This pandemic in itself is challenging to deal with – all the fearful news reports, lifestyle changes, isolation, etc. But there is an added challenge, and that is what the situation is triggering in us. I’m referring to the old wounds, unresolved emotions that linger inside and get touched when certain situations occur. When these wounds get triggered, if we aren’t consciously aware of what is happening, our behavior can surprise even us. This explains a lot of what has been going on out there. It’s more important than ever to practice good self management and self care. This means immediately tending to any emotional disturbance or reaction. The faster you attend to it, the more quickly you will clear the energy and be able to see your way forward.
For example, I woke with a feeling of sadness the other day. As always, my first order of business is to make space for what is arising and be fully with it. As I breathed into the feeling, I had an image of myself as a child alone in my room. I had many illnesses as a child, so was often alone in my room in “sick bay”. Although I have met this old wound of abandonment many times and it is essentially healed, this current imposed isolation served to touch a remaining thread of the old pain. After being with it, applying love and compassion, the energy released and I was able to move forward. That’s the other important point: we have been trained to move away from painful feelings, but that only keeps them in place. Moving away is the opposite of what heals; moving towards, pausing to feel what we’re feeling, is the way to emotional freedom. Clues that we have unprocessed emotions include feelings of being stuck, triggered/reactive or emotionally unbalanced. These states are meant to be cues, not obstacles to overcome. If we respond to the cue, we will use it as an opportunity to pause, feel, inquire and thereby heal the underlying emotion. Your kind attention, your gentle presence is the healing agency. All you really need to do is make space for what is arising and shine the light of your awareness on the feeling. Use the steps below to guide you through a quick self care process that you can use anywhere, anytime. Blessings and peace, Karen
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The world is shaking right now. And it’s a BIG SHAKE. As uncomfortable as this is, it’s an opportunity to make a quantum leap in consciousness by awakening to that in us which cannot be shaken. This aspect of us is often referred to as the ground of being. It’s the deeper essence of who we are that is ever calm, still, peaceful and undisturbed. If we’ve already discovered this ground, this is an opportunity to grow deeper roots, to become more established in the ground of our being. Like a mighty white oak tree whose deep roots keep it anchored to withstand winds and storms, we can become so rooted in our deeper being that we are able to move through times of challenge with less disturbance, greater equanimity. Once we’ve become more connected to the ground of our being, we are not only better able to weather storms, we also recover much more quickly from the situations and reactions that occur.
In each of us there is this ever-present reality, this ground of being that is always undisturbed. Unlike the turbulent, ever-changing world, this ground is unchanging and stable. When we return to this ground, we begin to move into resonance with this frequency of stillness. In my experience, there is nothing more calming than this. The surface or form level of experience – body, mind, emotions, experience, world – is always changing and by its nature, unstable. If we can connect with the constancy of the stillness of our being, we can be less disturbed by what is unfolding on the surface. It’s very much like an ocean: waves on the surface but an undisturbed foundation deeper down. There are many ways to touch this ground. You can begin by taking your attention from the surface, from fearful thoughts or news reports for a moment. That is the beginning of moving deeper. Then use the body to help you go deeper by bringing your attention into your feet. You are getting more rooted. Then pause thoughts and actions for a moment. In that pause you can touch the stillness of your being, the deepest part of you. The other important point to note is that this is a time that demands we be very conscious about our choices in each moment, especially where we place our attention. If we focus on fearful thoughts, scary what-if scenarios, or put too much attention on news reports, we begin to enter the “Big Shake”. We start shaking with the shaky world. However, if we choose to focus on what calms us, to come back to the ground, we can step outside of the fear and tune into the peace that is always present in the deep. What are you feeding now: fear or calm? Are you focusing on the surface turbulence, or are you touching the stable ground in you that is calm, undisturbed, still and silent? It’s your choice. Choose wisely. The world needs us to hold steady, to be the stable ground under the chaos. Visit my Facebook page for more resources including free livestream meditations. Find free downloadable meditations on the Audio page of my website. Greetings Heart Friends,
I would like to speak about the waves of fear moving through the collective, and offer some free online meditations to help calm the turbulence. As we all know, fear is powerful. Once it gets hold of us, it can be challenging to shake it off. Fear triggers our survival patterns which makes it more challenging to meet situations calmly. It also obscures our clarity and makes it more challenging to tune into our intuition. With so much fear in our collective psyche, it is important to develop skill in working with fear both reactively and proactively. Working with fear reactively means having techniques for responding to fear when it arises in the moment. The proactive approach is where we take steps to prevent fear from entering our consciousness. One of the best ways to prevent fear from moving in is to join together in a field of peace, such as in group meditation. When we enter into a shared experience of peacefulness, it multiplies and deepens in each of us. For that reason, I'm offering a series of free online meditations, starting on March 20 (details here). For working with fear in the moment, try the process included below. it's very simple yet can powerfully shift your experience from fear to calm. Peaceful blessings, Karen Simple process for dealing with fear.
