what could be.

The ‘benefits of a surrender in love’ are beyond all languages and the most vivid imaginations. A surrender to the love within can be activated by meditating or by the rare merger of two conscious souls in a total let go beyond any describable experience. ‘Making love’ is an open door to a real everlasting surrender, but as long as the ‘ego’ lurks, the divine will not come in to fill the spirit with it’s invisible cosmic starlight of ‘heaven within’.  ‘Unconditional love’ is not encompassing enough to describe the freedom that even dreams can’t compare.

Everyone wants the inner peace that is read about only in books and by mental ‘wishers’ who think everything comes in the mind. To continue reaching into ‘life’s time’, with at best only a semblance of memories of love, is not what anyone really desires. We want to wakeup every moment to the last day with an overwhelming sense of a deep, peaceful love within that likely has experienced a ‘divine spiritual surrender’  making it’s home within and not needing to be filled by anyone or experience that is still missing.  Love becomes divinely real when a surrender fills the aura within. To ‘know’ is not to have knowledge of.
Arhata

Submit to Surrender

April 23, 2010
To submit to love is life’s greatest blessings.  No submitting, no love.  To submit is no guarantee of love beyond a glimpse through biological/emotional experience. Submitting is to open the door to the unknown gifts of love if done consciously. The aware mind uses the best discernment in opening the door to learn and experience the fruits of love. Submit and surrender all trappings to enter into the chambers of a love into the divine.  But…

To submit to one with the intent of love’s blossoming is best done from the open heart and with as much consciousness as possible. Love is fleeting to those who submit to the biological/emotional state only, and without a conscious surrender to follow the scent of love in a compassionate, sensitive manner. Holding back in love or meditation is to keep one foot in and one foot out, which favors the ‘out’. Fear of losing oneself in either is not to submit but to have love run from the potential experience.

A surrender into the ‘divine realm’ of love only happens ‘after’ submitting and letting go totally. Putting up any barriers to love and meditation that are not necessary or avoidable are to snuff out the eternal experience of being filled with love. Real love is not a potion that comes in a bottle nor can it be earned.  It comes from confronting the opportunity with an open mind and heart with no reservations and complete trust.  Anything less will at most be a glimpse of bliss that gets lost in the fogs of fear. Biological or emotional love is fleeting while not reaching the deep spiritual experience that radiates within and beyond life as we know it.

To submit with consciousness is to enter the door for learning with an openness for all that prepares one to be at the invisible, ‘mystical door of surrender’ which only happens when the time is ripe, and ‘involuntarily’. Surrender happens in a deep meditation or deep love, and is a rare diamond of evolution. The inner world and the view of the outer world take on a divine sparkle that others don’t and won’t experience without ‘the happening’. To live life and not submit to the possibility of a divine surrender is to ‘flat line’ life where the melody of bliss and joy are found that the world is left searching for. Awaken and let go for the possibilities.
Arhata

Levels of Love

April 22, 2010
Love is often a convenient word to describe a passing feeling of the moment, but in it’s true meaning, is as clear and overwhelming as the air we breath.  Love is beyond a word that has many spellings in different languages. Love, like the air, is free. Love is innocent. Love heals. Love has no boundaries. Love is unexpected. Love is unconditional. Love is the spirit of energy.

‘Watered down love’ is in popular vogue. The word love is used as a device to ‘shut it’s recipient up’. What love is and isn’t is endless and fraught with infinite opinions. The most meaningless use of love is used for ‘love of the manmade material’ from money to expendable experiences and items like cars, TV’s, movies, sports, furnishings, clothes, food, stimulants, and the like.  Not following far ahead is love of attention, success, job, ideologies, religions, fantasies, etc.

The next level of love, which is below ‘real love’, and often very conditional as is those already mentioned, is God, marriage, friends, family, people, etc. Love with most is conditional for the most mundane reasons. Family and friends love over the years is commonly always changing and falling off the ‘criteria of love’. Quality of meaning of love over time separates the ‘real from the momentary love’.

No real, unconditional love is possible without the conscious love of one’s inner self, which nothing can alter. The ‘peaks of love’ are often touched in flashing moments by most but rarely sustained.  Self love seeks other love of the same high quality as if ‘mirrored love’. Love on lower levels frequently gets stuck in the attachment to that love, foregoing finding it within.  Love knows no hate or even doubt of it’s existence.  Love is not a shadow that disappears when clouds or darkness appear in ones life.

