Please Change Your World

What a bold title today!
The truth is, I can't change your world. My world is full of it's own challenges, it's ups and downs. I am engaged, present to my own process of acceptance or taking action or letting go, whatever is required in the moment.
I'm there with you, in this fullness of life. Yet what your experience is, is of your own making. I can stand beside you yet you are the only one present for your own journey, just as I am for mine.

You are the the process itself and only by your own consciousness can the world change. Something is not going to happen to enlighten you. It happens in you because you pay attention, because you care, because you understand that no one else can do this for you in the way and depth you can do it for yourself.

We have all wished otherwise. Please someone take care of us. Our parents, friends, relatives, state, government all turn out to be inadequate, it's true. It's a setup really. Unfair even.

In the end it's you. We grow up and begin to look within. We see how our beliefs and misunderstandings color what we see and feel. We struggle with the alluring demons in our heads that tell us falsehoods and we gather the courage to say no, not now and not ever. We come to terms with our imperfections so we are not just walled off from the truth of our humanness. We accept our dominion over our own lives, weeding out the falsehoods and opening to a deeper sense of our place in the world. We let go and begin to see a new truth, one that includes both our humanity and our innate spirituality.

I love myself so I can now love you. I used to think if I could just love and accept you then I would be alright, that my undisclosed pain would absolve. It didn't work that way for me (let me know if it did for you). My self hatred was so deep and pervasive. I was the one that left the garden of Eden, that left paradise and needed so desperately to go home. It was my fault, there was something wrong with me, driven out of the kingdom for unknown but suspected iniquities. The original sin deal. Sorry it's not true. That lie keeps you small so others can control you. That lie allows you to give your power to others. Either way it's not true. You are meant to have your own life, your own dominion over your world.

We don't know if we even want that. It means taking responsibility for whatever happens within us when it's so easy to blame anything and everything on the outside. Our excuses abound: I'm too busy, worried, broke, inadequate, whatever.
We have been trained to look outside ourselves and for someone else to fix things. Magical thinking. We think that we are powerless to change our world because we have been taught that it's outside ourselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let's choose to wake up now. "Be the Change". Who you are is your responsibility and your resonance sends a message to everything around you about what you think and feel is true about life. Then that's what you experience. No one else can free you from the lies. Breathe it in and then let it go.

It's all in you.
Inhale and breathe in all the gifts and possibilities of this moment. This is where it starts. Now. Now is here, feel it, embrace it. This is what we have. The fullness begins here, the acceptance starts here, the recognition begins here. Let the lies go and allow yourself to be present. Your life begins anew right now. This is your life, don't be afraid that there's nothing here for you. Allow it to unfold in it's depths and simplicity. Trust life and trust yourself, it's all in you.

Blessings,
Laurel

The Call for Change- Monday, August 25, 2008

As the US political parties gear up for our Presidential elections and everyone is calling for change, I want to propose a call for change also. We’ve not just had 8 years of movement backwards, we’ve had lifetimes of it. It’s time to really move forward by staying in the same place and not doing anything! It’s time to take your life back.

For thousands of years we have left the garden believing we can use our minds to solve our problems. For lifetimes we have left behind the heart as our personal ruler, falsely believing it could not understand enough, fight the fear enough, to save us from the spin put on the world.

The heart is considered weak, ineffective, not really having the power to change our world.
The mind tells us it has the answers, it can solve the problems we face, yet it hasn’t and can’t. More information and more manipulation of information never solves anything. More details about our fears doesn’t change our fear. We’re given a false sense of security to having more and doing more and knowing more yet we are only really content and secure when we’re seeing the world through our hearts.

The mind has held dominion over our hearts and poisoned our view of what it is and the power it has. Maybe the fall of man is just this, the takeover of command by the mind, leading us to be puppets to information and fear. Our current world is all about fearmongering and scarcity. We no longer see the truth of the abundance of our planet and our lives and so this falsehood is perpetuated and we see our world destroying itself. Man can only solve the problems he has created, giving himself the illusion of control.

We attempt to remain mentally positive and generate some good feedback from that yet the foundation of that is not grounded. The heart’s view unfolds a true reality, the mind’s realities only appear real. We easily slip back into fear and trying and work even harder at believing that we can affirm our reality to be what we desire.

I’m not saying that postive thoughts aren’t beneficial, because we know they work alot of the time. Just not all the time. Why? Well because we’ve been taught that we are less than, not enough and weak, etc and the mind doesn’t want to lose control so it sabotoges the love we really are so we’re constantly working at our lives. Maybe you don’t believe that anymore so now it generates distrust of others or your safety in the world. It looks like a gerbil on a wheel and feels like it also. It’s time to get off the wheel dear ones.

