When the SELF leads the WAY

                  feelings

ego           environment           SELF

                  thoughts

We have it all wrong. Our mind only knows that much when it comes to God. Actually, it is even worse. Often the mind thinks it knows, only to be told years later that we have deviated even further from Her, well-meaning as we might have been. But then, feelings can sometimes not be trusted either. It takes our entire arsenal of our mind, heart, and the environment we operate in to discover Her. There is a divine Guidance inside of us - the SELF - that very much like a global positioning device always is connected to the Way.

We always can listen to the Quiet Voice inside; we can get in touch with our big heart, follow the serene flow of our beautiful mind, and be one with the environment that surrounds you. Fact of the matter is, the God connection is both inside as well as outside of us, always ready to be accessed. Before we were on auto-pilot, swayed by feelings, thoughts, the events in our life, and the conflicts between all of these. Yet, once you have a glimpse of the Way, everything - thoughts, feelings & the daily occurrences flow just as She desires it.

One

How do you do respond to someone who is angry, sad, or full of negative energy? It turns out that your response largely depends on the way you deal with your own negative emotions.  If you tend to repress your negative emotions and deny their existence, you will most likely struggle with other people's negative emotions as well.

 If you learn to acknowledge your negative emotions, if you have learned to accept them, perhaps even tried to understand them, you will be at ease to deal with people who are in a negative emotional state. You will not get pulled down by them and you will not try to stop them either. Instead, you will let them release their emotions and just be there for them. You take the negative energy in just like the ocean accepts all the rivers, polluted or clean. Before you know it, things will resolve naturally and peacefully.

Coping with emotions, being open to emotions, and even digging up repressed emotions, is not an easy thing to do, but it is something that we can learn to master. The Tao - and the world - is here to help you. See your angry bother as a reflection of something that hurts inside. And see your sad sister as a symbol of one of your own suppressed emotion. We are one.  If we learn to treat people’s emotion as our own emotions, there is nothing really to do but to let the emotion express itself. Don't resist it and it will be gone before you know it.

Silence and Tranquility along the Way

"Boy I am tired. This was a hard day at work. Wow, Marina prepared the delicious guacamole again. Yes!!! We have my favorite Tortilla chips in house. But wait, where the the beer? Ah, that is a life. I love Friday nights!"

"You idiot, who said you could drink two beers? Just look at this  mountain of chips you just ate! What happened to your New Year's resolution to lose 10 pounds?"

This exchange probably sounds familiar to you. I am sure we all had this discussion centered around food, weight and exercise, but when it comes to other areas of our lives we all differ somewhat. Professional success, status, looks, sex, money, relationships, you fill in the blanks. Back and forth an endless conversation goes in in our head.

Silence is the realization that this exchange is just a voice. It would be a little misleading to say that this voice isn't us. After all, it does summarize everything that seems to be going on within ourselves, the biology, the instincts, the psyche, the ambitions, the fears, the drives and so much more. The voice in our head is definitely part of the "I", but there is much more to us. There is the "I Am that I Am" that everyone can discover inside. Recognize a point of stability inside. Discover the yin and yang of this voice, understand the theater unfolding in front of your eyes without judging, criticizing or taking sides. Just observe and there will be silence.

You probably have experienced the same back and forth with emotions. Love for someone followed by anger, followed by love again. Excitement for a project followed by frustration. Boundless energy fizzling into fatigue. Aggression followed by defensiveness. You can monitor this yin and yang of your feelings and your state of emotions  very much as you can track the voice in your head. Again, saying that these emotions aren't the real you would be disowning them which is not that helpful. But finding this observer inside that understands what is going on is tranquility.

Spirituality is the discipline to put you in touch with that observer. The path of the Way is to understand that life works very hard in the background to connect you with Her.  The way of the Tao is to honor  and  welcome everything and everyone as a divine messenger to bring you Home, back to our Source. Let go of the steering wheel and let Her decide what the next action is going to be. You just monitor everything that goes on within you and your environment. Along the Way there is silence, there is tranquility and there is that blissful moment of being connected with Her.

4 Ways to Silence and Tranquility:

Tired of the voice in your head, meditate.

Exhausted by the constant back and forth of emotions, stand still.

Feeling the aggression and submissiveness, don't engage

Held back by the lingering fears, do it anyway

On Wholeness

Imagine a circle that is sliced in four quadrants. To the upper right is intellect, to the upper left is wisdom. To the lower right are the emotions and to the lower left are the feelings. Wisdom and intellect are conscious dimensions whereas feelings and emotions lie in the subconscious realm. As you go to the right in the circle you are expressing yourself via thoughts and emotions, whereas as you go to the left you are going inside. Wisdom and feelings emerge from within.

You experience wholeness right  is the center of the circle. You feel and intuitively understand the environment you are operating in. What you feel overlaps with the emotions that you express. Similarly, you express intellectually what you intuitively know. Inside and outside overlap as do consciousness and subconsciousness. You are finally home and whole.

On Wholeness

Imagine a circle that is sliced in four quadrants. To the upper right is intellect, to the upper left is wisdom. To the lower right are the emotions and to the lower left are the feelings. Wisdom and intellect are conscious dimensions whereas feelings and emotions lie in the subconscious realm. As you go to the right in the circle you are expressing yourself via thoughts and emotions, whereas as you go to the left you are going inside. Wisdom and feelings emerge from within.

Wholeness is the middle of the circle as there is no longer any need to express yourself. You feel and intuitively understand the environment you are operating in. You have emotions, but they are stable and you just express what you feel. Similarly, you know and only use the intellect to express what you know. The yin and yang of absorbing and expressing, intuition and intellect comes to a rest in the center point of the circle of life.

The Journey Home

It is said that in the olden days we heard voices in our head. We were connected with a Force above and we were part of it instinctively; we never thought about it consciously. We may have heard the voice 'kill that man' when someone approached our clan and imposed danger. We gave it no second thought and swung the axe, very much as a termite kills an invader instinctively. Then came the fall; we ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. We lost that connectedness and with it came an awareness of good and evil.

Some of you know that a few years ago I started seeing signs, little messages from the beyond that I call the Tao. Being a Tao traveler is only one of many possible journeys. My spiritual friend experiences the connectedness via her feelings, her perception of energy, sometimes she even  some hears the voice of her guide.These are all different facets of the same phenomena. We have grown, we have found our individuality and now we have matured enough that we return to our Core of connectedness and love as grown individuals and we reach the Second Coming and everything we think, do and feel is perfectly synchronized with the Source. But different from before we are now consciously aware and freely choose our instinctive actions. Rejoice my friend, the war is over, we are on our way home.