Radical Awakening Quotes

When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.

Staying occupied is a socially sanctioned way of remaining distant from our pain.

Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion.

Living in a female body, a Black body, an aging body, a fat body, a body with mental illness is to awaken daily to a planet that expects a certain set of apologies to already live on our tongues. There is a level of “not enough” or “too much” sewn into these strands of difference.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. MARCEL PROUST

one of the most radical, far-reaching, and challenging statements of the Buddha is his statement that as long as there is attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant, liberation is impossible.

There is a Turkish proverb that says, “No matter how far you have gone down a wrong road, turn back,” and that is exactly what I did. It was painful, but also one of the most beautiful things I have ever experienced.

What you really long for is a deep intimacy with your own experience—the deepest acceptance of every thought, every sensation, every feeling. And that cannot come from outside of yourself.

Admit is a beautiful word—it means both “tell the truth” and “allow in.” To admit present experience—to tell the truth about what is actually present—is to recognize that what’s present has already been admitted into life. The waves appearing at present have already been admitted into the ocean, and admitting that they exist is at the absolute core of this teaching. Waking up is all about admitting who you really are!

Why does it often take extreme life situations to bring back an awareness of the magic and mystery of life? Why do we often wait until we’re about to die before discovering a deep gratitude for life as it is? Why do we exhaust ourselves seeking love, acceptance, fame, success, or spiritual enlightenment in the future? Why do we work or meditate ourselves into the grave? Why do we postpone life? Why do we hold back from it? What are we looking for exactly? What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of? Will the life we long for really come in the future? Or is it always closer than that?

When a woman tells the daring truth of what she has endured, she moves away from being mired in individual fear toward a new emotion—love. She declares, “I love myself. I am worthy of being heard. I am more than the sum of my past. I trust my voice.

All human suffering is a variation on this theme—trying to control the waves, trying to control our present-moment experience so it conforms to our ideas and concepts of how it should be. If you want to suffer, compare this moment with your image of how it should be! I

The intelligence suffers today automatically in consequence of the attack on all authority, advantage, or privilege. These things are not done away with, it is needless to say, but numerous scapegoats are made of the less politically powerful, to satisfy the egalitarian rage awakened.

When we allow toxicity to exist for the sake of peace, we are actually perpetuating war. There is no real peace where there is no authenticity. Lasting peace only emerges from an honest acceptance of oneself and one’s life experiences.

Ignore the story and see the soul. And remember to love. You will never regret it.

Love big, forgive always, do good, and don’t be an asshole.’ That’s yoga, that’s a life well-lived. It’s really that simple. End of story.

We don’t live a life, we live a pattern.

Transformation comes not by adding things on but by removing what didn’t belong in the first place.

When we get lost in our stories, we lose touch with our actual experience. Leaning into the future, or rehashing the past, we leave the living experience of the immediate moment. Our trance deepens as we move through the day driven by “I have to do more to be okay” or “I am incomplete; I need more to be happy.” These “mantras” reinforce the trance-belief that our life should be different from what it is.

But it would be a great mistake to think that the awakening of desire for the Bridegroom would produce a wave of monastic withdrawal into the fasting and prayer of passive waiting. That is not what the awakening of desire for Christ would produce. It would produce a radical, new commitment to complete the task of world evangelization, no matter what the cost. And fasting would not become a pacifistic discipline for private hopes, but a fearsome missionary weapon in the fight of faith.

At the end of the day this has nothing to do with him. This is all about you—how you attracted him into your life and how you kept him engaged in a cycle of dysfunction. If you focus on him, you will lose. You need to focus on your inner void, since this is what keeps this dynamic alive.

. However they were passed on, in whatever language, the fact remains that we women are conditioned to hold ourselves back and give of ourselves to ensure that the needs of others, especially men, are met before our own.

Tomorrow's integration is not my job. The story of yesterday's awakening is irrelevant. Here and now is where life is. And there is only here and now.

Gradually, I realized that the ideas I had embraced and defended blindly all my life represented a singular, and highly radical, point of view. I began to question everything.

Charlotte Joko Beck, Zen teacher and author, teaches that the “secret” of spiritual life is the capacity to “… return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment—even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.” Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible.

As a white woman, part of my awakening has included a growing awareness of my privilege and an active education in dismantling the ways I contribute to the oppression of black, brown, and indigenous people. It’s the job of white women (and white men) to undo this discrimination, the same way it’s the job of men to undo toxic masculinity

What is required after a glimpse of awakening is radical honesty, a willingness to look at how we unenlighten ourselves, how we bring ourselves back into the gravitational force of the dream state, how we allow ourselves to be divided.

