Knowing and Wholeness

Posted on March 17, 2014 by mcallister

Sometimes life throws you a curve. A hail storm messes up your roof and skylight. A flood evicts you from your office. A spare tire drops off a truck onto the highway a hundred feet in front of you, slides under your bumper and causes serious damage.

Situations crop up that you have to sort out, but may not have the expertise or information you need to do so. Your mind thinks it has to figure it all out, or if that is too much, to find someone else who will know the answers. There seems to be a choice between a lot of mental effort and giving up.

In either case you are operating from fear and loosing your space, your certainty and sense of Self. When you do this you open holes in your space and your boundaries for others to step through. But there is a third option, in between versions of fight or flight, in between trying to control things, or giving up.

When I felt I didn’t have the answers, but needed them badly, it was easy to give up my Knowingness and my space. But Spirit reminded me that knowingness is not always about factual answers and information. I can Know and be certain that I am whole and will be OK, that things will sort themselves out, that the right folks will come along to help out.

I may not know the details, but I can hold firm the emotional tone of the situation. I can address my fear, release the mind from figuring things out and remember the place of inner certainty that is always there, and from there set intention for a smooth, supported, and even playful process. My knowingness will tell me who the right people are, what the right answers are, even if I don’t understand the details. Letting go with my mind I can still own the situation with my heart and soul.

This is the route between the Scylla and Charybdis of effort-and-figure-it-all-out and giving up. Stay present with yourself and your Self, and that changes things completely. You are whole and complete, with or without specific answers. This type of Knowing allows you to hold effective boundaries in spite of needing something from the world. You can wait for the right answer without grabbing for the first answer.

We are all connected to Spirit and Self, and at that level we know what is right for us. We just need to relax enough to listen. Sometimes knowingness is about having the answers appear in your mind’s eye, or ear. Or you may get a body feeling when there is resonance and truth. The deep Knowing, however, is something that not only calms the anxious mind, but the calm certainty of the heart, of your Self and Spirit.

Knowing that you are Whole you will set a positive tone, even for the unexpected. You will find your answers and assistance without giving up your space or your power. When life provides the unexpected, you may not have all the tools you need right at hand, but remember that you Know, center in your Self, and the rest will follow.

(© 3/2014)

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Eye On The Ball

Posted on March 3, 2014 by mcallister

Have you ever played a sport where you threw, hit, or kicked a ball? You will have heard the maxim, “keep your eye on the ball”. It’s harder to hit something if you are looking somewhere else. Similarly you learn to focus on where you want the ball to go after you’ve connected. This may be done with your eyes, but also with a stance or body posture. If you have played the game a lot you will get to the place where you simply hold the intension and your body carries through to direct the ball to the proper place.

Riding a horse or driving a boat or car is similar; you need to look where you want to go, rather than where you are afraid of going. The horse or the vehicle will inevitably follow your eyes either way. You must focus on the way around tree you want to miss, not the tree.

It may seem simple to set an intention and focus on it, but life is full of distractions. Sometimes they are external like the tree, and sometimes they are internal, like your fear of the tree.

I recently saw a classic W.C.Fields routine where he is supposed to open a new golf course by taking the first shot off the tee. However, he has never played golf and is very easily distracted. It’s clear that he is too nervous to really want to hit the ball. All the distractions are excuses to put off something he would rather not do. It is his internal lack of focus that allows the obvious external distractions to be effective.

External obstacles that we must navigate only distract us when we are internally fearful. Our fears will alter the perceived situation, minimizing the positive possibilities and exaggerating the negative, drawing our attention away from our intention and guiding us into that huge tree.

Human beings are complex. We operate on many levels at the same time: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Some parts of each level are conscious, and others are unconscious. While we may have a clear conscious intention and goal, the various unconscious aspects may be focused in a different direction. This focus is sometimes attractive, wanting something different, and other times resistive, reacting to associated fears.

One of the aspects of self knowledge that comes from inner inquiry, is learning what all these secondary intentions and fears are, so that you can sort them out, and forge a unified intention, and compensate for anything that tends to throw you off.

When you have internal distractions, other people can move you from your core intention by engaging a secondary or unconscious intention. Pride often works this way. If our sense of self importance trumps our intention to accomplish particular tasks, we can be easily distracted and loose our way. Fear and anger can also often have this affect.

