Resources of the Mind

Posted on June 1, 2008 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

We are often taught to think of ourselves as our ego, our conscious mind, which inhabits a physical body, which sometimes has emotions. The body allows us to experience the physical world around us and to act upon it. We identify strongly with the body, but usually more so with the mind, our sense of self, our plans and hopes, expectations, concepts and memories. For many of us, in most of our lives our conscious mind handles things for us pretty well. But it does have limits.

Sometimes if we push these limits strongly it may break or fracture. But today and every day, even in ordinary circumstances we are also handicapped by this limited view of ourselves. We are so much more than just a mind in a body that sometimes feels things.

Some morning take the time to really feel the water in the shower as it flows over you. Listen to the sounds it makes. Smell the soap. Be aware of your body, all the aspects of mind that are tied to the body. Thank them for handling the details of the most complex organism we know of. Be aware your senses and of the bodies sensations. Bringing your mind back from racing already through your day. Allow yourself to really enjoy being a human in a body taking a warm shower.

This is the base layer of mind. Step up now to your emotions. Many of you are already there and function naturally in your emotional body. But there are still places you don’t like to go and places you are challenged to give space to. How much of us, both light and shadow is under the surface emotionally? Too much joy can be as threatening as too much fear. But there is great knowledge and wisdom here.

Most of your experience this lifetime is in the emotional associative memory. Allow yourself to remember other showers, other times you felt water on your body, other times you were warm (or cold). Follow the chains crisscrossing back into the past. Like nuclear particles decaying in a shower of sparks in a scintillator, each chain activates others, by association, on and on.

In the sum of these pathways there is depth and wisdom, experience and knowledge. These levels of mind remember how to play, how to relax, how to love. Other parts of yourself that were assigned to tasks many years ago, are waiting to be assigned new tasks that serve you better. Even the hurts and pains carry within themselves the knowledge of how to complete, to release. The wisdom of the body to heal itself is true on many levels, when we listen.

Now, imagine you are holding a ball between your hands, perhaps about 3 inches across. Feel the ball. Or take the sense of water flowing down your arms and let it jump across the gap in your hands. If you intend it, there is something there. Feel into that in a different way, and you are feeling the energy of your being. Allow yourself to begin to feel your whole energy body, as the water washes away any tension down the drain. Breath into it. Feel the ball, and yourself, expand and contract with the breath.

Your energy bodies carry a whole different level of wisdom, a new way of being and feeling in the world. This is information that some level of your mind is always receiving. Only when it becomes very strong, a hunch perhaps, or a sense of something do most of us listen to it. Perhaps we wind up meeting an old friend, or turning a corner to see a beautiful sunset, or it may save your life. We can learn to hear it all the time.

Some of you already have a relationship with your higher self, angels, or guides. There are levels of mind that exist “above” our normal consciousness, which we access in meditation, or in nature, or under extreme circumstances, when the conscious mind has the good sense to step aside.

These levels are always there, if we are not to focused on our busy lives, on figuring things out, on thinking our way through. They can help us when we are troubled, you are never really alone, let your essential self comfort you. They may warn us or help us to heal. But they are also a source of joy, creativity, and imagination. They can help us to create lives well beyond our conscious imaginings, all the time.

We all have so many resources, that we are mainly not trained to be aware of or tap into. Playing with them in the shower, or on a trail or even in the office, and you will develop them. Having the intention is the key. Playing is how we learn. Know that you are much more than you think, and you have resources along the way.

Blessings and enjoy the journey.

(© 5/2008)

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Willful Eyes

Posted on May 15, 2008 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys



Perhaps you are used to thinking about your eyes as a doorway that lets light and vision into your mind? Through them we absorb images that tell us what is happening in the world around us. We usually think of sight as a passive experience, like watching a movie.