I've been on a spiritual path for many years. After experiencing a number of awakenings in which I came to know my true nature as light, peace and joy, I felt pretty contented and fulfilled. However, unbeknownst to me, my journey was just beginning.
I had no idea I was going to be called deeper, and in I way I could never have anticipated. That way turned out to be what I now call the Blue Ray Healing & Awakening system. I received this teaching, which is a method of awakening Christ Consciousness, and clearing away any barriers to that pure awareness so that it can be fully embodied, at a time and in a way that was so unexpected it really threw me for a loop. It caused me to stretch in ways I didn't know I needed to, or even could. It gave me methods for increasing my light and shifting mental, emotional or physical patterns that needed healing or understanding so they could be liberated. Although this work can be subtle, it has powerful, lasting effects and helps us to clear away and resolve any conditioning that blocks the full realization of our magnificent being. The feedback from class participants has been very positive and I'm excited about seeing where this takes me and those who choose to participate. People have experienced feeling more centred during difficult situations, having more access to inner wisdom and peace, and feeling more connected and grounded in their spiritual essence and light. If you feel a tingle of interest or sense of resonance with what I'm sharing, I hope you'll consider joining me for a Blue Ray Healing & Awakening online workshop. The next one I'm offering is Blue Ray Level 1, starting this Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 9:00am Pacific, 10am Mountain, noon Eastern and 5pm London. This online workshop will run for four consecutive Saturdays. The workshops are a collaborative process, a kind of co-creation in the light. Feel free to email me, or check out the upcoming dates and course descriptions on my website. I’m hearing a number of reports lately of people getting stressed about the pressures of the Holiday Season. More than any other time of year, this can be a time when we most need to rely on our spiritual practices and tools to help us navigate situations and events with equanimity. One of the most important practices is to accept what is, AKA surrender practice.
This really came home to me when I was having a conversation with Eckhart Tolle about a challenging situation I was facing. He turned to me and asked, How is your surrender practice going? As usual, he got right to the heart of the matter. He was reminding me that if my internal state was one of acceptance, I would be able to handle whatever happened while maintaining a connection to my core of peace. A surrender practice, as Eckhart suggested, involves internally accepting what happens, including your own reactions. The priority becomes attending to your inner state of being first, then responding appropriately to the outer circumstances. As he said a number of times, the process is to accept what is, then take the best action possible, from that surrendered state. Catherine Ponder has a beautiful surrender pointer I really resonate with. She refers to accepting or surrendering as coming into agreement with what is. I love this because it makes surrender so accessible to us all. Once something has already happened, I can come into agreement with the fact that it has, and then see what the best response could be to the situation. Eckhart refers to this as becoming friendly with the present moment. To come into agreement, to become friendly, automatically shifts any situation or experience, and helps increase the possibility that it will have a positive outcome. More importantly, it keeps our inner state open, clear and calm. Our experience then is one of peace, regardless of what is happening externally. During the Holiday Season, many of us have ample opportunity to put our surrender practice into action. The holidays often find us in situations that can trigger us. I invite you to focus on your surrender practice this season and see how fully you can come into agreement with what is happening and thereby experience, at the very least, less stress and more ease. Perhaps you will be able to experience a fuller surrender that leads you to a deep, unshakable peace. Aunt Helga’s condescending comments at the annual family gathering may just roll off your back this time as you recognize her words say nothing about you, unless you let them. Instead of becoming tense in long holiday lineups, maybe this year you will use those moments of waiting to come into agreement with the delay and thereby drop into the calm stillness of your center, instead of wasting that precious time by stressing out. If you feel you need a little support getting through the season, I have a few suggestions of helpful resources. If you are sensitive and/or feeling yourself getting overly affected by people, you might want to check out my friend Dave Markowitz’s book Self Care for the Self Aware. This book is a great resource for helping to learn how to let things move through rather than sticking to you, how to release energies you may have taken on and how to strengthen your boundaries. I use his Return to Sender technique often in sessions, as it is so helpful. Another resource is the Shift Into Freedom audio program by Loch Kelly, available through Sounds True. This program has many guided practices for awakening your deeper nature so you can have a greater experience of wholeness that also includes your human aspects. His Emotional Freedom practice is one of the best I’ve ever come across for dealing with difficult emotions such as anger, fear and sadness. It can help you disentangle from emotions and shift into acceptance and