I Choose Love ~ Shawn Gallaway

What we practice we get good at...

What we practice we get good at, so what are we practicing? Peace or war? Love or fear? Judgement or compassion?

I just wrote a piece for another blog which I am reposting here as I think it's important to emphasize that we do have choice and that the choices we make are becoming more and more important.

With all the talk and speculation going on around October 28th and it’s association with Calleman’s projected “end” of the Mayan calendar, (see top picture) now is a very good time to look at what you choose to think and why.

There is certainly a sense of change growing on the Earth and even more so, there seems to be a real desire for positive change.

Whether October 28th has any real meaning in Mayan or astrological terms or not, doesn’t really matter as we are collectively giving it a meaning by looking towards it as representing something significant.

We can harness this significance and choose to focus collectively on positive change. So how do we do this? Mainly by letting go of fear.

"But this is a scary time!", some people will argue. Yes it is. We are certainly not downplaying the real issues that are bubbling on this planet of ours. As global financial structures collapse and with them all the livelihoods and ideas of what a secure life and a secure future should look like, then of course fear can get a toehold on the collective consciousness. Change brings with it a feeling of uncertainty and if uncertainty is not managed then fear can and will creep in.

But we have to be realistic about change. The clue is in the word and change really does mean change. Even when the change is for the good the process that nudges this new way of experiencing the world can be uncomfortable and unsettling. We can make change easier by flowing with it, staying in trust, reaching out to help each other and opening our minds to new ways of seeing and experiencing our daily lives.

Or we can make it difficult by resisting, grumbling, wallowing in fear based thinking and walling ourselves away from our true selves and from each other.

This is where our collective thinking can make a difference. If we expect the best, then perhaps we can nudge our collective destiny onto a smoother path that doesn’t have to create too much discomfort.

Here are some practical ways to create positive intention and vibration:

• Stop feeding your mind with negative outcomes. That means be very discerning about watching news or reading newspapers. Either stop or at least be aware that for every bad story going on there are hundreds of good things happening that are never reported. 
• Find a positive angle in everything that you hear and actively look for positive stories.. 
• Use vision boards and positive words to dream yourself happy and to include beautiful earth images so that a healthy, happy planet is always included in what you imagine. Connect with animals and nature. 
• Pass on positive stories to others. Don't pass on bad news, scare stories or engage in pessimistic conversations. 
• If your thoughts are stressing you, depressing you or making you sad then ask for help. There are hundreds of wonderful teachers and methods out there that can help so have a look around and work with whatever system appeals to you. 
• Find a meditation practise that works for you. Learning to be with yourself in silence opens you to the much bigger you that lives within you... 
• Don't listen to people who say that it's so hard to become enlightened and all that sort of separatist thinking. That's just another negative thoughtform disguised as a philosophy. A happy human being at peace with themselves and the world around them, doing his or her very best to consciously create a happier, healthier world is an enlightened human being. That's all. It's no big mystery and if you're not feeling like that right in this moment you're only a thought away from it! 

The key to all of this is to be conscious. To live consciously and to remember that our time here is meant to be a joyful and fun experience. Remember that the news reports just give one side of the story. There have never been so many great teachers on the planet, so many people waking up and choosing to live consciously and so many ways in which to learn and experience conscious living.

And what does it even mean to be conscious? In essence it’s a way of simply living from the heart.

And because I haven't given any extracts for a while from Dance with Life here are a few to hopefully inspire and uplift!

Source: Dance with Life by JM Hurley (see links on right) 

'Do you know what it means to be alive?
Do you understand that life is only a moment, just one moment after another?
Do you understand that?
There is no going back, no skipping ahead, just the moment called now, just the feeling that you carry within you.
Do you realise how much time is lost by spending all the yesterdays dreaming of tomorrows?
All the ‘should haves’ and ‘could haves’ are meaningless.
Tragedy is when you realise this too late.
Tragedy is when the first experience and understanding of this reality comes with the last breath.’

...

‘This is not a journey with outcomes,’ he said. ‘The journey is the destination. I can accompany you on this journey but it is your journey and I cannot take your steps for you. You need to feel it in your own heart. Face it with clarity and with courage.’

....

‘The inner voice can see in all directions,’ he replied. ‘To know yourself you must get to know your capacity in all directions. Good and bad are not qualities that exist outside. They are inside every human being. To be unaware of this would be to mislead yourself. Take time, let this settle. Look at what is around you; see things for what they are. Sometimes this will involve just seeing something exactly for what it is. Sometimes it will be to look beyond what is apparent. Listen to your gut feeling it is often a very good mouthpiece for the heart.’
...