My friend KellyIII told me to pay attention to the difference between self-care and self-comfort. I had a natural bent toward indulging in self-comfort; what I needed now in this season of my life was radical self-care. Self-comfort numbs us, weakens us, hides us; it can be a soporific. But self-care awakens us, strengthens us, and emboldens us to rise.

Kali's nakedness shows that she has cast away illusion; in her, the entire truth about life and death is revealed. Even her color is esoteric; Kali's dark colors stand for the ultimate void state, where as differences dissolve into the absolute beyond all form. Her sword is the force that slices delusion, ignorance, false hope, and lies. Her position on top of Shiva reveals that she is the dynamic force in the universe, the power that churns the stillness of the void, so worlds can be created inside that transcendent nothingness.

As Buddhism has been integrated into the West, the meaning of sangha has come to include all our contemporaries who in various ways are consciously pursuing a path of awakening. We are held by sangha when we work individually with a therapist or healer, or when a close friend lets us be vulnerable and real. Taking refuge in the sangha reminds us that we are in good company: We belong with all those who long to awaken, with all those who seek the teachings and practices that lead to genuine peace.

Authenticity is the measure of our intuitive awakening.

As Socrates said, “True learning is remembering.

the highest form of repentence is self-acceptance.

How can I look within myself for solutions to my disempowerment

The yo-yo is between our love and hate for our own missing parts. We are waiting for ourselves

But because of the religious element in our message, and the desire of the authorities not to offend our religious

Our unworthiness is often heavily disguised. So much so that we often mistake it for virtuosity. This is how clever culture is. It cloaks its messages of unworthiness as virtue. For women, it's always connected to how self-sacrificing we are, and how well we keep others happy. If we are unable to keep them happy then we feel like failures, and therefore are unworthy.

The poet Rumi saw clearly the relationship between our wounds and our awakening. He counseled, “Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.

Many women stay ad nauseam in dysfunctional relationships because they keep waiting for the other person to change. Their happiness swings like a pendulum, forever dependent on the other.

We see it repeatedly throughout the Bible in examples such as Nehemiah, Josiah, and Hezekiah. First, these men personally renewed themselves in the Lord, and then they set out to influence their culture and their nation for what was right. It started with just one individual unabashedly willing to turn back to God, and soon an entire generation of God’s people did the same. Only after these leaders began to seek the ways of the Lord was there a profound cultural shift. It happened as well in America’s great awakenings. In each case, there was a ripple effect. A radical awakening, a change, repentance, that took place in God’s people, bringing about a dramatic shift to the culture at large. The result was a witness to the lost, which brought salvation to many.

O Kali, my mother full of Bliss! Enchantress of the almighty Shiva! In your delirious joy you dance, clapping your hands together! You are the mover of all that moves, and we are your helpless toys! RAM PRASAD

A government must rule by the Grace of God or by the will of the people, it must believe in authority or in the Revolution; on these issues compromise is possible only in semblance, and only for a time. The Revolution, like the disbelief which has always accompanied it, cannot be stopped halfway; it is a force that, once awakened, will not rest until it ends in a totalitarian Kingdom of this world. The history of the last two centuries has proved nothing if not this. To appease the Revolution and offer it concessions, as Liberals have always done, thereby showing that they have no truth with which to oppose it, is perhaps to postpone, but not to prevent, the attainment of its end. And to oppose the radical Revolution with a Revolution of one's own, whether it be "conservative," " non-violent," or "spiritual," is not merely to reveal ignorance of the full scope and nature of the Revolution of our time, but to concede as well the first principle of that Revolution: that the old truth is no longer true, and a new truth must take its place.

Whether Kali seems terrifying, fascinating, or loving depends on our state of consciousness and our level of both emotional and spiritual development. But she always invites us to a radical form ego-transcendence.

It is not important whether what he is chanting is true or not, whether you believe in it or not. Your decision to chant along with him is no measure of your commitment to justice or freedom or whatever lofty principle is at hand. Sometimes, radical slogans are a trap. They are shouted by infiltrators so that a group of students protesting a press crackdown can be depicted as seeking to overthrow the regime. Sometimes they are not traps at all but the frustrated stand of a brave person. But how are you to know? Your objective is to avoid being a pawn, to avoid getting dragged into trouble because you are curious, or believe you are seeing history being made." They

Căprioara nu plânge că nu e jaguar, Nici margareta nu se ofilește lângă trandafir. Leoaica nu se micșorează în fața leului Și nici păunul nu-și ascunde penajul în fața vulturului. Fiecare își acceptă dreptul de a fi valoros, fără vreo îndoială.

