Archive for Quotes

In The Present, Ever Deepening

Artwork by Favianna Rodriguez

While I have not been as diligent with blogging of late, I have definitely been committing myself to inner work and development … and BOY, has it been a year and a half for it!

Just before COVID really shut things down I had begun working with an intensive leadership development group based in Atlanta. I paired this with bi-weekly sessions with a Qi Gong master I have worked with on and off through the years. This work began around January of 2020 … coincidence? Hmmmm.

Another developmental work began last Spring. A friend, also a member of the leadership group in Atlanta, asked if anyone was interested in doing The Presence Process with him. I was not familiar with the book/program, but I’ve always been curious and game for that which I have yet to experience … so it was game on.

I have now completed my third time through The Presence Process, by Michael Brown. It is a ten week program, as well as a book to read, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested … I guarantee it pertains to ALL people. It’s ten weeks of progressive work at being present … sounds pretty simple, right?

Yeah, so simple that it has turned my world upside down. After my second time through the process I had a repressed memory surface of sexual assault by a man in a bathroom when I was four years old. Being present to that has been … well, I won’t say for now because it would require some swearing.

I had obviously heard about repressed memories but figured it didn’t apply to me. After all, I can remember things all the way back to age two. So I was fairly certain if something had happened to me I would remember it.

I now believe that every single one of us has repressed memories … every … single … one. Can you remember every event that happened in your life from age two to seven? No?

Well then, my friend, you’ve got some memories in there that you are not conscious of … many of them are still affecting you in the life you live. How you process, how you interpret the world and the actions of people in the world around you … the context that you perceive life with.

Here’s the thing … so long as there are unintegrated emotional roots for our current triggers that go ALL the way back to those years? We are a slave to them. You want freedom? Most people do.

True freedom comes in being present to what is so, all of it. As Michael Brown says in his book, “The only way out is through.”

So why on earth would anyone actually WANT to expose themself to the roots of their emotional triggers? Well, it depends on how you want to live life.

Do you want to keep re-living the past and projecting it on out into your future?

Or do you want to discover who you really are down underneath all the habitual ways of being/reacting you were imprinted with by others as a child when you didn’t yet have the ability to cope?

So I’m going to start writing again. Some of it will be spiritual, as has been my wont, but I also want to get into what it means to REALLY have your voice, and to have your choice … YOUR choice. Your true self, not the imprinted, knee-jerk reaction, emotional triggers you have come to associate with who you “are”.

There’s beauty down in there … believe it.

Peace and Love.

——-

Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

Southern California, Northern California, Mission ViejoIrvineLos AngelesSan FranciscoMarinSan JoseSan Juan CapistranoSanta AnaPalm SpringsLong Beach

Travelling Companions

If you are someone who sees pathways easily it is very easy to just GO … wherever it is that you want or need to go. This is especially true if those around you (your travelling companions on this journey of life) don’t see the pathways and are “slowing you down” (assessment).

You see, it’s simply not efficient to traverse all of these other pathways that CLEARLY are not the best or wisest pathways that you see.

However, if you just go it on your own, to arrive where you want more quickly, your travelling companions are likely to get lost (because they don’t see what you see) … and, when you finally get to your ultimate destination?

You will be alone.

So, even if it seems maddening to go slow or wait, perhaps the greatest contribution you can make is to simply be here in the Present with everyone and every circumstance that comes along … trust that there is something greater than you charting your course and be the best travelling companion that you can be.

Pic by Murad Osmann

——-

Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

Southern California, Northern California, Mission ViejoIrvineLos AngelesSan FranciscoMarinSan JoseSan Juan CapistranoSanta AnaPalm SpringsLong Beach

A Perfect Paradox

paradox

“I am already perfect … I need do nothing to become perfect … it is only my actions that are imperfect.”

That is a very different mantra than what I grew up with!  For those who do not know, I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian missionary family.  There were good sides and bad sides to this, as there is to all things … Dualiity.  The wonderful side is that this upbringing is what introduced me to the concept of having a literal relationship with God … it doesn’t get any better than that!  One of the many down sides is that I was imprinted with certain mindsets which I have now come to see are false … not only are they false, but they are harmful.

The specific mindset I am referencing here is the mindset that “We all are born sinners!” … horrible, awful sinners who must bemoan their woeful state and flagellate themselves constantly with the lashes of shame and penitence.

This is false.

We all truly are beautiful creations … at our core we are the unique, sparkling beauty of a soul that God created us to be.  We have LEARNED to do evil things … but we are not evil at our core.  We have taken upon ourselves the structures of the world around us: how we were raised, who we find to love, where we go for acceptance and validation, what we choose to believe, who we choose to follow, and the list goes on.  These all are the structures we have built upon the fabric and foundation of our souls … and we will do ANYTHING to maintain the solidity and surety of those structures … even if it means doing things that are harmful to others.

It is in letting these structures dissolve we find the freedom to become the perfect and beautiful creatures that we were created to be.  The more we adhere to these structures, the more we keep that perfect creation buried deep, SO DEEP, within the sealed up wells of our inner psyche.  We do this thinking that we are protecting ourselves … if that True Self gets hurt it can be devastating.  So we submerge it, and hide it, we bury it, and bind it … so that we won’t be hurt in such a way again.

In doing so, however, we are denying the perfection that already IS.  We already ARE perfection … the perfection that God created us to be.  It is only our ACTIONS that are imperfect … and those actions are based on what we have learned, taken on, or been brainwashed to believe.

Will my actions ever be perfect? No, probably not. That still doesn’t mean that I am a horrible, awful person at my core … and neither are you.

When you were born and those innocent newborn eyes looked out into the world … do you really believe you were evil??  No … you were perfect … and you still are perfect … your actions simply do not reflect that perfection.  You have lost touch with the perfection that IS the LOVE of God. Love that is there for all of us, and LIVES in all of us already.  All we can do is strive to reflect that Perfection into the world around us … strive to embrace the fact that we are all beings with Duality and to embody the perfect Love that is already there at our core.

Doing this means LETTING GO of the structures that are learned or imposed … not clinging to them more desperately.

THAT is a HUGE difference … at least for me.

You are perfect … JUST AS YOU ARE.  God loves you … JUST AS YOU ARE.

Peace and Love.

~~~~~~~

Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

Southern California, Northern California, Mission ViejoIrvineLos AngelesSan FranciscoMarinSan JoseSan Juan CapistranoSanta AnaPalm SpringsLong Beach