Light is a real thing. It overpowers darkness on every level. I can’t remove another curtain and let darkness in to engulf the light. I can only create darkness by blocking out the light, but the light is always there, waiting for a chink through which it can pour. Even the smallest spark, the tiniest chink will let the light in. Never forget that. Even when it seems to be the darkest place, never forget that the light is there, waiting for the moment when you allow it to seep in.’

...

‘See this hand,’ he continued, holding one hand up, ‘imagine it’s your physical self with all its hopes and dreams. It has a finite route. It is made of the elements and it will return to the elements. Now see this hand,’ he said, holding the other up, ‘imagine this is the place inside that you have just experienced. This has been, is, and always will be.’ He joined his hands, interweaving the fingers. He smiled. ‘This is life. This is the merger of the finite and the infinite. Through the amazing feeling machine that is your finite self, your infinite nature can play in the symphony of life. With every breath the finite and the infinite meet. Their point of union is contained in that breath. It’s as close as the two realms can ever get to one another. The point of being alive, of understanding the nature of this breath is to feel and to experience this gift of life.’

..... 

The heart feels no chaos. Its drumbeat is simplicity. Its desire is to be in love and to feel no duality. It is the happiness of contentment. Chaos lives in the mind, in the nerves, in the sinews. It feeds on turbulent emotions, on the rapidfiring of agitated brain cells; it battles against the simple calm of the soul. The dark night of the soul lives in the mind. Only the mind can create the very traps that lead it to self-destruct.

.....

Let no room for doubt in your heart. The heart is never off course. Trust in that.’

....

Every unconscious moment sets the seeds for a future disaster. There is always choice. You can choose to be swallowed by fear or you can choose to remove yourself from the control of fear. Do you have the ability to make that choice? Yes, because you are choosing to learn now about the process of living consciously.

......

‘The world!’ he exclaimed. ‘The world is a very peaceful rock floating in a very calm solar system. I don’t see Earth rushing at Venus or Mars, challenging them to a fight! And it has a very fortunate position, if it was anywhere else, Earth could be constantly bombarded by meteors. Instead it’s lucky to bump into something only every few million years or so. This world, this planet Earth, doesn’t need to seek peace, it already has it. It is people who create the wars, the random acts of violence, the hatred and destruction. And yet inside every human being is the most perfect peace. Every individual heart must seek that peace, must become conscious that everything connects, that taking responsibility for making the world a better place starts first within each person. Unconscious behaviour has a heavy cost.’ ‘The heaviest cost being death,’ she said. ‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘The heaviest cost is in failing to notice life.’
.......

‘The true miracle of life lies in the breath and in the ability to experience the divine within. There are no other miracles,’ he added, ‘plenty of unusual phenomena maybe, but no other miracles. Too often the unusual takes over and the truly miraculous is forgotten.’
....

And to conclude, if you haven't already seen it the amazing and inspiring talk by Jill Bolte Taylor on what she calls her Stroke of Insight. A stroke at the age of 37 led Jill, a Neuroanatomist who specialised in brain research, not just to a new found medical understanding of brain function, but to a life changing meeting with her fully conscious, aware and blissful self... 

Elisabet Sahtouris | The Butterfly Story

This is a lovely take on the current world consciousness change by Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolution biologist and future consultant. It reminds me of the caterpillar story from Dance with Life, which I posted ages ago. But, as I believe in synchronicities and I was thinking about that story from Dance with Life when this one came tweeting in, I think I am going to dig it out and repost it at the end of this.
Enjoy...

The Butterfly Story
Elisabet Sahtouris | the butterfly story

A caterpillar can eat up to three hundred times its own weight in a day, devastating many plants in the process, continuing to eat until it’s so bloated that it hangs itself up and goes to sleep, its skin hardening into a chrysalis. Then, within the chrysalis, within the body of the dormant caterpillar, a new and very different kind of creature, the butterfly, starts to form. This confused biologists for a long time. How could a different genome plan exist within the caterpillar to form a different creature? They knew that metamorphosis occurs in a number of insect species, but it was not known until quite recently that nature did a lot of mixing and matching of very different genome/protein configurations in early evolutionary times. Cells with the butterfly genome/ proteins were held as aggregates, or 'discs' of stem cells that biologists call 'imaginal cells', tucked inside pockets of the caterpillar’s skin all its life, remaining undeveloped until the crisis of overeating, fatigue and breakdown allows them to develop.