Conservatism is far from what I’m aiming at in proclaiming the establishment of a Sethian left-hand path tradition in the West as one of the first missions of the SLM. In fact, in establishing such a tradition, true to the spirit of sacred transgression and holy subversion that is essential to both Seth and the left-hand path, we are opening a door that enlightens through endangerment, that awakens through risk and peril: this is a radical (from Latin radix, root, implying how deep a change is required) enterprise that is the very opposite of conservatism.” --“From the Eye of the Storm” (Zeena's column as Hemet-Neter Tepi Seth for the SLM), Volume I - Summer Solstice issue (2003): "Building a Sethian Left-Hand Path Tradition in the West.

the end, if you dedicate your energies to detaching from struggle, giving up fear, taking right action, and practicing true patience within yourself, you will find that all the pieces of your life begin to radiate with the luminosity of whole and true health.

soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk, and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become.” Sobriety, for me, was exactly as he wrote—I truly inherited my life. I slipped deeper into the adventure of who I felt called to become, and the tired roles I had played forever became obsolete as I moved forward into a world where I was finally naming the terms of who I would be, and who I wouldn’t be.

. a revolution of awakened souls, united in heart, aligned with God, in service to each other, the planet, and the Divine. And if all beings could come together and do what needs to be done, in empathy, there would be peace, and we would all, finally, be free.

Când ne așteptăm ca altcineva să aibă grijă de noi înseamnă că avem complexul prințesei. Credem că suntem îndreptățite să fim îngrijite, protejate și susținute. Dar nu ne trece prin cap că trebuie să contribuim în mod egal la propriile vieți și la ale celorlalți.

Feeling not okay went hand in hand with deep loneliness. In my early teens I sometimes imagined that I was living inside a transparent orb that separated me from the people and life around me. When I felt good about myself and at ease with others, the bubble thinned until it was like an invisible wisp of gas. When I felt bad about myself, the walls got so thick it seemed others must be able to see them. Imprisoned within, I felt hollow and achingly alone. The fantasy faded somewhat as I got older, but I lived with the fear of letting someone down or being rejected myself.

We are addicted to fulfilment, to the eradication of all emptiness. . . . swallowed the cultural myth that says, “if you are well-adjusted, and if you are living your life properly, you will feel fulfilled, satisfied, content, and serene.” If you are not satisfied and fulfilled, there is something wrong with you. . . . . . The myth of fulfilment makes us miss the most beautiful aspect of our human souls: our emptiness, our incompleteness, our radical yearning for love. We were never meant to be completely fulfilled; we were meant to taste it, to long for it, and to grow toward it. In this way we participate in love becoming life, life becoming love. To miss our emptiness is, finally, to miss our hope. Emptiness, yearning, incompleteness: these unpleasant words hold a hope for incomprehensible beauty. It is precisely in these seemingly abhorrent qualities of ourselves – qualities that we spend most of our time trying to fix or deny – that the very thing we most long for can be found: hope for the human spirit, freedom for love. This is a secret known by those who have had the courage to face their own emptiness. The secret of being in love, of falling in love with life as it is meant to be, is to befriend our yearning instead of avoiding it, to live into our longing rather than trying to resolve it, to enter the spaciousness of our emptiness instead of trying to fill it up. It has taken me a long time to learn this secret, and I continue to forget it many times each day.

Somewhere deep in our unconscious we have a vision of how we are supposed to be and the roles we are to fulfill. When this version of ourselves doesn’t pan out, we go through a pivotal identity shock. We die to ourselves. We feel as if we are no one and that our life has no meaning. Who are we without the image we embraced of ourselves?

One tool of mindfulness that can cut through our numbing trance is inquiry. As we ask ourselves questions about our experience, our attention gets engaged. We might begin by scanning our body, noticing what we are feeling, especially in the throat, chest, abdomen and stomach, and then asking, “What is happening?” We might also ask, “What wants my attention right now?” or, “What is asking for acceptance?” Then we attend, with genuine interest and care, listening to our heart, body and mind. Inquiry is not a kind of analytic digging—we are not trying to figure out, “Why do I feel this sadness?” This would only stir up more thoughts. In contrast to the approach of Western psychology, in which we might delve into further stories in order to understand what caused a current situation, the intention of inquiry is to awaken to our experience exactly as it is in this present moment. While inquiry may expose judgments and thoughts about what we feel is wrong, it focuses on our immediate feelings and sensations. I might be feeling like a bad mother

And how easy this mechanism is to see in others! Can we see it in ourselves? That is the question. Who are your scapegoats? What do you reject in others that you secretly reject in yourself? Weakness? Failure? Fear? Homosexuality? Violence? What thoughts and feelings do you not admit in yourself, in order to hold up to the world an image of who you are?