peace. Finally, if you would like to get more rooted in your heart’s wisdom, and release painful emotions from the past, consider joining me for my Heart Alchemy online class starting Saturday, January 6. I’m also offering a new online workshop, Bringing the Shadow to Light, if you find yourself in the same reactive patterns and really want to get to the bottom of them so you don’t have to repeat them in future. This online workshop will also help you uncover more of your light and express it in your life and the greater world. Starts January 10. More details on both courses may be found on the Schedule page of my website. Wishing you much peace this Holiday Season. Blessings, Karen In last week's blog I wrote about the primary key to experiencing embodied wholeness: feeling, or being with, what arises. Now I'd like to share the other main component which, in a word, is discernment. While feeling what arises engages loving compassion, discernment calls forth the sword of awareness to cut through remaining illusions that are reinforcing the sense of separation and thereby perpetuating suffering. I often refer to this skill as separating fact from fiction.
Whenever we use discernment to reduce the moment down to what is actually alive (i.e., real), we are left with the facts: pure being, pure life. The fiction is the story, the mental commentary about what is. I'll share a dramatic example from my own experience to illustrate the process of separating fact from fiction, and the liberation it often leads to. I had a debilitating health condition for many years. It was so familiar that it seemed like "me" rather than something I was experiencing. In other words, there was identification with the illness. One day, during an episode of the illness, I decided to inquire into what was occurring to see what was true. I dropped all preconceptions and met the symptoms with pure attention. I noticed there were thoughts around the possible future outcomes of the episode such as "Oh no, I will miss work again. I won't be able to make the rent". Etc, etc. With discernment it was seen these were just thoughts and not actually real. The future wasn't here yet, and who knows what would actually happen. By seeing through the fiction, the thoughts fell away (which tends to happen when we no longer believe them). Once the fearful thoughts were disarmed, what remained was my body lying in bed, sensations throughout the body, sounds in the environment, and the spacious presence holding and surrounding it all. There was no longer any such thing as an illness, with a past and future, just the sensations of the moment. Very alive. Very real. I then inquired into the uncomfortable sensations that were present with open curiosity, wondering what they were trying to communicate. Considering the Divine is omnipresent and omniscient, I went with the assumption that these sensations must be a manifestation of that intelligence. I received an intuition about the purpose of the sensations, and immediately responded with appropriate action. The symptoms dissipated soon after. Without dragging along the whole illness with its remembered past and projected future, I was able to respond in the moment to the movements of life (in the form of sensations). The discomfort then fulfilled its purpose and my experience was returned to a balanced state of well-being. It's hard to express how potent this experience was except to say that moment was the end of a decades-old illness. It was over the moment I saw through the fictional story and met with the facts of the moment. The story was that there was an illness with a past and future. In reality, there were only sensations arising and subsiding in a given moment. The past and future were all in my mind, and were creating a burden I didn't need to carry. For the next few weeks, every time a symptom would arise, instead of assuming it was related to anything from the past (i.e., the illness), I would meet it directly and just be with it, feel into it. It would often dissolve in my attention. When it didn't, I would bring warm curiosity to it and open to receive any messages or guidance - sometimes it came, sometimes not. Either way, I would be with what arose without adding any story to it. A few months later I realized that I no longer had the illness, nor any of the symptoms I had associated with it. It was as if it had never existed. And in fact it never had except in my mind. It had always been a fictional story overlaid on the reality of a given moment, a kind of misinterpretation of what was occurring. Almost ten years later, it's a vague memory that only comes up when I'm recounting this breakthrough experience. My purpose here isn't to say all illness is unreal or that this will bring the same results to everyone. The point is to encourage you to use discernment to separate out the fact from the fiction, particularly with anything that you struggle with. Once you do that, you will always be freer, if only of the mental overlay that often adds a layer of psychological suffering that is totally unnecessary. Through discernment you find that pain and discomfort still happen, but suffering is optional. Blessings, Karen Our true nature is vast and deep, alive and awake, joyous and peaceful, with infinite capacity to hold our experience. I have found that to realize this truth fully it takes both awakening and embodiment. Awakening is timeless; it's an insight or recognition that happens in an instant, yet is always present thereafter. It doesn't take time, but it lasts....forever. Embodiment, on the other hand, unfolds through time and experience. This can be likened to the marriage of heaven and earth: awakening is the recognition of our Divine, heavenly nature; embodiment is how we bring it down to earth and live it.
