It's never too late (to awaken)

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart (Shambhala.com); Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly COUNTDOWN (TO EXTINCTION) CLOCK: -15

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream (onmarkproductions.com tenbu-montage).

Dreams of nightmares (fortytwotimes.com)

When I was about ten, my best friend started having nightmares:
 
She'd be running through a huge dark building pursued by hideous monsters. She'd get to a door, struggle to open it, and no sooner had she closed it behind her than she'd hear it opened by the rapidly approaching monsters. Finally she'd wake up screaming and crying for help.
  
One day we were sitting in her kitchen talking about her nightmares. When I asked her what the demons looked like, she said she didn't know because she was always running away. After I asked her that question, she began to wonder about the monsters. She wondered if any of them looked like witches and if any of them had knives. So on the next occurrence of the nightmare, just as the demons began to pursue her, she stopped running and turned around.

Q: Where The Wild Things Are? A: the library

It took tremendous courage, and her heart was pounding, but she put her back up against the wall and looked at them. They all stopped right in front of her and began jumping up and down, but none of them came closer. There were five in all, each looking something like an animal. One of them was a gray bear, but instead of claws, it had long red fingernails. One had four eyes. Another had a wound on its cheek. Once she looked closely, they appeared less like monsters and more like two-dimensional drawings in comic books. Then slowly they began to fade. After that she woke up, and that was the end of her nightmares.

Awakening

There is a teaching on the three kinds of awakening:

1. awakening from the dream of ordinary sleep,
2. awakening at death from the dream of life, and
3. awakening into full enlightenment from the dream of delusion.

Deva in garden (WeGoTwo/flickr.com)

These teachings say that when we die, we experience it as waking up from a very long dream.

When I heard this teaching, I remembered my friend's nightmares. It struck me right then that if all this is really a dream, I might as well spend it trying to look at what scares me instead of running away.

I haven't always found this all that easy to do, but in the process I've learned a lot about maitri [metta, the Buddha's teaching of loving-kindness, friendliness, and altruism].

American Vajrayana nun Pema Chodron on "Fearless Nontheism"

• HELP WANTED: Jobs waiting in Dharamsala
• The Pema Chodron Foundation
  

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Healing Conversations Fall Series (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Pam Oslie (AuraColors)

(centraxis.blogspot.com)

 

Here is a wonderful opportunity to hear the latest from world-renowned, paradigm-shifting thinkers, healers, authors, and spiritual teachers. Aura specialist Pam Oslie has been invited to join 23 speakers on the free Healing Conversations Fall Series 2012.

 
Join Pamala Oslie, Lynn McTaggert, Dan Millman, Patricia Diane Cota-Robles, Dr. Christine Page, Freddy Silva, and more! Sept. 25-Dec. 22, 2012. (Join in at any time). Oslie's interview on "Healing Conversations with Host Lauren Galey" is Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 3:00 pm Pacific Standard Time (4:00 pm MST, 5:00 pm CST, 6:00 pm EST). Register FREE

Free registration allows listening to this interview and 23 other consciousness expanding ones that will also open hearts and provide powerful tools, meditations, and processes to help make 2012 a powerful year of mastery! With registration for this event, an email reminder of the show time and the link to join in the event will arrive.

What has Lauren Galey put together this fall? With an intention to access to the most current information on this Shift of the Ages, which is actually a shift in consciousness, she explains:

  

Feeling the call to discover a reason/intention for being on Earth? Want to break free of limiting thoughts, behaviors, and baggage to manifest ANYTHING? Ready to ascend into a higher vibration and open to unconditional love? Want to learn about quantum physics to heal?

