It is easy to give and read advice on the art of living, but not so when everything seems to be tough.  That is the hardest time to hear anything.  But, that is when a little advice would be helpful.

Tough times require tough medicine: the truth.  Every seeming problem boils down to a spiritual problem.   Normally, we  forget our spiritual nature and see things as me against the world.  The truth is that I am Spirit or Consciousness.  Everything that is happening is part of that Consciousness.  I am Consciousness, perceiving as Consciousness and everything I perceive is part of that Consciousness.  Where is the problem?

The idea is to relax.  We are like a fist that has been squeezed tight for so long that it seems to take effort to relax the hand.   We’re all tight, protecting ourselves in every way that we can, guarding against imagined danger.  We need to let it all go.

Life can be an experiment in letting go, trusting in the perfection and understanding that we are not our minds.  Need a job for your mind?  Give it the job of understanding your spiritual nature.  That is a worthy assignment.

Waiting seems to be one of the most difficult things.   The mind just hates it.  We want everything now. We want so badly that we pray for it, wish for it, focus on it.

In Human Design, almost everyone is instructed to wait.   Wait to respond.  Wait to be invited.  Ugh, says the mind.  I’m too busy to wait.  I have too much to do right now.  I have a life to make.

So, what about this waiting thing?  Is it important or a waste of time?  I vote for important.

Look at it like there are two worlds, one where you have to do everything and one where everything is done through you.  In the later, you no longer go out of your self towards things.  You stay within and things come to you.  Things – that is, thoughts, feelings and perceptions come to you, appear to you, arise within you.  You, your essence, no longer needs to forget itself in order to experience the body, mind and the world.  This experience by your essence, or Consciousness, is the prize.  Experience it and you know I’m right.

Waiting, with awareness, is a prerequisite for experiencing deeply.  When you know that you are a unique perfect expression of God, waiting for life to unfold becomes easy.  What could you do to improve it?  Nothing.  So give up the anxiety, pain and struggle and try waiting for what comes.  It won’t be easy because almost everyone is racing, praying or hoping for something to happen.  The only mentors you will find who are waiting are a rare few sages and awakening ones.  Think about it.

Nature has been one of my best friends.  I associate pleasure and ease with being in nature.  For me, making and taking flower essences seems to be a concentrated dose of nature’s healing power.

Well, what do others say?  Here are three tid bits I gleaned recently from my research:

1.  Visual exposure to settings with trees produced significant recovery from stress in five minutes, evidenced by changes in blood pressure and muscle tension.

2.  Desk workers without views of nature recorded 23% more incidents of illness than those with views of nature.

3.  Hospital patients who had views of trees needed less medication and had faster recovery times after surgery than those without such views.

So, go take a walk in the woods, or take a dose of nature in a bottle, flower essences.

Hello to each of you reading this in Russian.  Through the wonder of the internet and the weave of life, there are several people reading this blog from Russia.  Kauai to Russia. Amazing.

The message doesn’t change.  You have been kidnapped by your own mind, and you better pay attention.  If you want to get out of this, you have to get back into your body and wait for life to unfold at it’s perfect pace.  Our world and countries support our thinking in fixed programmed ways.  As if we were all the same.  It is not so.  You are the perfect one you are meant to be.  Only your truth.  You are the one you have been waiting for.

How to proceed?  Back to nature.  Flower essences seem to be very helpful in shattering the programmed ways of being.  It is a war between the mind and your truth.  The mind is clothed in all of your survival patterns pretending to be you. But, it is not you.  Let the destruction of the false self continue.

What a funny concept, the fool.  Not working on the same serious level as the rest of us.  Seemingly detached from the reality of our many problems and needs.  They give him one day to play.  Then back in line, hit the road, move em out.

What a fool I have been, over and over through this life.  Most of the time, I was in denial of it.  In recent years, I have accepted it.   The ego driven, mind filled entity that I used to align myself to and as, is a fool.  I opine that the most serious problem a person can have is to believe anything strongly.  Better to be the fool.  Laugh about it and flow on through the mystery of life.