“Consider the lillies of the fields, they toil not.” Why? They know they are love, as do the animals and the trees and the earth. Really. Honest. When you are in love, the whole world looks and feels very different. How about us? Who are we?

The trees teach us we are the masters and commanders of our lives, that we are LOVE incarnate. Through the love we hold for ourselves, our lives and our planet, we open to a higher understanding of what we are here for and how to live on this planet. Yet we don’t know how to do this because the mind, which is supposed to be our servant (a brilliant one at that) has become the master and commander. It lies to us about how ineffective the heart is to maintain control.

In the teaching from the Council of Trees, the heart is our center and holds seven levels of understanding and power. It is the key. It informs the foundation of who we are and how we are in the world. It provides us with safety and security because it connects us to the deeper rhythms of all of nature and the universe. When you are in your heart, you lead your life without judgment and you want what’s best for all, naturally. You sit in your heart, BEING all of who you are, having the natural intelligence of the universe creatively avaliable to you. The heart generates trust and the world responds in trust of you. As the heart is present in time, fears from the past and of the future are neutralized. You go home to Eden, to heaven on Earth. From this place you can respond to life with care and wisdom, drawing from a deeper intelligence, the one of your heart. The mind becomes a good servant, as it was originally intended to be, and relaxes, no longer spinning tales of doom and gloom.

This is a change I believe in. This is the only way that works in my life. A thousand years of peace begins in you and reverberates through your family and around the globe. We can do it, saving ourselves and our planet through our love and compassion.

Blessings,

Laurel

Healing the Past, Monday, August 18th, 2008 Being Present for Today

I’m allergic to cats, have been for years. The sneezing and runny nose are bearable but tearing, itchy eyes can really overwhelm me. So I’ve been here for two days with two lovely cats, and I’m going back and forth between the 2 parts of the house, getting things I need to be comfortable, feeding the animals, etc. I’m taking a homeopathic animal dander remedy and putting in eye drops but whoa, it flares up and I can’t stop tearing and it’s really uncomfortable. Saturday I go visit a friend who I didn’t know also had a cat and even though I spend most of the time outside, I’m pretty miserable. My other eye starts to react also. Sunday, I’m constantly putting drops in, remembering the last time when I ended up at the eye doctors in a toxic allergic state. I attend a healing group I belong to and plan to stop by my house after and pick up my air cleaner for the apartment here. I’m worried I won’t be able to stay here and I love it here.

Please know with every healer and modality I’ve done, I’ve brought up this allergy for treatment. Usually I feel better but it has never cleared completely. So in our group I put it on the list, open but not convinced it’ll help much. In our group everyone puts their stuff on a list and we all work the list. (We’re all in this together!) So I’m working on my allergy and receive this whole picture of a conversation on the phone a long time ago with my Mom where all she’s talking about are her cats. Here I see myself saddened one more time with my Mom’s self absorption and my neediness. It’s painful and the message is to forgive my Mom and embrace who I was back then. I do not allow my mind to recreate a story or attempt to ‘process’ this information. I stay with the sadness, accept what I feel and stay with what’s in my heart. In order to move forward, I need to embrace my past self with full acceptance and absolve my Mom of my self care now.

My eye starts to quiet immediately after the healing. I open up the whole house to the cool evening air as I have done each night here. The tearing lessens and I take particular care to avoid the main house and to trust my body to resolve this. Of course I take the remedy and the drops, but something feels very different. Today my right eye is fine and my left eye has a mild irritation, the tearing is minimal.

I am reminded once more that this life is deeper than what we think. Maybe I have never really been allergic to cats at all, just allergic to a hurtful experience in my past, my body graciously somaticizing it into a bearable problem. Today I have felt okay when I was in the ‘catful’ part of the house, as I am right now. My eye feels like it is healing and my soul feels it is opening to a new level of acceptance of myself.

I know my expansion comes out of the connection to my past. Some people feel that each of us cannot more forward without all of us moving forward together. I don’t know if this is true; I do know that I’m responsible for me and I can help myself. My job is to heal my life by total radical acceptance of all I’ve ever been. This is the biggest and most blessed challenge I’ve ever taken on, especially since the only way, after all these years of thinking through it all, is to feel, feel and keep feeling until I’m done. The mind can never heal a broken heart and the heart is the only place where truth and reality appear.

Long ago, one of my teachers said the first thing we feel when we begin to open the heart is sadness. Most people back away right then, moving up into their heads to explain it all away. But the illusionary cure is not real. The pain goes underground and often comes out in weird ways. I’m sure we’ve all experienced that; the surprise attack of an emotion out of the blue that seems overdone for whatever situation we’re facing.

Being with myself totally, with whatever I’m honestly experiencing, is not always easy. It doesn’t necessarily look spiritual. Yet it works and I’m a practical person, I want to do what works. Loving my Mom and loving myself doesn’t always feel like the shortest path to a resolution, or the easiest. I don’t know yet whether I am free of my cat allergy but I am loving all aspects of my life right now.