When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form—or a species—will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.

The Twelve Laws of Transformation LAW 1: Seek the Truth LAW 2: Be Willing to Come Apart LAW 3: Step out of Your Comfort Zone LAW 4: Commit to Growth LAW 5: Shift Your Vision LAW 6: Drop What You Know LAW 7: Relax with What Is LAW 8: Remove the Rocks LAW 9: Don’t Rush the Process LAW 10: Be True to Yourself LAW 11: Be Still and Know LAW 12: Understand That the Whole Is the Goal

Adevărul este că opiniile noastre ar trebui să devină din ce în ce mai irelevante pentru copii, pe măsură ce cresc și-și cunosc propriile minți și suflete. Noi ar trebui să ne pierdem imaginea de figură centrală din conștiințele lor. Nu ar trebui să aibă grijă de sentimentele noastre pe măsură ce trec prin viață, ci ar trebui să devină protagoniștii propriilor călătorii, eroi măreți și puternici.

For Wang Man the most painful part of her experience was being absconded by her friends. Those within her closest circle, whom she mostly knew from development work, and not the feminist community, didn't consider themselves feminists and thought her actions too radical [passing out stickers]. Although they said the government was wrong to detain her, they also believed she bore some responsibility.

Nu e nevoie să spun: „Am picioare subțiri și sunt frumoase.” Nevoia de a spune asta implică un grad de nesiguranță. Adevărata acceptare a corpurilor noastre le-ar permite să fie observate așa cum sunt, fără etichetele de bine sau rău. Deoarece ne dezgustă cuvintele grăsime, celulită și riduri, aceste cuvinte ni se par o insultă. Aceasta este o proiecție culturală. Ce ar avea dacă pur și simplu ar fi?

The dynamic, future-oriented, ecstatically inspired state of the evolutionary impulse is the new enlightenment that I am speaking about. The inner eye has become compelled by the ever-unfulfilled promise of creating the future at a higher level than what exists in the present moment. When the awakening to this powerful spiritual urgency becomes one’s irrevocable attainment and permanent state, one has surely landed on the yonder shore, where the evolutionary impulse has become the driving force of fundamental principle guiding the vehicle called the body, mind, and soul. . . . God is only as powerful in this world as those of us who have the courage and audacity to awaken in this way—to become one with our own impulse to evolve. That’s the awesome significance of being a human being who is awake. When you realize this for yourself, you discover what an extraordinary blessing it is to be who you are, in this world, right now. In fact, the whole point of the creative process is to be here—to participate fully, radically, consciously in the Universe Project. In this evolutionary context, the point of enlightenment is not merely to transcend the world so that you can be free of it but to embrace the world completely, to embrace the entire process as your self, knowing that you are the creative principle incarnate, and you have a lot of work to do. As an individual, you are instantaneously liberated, simply through taking that step, but your personal liberation is a mere by-product of finally embracing the awe-inspiring burden of the Universe Project, which in truth has been yours all along.

what he meant by repentance wasn’t that we should dwell on where we lost our way and all the ways we are bad, but rather to have the courage to face the pure, unsweetened truth of ourselves so that we can move on and grow in more honest and authentic ways. It is simply the willingness to see in full truthfulness what we need to face within ourselves and our lives so that we may get into the right alignment.

Extremism frequently turns its champions into angry people, driven by conflicting desires. At first, I pitied my less enlightened parents and siblings. Then I felt superior to them, poor sinners that they were. Then I lost patience with their unwillingness to see the one true path and resorted to threats, intimidation, and yelling. At night, I was tormented by thoughts of what would happen to all us of when we reached our graves.

What do we hope to accomplish? What will help us realize our deepest dreams and desires? In what ways is education liberating, and in what ways can schooling be entangling and oppressive? Can learning be cast as a creative act, enjoyable and social, or is it always framed as competitive and brutal? What does it mean to be an educated person? What does it mean to be free? Awakened to fundamental and forbidden questions, a new world of possibilities heaves into view.

Energia divei își are rădăcina în lipsa profundă de siguranță. Atunci când avem o astfel de energie, suntem negative cu ceilalți și intrăm în competiție. Suntem pline de un critic interior negativ, care ne nimicește, nemilos. Doar atunci când diva va fi dornică să meargă în interior și să fie sinceră cu demonii săi va reuși să spargă acest tipar. Va trebui să înceteze să se mai prefacă și să înceapă să spună adevărul despre cum se simte cu adevărat în interior - neputincioasă, nedemnă și neînsemnată.

