Happy Tuesday (Wednesday in Australia) to you!
This blog is inspired by Dan Hellman, CHEK Institute Instructor, great friend, and artist; Dan provided the art for today’s offering:
FINDING PEACE WITHIN YOURSELF
The world is a place where we come into relationship with other people, places and things. This is an essential aspect of how love works. If we did not explore other people, places and things, how could we come to know what love is, or how love works?
Through what Carl Jung calls the necessary collisions of the soul, we progressively learn the laws of the physical universe.
We also learn the way to relate to others through our family, social circles, and our culture. In the process of growing into our humanity, we inevitably embody ideas.
Some of the ideas we embody and give life to turn out not to work so well in relationships and often leave us in pain, or wanting to be loved differently.
If we are not conscious of our thoughts and the actions they create, we can easily find ourselves feeling frustrated with the world, and wishing we were loved differently.
You may love smoking, drinking and partying, and those in your family may be very opposed to your way of self-expression.
You may have found a great job that pays you well, but grow to see that you are contributing to a corporation that is very destructive to the environment; the pain of that realization along with the concerns about finding another good paying job can be daunting.
TO FIND PEACE WITHIN
I too experience the necessary collisions of the soul. I know how challenging life can be. I also know that if life was just easy all the time, we’d begin doing things to make it harder on ourselves so we could become a character of individual expression.
That’s just the nature of human beings.
When I’m feeling challenged with what I’ve created, or participated in in my life, I go through this helpful process within myself:
1. I ask the question, “Am I safe right now?” If I’m not in a situation where someone is trying to harm me physically, and my basic needs for food, shelter and survival essentials are met, I know I have time to hold still and ask myself deeper, more meaningful questions.
2. Next, I remind myself of what my dream is. I know that life must be conceived in ideal terms before it can be lived that way! After stating my dream to myself, I open myself to guidance from the Universe.
3. I give myself permission to stop ruminating over whatever it is that is stressing me by chanting a little poem from Rumi: Beyond judgment, there’s a field. I’ll meet you there.
When I do this, I also hold the thought that the world has existed for billions of years and seen a myriad of life-forms, people, wars and disasters come and go like the wind.
I trust that the world will hold me (and all of us) in her arms while taking the time to empty myself. As I chant Rumi’s poem, I let go of any need to figure things out and trust that I will receive guidance.
In doing this practice, I open myself to receive guidance without trying to fix anything or anyone.
I give myself time to be still and just rest. When I’m feeling rested, I find that I’m open to guidance from my feeling nature, not just my head.
I often realize that I’m making more of situations that is necessary. I learn to be more aware of when I’m acting in a way that hasn’t been helpful for solving my challenges in the past.
This little practice is hard when you are addicted to acting out your past programming, but easy to do once you experience the mental clarity and intuition it affords.
I have found that because we are so conditioned to a logical, left-brain input-output way of thinking and living, that most of us are afraid of the emptiness of waiting and trusting that we are supported and will receive guidance.
I feel from my personal experiences that Great Spirit guides us into experiences where our thought dominant way of living won’t work specifically to open our feeling capacity.
When we learn to feel before we think and act, we gain much more information and can make better decisions. T
his is because if we state our dream (our love) as our motive, we naturally feel from our heart.
Love is an emotion of inclusion, of wholeness.
Fear is an emotion of exclusion, separateness, and division.
If our motive for self-healing and gaining guidance is living our love more fully, then naturally we will remain in an open, loving state.
There, we are unafraid to feel our feelings and perceive what guidance we have been blocking out by living in fear.
So, remember, beyond judgment, there’s a field. I’ll meet you there.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
My Day Off after HLC2: Flint and Steel Beach
Yesterday, Vidya, Donal, Cathy and I did a lovely hike down to a remote beach. We went swimming, created some rock art, took a power nap, and enjoyed the steep uphill return hike.
It was a beautiful day of rest for all!