When a scientist observes his experiment, however, quantum mechanics tells us that it is not entirely a passive process. Her observation will, subtly or grossly, affect the process that she is observing, will influence the outcome of the experiment. This influence is not simply selective observation, the mind filtering its inputs (which happens all the time), but is such that the events themselves are altered by the observations process. In the social sciences, or news reporting, the presence of an observer may affect behaviors on conscious and unconscious levels. If the observed are, on any level, trying to please the observers, or persuade them, then the act of observation has effects that are edging towards the active.

Remember the experience of riding as a passenger in an automobile with a driver who you didn’t fully trust? Perhaps they are angry, or tired, or for some other reason aren’t giving the road their full attention. You may have noticed yourself trying to make up for their lack of attention by increasing your own, leaning into the curves, breaking with your feet, or perhaps you have found yourself willing the car around the curves or to break at a light? Now your eyes are actively trying to manage the world around you, to create your experience, manifest a positive outcome. An activity that takes energy, and over time, can be noticeably tiring.

In fact, we often use our eyes to create what we see, to will our life into existence, either literally or figuratively, in our imaginations.

The other night I had a chance to experience a period of being blindfolded. I recommend you try it sometime. I have noticed before that when the visual mind “gives up”, besides making space for our other senses to receive more attention, something else happens. The willful mind relaxes. It may not do it right away, but when it does there is a profound sense of relief. This happens when we allow ourselves to trust that someone else, or something else will guide us where we need to go, safely and well. Suddenly I realize all the energy that has been going into “keeping the car on the road”. When this effort ceases there is a sense of calm and peace that is unexpected and perhaps somewhat unfamiliar.

In our lives who is it we don’t trust? Ourselves, others, the divine? who is the driver that we need to help out by adding our will to theirs? How much life force do we loose through the eyes, trying to shape our world, to keep our life on track, because we don’t trust it to happen otherwise?

The other night after a period of time of being led through a process, a period in which I could relax and just be in a unique way, I am invited to take off the blindfold, and a little later to dance. I find that I am certain of my moves, I know where the spaces are on the floor. I move easily and without effort through those spaces, without fear or anxiety that I will be anywhere other than where I should be, that I will trip, or run into someone else, even though they are all moving too. Without my willful mind I am able to show up and be present in a new way, that is far superior to the way I am used to navigating my life. Relaxed, fun, free. I am more fully aware of what is, using my eyes to see rather than create, I glide effortlessly across the floor, joyfully weaving the dance with everyone around me.

Give the mind and the will a vacation. Stop projecting what “should” be there, and allow yourself to dance with what is, in joy and gratitude. You may be surprised at how beautiful, effortless and graceful the experience is.

(© 5/2008)

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Parents Come in Pairs

Posted on May 1, 2008 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

Coasting down Vail pass, westbound on a spring morning several years ago, I am meditating on the emotional attitudes to driving that I absorbed from my parents growing up. I have long been aware of my father’s tendency to be angry more easily behind the wheel than in many other situations, something that has at times made me nervous as a passenger, both with him and with other people as well. I have also at times noticed the same thing in myself. On this morning I suddenly notice in myself that this is my mother’s fear, which had become my fear of his anger. Which became my fear of my own anger, which arose in part as a reaction to her fear and resulting control.

Round and round the mulberry bush we go.

Often times, as we sort through our lives, we notice the affect that one of our parents has had on us. One of them is, perhaps, much more obvious and we focus on that one. We work hard to let go of their energy, to release programming, beliefs, emotional charges: but with only partial success. What I have realized this morning however, as I glide now past Vail and on west along I-70, is that I have incorporated both halves of their dynamic, and that becoming aware of the second, less visible, component can be a key to clearing the full effects of the more visible one as well.

The doorways that let in the influence of one parent may have their source in the other parent. As a couple their dynamics matched up, and we often take on both parts. So I take on the fear of one parent, which creates a doorway to take on the behavior of the other, and to be fearful of similar behavior in other people as I grow up. I am myself both angry and afraid, an internalized dynamic that has more than one part, each triggering and regenerating the other. Cut off only one head and the other is still there, in the shadows, from which to regenerate the first. Like the Hydra of legend we need to address them all at once.

