Sea Changes

Sea Changes ©2014 Joan M. Newcomb

I've been pondering evolutionary vs. instantaneous change.  Evolutionary change happens over time, you sometimes don't even notice it until you look back and realize you have become completely different. One thing happens after another, you respond or react, and you grow.

Instantaneous change is when your life changes in an instant.  You look into the eyes of your newborn child.  You win the lotto.  There's a tragic accident or natural disaster.

Growth is always happening, even if things appear stuck.  Stuckness grows, it just increases in density. Things may appear frozen, but many things are germinating beneath the surface (or in the unseen).

We like things to be easy and effortless, we want our changes to be pain-free.  Do you wait for the bandage to fall off, or do you rip it off?

Moving forward or staying still, are both actions.  Letting things happen or making things happen are both choices.

Accidents, disasters, sudden changes, are opportunities for growth and depth.  They can bring out the best in you, if you remain conscious.

You may not be able to control the event, but you can set your intention.  You may not know what's unfolding, nor how you'll get through it.  But you have access within you to the Cosmic Internet of all knowledge.

You are flowing in a current of the sea of life.  Sometimes you can pull up the oars and go with it, sometimes you need to paddle not to drift off course.  Sometimes a storm tosses you and takes you somewhere unexpected, to your next leg of your journey.

It's a waste of energy to complain about what's happening.  Resistance creates more of what you're resisting.  Complaining depletes creative resources.

You can't stop the ocean, you don't really want to.  Embrace the adventure.  When you look at the big picture, it's all supporting you to get where you want to grow.

Interconnectedness

Interconnectedness ©2014 Joan Newcomb

An aging teacher tired of his student's complaints. One day, he sent him to get some salt. When the student returned, the teacher told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.

“How does it taste?” the teacher asked.

“Bitter,” said the student.

The teacher then asked the student to take a handful of salt and toss it in the lake. Then the old teacher said, “Now drink from the lake.”

The teacher asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fresh,” said the student.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the teacher.

“No,” said the student. The teacher explained gently:

“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain remains exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container. When you are in pain, all you need do is enlarge your awareness. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

I'd take this a step further and say that the pain of life IS exactly the same, we are tasting the same salt that that others are tasting.  If we contain it within our bodies, it will feel overwhelming.  If we release it back to the Cosmic Sea, we gain compassion and awareness.

We're Consciousness experiencing individuality.  Our bodies are transmitters and receivers.  We have our reactions to events, but we also draw from the pool of lower emotions. When we operate from Consciousness, we can choose what we transmit. 

The Buddhist bodhichitta mediation practice has one breathing in the world's misery and breathing out loving-kindness.

In other words, you can use your body as a transformer of lower vibrations into higher vibrations.

This only works if you're already grounded and cleared, otherwise you're just swimming in pond scum.

You can tell when you're experiencing your own body's emotions, from when you're experiencing the collective discomfort.  Your own feelings have clarity, when you're feeling other's feelings, it's overwhelming.  Toss their salt back into the sea.

It's easy to get caught up in collective events, people coming together to protest, people reacting to a natural (or man-made) disaster.   We're naturally compassionate, we respond to other's sadness.  But we can't help others if we're drowning ourselves.

There's another practice where you quietly turn within and emanate Love.  You don't have to transmute other's feelings for this one.  In fact, in filling your energy field with this higher vibration, you de-energize any lower frequencies of your own that you're holding on to.  

This helps bring light into the world, and gives others the opportunity to match a higher vibration.  It helps Consciousness evolve.

We don't need to eliminate all uncomfortable feeling responses, that just numbs us and misses the point of being in a body.  When you expand your awareness, feelings wash through you.  Discomfort still exists, and you're holding a bigger space.

We're all capable, Infinite Beings.  We are at choice.  Be the Ocean.

Plexiglas Walls

Plexiglas Walls ©2014 Joan M Newcomb

Have you ever found yourself blocked from moving forward?  There's no obvious reason for it.  It's like bumping up against a Plexiglas wall.

Perhaps it's something you've tried to attain again and again, and you just can't get past the invisible barrier.  There's no external barrier that you can see.

Even though you may make up stories about the first, second, or third time your face hits this wall, inwardly you wonder what is wrong with you.

Our reality is made up of pictures, impressions we've received (and created) from the moment we pop out of the womb.  Actually, the moment we pop *into* the womb - we absorb these impressions in utero as well.

We're veritable picture galleries of impressions.  And as long as we're within our families or culture, we're amongst others who have the same pictures.  They're agreed-upon images, so they seem real.

When we step outside our matching pictures, we experience discomfort.  Moving to another country, going away to college, getting married, all expose us to different collective pictures.  We can either expand our Universe by moving beyond our limited gallery, or we can get solidified and stuck.

It's why people get upset with others who are different.  We don't want our world to include those who don't have our same pictures.  Make those people go away!

Life is growth.  When we stop growing, we die.  Body/personalities think it's the other way around - we feel threatened when we have to expand.  We think there's nothing beyond our limitations.  But it's a whole new world out there, baby!

Back to Plexiglas's Walls.  They are pictures we haven't recognized as pictures, yet.  They are family or cultural programming, initially given to protect, perhaps, but now control your reality.

How do you get past something that's invisible?  How do you break through something that feels so solid?

Charging headlong into it doesn't work.  Sitting down and moping doesn't either.  Years of psychotherapy can completely elude them. People can't rescue you from your own pictures.

You have to bypass the conscious mind, since that's the curator of your gallery.  Energy work can be helpful as long as you don't get entangled in effort.

Something to playfully try - imagine blowing bubbles.  Each bubble represents a picture in your wall.  You don't have to know what it is, just imagine the bubbles streaming out or floating up and popping.  Do that on a daily basis, or whenever it occurs to you, and you will see change.

You can sit quietly with your eyes closed and visualize yourself walking up to the Plexiglas wall, reaching out and touching it, and have it become gelatinous or made up of bubbles, and gently move through to the other side.

Be gentle with yourself while doing this work, you are transforming your Universe!

Try this for a week and see what happens!