Happy Valentines Day To You!

I hope you are all well and enjoying your (Valentines) day.

I had a great day yesterday. My morning was abundant with chi. Though chi is always there, it is like water, we still have to drink it in.

After my morning tai-chi session, I got some work done and then headed to the gym for a quick pushing workout.

I had a good planning meeting with Vidya so we can manage energy effectively and strategize our work together over the next few months as I move into retreat mode.

We’ve been having some heavy rains here in Vista, but when I got home, the rain stopped for a little while and I took the opportunity to get out for another tai-chi session.

There is something magical about being barefooted in the wet grass and mud while cultivating chi. The air is so fresh and the chi so dense that in just a few minutes, I become harmonized in body and mind.

Soon thereafter, I often cease to exist as one with a name. I enter into a lucid stillness and experience a state where the concepts of living and dying cease to have meaning.

After my tai-chi was over, I enjoyed building a nice big fire with some of the wood I split this weekend. There’s a mysterious beauty that emanates from a wood fire.

I read some more of Arnold Patent’s excellent book titled “MONEY”, which I’m really enjoying. While I had dinner, I watched Oprah’s Next Chapter program.

She interviewed women in the Hasidic Jewish community in New York city. It was very interesting.

I was very impressed with how well the people she interviewed have done at maintaining a lifestyle built on essential core values. They really make the children and the family the focus of their lives.

Oprah did a great job of clarifying many of the social beliefs about the Hasidic Jews and the women she interviewed were very intelligent, loving and lively.

I feel grateful for Oprah and all the love she brings to the world.

ANGELS

The other day, Josh Ruben, an instructor for the CHEK Institute sent me this video link to a beautiful youtube.com video titled “A Very Powerful Message”.

This is a lovely video, and when you see,  it’s proof that beauty can appear in even the strangest and most unexpected of places!

Have a look. It’s worth watching:

httpv://youtu.be/2KH0ZSUC2bY

A RUMI POEM ABOUT LOVE

This poem comes from, Love’s Fire, Re-Creations Of Rumi, by Andrew Harvey (p.32)

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When my eyes are blind, what use is collyrium (PC: eye wash)?
When my heart’s in fragments, what use (is) fidelity?
When soul and heart are ash from longing for you
What use are your seductive words?

Paul’s Commentary:
Here Rumi is speaking of his relationship with God:
When my eyes are blind, what use is collyrium
PC: When our ideas, our philosophy externalize and/or limit God, what use is there trying to see that God by cleaning our eyes?

When my heart’s in fragments, what use (is) fidelity?
PC: When we create all sorts of conditions based on our ideas of what God is, or what God wants, we fragment our hearts and minds.

We create “distance” between what God truly is, and what we believe God is. As long as we play such games, keeping ourselves trapped in judgment, pain, guilt, shame!we create many gods, therefore, what use is fidelity?

When soul and heart are ash from longing for you
What use are your seductive words?
PC: When we continue to play the games that others do, be they the games of commandments, limitations, trying to be “special”, “chosen ones”, sectarianism, avoiding the love of our own body, relinquishing the power of our own mind to the books and ideas of others, following blindly and not paying attention to what our belief system is producing, etc,!

Our souls and hearts can turn to ash from the pain of longing and separation we create; all the while, we convince ourselves we should be loved by God more than those that are less subservient, devout, committed.

We end up believing that “nice guys finish last”! We can easily reach a point where reading beautiful poetry or scriptures becomes an empty process! “What use are your seductive words?”

EVERYTHING IS WITHIN YOU

If you stand in your house and look out into your yard, and I ask, “Where are you?”, you will most likely say “I’m in my home.”

If I ask you to go outside and stand in your yard and then ask, “Where are you?”, you will most likely say, “I’m in my yard.”

Just as we create the illusion that we must be a certain way, or do certain things to achieve the favor of God’s love (The Consciousness of the Universe), we also create the illusion that the space inside our home is somehow different in nature and essence than the space outside our home.

When we get into the habit of compartmentalizing, we get into the habit of dividing ourselves into ideas, concepts and pieces that must all be managed by the ego-mind that created the labels.

Just as there is no difference between the space inside your home and the space outside your home, there is no place that God (Consciousness) isn’t.

Just as you can create the illusion of “your own space” in your own home, you can also understand the reality that space is continuous and that all existence is an extension of space.

Therefore, if we create love, acceptance and compassion for ourselves in our own home or inner-world, that naturally radiates out to the rest of the world, just as a light in your window at night lights the yard outside.

The sun is a long way from us, yet, it’s light comes in your window as though there were no distance between you.

If we each give ourselves permission to love ourselves and create values that are life and love affirmative, then we get to experience how our own love and creativity influences “space” everywhere we go.

Soon, with a little practice and awareness, we find that our hearts heal, our minds learn to listen to our hearts, and we are at home everywhere because our consciousness is, like space, one with all that is.

Just as a blind man needs a seeing eye dog to navigate a busy street, one who is in pain and can’t see or feel God need only find someone who does see and express the God within them.

Through the light of such a person’s love and authenticity, you both learn to “see” and to navigate the many worlds of illusory beliefs and conditions we create to keep ourselves in the game of lack.

If God can create Universes, then I suspect there’s no shortage of cookies in the jar!

May Love shine through your consciousness to touch and connect with each other today!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek