Have you ever noticed that when you truly surrender to what is, stop trying to get or grasp, trust that all is well and that everything occurring has your best interest at heart, then, the very things you want, seem to effortlessly navigate themselves toward you?
I imagine floating down a river, the current is the universal force for expansion with a creative knowledge all its own. While the river is connected to source any attempt to figure it out is like stepping outside of the river and examining it under a microscope. You may identify its parts but never feel the enormity of its loving force because your perception of connection with the whole has been severed.
But back into the river …
As I float, I reach overhead…arms akimbo…languishing in the stretch of the present moment. If I was to make a sound it could be the ahhhh of exhaling, of letting go. And this is not navel gazing for the sake of navel gazing! The river is going someplace. I am called to action but it is the action of the conscious, soft-hearted warrior.
My definition of warrior is a person who hunts their own heart. To me this is a lifelong task, easier on some days, harder on others, but always with the intention to extend love to others AND to myself.
Just having this knowledge that we are called to surrender to the deep wisdom of our own hearts in every present moment doesn’t mean it happens. But what can occur consistently is acceptance, so that even if you follow a contraction, negative thought, limiting belief or get reactive, even then, grace is waiting for you.
Grace is always waiting to envelope you and simply accept you in all your humanness. It’s only call is to invite you back into the river, back into connection with yourself and to the knowing that you are and always have been, always will be, connected to source. When you connect to source inside yourself you are connected to source inside everyone. That is the energetic web that ripples out and joins us all. The realization, the choice, the ability to see the beauty in loving our flawed humanity this way, is breathtaking.
I have set a pretty high bar for myself in terms of ethics and behavior. I am learning to include acceptance and tolerance for myself and others when I miss the mark. Accountability for mistakes, now that’s important, that is in the flow of the river. Criticizing oneself or others for making mistakes, interpreting them and making assumptions about what they mean, well that is definitely on the banks of the river and sets you up for an experience of separation and feeling not good enough.
You do feel separate when you view the river from its banks… and yet who choose to step out?
Candace Pert, who wrote a book called ‘The Molecules of Emotion’, is a neurophysicist who talks about the body/mind connection. She describes how information is exchanged between the brain and the body through various information substances called peptides. These peptides fit into our cells like a key into a lock and then a message is sent to the receptor on the cell itself, moving eventually to the brain and consciousness. There are specific peptides for every emotion. This is huge! It means that it is not our will, our conscious mind that has direct power over the body but that it is the emotions forming this network between mind and body that influences both.
All this sensory information undergoes a filtering process that governs what we pay attention to; it’s determined by the quantity and quality of the receptors. And guess what, while there are many receptors for emotion in certain areas of the brain they are also found throughout the body and in all the organs and also in large concentration in the belly, just below the second chakra. Those of you into energy centers know that the second chakra is the home for all our human feelings. Can you tell I am excited!
I would love to weave this science back to the metaphor of the river. Life will always evolve. Changes happen, circumstances produce various levels of anxiety and that is when all our defenses want to kick in. If you choose to feel the feelings under the sensation of your anxiety or defense from an accepting state of curiosity, then you are re-wiring yourself. You are creating new networks inside your body that will increase your ability to have choices about how you view your experience AND what you feel about it.
You can choose the meaning you attach to an experience and while you can’t control feelings, if you actually let yourself just have them, they will come and go without drama or getting stuck. It’s the thoughts, the interpretation you make about the feelings and what they mean that creates more and more peptides of the reactive feelings themselves. For instance feeling angry and then judging yourself as bad for feeling angry creates a causal loop that contributes to the creation of more anger peptides. And yet, deciding which feelings are good and which are bad, is not the answer. Feeling them without interpretation or blaming yourself or anyone else, is essential to accepting them and inviting flow.
You can have your feelings, you are NOT your feelings. You can have your thoughts, you are NOT your thoughts. When you breathe into what is, in the body and stop attributing it to something outside yourself, then you can relax and accept. That state of grace automatically shifts the feeling (how can it not) and that shifting creates wiring, pathways and more peptides that will enhance your life experience. You are in the flow, not working at fixing a flow that is designed to support you.
As I invite the feeling of inner connectedness I am inviting alignment with creation and then so many opportunities flow toward me it’s impossible to not notice and make the correlation. Surrender to what is, life feels great…fight it, control it, judge it and end up anxious, exhausted and depleted. That’s a BIG current you are taking on…choosing to try to manage. Far easier to go with it and get curious about where it will take you.
Certainly in my experience I tend to move toward places I hadn’t even yet thought of. That’s exciting. And doesn’t feel like work at all.
While outside the river, which is my body and home, the perception of my separateness is heightened. In the river, I can anchor to a sense of deep remembering that is always supportive and inclusive.
One of my favorite thoughts that lives only in the river is ‘Who knows if this is good or this is bad?’ Breathing into that thought, opening to not knowing the answer but trusting what will unfold, will lead to delightful and synchronistic events and encounters. It is the body invitation, like a prayer, that invites more flow.
In essence this is the theme for Buns and Marty’s adventures. Invite the unfolding and the creative force of the universe, while floating in our rivers, unique individuals, yet both connected to source.
The water is soooo delicious when felt this way. I guess I am saying I am so delicious when felt this way.
See you at home.
Authentically Yours,
Marty
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