Shifting Consciousness, Spiritually, with Jesus

When Problems/challenges arise,
it helps me to remember that God is SO Big,
even when my vision and resources feel So small, sometimes.

When I try to fix my life, or figure out who I should be, or what I have to do - I often stay stuck.
But, when I spiritually MATCH JESUS... put on the Mind of Christ: spiritual perspective, Christ Consciousness;
Everything Shifts inside me and in my world, naturally, effortlessly.

When I Try to be Good, to Act Loving, to Perform as I believe Jesus would have:
I get off track - Because I am being physically focused, no matter how 'holy' my intention.
When I focus spiritually, bring my spiritual eyes back on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith, everything changes in and for me.

I am Not speaking of focusing on the Jesus of Religion, of Christian Faith and Practice, of Ethics or the Bible.
I am Not relying on who I think Jesus was or what I think he did when he walked the earth...
I AM speaking rather of who Jesus is Now, as spirit:  always spiritually present with us, available to each of us now, in intimate relationship, in spiritual communion.

From this spiritual perspective, 
problems/challenges are an invitation
back to my spiritual center: alignment with God and my unique path.

My challenge is:

• Really Allowing God's abundant, limitless blessings IN, and
• Allowing my eyes to shift from:
• flesh: my body, my needs, my shortfalls/brokenness and my myopia;
• to spirit: living as Jesus, as God's Way, Truth, Love, Life, Light manifest in our world.

SO many of us Mean to do all this, Think about this, Sometimes feel this and sometimes don't.
We hunger for God; to experience God's Blessings, Fruit, Leading and Manifestation in our lives, and in our world.
And many of us struggle with HOW to do this.  

THIS is the focus of my ministry: HOW to do this.  
Jesus, and all the other Ascended Masters, can assist, inspire, lead us, magnetize us to do this:
To continually turn from physical to spiritual focus, and allow God's Blessings IN!
And then our unsolvable problems, become challenges that are blessings in disguise.

AMEN

Finding Balance: let the waves come, let them go

I allow balance to come to me:
Balance happens
when I do not attach to being perfectly balanced,
and I let go of fighting to stay balanced.

It is only fighting the waves that keeps me out of balance:
When I let go, I slosh back and forth for awhile;
but roaring waves rather quickly settle to ripples,
when I allow them to resolve naturally.

I allow balance to come to me,
when I let go of judging, of attaching to, of resisting
the waves of intensity, of dichotomies, of extremes that pull me off center;
I settle into a dynamic centeredness.

It is only fighting the waves that keeps me out of balance!
As I practice letting go,
I find myself comfortably floating,
swaying around center,

I allow balance to come to me.
It is only fighting the waves that keeps me out of balance.
This is a picture, a practice I received from Master Lao Tzu.
I have profited from his insight, for awhile now.



- want to read more like this?
Try Mountains are not better than valleys. Valleys are not better than mountains.

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Meeting the Red Dragon

I have had a lot of challenge in and with my body,
and my life on this planet.

To get on this bucking bronco of life IN my body,
and learn to ride, again;
I have been practicing Energy Healing, Reading and Teaching.

This path has served me and blessed me immeasurably.
Meanwhile, 'owning' my body and my body energy, again,
has been a very long and challenging process.

Lately, I have turned a very large corner in my relationship with my body.
I think of the song: Secret of Life: Isn't it a Lovely Ride?

It IS a LOVELY Ride.
It CAN BE a Lovely Ride, as much as I let it...
as much as I LET it...

9 years ago, I came to Seattle 'sick unto death'.
I was So broken and so stopped in my life and in my body:
I knew if I didn't change my trajectory,
I would die a protracted and painful death.

I was not slidin down, glidin down:
I was free falling... without a parachute
... and Not enjoying it.

In the last 9 years, my life and my body have changed Tremendously.
I recently started Yoga, again.
And the day before, I started Network Chiropractic.
They are each amazing, magical.

Here is one recent day of being with my body and allowing healing:

Yoga Day 5: Sunday morning - woo hoo.
It felt good to do it: I had skipped Friday morning,
I have been fighting a 'cold' and changing too quickly!

Today I had so much fear,
seen as cockroaches,
coming out of my body as I did Yoga!

I noticed this particular time, that the breathing Really brought everything to a head.
I could get through with the postures - such as they are when I do them - ha!
But in adding breath, so much came to the surface! 