Working in groups, creating ceremonies, or in personal relationships, take time to sort out what the really important intentions or goals are, and which are secondary. Without judgement you can maintain focus, trim what’s distracting, and focus on what supports the core intention.

The better you know yourself, the more clearly you will be able to define and focus on the intentions that truly serve you, truly express your essential self and the fewer handles there will be for external distractions to lead you off course. With a focused intent, free from fear, you will come safely through any obstacles and arrive successfully at your goal.

(© 3/2014)

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True Hearts and Crosswinds

Posted on February 16, 2014 by mcallister

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. When you look back over your life, things seem to make sense, they seem to follow a coherent narrative. However at the time things probably made a lot less sense, and the narrative that is reasonably clear looking back, was not so obvious as you lived through it.

Perhaps your higher self could see it, but down at street level the fog was swirling in the crosswinds and you sometimes weren’t sure if you were going uptown or downtown, or even which way you wanted to go. There were so many options and choices that might have been, which are smoothed and filtered out in hindsight. Because you know where you wound up, its easier to “see” the flow that led there.

I’ve been noticing lately that history is also like this. In a basic history book, certain people did certain things which led to the known outcome. Only when you dig into it you find out that other people were doing other things that aimed at different results. Writing out history, or telling your life story, it reads much better to leave most of that out, to create a clear, strong narrative following the flow of “what happened”.

A certain level of conflict and uncertainty gives the tension that makes for a good story. So there may be a war with two sides in conflict. There may even be a few people who have some internal conflicts that intersect with the large scale conflict. This allows complex characters and character evolution. Also good story telling. Too much detail, though and it becomes confusing, which is closer to how it would have seemed at the time, before you knew where it was going to wind up.

Any collective human endeavor is going to have a complex mess of motives, goals, strategies and personalities pulling this way and that. Differences of opinion, of strategy, of goals and personal ambitions on all sides, at all scales and all levels. Living through it the crosswinds are often more obvious than the net flow that we focus on later.

This is as true of each of us in our individual lives as in historical dramas. We have many voices inside us, doubts and uncertainties, usually compounded by actual uncertainties of what the “facts are”. There are internal crosswinds reflecting or intersecting the external ones. No wonder we some times become discouraged and give up.

So in your life, you can expect things to be complex, that there seem to be forces arrayed against whatever you are trying to do, create, or manifest. This is always true for everything. But take heart, there are always forces arrayed with you as well, and those crazy crosswinds often combine to take you to your goal.

This is not to be delusional or in complete denial, but keep your eyes on what assists you, what needs to be done and surrender the rest. Keep a focus on what your heart tells you, your joy and inspiration, and refuse to be distracted by the apparent negatives. A few crosswinds are par for the course, not a sign that you are off track.

Work the internal conflicts, the doubts and fears and consciously forge a unified intent and vision. When you are true to your heart, Spirit will be true to you. Ride that through the crosswinds and while they are averaging out, you are creating your own story, including all the twists and surprises that make it better than your original vision.

(© 2/2014)

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Falling or Flying

Posted on February 2, 2014 by mcallister

I’ve always had a bit of unease with heights. I’m OK in airplanes or tall buildings with solid glass in front of me, but high ladders, scaffoldings, or the edges of cliffs tend to make my body nervous. The natural assumption is that the fear is of falling, but I’ve noticed that when I move beyond the anxiety, and check in with my body, what I often find is not a sense of falling, but of flying, of rising into an open sky. Sitting on a ridge looking over a valley I almost have to willfully hold myself down to keep from flying away.

It’s possible this is an experience of incipient dissociation, the spirit wanting to leave a body that feels it is in danger. It feels to me, however, more like the flying in a dream, and perhaps the fear is not in the spirit, which wants to fly, but in the body which might be left behind. At other times, half in trance in nature, I have had the sense that I could teleport myself across an open space to a pinnacle some distance away. This was an exhilarating sense of heart connection, as one moves in a lucid dream. In fact I had to remind myself that the place I was looking at would be hard to get down from if I succeeded.