 
If so get ready to hear some amazing information from 24 incredible speakers on Healing Conversations Fall Series 2012. With two shows each week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) from Sept. 25-Dec. 22 hear about many fascinating topics such as:

- A step-by-step process to discover passion and purpose
- New forms of healing modalities to heal self and others
- Tips for achieving mastery of the mind
- What happens when we "Let go and let god"?
- Learn how to trust the inner committee to co-create reality
- True stories of telepathy, teleportation, and psychic ability
- Identifying soul contracts with various people in our lives
- How to hire the heavens and create a celestial committee

- The latest discovery in Romania, the Transylvania Sphinx
- How to distinguish our true heart’s desire
- Attaining pure presence in the eternal NOW, and more!

Speakers include Patricia Diane Cota-Robles, Dan Millman, Freddy Silva, Dr. Christine Page, THEO with Sheila Gillette, Anrita Melchizedek, and others!

Be sure to register FREE for the Healing Conversations Fall 2012 Series to get all the details, dates, and times for each show.

Tune in FREE to Healing Conversations and listen to some fascinating information not found on the mainstream media. Can’t join live? Each event is recorded to listen in online for a few days following.

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When Things Fall Apart: A Middle Way

Pema Chodron, "Widening the Circle of Compassion" (When Things Fall Apart, pp. 81-83)

"Things were going like this in my life" (Wisdom Quarterly/Conscious Life Expo, LAX Hilton)

  

(Pema Chodron)

Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. 

  

For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

  

Blame is a way in which we solidify ourselves. Not only do we point the finger when something is "wrong," but we also want to make things "right." 

  

Not being right, not being wrong, but just being with what is -- it's an amazing way to be!

   
In any relationship that we stick with -- be it marriage or parenthood, employment, a spiritual community, or whatever -- we may also find that we want to make it "righter" than it is, because we're a little nervous.

   

Maybe it isn't exactly living up to our standards, so we justify it and justify it and try to make it extremely right. We tell everybody that our husband or wife or child or teacher or support group is doing some sort of peculiar antisocial thing for good spiritual reasons.

   

Or we come up with some dogmatic belief and hold on to it with a vengeance, again to solidify our ground. We have some sense that we have to make things right according to our standards. If we just can't stick with a situation any longer, then it goes over the edge and we make it wrong because we think that's our only alternative. Something's right or something's wrong.

A Middle Way

"It wasn't until the teachings touched my heart."

Instead of making others right or wrong, or bottling up right and wrong in ourselves, there's a middle way, a very powerful middle way.

   

We could see it as sitting on the razor's edge, not falling off to the right or the left. This middle way involves not hanging on to our version so tightly. It involves keeping our hearts and minds open long enough to entertain the idea that when we make things wrong, we do it out of a desire to obtain some kind of ground or security. 

  

Equally, when we make things right, we are still trying to obtain some kind of ground or security. Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space where we're not entirely certain about who's right and who's wrong?
  

Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right?

  

Could we see, hear, feel other people as they really are?

  

It is powerful to practice this way, because we'll find ourselves continually rushing around to try to feel secure again -- to make ourselves or them either right or wrong. But true communication can happen only in that open space.

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The Winds of Change.

changing winds swirl

clinging golden leaf shivers
smoke escapes cabin

By James R. Ure

Recently my wife and I did some cabin-sitting for our friends. Their A-frame structure is perched on a small hill deep in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado near where I live. It is miles from any sign of civilization, which is divine. They are nearly entirely, "off-the-grid" or self-sufficient thanks to solar panels and wind turbines that our friend manufactures with a buddy at his cabin a few miles away. It's a lovely home with a sea of green pine trees interspersed with small groves of quaking Aspens for a view from their front porch. We are often welcomed to come up and camp out on their property during the summer, so we were honored to give back to them by watching their homestead for a time.

Living "off-the-grid" means changing your focus on how you use energy and other resources. Knowing that the energy for the cabin was not unlimited nor on-demand like it seemingly is in the city made us much more conscious of its use. The irony is that we are already quite environmentally conscious. It underlined the truth that actually the energy we get in town isn't in-fact unlimited as we often think. It's easy to get complacent with energy use when we live in a city because it seems so permanent. Almost every time that we flip a switch, we are flooded with energy. This lulls us into thinking that this energy will always be there for us, which can never be true. Awareness of how energy is actually created; like seeing it work from wind gave me deep insight into how the way we live our lives is creating a deficit of suffering so to speak.