A later time: I’m looking at work and responsibility, conscious of my mother’s fear around money, her sense that, driven by survival needs, work must to look a certain way to be OK. This has been quite obvious for a long time, as she has made it obvious, believing this to be part of her parental duty to keep me safe. But underneath, if I look for my father, I find his pictures that paired with her.

I realize that I have a long practice of matching his acquiescence to her fears, his self limiting for the good of the family. Consciously it is relatively easy to become aware of the whip hand, the controlling factor, but not so much of the sense of being whipped, controlled, the giving up of aspects of oneself for the “good” of the family. This is more passive and therefore harder to notice.

But this is just the energy that “lets mom get in”, that buys into the paradigm that generates the fear and the control in reaction to the fear. This doorway will let in other fears, and allow other controls. No matter how many times we clear these out, or extract ourselves from controlling people or situations, the doorway is still there, unnoticed but open wide. Becoming aware of the “shadow parent” side is critical to permanently clearing the influence of the “obvious parent” as well.

Releasing my father’s energy, his pictures, decisions, (without judgement, perhaps even with gratitude, as he did his best) allows me to begin to create my own dynamic. One in which work can be many things that it wasn’t for him. One in which I can really let slide my mother’s worries and fears, her limiting pictures.

Sometimes the labeling of parents as “obvious” or “shadow” may be clear, sometimes not. They may take turns, playing it one way on some issues and the other on others. Or perhaps they are both obvious or both hidden. But just as in our own relationships “it always takes two to tango”, there is always some part for each of us in each dynamic or drama, so the family we grew up in was created by two souls in human form, dancing their dance for two.

So whenever you come face to face with aspects of one parent that you have taken on or are in resistance to, look in the shadows for the other, and notice how that side of the dynamic affects your life as well. Perhaps this is the key to unlocking some stubborn old issues.

Breathing deeply, relaxing into who you are, be freer to go forth without the fear, without the anger, without the control or self-limitation. Show up in the moment as happy and playful, following your soul’s calling, and creating your life from your own vision and inspiration.

PS. It is important to remember that this has everything to do with understanding our own process and where we have taken our programming from. It is not about judging our parents, as that will actually make clearing things more difficult.

(© 4/2008)

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Sunny Skies and Dark Thoughts

Posted on April 15, 2008 by mcallister

This afternoon the sky is clear and blue as only Colorado and other high dessert skies are blue. The sun is warm, if not hot. Fruit trees are beginning to bloom, as are the little spring flowers in the grass and along the trails. The air smells fresh and clean as the snow on the high mountains. Its about as beautiful a day as you can imagine.

My emotional body responds to this beauty, relaxes, opens, feels happy. Its an easy day to drop into my heart and breath and be grateful to be alive.

Then I notice my mind doing some strange things. It’s actually trying to talk me out of the way I’m feeling! It skips right by the fact that it may snow tomorrow (this is Colorado after all) to the fact that its tax day, that a client postponed, that various other things are not perfect in the accounting department. One after another it’s tossing these dark thoughts at me, challenging my right to feel happy and enjoy the day.

None of these things affects the present moment, like tomorrow’s weather. None of these is cast in stone either, and in fact they may well turn out to be opportunities in disguise. Like tomorrow’s weather everything may be different by the time it shows up.

So I ask my mind what the deal is? Well, you can’t just feel good for no reason can you? comes the answer. To which I say why not? You’ve talked me into feeling bad many times for no real reason, haven’t you? say I. No reply to that one. Why should it be that we need a reason to feel good? or to feel anything for that matter?

We feel what we feel when we feel it. If we can let ourselves have this then the feelings come and go and we move on. If the mind gets a hold of them and sticks them in a story, or connects them with various memories (in order to explain or justify them) then we start looping. Feelings to memories/story to feelings to.. over and over.