Since everything is light-filled perfection in heaven, it makes sense that awakening is the "easy" part. There are many things that support or encourage awakening, including sitting with an awakened being, or applying self inquiry. Since we are already "that", it's actually very accessible, and many people are awakening now. The experience of recognizing true nature is usually wonderful. It often brings a sense of freedom, expansion, joy, and everyone celebrates your good fortune. Embodiment is more of a slog. Once the honeymoon of awakening starts to pale, the real work begins, and work it is. In my experience, it's pretty tough work, and definitely not for the faint of heart. As Carl Jung said, "There is no coming to consciousness without pain". The good news is, there are some hints that can dramatically ease the way. I'll share the main one here, and more in a future blog. Although I would say embodiment is infinite - after all, what we are is infinite - you really just need to get over the hump (more on that later) and then it gets fun. Mostly. The hump is essentially everything that is out of balance, repressed, denied or disowned (i.e., shadow stuff). Embodiment requires the reintegration of the shadow, as it is a return to our natural state of wholeness. All of you has to get included back into being. Unless and until we return to the state of wholeness, we aren't able to fully rest in being and freely express our uniqueness. If you're pretty sane and balanced, embodiment tends to go along much more smoothly, and you might wonder what I'm gong on about. In my case, I had a lot of shadow material, so there were a few rough patches along the way. If I had known then what I know now, getting over the hump would have been much less challenging. Here's the key (otherwise known as the shortcut): What is required to return to wholeness is to fully feel all that has been denied or repressed. This means to be with whatever arises, as the aware presence you are, without moving away from the experience. No escape; no analysis; just being with or holding the experience. And everything will arise, though fortunately not all at once, as awareness wants to bring everything back home. At times it can be painful and uncomfortable, but as the saying goes, to feel is to heal. And the benefits are immense. The more we hold our experience consciously, the more peace, joy and freedom we experience, and the greater we discover our capacity to be. We truly are bigger than anything that arises, and by embracing it, we experience this directly, non conceptually. This brings about a stabilization of the awakened awareness which is another way of describing embodiment. Our very presence is our own best medicine. When we bring that feeling/attention to anything that arises, it acts like magic. It is the most potent healing power there is. And since this presence is infinitely intelligent, it knows exactly what is required to return to wholeness. So you can trust your experience, you only have to be willing to fully have it without resistance. Since the ego is resistance, it's old machinations may surface in the form of distractions, avoidance, denials. Just hold that, too, and it will only deepen your knowing of your unshakable being. Another important note is that the awakening/embodying process is cyclical, not linear. Each insight into true nature will become embodied in our experience. So wherever you are in the process, this is all relevant. We are all awakening and embodying more of ourselves in each moment. To support your embodiment process, I have a few free meditations on my Audio page. For practice being with what arises, check out the Hug Yourself meditation. When facing a more intense emotion, the Heart Embrace meditation can be very helpful. The Inner Body Meditation is useful for bringing awareness more fully into the body and awakening the fire of presence. If you'd like to explore embodiment more deeply, I'm offering a teleclass called Embodied Wholeness to support moving into this state of being and becoming fully integrated. The next class starts November 2; for details, see the Schedule page of my website. I hope you'll join us as we experience and celebrate our ever present wholeness. Blessings, Karen On the journey to wholeness, longing can serve as an obstacle or an ally; it's all in how you look at it. What I've found through my own investigation is when longing is embraced, it becomes a doorway into the experience of greater fulfillment and peace.
