Early Spring in the northeast presents a bare and leafless landscape, a clean slate.  There is a quiet emptiness, as we sit in the balance between dark and light, between what was and what will be.

The forest floor exposes the remains of limbs and trees that were not strong enough to withstand winter’s storms.  The buds that have waited patiently on the branches now take heart in these moment when forces coalesce to support expansion. We have the ability for just a short time longer, to effortlessly see a clear distance into the forest, without the distraction of  proliferation.

Nature’s outer movements directly affect the inner planes of human consciousness.  In this stillness between letting go and letting come, there is potential for profound presence.

Our addiction to drama and our discomfort with nothingness may mistakenly cause us to rush to fill these spaces.  But, have you ever hung out in the empty beauty of no breath, the subtle moment between exhale and inhale?

As we make the transition to higher levels of consciousness, we need more than ever these periods of conscious dropping down into silent, restful allowing.

We want to consider carefully how we dispense our precious energy.  This is not a time to go back to sleep, nor waste our energy clinging to a dying past.

It is a time for allowing clarity and burgeoning consciousness, and as Rilke describes, our ‘true power to come forth like a shoot, a force of nature, no pushing and no holding back’ …

“Late by myself, in the boat of myself.  No light.  No land.  Cloud cover thick.  I try to stay just above the surface.  But I am already under and living within the ocean.” (Rumi)

In the face of a dissolving love relationship, I feel dismembered and disembodied. It is the crumbling of yet another surreptitiously created self-image. Life, devoted friend and teacher that it is, has intervened once again to bring to light a self-imposed limitation. In the fiercest moments of this storm, there is not even a shred of hope that I will ever reemerge whole into life…

But all storms, no matter how devastating, settle and the fury breaks.  In the silent wreckage afterward, a sober clarity is born, as well as an ability to see beyond illusion. I was unaware of what a prison I had built for my spirit even in the clinging to a high-minded dream of love.  Loss of love is not standing between me and true fulfillment, but the conditions I had placed on my wholeness and happiness were.

In such cases, my higher self in its great wisdom, knows that hard human lessons are the best teachers. All that is born is sworn to pass onto another form, eventually.  Everything in this reality is bound by the natural law and will continuously cycle through birth, growth, dissolution, death and rebirth.

These inevitable cycles return us to the freedom of our original nature and the True Self.  Our nervous system is toned, allowing us to move more fluidly through the full range of human experience.

In these times, the two sides of our nature meet one another in sacred unity – the human being who resides in the material reality and the eternal self who lies in constancy beneath this ocean of perpetual change.

Our creative and generative powers are unlimited and yet we live largely unconsciousness of them.  We create our own universe as we go along and are only just beginning to know how to harness this for our well being.

The world around us corresponds to what we carry inside.  The images, feelings, thoughts that we hold emit a vibration that determine what gets reflected back to us. Ego consciousness has its basis in lack and separation.  Left untethered it will compulsively survey what is lacking.

When we are preoccupied with what is wrong in our lives, we cultivate an energy field of lack.  Desires put forth from this state are urgent and desperate in tone. Manifestation from this ground will yield a matching result, more of the same. In order to create a life of abundance, it is vital to generate an energy field of abundance.  The most immediate way to do this is by bringing our awareness to what is well in our lives.

Reflecting upon the good, what is already working, already abundant, allows us to enter an expansive state of gratitude. Gratitude elicits abounding presence and the compelling impulse to ask, “What else do I want to create?!” 

“The human eye is taught to see darkness and to make extraordinary honoring of ‘what is wrong’.  But let it also be known what is so very right… Take inventory, but not as you have done in your lives, not to find where more is needed or less seems essential.  But look to where, at this moment, all is well.  Dare to do that.  And when your eyes have become accustomed to the light, then allow your gaze to wander to further places and different situations.  This is not a call to New Age Pollyannaism.  It is a call to Balance.” – Emmanuel

In observing our own breath, we can witness the intimate relationship we have with life. I see it as an exchange analogous to that of lover and beloved.  Each inhale is an invitation from life, a call to union.  Each exhale is my reply, an acceptance of this invitation and an offering of my spirit. Tuning into this music which is occurring within us at all times, is like listening to the continual tender dialogue between lovers.

And yet, we are largely conditioned to fear life like we would an oppressive parent, which causes us to look for ways to merely survive, escape punishment and avoid doing the work.

What happens in our lives when we shift our fundamental relationship to life and instead of meeting it from our child consciousness, we show up it in full mature partnership?

Humans have been playing the role of child for quite some time now, but we can awaken to a consciousness that recognizes life as our benevolent counterpart, continuously calling forth our essence and requesting our full participation.

When we hold this empowered stance, like a true beloved, life will not collude with our falling back into smallness, hiding or holding back. Until we can really hold ourselves in partnership, life takes on the role of spiritual teacher, demonstrating its devotion to us by responding with challenge and adversity that will make us grow.

When experiencing disturbance in our lives, we can ask ourselves, ‘How is life speaking to me?  What misalignment is it calling my attention towards?  What greater fullness wants to come forth from me?’ 

When we begin assuming equality in our relationship with life, our questioning shifts from ‘How can I get by’ to ‘So, what do we want to do, you and I, Life? How can you support me in bringing the purest expression of my essence into visible form, and how can I enhance you?’