Once you see what’s going on in your experience, once you see the seeking that’s happening and are honest with yourself about it, communication becomes effortless. There is no longer any need to work out how to communicate. Communicating becomes a matter of simply saying what you see. It is telling the truth about what’s really going on for you, in your experience—without expectation. What could be simpler than that? Clear and honest communication flows naturally from the realization of deep acceptance of present experience.

To be honest means “to tell the truth without expectation,” without aiming for a particular result, without trying to hurt or manipulate the other person in any way. Honesty means telling the truth and being willing to experience everything that follows. It means telling the truth not with the aim of changing or fixing the other person, but simply because the truth is what I long for the most. What I long for the most is to let go of the burden of trying to hold up a false image of myself in your presence. In the end, we don’t need a reason to tell to the truth, to admit what is. Truth is its own reward.

Buddhism offers a basic challenge to this cultural worldview. The Buddha taught that this human birth is a precious gift because it gives us the opportunity to realize the love and awareness that are our true nature. As the Dalai Lama pointed out so poignantly, we all have Buddha nature. Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion. In stark contrast to this trust in our inherent worth, our culture’s guiding myth is the story of Adam and Eve’s exile from the Garden of Eden. We may forget its power because it seems so worn and familiar, but this story shapes and reflects the deep psyche of the West. The message of “original sin” is unequivocal: Because of our basically flawed nature, we do not deserve to be happy, loved by others, at ease with life. We are outcasts, and if we are to reenter the garden, we must redeem our sinful selves. We must overcome our flaws by controlling our bodies, controlling our emotions, controlling our natural surroundings, controlling other people. And we must strive tirelessly—working, acquiring, consuming, achieving, e-mailing, overcommitting and rushing—in a never-ending quest to prove ourselves once and for all.

We have always called ourselves a tax-exempt 501c3 antiprofit organization. We wrestle to free ourselves from macrocharity and distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community. We visit rich people and have them visit us. We preach, prophesy, and dream together about how to awaken the church from her violent slumber. Sometimes we speak to change the world; other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it. We fight terrorism—the terrorism within each of us, the terrorism of corporate greed, of American consumerism, of war. We are not pacifist hippies but passionate lovers who abhor passivity and violence. We spend our lives actively resisting everything that destroys life, whether that be terrorism or the war on terrorism. We try to make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so the few can live as they wish. We believe in another way of life—the kingdom of God—which stands in opposition to the principalities, powers, and rulers of this dark world (Eph. 6:12).3

Gotama's awakening involved a radical shift of perspective rather than the gaining of privileged knowledge into some higher truth. He did not use the words "know" and "truth" to describe it. He spoke only of waking up to a contingent ground--"this-conditionality, conditioned arising"--that until then had been obscured by his attachment to a fixed position. While such an awakening is bound to lead to a reconsideration of what one "knows," the awakening itself is not primarily a cognitive act. It is an existential readjustment, a seismic shift in the core of oneself and one's relation to others and the world. Rather than providing Gotama with a set of ready-made answers to life's big questions, it allowed him to respond to those questions from an entirely new perspective. To live on this shifting ground, one first needs to stop obsessing about what has happened before and what might happen later. One needs to be more vitally conscious of what is happening now. This is not to deny the reality of past and future. It is about embarking on a new relationship with the impermanence and temporality of life. Instead of hankering after the past and speculating about the future, one sees the present as the fruit of what has been and the germ of what will be. Gotama did not encourage withdrawal to a timeless, mystical now, but an unflinching encounter with the contingent world as it unravels moment to moment.

Echoing Lincoln, Larson explained, “Our underlying philosophy . . . is this: if a job has to be done to meet the needs of people, and no one else can do it, then it is a proper function of the federal government.” Americans had, “for the first time in our history, discovered and established the Authentic American Center in politics. This is not a Center in the European sense of an uneasy and precarious mid-point between large and powerful left-wing and right-wing elements of varying degrees of radicalism. It is a Center in the American sense of a common meeting-ground of the great majority of our people on our own issues, against a backdrop of our own history, our own current setting and our own responsibilities for the future.”[6]

A privi în interior înseamnă să ne întrebăm de unde vine această nevoie de a fi atotputernic în viața copiilor noștri și de ce avem nevoie ca ei să fie fericiți și să aibă succes? Ambele răspunsuri ne vor dezvălui sentimentele disperate de neputință și de nevrednicie interioară. Ajungem să vedem că ne-am proiectat lipsurile interioare asupra copiilor. Când facem acest lucru, încercăm să corectăm, să remediem și să reparăm aceste lipsuri interioare, dându-ne seama că, de fapt, nu ne lipsește nimic. Toată lipsa vine din noi. Până când nu vom vedea cum le facem asta copiilor noștri și celorlalte relații intime pe care le avem, vom fi ca un parazit pentru valoarea celuilalt, sperând că vreo câțiva stropi ne vor vindeca rănile interioare.