The feeling I had most of today was one of immersion. Immersion into the depths of life, opening to the unseen world that underlies everything, the sacred world that holds the fabric and the magic that goes beyond what we usually see and think. Loving all of who I have been and all of who I am right now heals me. Then life unfolds her aliveness out my back door and the earth sings it’s glory.

Blessings,

Laurel

A Noisy Quiet- Friday, August 15, 2008

I’m housesitting for the next few weeks way out in the country and down a long dirt road. The planes still zoom overhead but it’s minor compared to the deep stillness in the land. This is how I want to live; with stillness within my aliveness. It seems a contradiction yet it is so obvious out here. There’s a constant racket from the birds, hens, frogs and ducks, yet the tree life is immense and deep roots run under it all. The racket is really song and story and somehow adds vs. subtracts from my awareness of my center. They call me into my heartspace. Feel, feel says the world. Be attracted to who you really are. Sit in your animal being, let your mind take a back seat, give up control by the mind to the heart.

Yes, I have some ‘work’ to do. What value is work when it comes from a space ruled by the mind? How does it feel if my hearts not in it? In my heart lie realms of creativity, depth and shadow, austuteness all sure to be missed by a mind that is looking for safety and security. In my heart, I am allowed to be with all I’ve ever been and all I am now, bringing all these aspects of myself into a new resolution of healing. There is space and depth of being that the flatness and linearity of the mind can’t embrace. Like the crooks and curves of the tree’s roots and branches, it’s time to open to a new awareness of being. By living all of who we are and opening to the wholeness and creativity, we can heal our lives and our world.

Take a breath, feels how it nourishes your heart. You are divine, stop giving control of this precious life to the mind. It’s yours, take it back to your heart. Here your life begins anew each day, here true living has magic and mystery and meaning.

Blessings,

Laurel

Ideas of the Mind vs the Heart- Saturday, July 26, 2008

As usual, my mind always has it’s own ideas about what to write. It can run circles around me that are so impressive. Yet when I sit down at the computer, even though I may have believed that a certain idea would be great to write about, I can’t remember any of it! This is the blessing of my soul to be sure. Yes my mind is occcasionally brilliant but that’s not what I or probably you, what to hear.

Unless I ask for another part of me, I just hear the mind. This new journey calls me toward a resonance deeper in my body, where I sit in my heart and listen from there. This is the challenge, to do this every day, to begin to let another part of me be in charge. In longing for the musings of a deeper clearer part of me, the heart offers it’s own intelligence. Yet the mind says not to trust it, so it took alot of small steps to get here, where something else is leading me. Breathing, listening, following in trust even though results were not guaranteed. Well really, that’s what my mind says, it says the mind KNOWS, so I should trust it. Yeah right!

What I know is I am a lot more me, simpler and clearer, without the mind leading. Here is no fear, just embracing what is, being. Just see what happens when the mind gets to take the back seat. Every moment becomes fuller, more vibrant. Here, here, just here. Yes this is all there is. Here is where my heart sings and I can let go of looking for things to be other than they are. There is really no other truth than the present. This is freedom. Being here shapes my whole day, one moment at a time, breath by breath. In trust, I give up searching , I am all that is.

So sorry, the mind had some interesting things to talk about but really what is more important than learning how to BE. To be in love with my life, to feel all my cells sing, to feel so full it’s delicious. Maybe another time this will be more interesting for the mind. Today it’s an all Hearts day.
Blessings,
Laurel

Tools of the Trade-Saturday, July 19, 2008

So often when people show up for the free class overview they want to know what tools are going to be taught. There are quite a few tools- meditations, healing practices, working with sacred geometry for creating- taught in the whole series but the ground needs to be laid down before the tide comes in. They don’t work well without some basic principles being embraced.

Tools are useless for the unfound because life is so full of strong winds, it’s easy to lose ourselves. First we have to find ourselves. Until someone is ready to turn within, assuage their thoughts and listen to their bodies and hearts they can’t begin to feed themselves. If they don’t know how to feed themselves every day, throwing a few practices at them is like throwing sand at the wind.

This is a new skill for most of us and I still practice it every day. If I forget to orient myself first thing in the morning, I can find myself at midday feeling lost and uncentered. If I put my heart and breath first, the day can be absolutely magical or at least simple, a quality of being often grossly undervalued. When one doesn’t have this basic understanding it’s hard to teach them. They are not present so there is no foundation on which to lay down a path.

First I teach what the trees taught me; who we are and how to heal ourselves, how to feed ourselves so we are self generating, self filling. This is no small thing and to me, leaves a lot of spirtual practices in the dust. Most of us need the basics, every day, on how to live. Well at least I did and do! All the spirtual understandings then can land, then can be implemented, then can fulfill their promises.