Such metamorphosis makes a good metaphor for the great changes globalisation, in the sense of world transformation, is bringing about., as Norie Huddle first used it in her children's book Butterfly. Our bloated old system is rapidly becoming defunct while the vision of a new and very different society, long held by many 'imaginal cell' humans who dreamt of a better world, is now emerging like a butterfly, representing our solutions to the crises of predation, overconsumption and breakdown in a new way of living lightly on Earth, and of seeing our human society not in the metaphors and models of mechanism as well-oiled social machinery, but in those of evolving, self-organizing and intelligent living organism.

If you want a butterfly world, don't step on the caterpillar, but join forces with other imaginal cells to build a better future for all!

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I love the idea of imaginal cells. It never ceases to amaze me what we can learn from nature and how many life lessons are right under our noses! Anyway that was Elisabet's lovely story and now we can zoom in and see it from the viewpoints of the caterpillars!

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A Tale of Two Caterpillars
“Once there was a brother caterpillar and a sister caterpillar. The sister spent all her time looking to the sky. She would watch the birds and all the other winged creatures with longing. She said to her brother ‘One day I’ll fly just like them. I really feel that I will.’
Her brother was scornful.
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he said. ‘What would you even want to fly for. It’s lovely to be able to wiggle along the earth and to find a fat juicy leaf. I watch those silly birds and they’re always just darting about looking useless.’
She listened to him, but didn’t agree.
‘It’s not that I don’t like being a caterpillar and that I don’t enjoy every leaf and patch of earth that we explore, but I just can’t shake off the feeling that there’s something more. Haven’t you ever wondered why there are no old caterpillars? Where does everyone go?’
Her brother looked angry.
‘You are so STUPID,’ he shouted. ‘Why do you think those birds are so fat? That’s where we all end up – in their stomachs. We’re bird food! We just have a pointless reason here. It’s as simple as that. There’s nothing ahead except some sharp beak, then darkness. Just accept that and stop going on at me. And stop admiring the very creatures you should hate!’
Her brother was disgusted and wriggled away.
She curled on her little leaf singing happily to herself.
‘Maybe my brother is right, but it’s still lovely to look at all the other creatures,’ she said to herself.
Just then a dragonfly whirred past. He saw her on the leaf and landed to say ‘hello’.
She told him about her argument with her brother. The dragonfly clicked and hummed with laughter.
‘But of course you’ll fly. One day you’ll be a butterfly!’
She was thrilled and excitedly went to tell her brother.
‘And you believed him!’ he scoffed. ‘No one believes that mad fool. Even the very word, “butterfly”, I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.’
Time passed and the urge came for the caterpillars to start spinning their chrysalises. She was full of hope, sure that this was going to take her towards her dream. Her brother was melancholy.
‘This is just packing you know,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s a cruel trick. They’ve engineered it that we do this to fill their stomachs even more. We’re too thin as we are.’
She tried to argue with him but he wouldn’t listen.
They hung, suspended in their chrysalises, for what seemed like an eternity. Then one day her chrysalis began to move. She felt it slip away. She couldn’t figure out where she was, everything looked red. She shook herself and a trickle of red fluid gathered at her little feet. As she looked down she noticed the most beautiful sight. She had wings of lilac and gold with little green spots for decoration. She flapped her wings and began to fly. It was the most amazing feeling. She landed on a flower and sipped delicately at the nectar. It was exquisite, beyond any taste she could have ever imagined. As she looked down on the earth below she felt extraordinarily privileged.
‘This is even better than being a bird,’ she sang out loud, ‘because they have only ever been birds. But I know how cosy and warm it is to snuggle in the warm earth and to chew the deep green leaves and now I know the joy of flight and the magical taste of nectar. I have been given two lives, two experiences in this one lifetime.’
She heard a grumbling coming from a rich yellow flower. Perched on the flower was a beautiful orange butterfly. It was her brother! She flew excitedly to him.
‘It wasn’t a trick, it was real,’ she cried, fluttering her wings to him in greeting.
He looked bitter.
‘Don’t be so naive!’ he snapped. ‘Look at the colour of us both. You bright gold and me bright orange. They’ll see us for miles. We won’t last a second I tell you!’
‘Oh brother! Why can’t you see how amazing this is? You’re beautiful. And we can fly!’
He grimaced.
‘What sort of awful stuff is this?’ he moaned, indicating to the nectar. ‘My teeth are gone. I can’t get a bite of leaf no matter how I try. And I hate flying. It makes my head spin. I tried to curl nicely on a leaf but these blasted wings keep slipping so I fall down.’
She shook her little head and spiralled upwards, realising that there was nothing that she could do to change his mind. He
was as determined to dislike their new life as she was to embrace it.
‘Perhaps in time he will like it more,’ she thought, as she caught a current of air and swooped and fluttered along it into the blue, blue sky.”
Dance With Life page 126-129

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