In spite of an innate bodily fear of falling, the soul remembers how to fly, which makes the body nervous also. I wonder how often we let our body experience and awareness obscure our soul memories. As mammals we have an instinctual reflex fear of falling. On the other hand, up is a happy place. Flying in dreams is usually happy, either as an escape or as play. Heaven is up. Culturally Spirit is thought to be up or out there somewhere (in spite of various underworld traditions).

Spirit is certainly out there, in nature and the universe, but it is also in here. T’ai chi teaches how to let go, without falling, how to relax like a stone surrendering to gravity. Releasing the tension that comes from a fear of falling down. you create space for your chi to support you. Releasing effort, drops you into effortlessness.

In dissociation we fly up, as we escape in our dreams; in meditation or death the angels carry us up to Spirit, and yet if we relax and fall inward we also come to Spirit, the living Spirit in our own being, through which we are connected to source, inwards/downwards. Sometimes going inward we move through some shadowy places, experiences and feelings that can separate you from your center, your deep Soul. If you allow yourself to relax through them, at the core, or under the lowest surface, you come into the Light.

If you step into the inner Void, you may fear to fall, but do you? perhaps you float in spacelessness, or soar like a hawk? Your body may fear falling, but your Soul knows how to fly.

I invite you to play with replacing up and out, with down and in. Either way will lead you home, but it seems that the former is more associated with effort and struggling, while the later is the default as soon as we relax. Spirit is always calling to us, just as Earth’s gravity is always calling to us. Recognizing the tension of effort or fear, let it go, relax and Spirit will effortlessly pull you home.

(© 2/2014)

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By Yourself, Is Not Alone

Posted on January 15, 2014 by mcallister

Imagine yourself out in your favorite spot in nature, on the beach, by a stream, high on a mountain, or sitting at the base of a majestic tree. You are surrounded by a living fabric, experiencing it with all your senses, breathe deeply, and feel it with your whole being. You are by yourself, but do you feel alone? It probably depends.

Being by yourself and feeling alone sometimes go together but often do not. You may be by yourself out in nature and feel very connected. You may be in a group with many other people and feel alone. We all have places we feel less alone in and places where we feel more alone. Feeling alone, however, unlike being by yourself, is not an external fact, but in internal subjective experience of separation.

Now, gently, imagine yourself in a place where you tend to feel alone. Wherever that place is, close your eyes, let go of your surroundings, and drop deep into your own inner space. Using your creative imagination, remember that you are connected deep into the earth. Feel yourself grounded into her unconditional love and support. Remember that you are connected up into the heavens. Feel yourself receiving the unlimited life force and positive regard that flows unconditionally from Source.

In your own inner space you are supported and nurtured and never alone. Take a moment and check for any shadows here, any old feelings or emotions, any self judgments or anxious thoughts, and gently release them into the earth. Imagine this inner space being like a womb. Your whole awareness is in this space. You are present with yourself here and nowhere else. Let any thoughts drift away. Let any emotions dissipate. Experience spaciousness, warmth, safety, and the sense that there is a loving presence with you.

When you were physically in the womb, the obvious presence was your mother’s energy. In this imaginary womb of your internal being, the presence is that of Self and Spirit. The physical universe is woven from the fabric of unconditional love and acceptance that is Source, a presence that permeates the universe, including you. It holds you gently in an unconditional spacious safety. Allow yourself to relax into it.

On an energetic level the universe is like a hologram, where everything is present in everything else. As a human being you are like a piece of this hologram, with your own identity an ability to be by yourself and at times to feel alone, but the truth is, on the inside, the whole universe is always present and available. In the space between the molecules of your body, is the void, the living Spirit, that is both you and the larger whole of which you are always a part.

Feeling into this inner space of Self and Spirit, bring this knowing and feeling back to your human self and remember that it is never alone. This is not about connecting to divinity up in the sky, or even to the fabric of nature, but becoming aware of the Spirit that lives in your heart, and belly, and mind, the unconditional foundation of your Being.

This womb-like inner space, filled with the presence of Self and Spirit, a sense of safety and wellbeing, is unconditionally available. Know that it is there and practice accessing it. Practice will become habit, imagination will become experience, and though you may be by yourself at times, you need never feel alone again.

(© 1/2014)

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