Connected and Committed

there but for the grace of god go I

Tonight while I was driving into my apartment complex, I noticed some unusual activity to my left. It was nearly nightfall and hard to see, but I could make out a refrigerator and lots of other belongings all over the lawn in front of one of the buildings. Someone must have been "displaced," or whatever that vague distancing terminology is, after not being able to pay their rent. That might explain the suit jackets laying on the folding table in the laundry room. There but for the grace of god go I. I hope they have a place to stay tonight. It's cold, and dark, and they probably have miles to go before they sleep. God bless us every one.

#7

self-enhancing beliefs

I'm rereading Awake in the Heartland by Joan Tollifson - found it a few years ago in the awesome metaphsyical bookstore in Portland on NW 23rd, and have had a hankerin' to dip into it again. I'm staring down the barrel of my self-limiting beliefs, who's days are numbered, and Joan's words are like ambrosia for the process. Everything is a story, and when approached from that perspective, coupled with the feelings nudge I get from my inner being who just ain't goin' there when I believe those crazy things that loop over and over again in my head, well, it's a done deal.

Rather than play symbiotic footsie with self-limiting beliefs, I am now host to the self-enhancing kind. About a year ago I went through this process withering the power of lack in particular, so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens this time around.

Some choice passages from Joan:

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It is painful, and yet, there is always something I love about withdrawal. It is the stopping. YOu finally stop running, and you sink in. You meet what you've been running from. You don't move. And it feels like a huge relief. Like some enormous noise has stopped. And you're just here.

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To the mind, "nothing" is a terrifying idea....and so, we pull back from bare presence. We keep very busy. We avoid this terrifying nothingness that lurks just under the surface of everything. We avoid silence. We avoid gaps in the conversation. We turn on the radio or the TV. We read books. We have "meaningful" careers. We raise families. We go on vacations. We chase gurus. We drink. We smoke. We consume. We talk. Anything to avoid this dreadful nothing.

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I learned a lot from people's questions and my responses. It was easy to see, in the others, the absurdity of the stories, the flimsiness of the imaginary webs that seem to bind us. Whereas when it was my own story, its apparent reality had a greater hold. So everyone was a mirror in which I could see the emptiness of all beliefs, and the absolutely undeniable radiance that is always here.

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I want to emphasize again that these [suggestions] are not intended as a recipe for enlightenment or as guidelines for a spiritually correct life. These suggestions are merely pointers to what is. You won't acheive anything by following them. There is nothing to achieve.

If you have been meditating for many years, I encourage you to recognize what never comes and goes, and to stop pursuing it in any specific or exclusive experience. If you enjoy meditating, by all means meditate. But if you are separating meditation from the rest of life, recognize that every moment is meditation. Give up the whole concept of "meditation." Give up attaching importance to any particular state of consciousness, however "enlightened" or "unenlightened" it seems.

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Your suffering is your own activity. It is something that you are doing moment to moment. It is a completely voluntary activity....You will continue to pursue every kind of means until you realize that all you are doing is pinching yourself. When you realize that, you just take your hand away. There is nothing complicated at all about it. But previous to that, it is an immensely complicated problem.

--Da Free John

#6 - source

This is my attempt to render this image from a magazine from memory:

I didn't scan the photo until I was finished with the drawing.

This is the light that shone down on Arthur when he grabbed the sword from the rock.

Source energy.

#5

I don't know what these soul messages are saying. I'm just playing around with color and tonality and texture, as far as I'm concerned. It feels good to put oil pastel to paper and pull the colors that speak to me. That's it.

#4

My favorite one so far. I don't know what it means, and leave that to anyone who is called to give their inspired comments.

#3 - irritation

This would explain a few things......

truth

This morning I was called to do another soul message. Before I sat down to pick up the pastels, I was feeling a tad on the agitated side. I was grappling with some shoulds and then allowing them to filter through me. Some inner knowing appeared and reminded me of where the shoulds were coming from, and that helped to let them go.

And then I started applying pastel to paper. The first version had the word Truth in the middle. That version didn’t feel complete, so I started over. This time I left out the word as a focal point, and just drew.

It makes me think of sap oozing from wood, like truths that keep bubbling up from our core. There is no end to the truths we may uncover, and there is no end to our wisdom around these truths. There is an ever so pleasant dovetailing, an intersecting between the two, when we are rested, when we are at our best, when we are who we really are, not the construct our culture would have us be. It’s a coming home.

soul message 1.10.08

The emotional scale redux. I did an earlier one about a year ago to accompany my Law of Attraction game. That version was static and controlled.

This image captures more realistically what's going on in the ol' feelings department - they are running into each other, intermingling, jockeying around each other, jostling, shifting, all at the same time.

Sort of like a pack of snakes, if what I saw last week on Animal Planet was accurate.

jagged

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This is an image that came to me in the shower this morning, so I figured it was a soul message coming through. I like it better enlarged, so when you click on the image, it will appear the way I intended.

horizon 1

So I started in on the visual journaling bit.

And of course I have to tweak the process so it fits me, rather than the other way around.

In order to keep my scanner pristine, I put a layer of plastic wrap over the scanning bed to keep the pastel chalk from rubbing off onto the glass. I suppose there is a way to fix the chalk to the paper. I'll find out more about that later.

I see a horizon, and a brand new day dawning, BECOMING. Bursts of color everywhere, just waiting for my eyes to see them and make them real. Heart(s) alight, like butterflies, discovering. And that blue orb thing - I love the line and the color, but I don't know what it is. Inner knowing, maybe, beaming in/out from non-physical?

Waddya think, Abe?