Whether in our personal, financial, professional or spiritual lives, most of us can identify areas where we consistently struggle, experience road blocks and undesirable outcomes. We may desire a certain reality, even work diligently toward it, but not be able to figure out what is stopping us from manifesting our dreams.  Often an unresolved aspect of our child consciousness  is responsible.

It takes self-compassion and awareness to turn toward it and patiently ask the necessary questions that can facilitate movement. We might carry a deep disdain for this voice and want to divorce ourselves from this dimension of self, which pushes it into further into our unconscious only increasing it’s power over us.

Just as the the youngest child in a family can rule the emotional climate of the house if not handled with consciousness, so these unrealized and unattended parts of self have the power to rule the inner and outer conditions of our lives.

If meeting road blocks in one particular arena of your life, just invite the inner voice in the chorus that you would least like to claim as a relation to stand up and take the mic. The suppressed voice of the needy inner child becomes the one we are most beholden to if we do not confront it with loving awareness.

Allow the child to speak while giving it your full presence.  Listen to all it has to say.  It will enlighten you. It will show you where you are not listening, where you have been afraid to look, what wounds still need healing. If you ask, it will tell you what it needs from you. Dialogue, then enlighten, reeducate and bring this young one up to speed with the current reality.

The guru comes in many forms and quite often in the form of an unruly child.  Though we resist it, this is the healer and the teacher that can guide us toward the inner reunion that we seek.

Most of us have a strong desire for something in our life that we have not yet been able to manifest, in spite of our most fervent efforts.

Whether it is a desire for love, greater financial stability, some expansion in our life’s work, a shift in consciousness, it is something that in our highest vision we sense is meant for us, something we feel we have come to do or be.

The work lies in becoming more aware of our thoughts.  Often the reason we have not yet fulfilled our desire is because we have a hidden contradictory desire, a split between our unconscious, conscious and divine mind.

No matter how buried or repressed these alternative voices are, they are also sending thought waves into reality that are affecting what we draw toward us and create.

Before we can clear the way for positive manifestation, we have to do the work of exploring the unconscious mind to reveal the hidden negative feelings held within our desire.  We aim to heal this internal split and bring all the parts of self into light and ultimately into greater unity with one another.

In these dark days before the Winter Solstice, our spirit naturally hovers nearer to its own light.  Reinforced by the extended nights, we have an enhanced opportunity to still ourselves and explore our innermost terrain.

I consider these the most sacred, spiritually fertile days of the year.  It is a potent time for purifying the subconscious, focusing on renewal on all levels of our being and for realigning with the soul.

The darkness holds immense transformative power as well as the seed for renewed life.  Once we know the depth of this truth, it is much easier to embrace the disturbance that often comes as the underworld of our psyche rises to meet us in the absence of outer light.

Like an expectant mother preparing herself for labor, we can expect a challenge and offer our full presence in anticipation of the great gift of new light and expanded consciousness that this time can yield.

We are born to fully experience this dimension of duality in all its pleasure and pain, to suffer and to grow beyond the need for suffering.

Even though it is our task is to liberate ourselves from our over identification with form, it is Love that has called us to this temporary name and identity, to this limited reality, to this earthly struggle and beauty.

Emmanuel says, “There is always the call of Love and the human response, and that is what brings you back when you are sleeping, and that is what brings you back when you are born.”

Our purpose is to re-member ourselves by bringing our eternal nature to the ephemeral world, ultimately awakening to the realization that we are more than what we see, as well as less than what we have imagined.

It is our birthright, as well as our overall purpose, to experience an ecstatic reunion within by allowing the sacred partnership of infinite creator and temporal human, the full and conscious marriage of spirit and matter.

Nothing material lasts, nor provides lasting fulfillment.  When we stake our sense of self in the temporal forms of this world, we are tossed about in the sea of constant change – the interminable cycles of birth, growth, fulfillment, dissolution and death.

Human existence is hollow if not rooted in some ineffable awareness.  The vastness of our being cannot be contained within the confines of the human mind.  Eckhart Tolle says, “Your primary task is not to seek salvation by creating a better world, but to awaken out of identification with form.”

Wisdom tells me I am nothing.  I am not this name, not this body, not the struggles nor the successes that I encounter in this illusory world.

Love informs me that I am everything.  I am you and I am inseparable from all that arises in the universe.

Nothing and everything simultaneously.  It is together that they satiate the totality of our nature and provide the full story.

Spiritual maturity and sacred unity rests on being able to exist comfortably on the boundary between the transitory and the everlasting, form and nothingness, time and timelessness…

One of the great liabilities of being human is that we continually hook our identity and our expectations for fulfillment into forms outside of ourselves.

We unconsciously perceive that our loved ones, the contributions we make through work, our possessions and the places and experiences that please us are actually the generators of our
fulfillment.

In reality, the feelings of satisfaction that arise from contact with these forms are constituents of the inner realm. The beautiful things that we love in this world are guides; teachers that point us to the love that exists within.  They are powerful triggers that inspire us to reopen the gates, or flip on the switch.

We awaken to a new level of spiritual maturity when we realize that we have access to all that we have been seeking anytime that we choose, and that we are the ones who have the power to consciously permit or prohibit this flow.

We hold the connection inside of us to the true and lasting source of love and fulfillment.  It is our task to liberate ourselves from our need for the outer reflections, and the endless pursuit of fulfillment through the inconstant external forms.