The secret of enlightenment is the absolute, unequivocal conviction that it exists. What does that mean? It means you have discovered an unshakable confidence in the fact of nonduality—in the perennial mystical revelation that IT IS . . . and I AM THAT. A confidence in that which can never be seen or known is the very ground of the enlightened state. Being is ungraspable, it’s unknowable, it’s ever elusive, and yet it is the only place you can find true confidence in life. Why? Because it is the very source of life itself. The conscious experience of Being, which is what enlightenment is, has always been the ultimate answer to the most fundamental spiritual questions: Who am I? and Why am I here? Those who have tasted enlightened awareness find that in that experience, any trace of existential doubt and all the questions that go along with it instantaneously disappear. It’s not even that they are answered, but rather, the questions lose their meaning. When you locate the nonrelative, or absolute, nature of consciousness in the depths of your own self, it is experienced as a clarity that is empty of content; a weightiness that is full of nothing in particular; a profound knowing that dissolves all questions. In that questionless state, you find yourself profoundly rooted and radically free, supported by an absolute confidence in the knowing of no-thing that changes everything. The experience of that empty ground is the answer—the one answer that always liberates each and every one of us. You simply know, unequivocally, before thought, that I am. That’s the only answer: I AM. There is no why.

When Intercession Breaks Through, INTERCESSION. “Awesome things for which we did not look” is a perfect description of genuine revival, because the unpredictable and unusual are the characteristics of great spiritual awakenings. It is of paramount importance that we pray that God will prepare the spiritual leaders for such an “awesome” visitation of the Holy Spirit. Pray that they will: 1) have understanding of the ways of the Spirit and will make room for God; 2) be sensitive and flexible to flow with whatever new thing God wants to do; 3) be taken over by the fear of the Lord and re-leased from the fear of men; 4) recognize that the fear of the Lord is the source of their much needed wisdom; 5) be given a deep desire to be radically real and to repent of all hypocrisy; and that they will not be concerned for “manpleasing” or “reputation.

Să fim părintele interior înseamnă să ne oferim instrumentele și abilitățile pe care nu le-am primit de la propriii părinți pentru a ne ajuta să ne gestionăm lumea interioară. Asta implică alcătuirea unui set de instrumente emoționale interioare plin de cuvinte care ne pot ajuta să ne găsim valoarea și puterea. Părintele nostru interior ar putea spune astfel de lucruri atunci când va veni timpul: Te văd, te aud, te validez. Ești suficient de bună așa cum ești. Nu trebuie să fii perfectă. E în regulă să te simți așa. Toate sentimentele tale sunt valide. Ești puternică peste-poate și poți s-o faci! Ești capabilă și valoroasă. Meriți să vorbești cu propria voință și voce. Exprimarea ta este importantă. Ce ți s-a întâmplat în copilărie n-a fost vina ta. Nu-ți fie teamă să creezi limite. E timpul să accepți cine ești, fără să-ți mai ceri scuze.

Când decidem să ne eliberăm părinții de greșelile făcute pe parcursul copilăriei noastre, o facem cu o înțelegere plină de compasiune pentru natura lor umană și limitele lor inevitabile. Îi vedem pentru cine sunt, nu prin ochii de copii prin care-i vedeam odată. Este posibil să vedem defecte extreme sau lucruri necuvenite, de la care să vrem să ne ferim privirea. E firesc. Dar pe parcurs, am mai putea vedea durerea lor interioară puternică. Când ajungem la această durere din interiorul lor și avem empatie pentru propriile lor copilării, în cele din urmă îi putem vedea ca pe mai mult decât părinții noștri. Îi putem vedea cu trecutul și locul lor într-o înșiruire lungă de dureri și bucurii. Putem, pentru prima dată, să înțelegem cum tiparele generaționale trec prin familii și să ne dăm seama de puterea noastră pentru a le opri pe cele care ies la suprafață din inconștiență.

when we taste discomfort and want to run is when the actual work starts. Most of the time we show up like I do in a yoga class, full of our own ideas and judgments. Sometimes we are so full, we can’t hear some of the more profound lessons and teachings. To find what works for you or to learn new things on a path of recovery, you have to empty yourself of the things you think you know. You have to be willing to try things you normally wouldn’t try, and you also have to allow yourself to experience them and make decisions based on those experiences. You have to create the space for change to occur and allow yourself to be changed. You don’t have to like everything you try, or fill yourself up with shit that, upon investigation, is just totally not for you. Discernment should come from experience, not just judgment or what your friend Sally said about Kundalini awakenings or what your uncle Ken said about The Fellowship.