The fear crescendoed about 2/3 of the way through the 70 minute class.
If felt like I would break somehow,
and I was fortunate that the Red Dragon appeared to assist me.

He is an Ascended Master lost to history, who is just new to me, today.
He is not very verbal - but very Powerful.
He doesn't have "nice pictures" (happy to fry someone's ass, as needed ; )

I matched the Dragon.
He helped me to run anger.
To run kundalini.
To run red vitality, life force energy.

To throw the fear in the fire.
To own back my space.
To let go of victim pictures,
and most importantly, shift victim habits.

I moved to the hot tub where I stayed too long!
I moved off more 'not me' and gained back more of 'me'.
I owned a new way of being and made a mock-up to attract a dozen subscription clients, by the end of the year; and keep a dozen subscription clients, moving forward.

I came home to a new subscription client in my e-mail,
after showering and going to the farmer's market.
The new client is excited and scheduled:
seems like a really Good fit: YES it can be This easy...

I had the 'runs' this morning before yoga and my energy waned quickly this afternoon.
I am fighting whopping flu-like symptoms tonight
Very painful body, very low energy, sore throat, FREEZING!

I feel the energy of fear and invalidation in my muscles. 
I am running light yellows, the red is too much for now.
I am detoxing like crazy: feels like metal coming out.

I SO want to blow through all this in one fell swoop!
....everything that is in the way of my full spiritual, emotional, mental, financial, vocational and physical wellness / wholeness!

But, I KNOW from long learning the hard and painful way,
with so much unnecessary suffering:
Easy Does It: gentle and balanced is the only way forward, for me, on this road.

Like I've had on my wall for the last dozen years:
Pursue Growth with Reckless Moderation.
Challenging but useful!

May all beings enjoy nurturing support,
resting in the cupped hands of the Creator.

in Life, Wendy

This path is spiritual, not religious

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I found this to be a wonderful essay from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. It was posted on Huffington Post, August 6, 2010.
This is written to Buddhist practitioners, but i believe it has more universal usefulness. I bolded a couple sentences which I found especially exciting...

Is Buddhism a Religion?

We often talk about Siddhartha, the young man who became known as the Buddha, as if he were a god. The fact is that he was just a simple Indian guy, a human being like you and me. We think of him as some kind of super-genius for having attained complete spiritual awakening, but in fact his real genius was in showing how any one of us can attain the same awakening as he did. We describe him as a prince and a member of the elite royalty of his time, and we think that must have given him an advantage over us — but the reality is that most of us today are probably better off, in material terms, than Siddhartha was.

We talk about his kingdom and so forth, but what the prince Siddhartha had was really no more than what you might find in any middle-class American household. He might have had more wives, but you’ve got more gadgets, more technologies and comforts and conveniences. Siddhartha didn’t have a refrigerator, and you do. He didn’t have WiFi, or a blog, or Facebook or Twitter. He might have had more houses and land, but you’ve got a more comfortable bed than he had. Maybe you even have one of those new, space-age Tempur-Pedic beds. Think of how much time you spend in bed, and how important your bed is. I guarantee that Siddhartha had a worse bed than you have.

The point is, we shouldn’t mythologize Siddhartha’s life and think that his spiritual awakening was due to his special circumstances. Most of us today actually live in conditions very similar to Siddhartha’s, in terms of our material situation.

Siddhartha was a truth seeker, nothing more. He wasn’t looking for religion, as such — he wasn’t particularly interested in religion. He was searching for the truth. He was looking for a genuine path to freedom from suffering. Aren’t all of us searching for the same thing? If we look at the life of Siddhartha, we can see that he found the truth and freedom he was seeking only after he abandoned religious practices. Isn’t that significant? The one who became the Buddha, the “Awakened One,” didn’t find enlightenment through religion — he found it when he began to leave religion behind.

The Lure of Religious Trappings

A lot of people prefer to think of Buddhism as a religion. It’s easy to see why, when Buddhism abounds with religious trappings: the rituals and the chants and the golden statues sitting on the shrine. Buddha himself never wanted to be deified in any kind of icons; at the beginning, he told his students no icons, no worshiping. But it’s said that he had a very devoted student who kept pestering him, requesting his permission to make a statue of him, until finally the Buddha gave up and allowed the first image to be made. And now we have all these elaborate golden icons that look like they were dug out of an Egyptian pyramid. It’s nice to have these reminders, but we must remember that’s what they are: reminders of something, an example to be followed, not idols to be worshiped.

