Most of us were born and raised in cultures that value the head over the heart, and as a result, we place our own hearts below our heads in a sort of inner hierarchy of which we may not be conscious. What this means is that we tend to listen and respond from the neck up, often leaving the rest of our bodies with little or no say in most matters. This is a physical habit, which sometimes feels as ingrained as the way we breathe or walk. However, with effort and awareness, we can shift the energy into our hearts, listening and responding from this much deeper, more resonant place.

The brain has a masterful way of imposing structure and order on the world, creating divisions and categories, devising plans and strategies. In many ways, we have our brains to thank for our survival on this planet. However, as is so clear at this time, we also need the wisdom of our hearts if we wish to continue surviving in a viable way. When we listen from our heart, the logical grid of the brain tends to soften and melt, which enables us to perceive the interconnectedness beneath the divisions and categories we use to organize the world. We begin to understand that just as the heart underlies the brain, this interconnectedness underlies everything.

Many agree that this is the most important work we can do at this time in history, and there are many practices at our disposal. For a simple start, try sitting with a friend and asking him to tell you about his life at this moment. For 10 minutes or more, try to listen without responding verbally, offering suggestions, or brainstorming solutions. Instead, breathe into your heart and your belly, listening and feeling instead of thinking. When you do this, you may find that it's much more difficult to offer advice and much easier to identify with the feelings your friend is sharing. You may also find that your friend opens up more, goes deeper, and feels he has really been heard. If you also feel great warmth and compassion, almost as if you are seeing your friend for the first time, then you will know that you have begun to tap the power of listening with your heart.
Source:  Daily Om September 28, 2010 - http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2010/25436.html

5 Steps To Peace

Your Spirit in Song: How Our Mothers Call to Us

There is a tribe in Africa where the birth date of a child is counted—not from when they’re born, nor from when they are conceived—but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind.

And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and she teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.

And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty—then as a way of honouring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song.

And it goes this way through their life—in marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person.

-- as recounted by Jack Kornfield in How Then Shall We Live? Four Simple Questions that Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of our Lives by Wayne Muller (New York: Bantam Books, 1996)

Posted September 1st, 2010 by Oneness Blogger

• Oneness Blogger's blog

Our Universal Hunger for Meaning

The Bushman in the Kalahari Desert talk about two “hungers.”

There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger.

The Little Hunger wants food for the belly;

but the Great Hunger,

the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning....

 

There’s ultimately only one thing that makes

human beings deeply and profoundly bitter,

and that is to have thrust upon them

a life without meaning....

 

There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness....

But of far more comfort to the soul...

is something greater than happiness

or unhappiness, and that is meaning.

Because meaning transfigures all....

Once what you are doing has for you meaning,

it is irrelevant whether you’re happy

or unhappy. You are content—you are not alone

in your Spirit—you belong.

 

-- Sir Laurens van der Post from Hasten Slowly, a film by Mickey Lemle

Posted August 17th, 2010 by Oneness Blogger

• Oneness Blogger's blog

Creating Your Own Reality

• Never entertain negative thoughts in your mind again.

• When a negative thought does slip in, get it out immediately. Think of something else deliberately. This allows you to simply change your mind about that. You begin not only to understand Who You really Are, but also to honour and demonstrate that. You begin to move from what you KNOW to what you Experience as the measure of your own evolution.

• Love yourself fully; just as you are.

• Love everyone else fully; just as they are.

• Love life fully; just as it is.

• Forgive everyone and everything.

• Never deliberately hurt another human being again – emotionally or physically. Least of all ever do this in the name of God.

• Never mourn the death of another again. Not even for a moment. You may mourn your loss, but not their death.

• Never fear or mourn your own death, not even for a moment.

• Become aware that everything is vibration. Everything. Pay much more attention to the vibration of everything that you eat, of everything that you wear, of everything that you watch, read, or listen to, and most important, of everything you say, and do.

Do whatever it takes to adjust the vibration of your own energy and the life energy that you are creating around you if you feel that it is not in resonance with the highest knowing you have about Who You Are, and the greatest experience of this that you can possibly imagine.

God's Three Desires

1. I desire to know and experience Myself, in all My glory - to know Who I Am.
2. I desire that you shall know and experience Who You Really Are, through the power I have given you to create and experience yourself in whatever way you choose.
3. I desire for the whole life process to be an experience of constant joy, continuous creation, never-ending expansion and total fulfillment in each moment of now.

Conversations with God, Book 1; by Neale Donald Walsch

Nine New Revelations

1.      God has never stopped communicating directly with human beings. God has been communicating with and through human beings from the beginning of time. God continues to do so today.

2.      Every human being is as special as every other human being who has ever lived, lives now, or ever will live. We are all messengers – each one of us. We bring a message to life about life every day, every hour, every moment.

3.      No path to God is more direct than any other path. No religion is “the one true religion”. No people are “the chosen people” and no prophet is “the greatest prophet.”

4.      God needs nothing. God requires nothing in order to be happy. God is happiness itself. Therefore, God requires nothing of anyone or anything in the Universe.

5.      God is not a singular Super being, living somewhere in the Universe outside of it, having the same emotional needs and subject to the same emotional turmoil as humans. That which Is God cannot be hurt or damaged in any way, and so, has no need to seek revenge or impose punishment.

6.      All things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing That Is.

7.      There is no such thing as Right or Wrong – there is only What Works and what does not Work, depending upon what it is that you seek to be, do or have.

8.      You are not your body. Who You Are is limitless and without end.

9.      You cannot die, and you will never be condemned to eternal damnation.

The New Revelations...a Conversation with God; by Neale Donald Walsch

Ten Illusions

1. Need exists
2. Failure exists
3. Disunity exists
4. Insufficiency exists
5. Requirement exists
6. Judgment exists
7. Condemnation exists
8. Conditionality exists
9. Superiority exists
10. Ignorance exists

Communion with God, by Neale Donald Walsch

The "You Are..." Affirmation

You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding.

You are peace and joy and light.

You are forgiveness and patience, strength and courage, a helper in time of need, a comforter in time of sorrow, a healer in time of injury, a teacher in times of confusion.

You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth; the greatest peace and the grandest love.

You are these things. And in moments of your life you have known yourself as these things.

Choose now to know yourself as these things always.

Conversations with God, Book 1; by Neale Donald Walsch

Three Levels of Awareness

1. When you have a 'hope' about something, you are wishing that it is true, or that it will happen. You are not certain, in any sense of the word.
2. When you have a 'belief' about something, you are thinking that it is true, or that it will happen. You are not certain, but you think you are certain, and you continue to think so unless something to the contrary appears in your reality.
3. When you have a 'knowing' about something, you are clear that it is true, or that it will happen. You are certain, in every sense of the word, and you continue to be certain even if something to the contrary appears in your reality. You judge not by appearances, because you know what is so.

Friendship with God; by Neale Donald Walsch

Yesterday's God vs Tomorrow's God

• Tomorrow's God does not require anyone to believe in God.

• Tomorrow's God is without gender, size, shape, colour, or any of the characteristics of an individual living being.

• Tomorrow's God talks with everyone, all the time.

• Tomorrow's God is separate from nothing, but is Everywhere Present, the All in All, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Sum total of Everything that ever was, is now, and ever shall be.

• Tomorrow's God is not a singular Super Being, but the extraordinary process called Life.

• Tomorrow's God is ever changing.

• Tomorrow's God is needless.

• Tomorrow's God does not ask to be served, but is the Servant of all of Life.

• Tomorrow's God is unconditionally loving, non-judgmental, non-condemning, and non-punishing.

Tomorrow's God; by Neale Donald Walsch