În acest fel , făcând un pas înainte și unul înapoi, părintele nostru interior ascultă strigătele de ajutor din trecut și încearcă să descopere adevăratul motiv din spatele sentimentelor actuale. La fel ca un bun terapeut sau un bătrân înțelept, părintele interior ne ajută să calmăm latura copilărească care capătă valoare și apartenență. Această parte din noi se simte auzită și înțeleasă, ceea ce duce la o înțelegere și o ușurare imediate. în loc să acționeze orbește printr-o reacție emoțională, dialogul interior permite timp pentru o pauză și reflecție. Prin aceste validări constante ale sinelui nostru esențial, părțile din noi blocate într-un comportament copilăresc ies din umbră și intră într-o stare de integritate. În acest fel, vechile noastre răni, abandonate în copilărie, au șansa de a se vindeca. Nu mai simțim nevoia să ne distanțăm de aceste părți vechi ale noastre, pentru că vedem că ele sunt doar proiecții din trecutul nostru.

Authentic awakening has nothing to do with the accumulation of good feelings or with identification with a role, albeit a spiritual one. It’s not about being happy when things are going your way; it’s about being anchored in the light of awareness, come what may. It’s in the darkest moments that we get pulled by the archaic patterns of dysfunctional thinking. Authentic awakening says yes even to the darkness and has the compassion to meet what is truly here without denial or escapism or the attempt to fix it. The light within you, when resolutely recognized in all circumstances, has the capacity to embrace everything. This uncompromising acceptance is, in fact, your true nature. It is nothing less than the unbounded space of consciousness that is here, beneath and beyond the story of who you think you are. To deeply rest here is a new way of being. Whether the river flows gently or turbulently, to rest here means that something obsolete will die and a radically new way of living will be born.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DEITY MEDITATION On a personal, psychological level, deity meditation gives us access to a power that works on a deeper level than is available through conventional psychology. The transformative power of the goddess energies can untangle psychic knots, calling forth specific transformative forces within the mind and heart. It can cleanse our mental and emotional bodies, put us in touch with the protective powers within us, and deeply change the way we see the world. More than that, it can shift the way we see ourselves, giving us the power to see the divine qualities we already hold. For women especially, tuning in to the goddesses is a way of homing in on aspects of our own life-energy that we may never have understood or owned. Celebrating the goddesses has the potential not only to tune us to our own sacred capacities, but also to help us work with the hidden and secret forces at play in our lives. When we can do that, we can literally harness these forces for our own transformation. GODDESS

Lumea în care trăim ne-a condiționat să ne transferăm nemulțumirea interioară către exterior, fie învinuindu-i pe ceilalți, fie în adicții cum ar fi cumpărături sau consumul de substanțe. Când simțim zgomotul deconectării interioare, presupunem imediat că lipsește ceva din exterior. Așadar, data viitoare când cauți să dai vina pe ceva din exterior, să repari, să consumi sau să faci ceva pentru a te simți fericită și cu o viață importantă, fă o pauză și întreabă-te ce-ți lipsește acum. Răspunsul va avea adesea legătură cu o căutare a semnificației. Poate cauți validarea, aprobarea, sentimentul de apartenență, nevoia de dragoste sau aprecierea din partea unei anumite persoane. Asta îți lipsește, nu acel „lucru” din afară. Vindecă-ți nevoile săpând în interior. În timp ce faci asta, misiunea exterioară se schimbă. Ceea ce credeam că ne va împlini își pierde puterea. Numai când suntem capabile să ne oprim, să pășim în interior și să punem întrebările pe care le-am sugerat eu putem începe să ne „dezaburim” percepțiile și să realizăm că tot ceea ce ne lipsește a fost dintotdeauna în noi.

Odată ce vom vedea potențialul tuturor tipurilor de comportament în noi, acceptăm cu compasiune posibilele elemente din umbră și extindem această bunătate și către ceilalți. Înainte să ne grăbim să-i judecăm, ne amintim să luăm o pauză și să ne punem pe noi însene în pielea lor, știind că singurul lucru care ne separă este situația de viață. Ne vedem natura umană subiacentă și creăm legătura cu situația lor, nu cu deconectarea. Așa ne ridicăm reciproc, construind puțin unul către celălalt, nu lărgind crăpăturile. Toată suferința noastră apare din lipsa de acceptare a sinelui. Dacă am fi în legătură cu întregul potențial uman și am accepta cu compasiune aceste elemente, ne-am vedea pe noi însene ca una cu întreaga umanitate. Odată ce vedem această unitate subiacentă, intrăm într-o comunitate. Suferința noastră se termină atunci când vedem că suntem cu toții în aceeași barcă, fiecare luptându-se cu nesiguranțele sale unice. Atunci, abundă compasiunea. Începem să simțim durerea altuia mai mult decât înainte. Capacitatea noastră de empatie crește, iar relațiile noastre sunt pline de bucurie și împliniri. Totul începe și se termină cu compasiunea pentru sine.