If our goal is to turn Buddhism into a religion, that’s fine — in America we have freedom of speech and the Bill of Rights. We can make Buddhism into a religion, or a branch of psychology, or a self-help program, or whatever we want. But if we’re looking for enlightenment, we won’t find it through relating to the Buddha as a religious idol. Like Siddhartha, we’ll find real spiritual awakening only when we begin to leave behind our fixed ideas about religious practice. Seeing the Buddha as an example and following his example — recreating, in our own lives, his pursuit of truth, his courage and his open mind — that’s the real power of Buddhism beyond religion.

Truth Has No Religion

Siddhartha actually became the Buddha through his failure at religion. He saw that the ascetic practices he’d been engaged in were not leading him to true liberation, and so he left them behind. But he had five colleagues who continued their religious practices of asceticism, and they regarded Siddhartha as a failure. From their point of view, he just couldn’t hack it, and that’s why he gave up. Later, after he attained enlightenment and became known as the Buddha, they became his first five disciples; but at the time when he left behind their religious program, they regarded him as a failure. I find that very encouraging. As spiritual practitioners, we should be open to being a failure. We can take heart in the fact that Siddhartha found enlightenment not through his great success at religious practices, but through his failures.

As Buddhists, Siddhartha’s example is the most important one for us to follow. He was a great explorer of mind and its limits. He was open-minded, seeking truth, with no preconceived agenda. He thought, “Okay, I’ll do these religious practices and see if I can find the truth that way.” He did the practices, he didn’t find the truth, and so he left the religion. Like Siddhartha, if we really want spiritual enlightenment we have to go beyond religiosity. We have to let go of clinging to preconceived religious forms and ideas and practices.

Religion, if we don’t relate to it skillfully, can trap us in another set of rules. On top of all the ordinary rules we are already stuck with in this world, we pile on a second set of religious rules. I’m not saying there is anything bad about religion or rules, but you should be clear about what you’re seeking. Do you want religion and a set of rules to follow, or do you want truth? Truth has no religion, no culture, no language, no head or tail. As Gandhi said, “God has no religion.” The truth is just the truth.

If you are interested in “meeting the Buddha” and following his example, then you should realize that the path the Buddha taught is primarily a study of your own mind and a system for training your mind. This path is spiritual, not religious. Its goal is self-knowledge, not salvation; freedom, not heaven. And it is deeply personal. Without your curiosity and questions and your open mind, there is no spiritual path, no journey to be taken, even if you adopt all the forms of the tradition.

Jesus says: Throw Caution to the Wind!

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I want to start by saying, that regardless of how lily-livered, judgmental, and boring some folks portray Jesus in modern America, that is not at all my experience of him. For me, to put it bluntly, Jesus is kick-ass! For me, and many folks I know, Jesus is fun, he is laid-back and easy to be with, he is incredibly validating, he is powerful, and he is a wonderful guide & role-model to living in: present-time, alignment with God, filled with delightful and delicious spiritual gifts & abilities.

I come from a Christian background, and I have a great appreciation for some of the Christian scriptures. I wrote to my Christian students and friends as encouragement about a year ago, in my excitement about a particular scripture. Meanwhile, I was talking to a spiritual friend of mine who knows very little about Christian scripture the other day, and sharing about this particular scripture. He was really interested and excited about this message. So I thought I would post here in the hopes that some might find this information useful and hopefully inspiring in a general spiritual context…

I am addressing Matthew 6:19-34, which is attached below if you are interested. I am putting my commentary up front, so you don’t have to wade through the whole passage if you aren’t so inclined. I am basically utilizing Christian language and paradigms in this post – please do the translation to your own tradition, for yourself or ask me to translate for you ; )

1)

"Be not therefore careful (anxious), saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we put on?"

Jesus hammers on not being careful - take a chance on God - throw caution to the wind!

What Jesus says (which is very often the case) flies in the face of *what everyone knows*, very often what our parents teach us and want for us to do in our lives... and what we teach our children...

in this case:
* BE CAREFUL, SAFE
* LIVE YOUR LIFE TO TAKE CARE OF BASIC NEEDS - FOR NOW AND FOR THE FUTURE…
* BE RESPONSIBLE!!!!!

and here Jesus is strongly exhorting the opposite:
* let go, let God;
* be here now, today;
* focus on your spiritual path and relationship with God and everything else will come into line…

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2)

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God (the reign of God) and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

The bible says that righteousness is being in ‘right relationship’ with God, being in alignment with God. (“Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”- Galatians 3:6; also see Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:9; Romans 4:22; James 2:23)

Abraham was righteous in that he heard the direct voice of God and (generally) kept faith in what God told him, in the face of much contrary physical evidence, over a long period of time… And was very blessed in the process: physically and spiritually. Yes, he was also challenged: he lived a very exciting life. So do we, on our own unique spiritual journey.