Love is an invisible energy that never loses itself. At it’s highest peaks, love transforms all to it’s highest possibilities. Love of the multidimensional divine that is an invisible presence, and is always providing bliss and joy inspite of life’s challenges, is love at it’s ultimate. Love is endless in time that transcends all.  Love is in the air to breath in, to light itself. The deep ‘breath of love’ is like an endless river that colors and illuminates the presence of the compassion of love for itself.
Arhata

Fun with Frustration

April 21. 2010
The world lives in frustration, as particularly exemplified by the global chaos caused by the ‘Eyjafjallajokull volcano’ in Iceland that is disrupting flights from and to Europe. From the crying baby to the investor waiting for profits as well as the one in love who is expecting a ‘return’ on their love, it’s guaranteed that nearly everyone on the planet is carrying frustration. Frustration for what they want, and making it more dangerous to their elusive ‘peace of mind’ by expecting too much.

People reluctantly live with constant frustrations by attaching expectations that further complicate the uncomfortableness.  Accepting the moment and what it brings is the beginning of moving beyond frustrations.  There ‘ain’t no sunshine in the dark’, but seeking it within where the real light of life is always available. Find the source of your frustrations. It will always come to ‘expectations’.

Frustration is everywhere.  People who look for power, prestige, acceptance, results, and certainly, love.  People are frustrated by their expectations, from prayer to a God that they expect will listen even though they have no idea what this God is or with certainty that there is one, and not something else more ‘benevolent’ that they have overlooked. Stepping out side of oneself, and saying ‘who cares’, as well as letting go to be free of expectations of certain results, is an opening of a new breath of life.

Freedom begins with being free of frustrations that come from expectations that have become like a bondage to the mind and heart.  Make expectations like clouds in the sky that are at best, only moving through in the moment as sun shines through them when they are detached. Love, and it’s many levels of meaning is a good opportunity to experience having less or no expectations which frequently create a tension not only within but with the object of that need of return love. Love really rolls in when there is no expectation, even if it’s from within.

The ‘greatest, deepest’ love, from my experience, will more likely just appear when one is carefree and experiencing deep positivity in life. It comes and stays forever even without the person who you met in that whirl pool of bliss and ecstasy. Keep self love filled and all gifts of it’s essence will be within.  Meditating clears away the clouds of self doubt while opening loves heart that rises above frustrations. Detach from seriousness and expectations to enjoy the fun of having frustrations float away!
Arhata

Expect ‘Nothing’!

April 20, 2010
…and you’ll never be disappointed!  Frustration, let downs, and hurts, happen when one anticipates any thing desired with ‘expectation’.  All over the world frustration is a constant ‘dis-ease’ of the mind rarely not from expectations that people are attached to or banking on. All over America, ‘expectation casino’s’ are flourishing for the false ‘hopers’ that pile into cars hoping to change their lives.

The ‘casinos’ are the new churches.  Check out the filled casino parking lots on Sunday morning at these havens for the the lonely, hopeful! At the same time, millions of people dressed in Sunday fineries sit in ‘holy houses’ praying to a ‘deity’ that they couldn’t begin to define if their life depended on it. From expecting ‘miracles’ to change their lives, that rarely if ever come, but for the endless trains of disappointments filling days, months, and years, there is only frustration.

All that energy taxing the mind and heart could better be put to being in the moment, and making the best of it.  There is little substitute for not counting ones ‘chickens before they hatch’ or ‘putting all one’s marbles in one place’, than that we are blessed with a mind that can access common sense. Common sense has the ability to find within, it’s capacity to detach from all expectations. Common sense prepares for the best outcome while expecting nothing but the experience that unfolds and how best to accept it.  Always it’s a wise plan to have ‘Plan A; plan B; plan C, and perhaps ‘no plan’!

A shadow is always following expectation appearing as hurt and frustration. Everything we do, we do with expectations. If I love someone, an expectation enters without my even knowing it. I begin to expect love in return.  Ironically, few ever love themselves first let alone expecting someone else to give love who likely doesn’t really love themselves.  Expecting love from someone will make love more difficult to flow back to you. The expectation will cause the other to feel an obligation or bondage of duty which will cancel any real love.

Seek with the notion that existence will provide answers that challenge any expectations. Find comfort in the love within that needs no expectation, but an open heart and mind to see and feel.

Arhata

Relationships CAN’T Work!

April 19, 2010
Love has many dimensions, but rarely is it authentic! It’s relaxing when realizing that sticking ones head in the sand is not the best way to breath!  Independence or dependence is a choice that doesn’t consider the ramifications.  Raging concern for independence became fashionable beginning in the ’60’s as a revolt against male domination over woman since written history, and likely, forever.  Women sought equality but at the expense of health, ‘interdependence’ and a rare continued expression of deep love.