How I discovered this was through an experience of restlessness that arose one day a number of years ago. I met it with curiosity instead of resistance. The curiosity brought a warm, welcoming energy which allowed the longing to unfold and reveal it's deeper nature. I gently inquired within using the question "What am I really longing for"? What came was that I was longing for an intimate relationship. I brought more warm curiosity to the feeling and asked a deeper question: "What will that give me"? What came was that it was actually a longing for comfort. Somehow the association had been made, through previous experience, that comfort is found in intimate relating. Rather than trying to take action to create an external change, I instead moved more fully into my experience of the present moment to see if the sense of comfort was already here. Starting with the physical, I became aware of the softness of the chair I was sitting on and the warmth of my favourite shawl around my shoulders. Then I felt the steadiness of the rhythm of my heartbeat and relaxed into the waves of breath moving through my body. In just a few moments, I was in an experience of comfort and peace, and the longing dissolved. What I realized was the mind, through associating comfort as only coming through relationship with other, had completely overlooked the nourishing, delicious comforting embrace that was all the while present and available. Over the next few months, I used the same approach with every longing or craving that arose. I discovered that every longing at its core was always about a felt state rather than an external object. I started thinking about this process as leading a horse to water: I would lead every longing to the experience of its fulfillment. After doing this practice for a while, I found a much deeper internal rest and contentment, and many conditioned patterns that previously created dissatisfaction came to rest. The delicious state of fullness became the norm instead of the exception. If you would like to experiment with this approach you can try out this guided process as a starting point. Please feel free to share your results. I'd love to hear from you Blessings, Karen Self love is a wonderful concept and something we hear about often, but how do you actually "do" self love? And why is it so important?
In my experience, the only thing that really heals is unconditional love. The parts of us that are wounded or abandoned need acceptance and love in order to heal and return home. Part of the embodiment process includes welcoming the rejected parts of us back, which results in a greater sense of wholeness and integration. As helpful as love and support from others is, often the love we most need is that of our deeper being. Our own presence can be our best medicine on the path to wholeness. I find that applying love liberally is the best approach. Every time any discomfort arises, I like to embrace it with love. This includes physical, mental or emotional discomfort. Pretty much everything responds well to love, so you can't really go wrong. As we respond with warmth to that which arises, a kind of alchemy happens and the pain, discomfort, judgement, etc., lessens and ultimately turns into peace. So the next time you feel out of sorts, I invite you to try a dose of the medicine of your loving kindness towards yourself. One day while guiding a friend in this approach, a process spontaneously arose which I've started calling "hug yourself". I find it very effective and have heard from others that they do as well. If you'd like to try it out, you can access a short recording of the Hug Yourself process here which will give you a taste of the wonderful embrace of your own spirit. You can find this and other meditations on the Audio page of my website. Ascending and descending are cycles of a greater process of integration that happens in our spiritual unfolding. Although we are always already everything and all, the experience of knowing our allness seems to unfold through cycles of integration.
We go through times of seeming to ascend into the light of spirit. These are the times of expansion and upliftment; literally the “up” cycle. We soar in the bliss of our Divine nature, or feel the vastness of our being and taste the "peace that passeth understanding". In these moments we are in the light - the light of our own being or spirit. Many of us wish to stay in this higher state. We tend to prefer the up swings of the cycles of integration. However, in order to fully embody these greater aspects, the descending arc is also necessary. In the descending movement, that greater light comes in, all the way into the cells of the body. It’s a more introspective process and can actually feel uncomfortable so we often try to avoid it. However, if we relax and allow it to unfold, it can be quite beautiful. The more we embody the fullness of our spirit, the more fully we can live. The process of integration is one of returning to wholeness, of being fully embodied as all that we are. Trees are a good metaphor for this state of wholeness. The deeper the roots, the higher the branches can reach to the sky. If we will allow the periods of deepening and rooting, our experience will be more integrated and stable, and ultimately more expansive and liberated. When you are in a descending period, I invite you to let your roots go deep by surrendering to the process. Know you are discovering more of your own depth and capacity to hold your experience and creating a solid foundation for the full embodiment of your light. Here is a guided mini meditation to assist you in navigating the ascending and descending movements within your unlimited being. Blessings, Karen |
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