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3)

"The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single (perfect), thy whole body will be light (enlightened)"

One of the practices in my tradition is: focusing ourselves spiritually into the center of our head – behind the “3rd eye” – this invites spiritual light into our physical body.

From this spiritually-focused place, we enjoy our spiritual sight (that Jesus so often referred to). We can more easily behold and reflect the glory of the Lord. (“And we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” - 2 Corinthians 3:16-18)

This shines the Light of God into and through our body. This changes our perception as well as our experience of everything inside and outside of us: switches it to a spiritual Point of View. It helps us find our way - our unique spiritual path deeper and deeper in God, as well as our unique path in this world.

I find it wonderful, in the middle of a section on HOW to LIVE in this world, this verse may seem tangential... but I think it is central! HOW do we live? We live as spirit, from our spiritual information, in focused connection with God: directed from Spiritual insight, not from the outside, from the inside... From there, and only from that place of experiential alignment with God and God's Light, Way, Truth, Life... we live in righteousness, abundance, peace, ease...

blessings on your hopefully un-careful journey,
as well as hopefully un-care-full journey
; ) wendy


Matthew 6:19-34

This is Darby Translation (with random reiterations from Young’s Literal Translation)
{and a couple insertions from me, when I couldn’t help myself ; }

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Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust spoils, and where thieves dig through and steal;

but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust spoils, and where thieves do not dig through nor steal;
{I see heaven is the spiritual realm, as opposed to physical realm}

for where thy treasure is, there will be also thy heart.

The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single (perfect), thy whole body will be light (enlightened):
{perfect may point to whole or mature}

but if thine eye be wicked (evil), thy whole body will be dark. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great the darkness!
{wicked or evil may point to being out of alignment with God}

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and will love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (Ye are not able to serve God and Mammon).
{Mammon refers to wealth or money – but it is treated like an idol or a god - i.e. the god of money, worshiping wealth…}

For this cause I say unto you, Do not be careful about (anxious for) your life, what ye should eat and what ye should drink; nor for your body what ye should put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?

Look at the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, nor reap, nor gather into granaries, and your heavenly Father nourishes them. Are *ye* not much more excellent than they?

But which of you by carefulness (being anxious) can add to his growth one cubit?

And why are ye careful (anxious) about clothing? Observe with attention the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil (labor) not, neither do they spin;

but I say unto you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed (arrayed) as one of these.

But if God so clothe the herbage of the field, which is to-day, and to-morrow is cast into [the] oven (furnace), will he not much rather you, O [ye] of little faith?

Be not therefore careful (anxious), saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we put on?

for all these things the nations seek after; for your heavenly Father knows that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God (the reign of God) and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
{Kingdom or reign reminds me of seniority, I certainly read it as referring to the spiritual realm.}

Be not careful (anxious) therefore for the morrow, for the morrow shall be careful (anxious) about itself. Sufficient to the day [is] its own evil (the evil of it).

This Square is Circling around again

7 years ago, when I started seminary, I was SO MAD at Jesus, I didn’t even want to relate to him. When we were asked to spiritually work with him, learn from him, ask him to assist us, etc – I worked with someone else on the spiritual level, because on a deep level, I really didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus.

(I should say that within a year or so, that had completely changed. It took some investment in our relationship, and allowing God to heal me in a myriad of ways, but I am grateful to report that for a long time now, I have an ever-deepening, respectful, playful & loving relationship with Jesus, and we work Really well together!! I can’t say enough about how amazing he is ; )

But, back then, for many years, I was very mad at Jesus. And, worse, the reasons I was angry had absolutely nothing to do with him. It was all to do with my relationship to Jesus’ followers... Christians.

I couldn’t stand how ‘Christians’ were (in many public ways) behaving in the world, and I blamed Jesus.

More importantly, I was really hurt and angry about how I had been treated by many Christians, and I blamed Jesus.