You are the Beloved you have been searching for, for so long.

Obama assured us, only the United States. He claimed to have worked across party lines in the Illinois state senate on bipartisan issues like ethics and health-care reform, when in fact he had a fiercely partisan voting record. As a legislator Obama voted against the death penalty for cop killers, against legislation requiring medical intervention to save the life of a child born alive during an abortion, and for raising taxes. His Senate voting record displayed the same pattern, and he was rated the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate by National Journal.1 No matter, for with Obama, style always trumps substance, and rhetoric always replaces the record. Facts and failure may shame other politicians into a reassessment of their policies, but not Obama. In his case, misleading the public is not a function of ego or a personality flaw. It is a deliberate strategy designed to tickle the ears with pleasing words while doing things radical and transformational.

Yet while it may be true that religious zeal can inspire armies better than most secular incentives, there was another great awakening that occurred before and during the Revolutionary era that also played a role. The other great awakening was a reevaluation of the merits of doubt. Often unspoken, religious skepticism in the colonial era was taboo even among professed radicals. Yet the spiritual awakenings of the middle of the eighteenth century signaled a transformation of “unbelief” from presumed moral failing to a reasonable theological and political position.

…above all I had awakened to the quite obvious fact that the masters and shapers of the world and the possessors of the world’s riches were cleverly scattering crumbs of wealth and power among the masses. They gave just enough crumbs to divert, deceive and corrupt each generation to secure its adherence, and to keep it in line, serving the interests of masters and corrupters. This indeed was the essence of the social problem – the success of the Oligarchy in brainwashing the populace to the point where they believed that what is best for the Oligarchy is best for them. So long as the brainwashing worked the masses remained in line and the Oligarchy could follow its program of making the rich richer and the powerful, stronger. Whither mankind?

I began to have a fantasy of living at a time when there was not a thought in the collective that women were in any way lesser than men; a time when the processes of the female body were revered and respected. As I dreamed into this other reality, I realized that my whole body would be affected, and that not a cell in my being would have been formed out of ideas of female inferiority. This was a radical thought. Imagine not having a trace, a smidgen, hiding anywhere in your cells or your thoughts, that would ever imply that there was anything to be ashamed of about being female. That’s what I want, I thought. I want to live like that. I want to really honor and discover the richness of my femininity, and I want to glory in it, revel in it. I want to dance with the mystery of my wondrous alchemical womb.

In the waning light of the attacks that had briefly awakened America to the threat of Islamic radical fundamentalism, the politicians had gone back to their old ways. They had turned on the very people they had asked to secure the country from attack. It always amazed Rapp that these were the very same people who in the year following 9/11 repeatedly asked the CIA if their measures of interrogation were tough enough. Now they were denying ever saying such things.

We must commit to love - ourselves, each other, the planet, the light, and the shadow - each moment and every experience, and know, that in love, we are unified; we are whole. This is what leads to peace.

We are pure love, but we think we’re something else. The truth is, we’re on a journey to awaken to what that love is, and that journey looks different for everyone. And what is this love we awaken to? It’s God, Seane. It’s inside us, and it’s what connects us to one another. Fully. We just need to wake up out of the crazy dream we’re all in and remember who we really are.

As long as we create separation, we will never be free.

In order to know the God within, you must inhabit every part of yourself, especially the wounded, sad, or injured parts.

Nothing is incidental or accidental. Everything, even the hard parts, are essential.

Asana can help you move any agitation out of your mind and into your body so you can identify it, notice where it lives, and release it.

The pathway was raw, intimate, and honest; it required breaking shame, being relentlessly self-aware, feeling big emotions - no intellectualizing or bypassing allowed - and pushing through resistance to uncover the beauty of our true Self.

Go beyond the admitting, beyond the noticing - which was all ego-driven - and name our feelings, feel them, get down into the muck, and engage with them.

Our pain is our purpose, and a revolution springs from that realization … a revolution of awakened souls, united in heart, aligned with God, in service to each other, the planet, and the Divine.

You become a living prayer, seeing the sacred in all things and all things in the sacred.

Once I began to pray, my practice became more of an energetic one, capable of taking me into higher states of transformative awareness. I felt like a priestess, collecting energy, charging it with positive intentions, and then directing it outward - my limbs like wands - onto my intended recipients.

Yoga has never been about the stretch; it’s always been about the reach.