So today I simply choose to connect to the day around me and feel good, be happy, use this as another lesson in what living with an open heart feels like. It may not change tomorrow’s weather, any more than my mind can change today’s, but I can enjoy today, and perhaps enjoy the snow tomorrow as well.

And perhaps, a little voice says, if you allow the emotional body to cultivate feeling good, in spite of the mental programs, we can learn to feel good most of the time, even when challenging things come.

Choose love not fear, and have a wonderful day.

(© 4/2008)

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Manifesting from the Heart

Posted on April 1, 2008 by mcallister

by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys

I am standing in front of the mirror in the morning, doing those things that one does between the shower and breakfast, getting ready for the day ahead. This particular morning I have woken up with some fear in my belly over moving ahead with aspects of my life, anxiety about projects I’m working on, how well the manifesting is going in the career sphere.

As I’m working in front of the mirror, I’m thinking about how I ought to feel. I know that I need to be in a less anxious and more positive space for successful manifesting to occur. I know that much of this anxiety isn’t mine, but was gifted to me long ago by anxious adults, and that I know what a more positive space feels like. I begin to notice that my mind is trying to think me into that positive space: that relaxed, open feeling of gratitude and certainty in the bounty of the universe, that it knows I should be in.

Then it happens. Another part of my awareness wakes up a little and realizes how strange this is. My mind is trying to will me into the appropriate feeling/emotional state, to shift me out of anxiety and into abundance. Now, I have learned some time ago that willing things in to reality, while possible in theory, is exhausting in practice and in any case not the way my being creates most naturally.

Holding the appropriate emotional state, full of gratitude and certainty in the flow of abundance, and allowing that to flow through the vision of what I am intending to attract into my life is both easier and more powerful. I may not be able to hit this place all the time, but I have enough experience to know that this is true for me. So my mind has backed off a level, but still believing that it has the answers, or is supposed to come up with them, it is now trying to will the appropriate levels of surrender and gratitude and trust. This is pretty funny.

I begin to find my amusement. I also realize why this isn’t really working too well. My internal narration is writing out the description of the emotional state it thinks I should be feeling, but I am still being held in the mental levels of awareness. So I check in on the feeling levels. I drop down into my heart, which has felt these things, knows where they are and remembers how to get there again.

Letting my heart open, as my awareness shifts into the world of feeling and flow, and releasing the mental narration, for the moment, I begin to breath deeper, to relax into that place I have been looking for. Now I am feeling for it, which is a much easier and more powerful means to get there, the anxiety is dissipating and space is expanding inside me for gratitude, for receptivity of the support and abundance that the universe is already sending towards my intention and vision.

My anxiety after all was largely driven by the mental mind which felt there was a problem that it was supposed to solve, to keep me safe and happy, but which it wasn’t sure it knew the answer to. The solution was not to figure it out and willfully create a better emotional state, from a place of resistance and fear, but to relax the mind and slip into the heart, which always knows the path for finding emotional peace.

Once you have committed to following and understanding this path, spirit will be there to remind you over and over to stop the mind and drop into the heart, until it also becomes familiar and you have the freedom to choose how to approach each aspect of your life, from the heart, or from the head, or in a dynamic balance of the two. After the intention comes practice and more practice, over and over 🙂 May you find patience and joy in the process.

As I headed into my day in a different place than before, I marveled at the persistence and subtlety with which the mind, so used to control and dominance, that releases its belief in itself as the only savior in our life, one layer at a time. I am grateful for this gift of awareness from spirit, and the reminder that my heart is powerful and can work many things more easily than my mind, grateful to experience again the ability of the heart to find the way back to myself, to gratitude, joy, and receptivity. This is the proper space for manifesting dreams.

May these come ever more easily for all of us. Blessed be.

(© 3/2008)

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