Since my late teens, I did my best to follow where God led me. God led me to do and be and believe in many ways that are generally unpopular for Christians. So I ‘took a lot of crap’ from Christians. I gave some back, too ; )

• Part of this was just my path, I had to follow my path, and it was off the ‘beaten-track’. I had to be willing to do God’s will, whether it was popular or unpopular, whether it was in alignment with what I, and Christians in general, thought I ‘Should Be,' or not.

• Part of this was, I had to be re-trained. There are things that most Christians just know to be true: certain ways of speaking, being, understanding spirituality, God and the bible, relating to the world, etc. In the United States there is a generally Christian way-of-being. It has different flavors and variations, but although we fight like the siblings we are, we hold most things in a common ‘world-view’ in the Christian family. God pulled me apart from the 'herd' so I could get un-habituated to this Christian world-view and way-of-being. So I could see the habits more clearly. And mostly so I could drop them, un-habituate from Christianity, and instead habituate to following my unique path in God.

• Part of this was, I had to let go of being validated by Christians. I had to learn to be inner-directed, not outer-directed. I had to learn to listen and follow the ways of God and not be compulsively trying to fit-in, or obsessively needing validation from Christians. I had to learn to let their rejection and judgment pass through my space without “taking me off my game.” I had to learn to let my joy be full, ‘outside the camp.’

Through all this I made ‘friends’ and ‘enemies.’ I have ‘fixed’ and ‘broken’ (repeat) relationships and structures – both inside and outside the Christian 'camp'. Mostly, it has been the experience of going through amazing and endless cycles of feeling ‘fixed’ and ‘broken’ – sometimes both at the same time! All this was often hard and painful, although the fruit is very sweet. And of course this all is still in progress... I'm Not ‘baked’ yet, not nearly!


Meanwhile, after decades of being chased from the Christian 'camp' by God, and feeling like a square peg in a round hole (at best) with many Christians, there is a sea-change happening. I feel drawn back deeper into the Christian 'camp'.

I don’t know for how long? I don’t know how it will go? I am excited and afraid, hopeful and cautious. I guess no matter what, it will be a learning/growing experience!

Does 'service' = spirituality?

A friend wrote me about the centrality of SERVICE in the spiritual life,
with the idea that the Ascended Masters did it, and we should too...

I believe service into the world occurs as fruit of our life as spirit in this world, and it comes in it season.  But, it should not be an end in itself, or even necessarily a means to a spiritual end, unless we are actively led in our unique spiritual path, to a particular service in a a specific space/time.

So, I wrote her to say:

If I try to think about the Master's priorities and how they serve, I could write a whole book.
But, keeping it simple is Key.

When I asked what Master's look like, what they all have in common, I saw a picture that looks like:

Being one with the Light,
like being in a waterfall of light, very bright.
Aligned with Source, as well as grounded in the physical world.

From my perspective, how that occurs in the physical,
is completely unique manifestation, focus and energies for each Master– as it is for each of us!
And of course they share things in common.

On a spiritual level, I see how it manifests; it spiritually looks like clouds, or waves, billowing out from the Master, in all directions (when the waterfall hits bottom it plumes out...).
From my perspective, it is the energy billowing out that is the service the Master offers in this world,
Not any particular way it looks on the physical…

On the physical - Peach trees make peaches, plum tress make plums.
They just do it, no effort, no shoulds, no agenda, no try.
It is like falling off a log – and there is fruit ; )

My friend responded, in support of her focus that service is spirituality:

Christ taught, he spoke, he did miracles. In teaching he filled the hearts of many. In speaking he brought hope to many. In performing miracles he was an example of breaking the shackles of this world to many. But it was in his actions with the poor, the sick, the helpless and the discarded ... did he show the many.

My response: yes, and...
Jesus, from my perspective, did a whole lot of NONE of that for ~ 30 years.
Three decades is a Very Long Time.
He was Jesus the Christ and he did relatively nothing of note for ~10/11ths of his whole entire human life!

I believe out of (from, because of) his quiet, non-obviously miraculous/healing/serving/inspirational/freedom-producing/demon-casting/etc 30 years, he was ready for public ministry.
Before that, not-so-much…

He did his work, deepened in himself and in the Father, increased in Knowledge and Power, etc.
He was centered in who he was and what God had him to do.
Then and only then did he go out to serve… as he was led/called to do, not just any ol' thing!

Even then, in the last ~ 3 years of his life, he was constantly moving away from the crowds. He consistently sought out the quiet, if he had to at night, to be with the Father, to do his spiritual work – or else he couldn’t have done what he did.

Great fruit. Amazing fruit. Fruit comes in its season, not before.