We put off a lot of natural suffering by our over-consumption of energy. We run our thermostat high, so we can wear shorts inside the house during the winter, and we plug in our cell phones while running the laptop and the television. This all makes for a very luxurious life to be sure, but each time we flip on the switch we are taking years off the livability of planet Earth. And, at the same time robbing our children and grandchildren from a healthy life. It's not unlike a country borrowing money to maintain a lifestyle that's unsustainable. It's a foolish game of borrowing against tomorrow to increase the enjoyment of today. And, like any form of karma this lifestyle will come back and reward us with exactly what we have invested into it.

But the hour is not too late. We can adjust our ways and live less greedily. It's easy to see greed by people who hoard money or take what isn't theirs but it's hard sometimes to see flipping on a switch as a form of greed. That's why I think if we invested in making everyone have a direct role in providing for the energy they use by hooking up all houses with wind turbines and solar panels that we could wake up in time. Awareness (as Buddha taught) is a powerful tool that can allow us to accomplish just about anything. If we don't know the full scope of what's actually going on around us, we really are living in denial and will be shocked back into reality. Isn't it better to see that reality now and adjust accordingly so that we are at one with that reality? That way, whatever is good for us will be the same thing that's good for nature because is it really a healthy life to have so much energy that we can go shopping for crap at 2 in the morning?

PHOTO: Cabin view from front porch by James R. Ure

~Peace to all beings~

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Afternoon Haiku.

honey dipped leaves flail

bleached refugees flee heavens
pixels dance inside

By James R. Ure

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Merging with Autumn and Preparing for Winter

There is a noticeable bite in the air these last few days around here. The vibrant energy of summer is slowing down and the season of harvest and contemplation is upon us. Autumn is a beautiful time of year and gives us the precious opportunity to pause and reflect upon the changes that we have gone through in the waning year. It is a time to give thanks for all the bounteous things that grace our lives. For instance, just the other day I was marveling over having warm, clean, fresh water at my fingertips. There is so much hard work and knowledge that has gone into granting me the convenience of indoor plumbing and I am very grateful. I am very aware that many in this world do not have that luxury and I pray that they will one day be able to enjoy such a blessing.

Autumn is a beautiful time of year when everything is vibrantly changing to make way for the long winter sleep. The trees begin to turn color to put on a glorious art show before shedding them to conserve energy for the cold days to come. Animals grow thicker fur and hair to adapt to the chill. It is a wonderful season to contemplate upon impermanence and how joyful change can be. I find the change in seasons to be one of the most potent pieces of evidence of impermanence and the existence of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth that one can experience. It reminds us that while we continue to base our state of being around desire, we will encounter the suffering of being cold and feeling aches in our aging bodies. What better reminder to work toward one's liberation then a cold, aching body!!

Soon winter will set in and slow us down and bring us to a state of rest. Winter is a time of quiet and peace if we allow ourselves to move beyond the physical suffering of the cold and snow. The more we can reside in a state of Buddha-nature or Onenes we better realize that winter isn't all about suffering. It is a time to regroup, study and contemplate where we wish to go in the next year. It is a period of setting goals and re-evaluating our state of being. Of course this is needed at all times during the year but there is something about winter that makes such action more accessible.

If you do not live in a climate that experiences severe cold and snow then the same can be experienced during the cold rains that force one to be indoors more and spend more time with oneself.

Yes, Autumn and winter will soon settle in around us and we will once more experience the awesomeness of change. As with all things we tend to only look at one side of an idea such as with change. I think that I often look at only the pain side of change and not the beauty and wonderful lessons that can lie within such adjustments.

PHOTO: What a beautiful face on this Buddha statue. Here is Buddha reminding us to enjoy the changing seasons.

~Peace to all beings~

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