Relationship implies you are separate, independent as is the other, and you decided to relate. Their is a gap that has avoided an interdependence of a deep merger. Independence has a type of falseness to it. Secrets and choices not to communicate to protect the independence are encouraged by the separateness. Love becomes a ‘word’ that’s convenient to keep the strings of an independent or dependent relationship afloat. No one can separate themselves from the interdependence of the elements of  existence. We are one with them, no separation is possible.

Love can have three dimensions:

One is dependent love which nearly everyone in a ‘relationship’ is involved in.  Each is a commodity where one exploits the other. They dominate, control, and possess one another.  Much of keeping it together has to do with fear of not having the other to maintain a lifestyle, and being left alone in a world where most others are also fighting to maintain some semblance of an outward happy couple, though inward, happiness is just a nice word to make one feel good.

The second, more popular in the west since ‘the independent me’ revolution of the ’60’s/’70’s in ‘independent love’. Compromise is fractured and often very unwilling with ‘adjustments’ at best having to be negotiated.  Independent freedom is demanded but at a big cost to all but marginal love. It becomes indifference as each is left to their own space.  Deep love is feared as something that will sacrifice what they consider freedom.

The third dimension is where real, enduring love occurs, yet rarely happening. It is where two souls are in synchronicity. Their every action and breath is in synchronicity with the other. Their is a merging in high consciousness so that their feeling of joy, bliss, compassion and love are present within each at any moment.  The other two dimensions are ‘arrangements’ for social, biological, economic and/or psychological reasons.  The ‘interdependence way’ holds the only possibility and probability of authentic, heart warming love that can be regarded as spiritual.
Arhata

Entanglements Let Go

Inner ‘goblins’ or demons sometimes find a good home where the houser (you) tends to feed them year in and year out.  There is no redemption for those who don’t take the initiative to ‘exorcise’ them by disconnecting, decoding, and/or reinterpreting their meaning into something positive. Deeper meanings of memories that linger and become unneeded, unwanted catalysts for seeming perpetual shadows of ‘life time behaviors’ often have beginnings in childhood.  We are more impressionable to negative ‘stimuli’ that harbors implications in later life from our early years where we have little means to interpret things in ways that we become less attached to.

Letting go of anything that we would have desired to not have taken place, be it unconscious or conscious will not happen by doing nothing or burying them with all behaviors that are irrational from excessive drinking, drugs, unexamined learned behaviors, and all false ‘cure it’ answers. One must go deep, deep into the mind and heart to experience a letting go into replacement energy that fills the vacuum of letting go of the negative ‘leaches’.

Various healthy use of a variety of forms of meditation coupled with conscious decisions to alter inner and outer circumstances to more favorable ones are incumbent to be on the path of renewing and opening to the real self. The  real self is natural and healthy, void of any dis-ease picked up in the past.  To move forward and upward in consciousness takes a special forgiveness of the unforgiven parts of the past step by step. All things which are possible to reinterpret positively and correct are major steps in the transformation from a life filled with blocks to a blissful, joyous existence.
Arhata

Infant Censorship


April 17, 2010
Little children don’t understand many things as, ironically, don’t many adults! An ability to listen to all manners of speech and expressions is a sign of maturity beyond the infantile stage.  How many times has anyone feared saying the ‘wrong’ thing to people who are easily offended often by the slightest verbal words that step over ‘their line’? ‘The line’ these reactive types have arbitrarily drawn to protect what they are not open enough to hear, particularly even if it’s a sound positive message, creates discomfort for many.

People in general tend to put up barriers to protect areas of dialog or discussion on a personal level that they have, even unknowingly, put an invisible ‘electric fence’ around.
More mature people are open, even if just tolerant, without reaction, to allow others to say what they want, and choose to listen without ‘knee jerk reactions’ that are a form of censorship on well meaning people.  It’s not just limited to verbal barriers that these ‘tip toe around censors’ freak out over, but all forms of expression including bodily or facial.

A rather covert as well as annoying form of censorship, is the person who talks incessantly about subjects unrelated to anything one may have any interest in such as more impersonal things like politics, fishing, movies, cars, investments, etc.  More annoying is those who talk over someone even if  would like to interject with a comment.  I’ve encountered many who continue talking, particularly in phone conversations without responding to repeated comments, just rambling on as if what they have to say is impervious to empathy and compassion for the ‘captured listener’.

Healthy, positive communication flows freely in both directions as listening and responding is given high regard. It’s always thoughtful to examine oneself, even if it involves asking others, on how one is receptive in listening and talking with empathy for the other. Open communication with transparency is at the foundation of all successful relationships whether on a personal level or with many. Love without communication that flows smoothly is a restricted, censored, unhealthy relationship that will inevitable invite miscommunication, uncomfortableness, and infinite forms of negativity.  Communication is like a dance with two partners in graceful synchronicity. Let go and enjoy communication!
Arhata