Look in the Mirror: Your Teacher Awaits You

It is time to stop looking for others to guide us to inner peace. It is time to look in the mirror and see our teacher. It is us; it has always been us.

We have been looking for signposts to guide our way and somehow we tend to get caught up in another’s story and their interpretations. The bookcases full of books we all have may have been helpful and uplifting in some cases but after awhile we realize in different ways and in different words, they all say the same thing: inner peace is within us.

Dancing in the Streets

Every day one must dance, even if only in thought.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

So if you haven’t already danced today……..or want to keep on dancing……here is your chance…….your choice or both……….you can get up and get moving and shake it……..in gratitude of

‘All That Is’

you can also hold the cellular celebration within your inner vision

dancing with all the elements of your beautiful Self

through the trees, up the mountain slopes, across the seashore, in the streets

the pure joy of just Being in this precious moment…..

Take that moment and rejoice!   Andrea

photo courtesy freedigitalphotos.net

Collective Love

We know the power of collective hate,

but we’re just beginning

to realize

the power of collective love.

Add to the collective love daily.

Marianne Williamson

Sometimes we are running so fast in our lives that we forget to just sit quietly for a few moments and to hold the vision of the world in our awareness, surrounding it totally with love.   Let’s see how often we can add to the collective pot of love each day………..…Andrea

photo: freedigitalphotos.net

Happiness and Joy

Happiness and joy are not one in the same.

Happiness is the elation that accompanies good fortune,

while

joy is the evidence of God’s presence in the human experience.

Joy is not a destination, it is a way of traveling.

Mary Manin Morrissey

Sometimes joy is very confusing……it seems elusive…….and very often we confuse it with happiness.  Happiness seems to be connected to conditions and people outside of ourselves.  It comes and it goes.  They come and they go.  We are not in control of happiness…….it has its own synchronicity……we enjoy it while it lasts but if we become attached to it being there for us……it has to be there or we are upset………there will be some suffering.  The same with unhappiness……..it comes and it goes as well…….being attached to it can also cause suffering.

Joy is ever present and not in our control in the sense that we can’t make it happen.  It just is.  It is in the acceptance of what is.   Morrissey says joy is not a destination but a way of being in the world. Sometimes we get immersed in the ’stories’ of our lives and forget that we are in an ongoing relationship with our inner essence or God (or whatever word fits for you.)  We study all the books and listen to the CDs and then promptly try to go it on our own.  The joy is in realizing God is everywhere.

It is in seeing and interacting with the light in every single person, place and thing in the world (including ourselves)…..every present moment.  It is in waking up just a little bit more every day in self-realization and knowing in our hearts that love is the glue that connects and IS us all…………….Joy is a verb……….Andrea

copyright 2009 Andrea Avari Stevens

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Sarah Palin: Fooling None Of The People All Of The Time

by Deepak Chopra
Last fall it seemed as if Sarah Palin would light a fuse and cause a social explosion. Behind her beauty-pageant smile lurked the shadow, the dark side of human nature. Her tactic of appealing to the worst impulses of the electorate had a long history in the Republican Party. Indeed, Palin inherited the selfish, mean-spirited values of another politician with a gleaming smile, Ronald Reagan.

When it first dawned in American politics, the shadow was shocking. Values were turned upside down. The AIDS crisis? Ignore it. They deserve what they got. The deficit? Doesn’t matter as long as the rich get what they want. Huge unemployment and falling incomes among the working class? Feed them crank social issues so they have someone to hate. Palin breathes this noxious atmosphere like the clear air of Alaska and thrives on it.

Taking for Granted

“When each day is the same as the next,

it’s because people fail to recognize the good things happening in their lives everyday;

that the sun rises………..”
Paulo Coelho

What is the subtle, seemingly innocuous energy that sucks degrees of passion and appreciation out of relationships and attitudes?

Taking It All for Granted....otherwise known as complacency…..that’s the sneaky stuff that seeps in and builds up before we even realize it is there.  It begins to form clouds over our view of the awe and wonder around and within us.

If somedays our lives seems like “Groundhog Day All Over Again.”……..full of boredom and blahs…..we can make a choice to WAKE UP and remember that we are forgetting to focus on the gifts, the incredible miracles of life……large and tiny and all in between. ……and to appreciate each and every wonderful happening in our days from moment to moment …….every single day, no matter what.

Consider trying this: every morning and every night……write out or share with a friend……5 things for which you are grateful….and don’t repeat any of the gratitudes for a week or more……what we focus on expands……..the beautiful habit of gratitude and appreciation can burst open our inner doors to the heartfelt joy of just ‘Being’………….Andrea

 

 

The Greatest Gift

“The worst loss you’ve ever experienced

is

the greatest gift you can have.”

Byron Katie

Byron Katie gives us some food for thought……for certain………how we allow ourselves to recognize this ‘greatest gift’ is the degree to which we choose not to be victims of life.  When we have had the luxury of time to process some of our life happenings and to move out of the perspective of the victim mode, we can see how in some way……..the gifts cracked open our hearts to both receive and to give more love……to ourselves and to others…..a greater awareness of self and a deeper appreciation of life.  Richard Bach had a similar quote that said something like “every problem has a gift for you in its hands.”  Moving out of the problem and focusing on the solution means we let go of struggle and embrace the opportunity to grow into higher consciousness.  Sometimes we forget and we get lost in our ’stuff’.  We forget to be in connection with the ever present light within us……….this week…….let’s remember to remember what we already know in our hearts…..love is what we are………..

May we all be open to finding the gifts in our lives……..Andrea

copyright 2009 Andrea Avari Stevens

Don’t Take Anything Personally

“Don’t Take Anything Personally.

Nothing others do is because of you.

What others say and do is a projection of their own reality,

their own dream.

When you are immune to the opinions of others,

you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Don Miguel Ruiz

Well, here’s a great reminder of how we can choose to create our own pain……..believing that someone else can define who we are……trusting our own identity to someone else’s reality…….yikes………how could that ever be a good thing?

……. and yet there are times when we easily fall into that mud puddle….. and more often than we would hope….

……..we all have our times when we forget who we really are and slosh around in the scummy pond of ‘Judgmental Opinions’. 

But that’s OK because we are getting better and better at recognizing the feeling when we are giving away our power.  It doesn’t feel good to be a victim but it certainly gets our attention…..this suffering thing……..So we wake up and climb out of that  messy level of consciousness.  We take responsibility and accept what is…….we don’t have to like it……but if we accept it and realize that someone’s opinion is a product of their own particular life influences and filters that are special to their unique perspective…………..and what does that have to do with us?  Nothing.  At all.

And instead of being defensive and protective of ourselves, we allow others to have their own reality……instead of trying to argue or manipulate them to see it our way.  It is theirs, not ours…..so we give the energy back to them graciously. And the charge for us dissolves and we are no longer held hostage. Now we are free to examine the opinion without any emotional jolt.  We can see if it holds any truth that we can use in our evolution…….maybe……maybe not…….now we can see straight through to it because we are not busy resisting it.

…….we have freed ourselves to move along into the next present moment.  We need no one’s approval but our own.  A beautiful week devoted to letting go of suffering……Andrea

copyright 2009 Andrea Avari Stevens

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net