I read recently that most spiritual paths are either about renunciation, transcendence or acceptance. This path is not about renunciation, unless you’re referring to the control of the little mind. It’s not about transcendence unless you’re referring to what’s not real. It is all about acceptance of who you really are and creating your life from your heart and compassion.

I am so honored to be sharing what the trees have taught me and most of all to be living in this grace, this presence of knowing who I am, of being the ‘I AM’.

Please consider joining me in September for the basics on how to live, how to love ourselves and how to bring peace into your life.

Blessings,

Laurel

Ripples from the Core of Being- Friday, July 18th, 2008

For days now I have been spinning, trying to avoid this writing, this channeling. I love this and yet there is a little hesitation as it comes from a deeper more expanded part of myself and being oh so human, some days I feel not quite ready. I love the way I feel when it comes on like this, this deep place of connection and love. Yet I resist it. For the last two days I have been trying to do some long distance healing work and when I ask permission to work I get a ‘no’. So I thought I wasn’t supposed to work on that person, but now I’m seeing that I’m not to be distracted from this writing anymore.

I think in my little mind it’s a little thing, not important, secondary. For the little mind that’s true but for the heart, this is the most important adventure of the day or week, to allow who I really am to come forward and be heard, especially by me.

This is what we are to do now, as we move into this new era of consciousness, this new territory. Listen to our hearts, connect to the soul level, the higher self, our innate divinity, whatever it’s called and move from here. Be here, live here, act from here. This place of ‘now’ unencumbered by the past or future, is the only real place to be.

This is the safe space. We think we’re in a safe space when we’re in charge, in control, yet it doesn’t work that way. There is no controlling the flow of life (hence my spinning), there is only letting go and trusting. Oh we want to believe that what has worked before will work now but then we only get what we’ve got before, the same old same old, imbued with fear. Where is the heart? That deep heart knowing place which opens to new potentials of being, which offers a new perspective in an old world that is rapidly fading away.

It’s normal to cling to what we’ve known before, letting the mind run things, as if it knows. It knows nothing real, nothing. There is a material world and then there’s this sacred world that overides it all. Have you seen that? Matter is subject to consciousness says quantum physics. Yet we stand in our little minds and pretend it’s all matter, but really it’s all consciousness. The old rules don’t work and don’t apply. We don’t want what we’ve had before so why do we look to the old ways of being? It’s time to step up to the next level of being, a being with a melded divinity and humanity. A creator, a master of living from the now.

It’s all about trust. You may think you don’t know the place I’m talking about but you do, you always have. It’s always been inside you, trying to wake you up, trying to have a say once in a while when you’ll listen, like when nothing else is working and you let go. An answer appears, the perfect solution to your problem, voila!

When you let go to the big you and stop listening to the small mind, life gets easier. You do not know all the answers yet, but you don’t need all that information and understanding at once, really! What you need is given. You stand in trust and your divine wholeness and listen to your heart. In the sacred space of the heart is the wisdom and compassion for your human self and all the companions who walk beside you. All your answers are within you. The veil is lifting and truth is coming to you. Listen closely and trust your inner wisdom. This is going to be great fun!!

Blessings,

Laurel

I Know Nothing- Monday, June 2, 2008

Today my mind is searching for something which I know is not there. This is what the mind does when it is distressed, it goes on and on looking for answers and explanations. They are not there and whatever I find still doesn’t allow me to sit deep within myself in contentment.

When I am sitting deep within me, holding on to the only thing that is real: the life within me, the soul or spirit or whatever it is; then I need no answers. There are no questions as Being is the answer to everything. The answer comes out of being in an easy and creative flow. There is no striving.

I am human, imperfect and I get distracted from me, from the core of my being. It’s okay if I don’t stay too long and begin to forget who I really am. I am compassionate toward my humaness and to yours also. We have been so drowned in ideas since we’ve been here that it’s hard to find reality, to feel the truth within us. We think time is in short supply and that we can’t Be now, since we have to do now. But the doing is empty of our life, shallow and meaningless. Being is always full.

I am so grateful that I took myself here today. Being with me is always the answer and is the freedom I cherish.

Gratitude to The Council of Trees,

Laurel

Comments:

Just last week, in the middle of a night of celebration with my friends, I heard myself say “We can’t know all the answers right now.” It made me think for a second, and then I realized that this statement is always true. Like you said, it’s all about loving your human-ness.
Russen

Great comment! If we knew the answers, then would we be right? The answers need to come out of our present and our presence in the now. What is presented has many layers to be read and felt. Sitting in the present is the best way to begin to access our inner knowing, to begin to approach our truth. Laurel