The fool acts without thinking.  Not carefully weighing the pros and cons of every facet of the issue.  I am suggesting that the fool is closer to enjoying the flow of his or her life than the one who sees others as fools.  So, in tribute to the 1st day of April, I will happily be the fool.

It is that time again.  Winter is ending and spring is just ahead.  Clean out the old to make ready for the new.

If I might be so forward, I recommend a flower essence reading and remedy for any one looking at this time as one to clear their old limiting survival patterns.  We are all unique, but we have been raised to be like the homogenized masses.  That is devastating to the authentic real essence of us.  I know that so well.  If you are also smarting from the pain of the not self, flower essences may be the way to get out of the pain and into authenticity.

So as you dust off the cob webs and clean from another winter, consider cleaning out the best of you.

This just has to be said.  It is not like anything.

My daughters grew up in the evolution of the phrase, “its like.”   You can hear it every where.  It is some kind message saying, hey, everything is cool.  Well maybe.  The point is that this phrase is revealing of our robotic programed way of experiencing.  Just like any software program, one thing refers back to another earlier program.  The new program “is like” the old one.  One big problem with this for us humans is that the earlier program is formed in childhood.  How clear is the child??????  Not very…….

So if I’m right, then our screwed up inner child’s reactions become the default “its like” for today’s experience.  Children making adult decisions.

The truth:  It is not like anything! My perception is making premature erroneous opinions about every moments experience as long as I am satisfied with having anything like anything else.  Is this really just one endless program?  Isn’t there room for raw experience?  Am I so crusted over that I can’t relax and allow life to impact me?  Am I too afraid?

Asking these questions is refreshing.  Life is an experiment.  Now is not like anything I have ever known before.

Chris and I went to our favorite winter get away, Sun Valley, in January.  The contrast between Kauai’s warm weather and  winter’s bite was shocking but easy to handle for a short time.  Breaking momentum is a great thing about a vacations.  What seemed so important is left behind as new fresh experience fills the perceptions.

We love to lunch at Roundhouse and are always entertained by the same accordian player.  I’ve dreamed about him at times.  This time he approached us playing Que Sera Sera, What Ever Will Be Will Be.  I told him that I first heard that song as a young boy in Cape Cod.  I continued telling him that it set in motion a primary question in my mind.  Is it really so easy as letting life be, or does one have to be try and manipulate every thing for personal and greater benefit?

“I thought the same thing,” he said,  “and I’m still struggling with that to this day.”   “But isn’t the mind your ally,  and don’t we need it to create the life we want,” he questioned as he left us.

Soon after,  I wanted to go skiing, and there I was. . . . racing down the mountain, wind blowing across the face, the thrilling feeling of speed shaking the senses.  But, in the middle of it all, here comes the mind to remind me about making a reservation for dinner tomorrow.  Boom!  It hit me.  I had decided what I wanted. I spent the money, time and effort, and in the middle of it, the mind breaks in to “help” with some details concerning tomorrow.  How do you shut this thing off?  This is one example of what I mean when I say that your mind is your only enemy.

Two of my friends have invited me to play poker.  I said no to this swamp of mind.  It is place where the mind is used to pretend.  It can bluff in a poker game and discern who else is bluffing.  Is this not a valuable skill that should be good fun?  Or is pretending leading us in the wrong direction.  Authenticity has been lost in our world, thanks to the mind.  Allowing has also been lost.  Presence, a state with no mind, is also sacrificed.

Boom!  The mind’s hold is cracking.  A ray of awakening penetrates the long covered armor.  I exit singing the future’s not ours to see, what ever will be will be, que sera sera.

What a concept, time.  We measure it in years, months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds.  To me it seems like one long continuous flow of awareness.  Some part of us, the mind, holds the memories and impressions.  We weave them together as us, like the old cartoon books that you turn the pages fast to make a movie.  We believe that all of those memories, plus our genetic predispositions, are us.

The little me watches the movement of time, like the doomed man watches his last hours.  It screams out, “there is so little left.”  It groans in agony.  It certainly doesn’t want to celebrate the passage of time this new year.

A fullness envelopes me as I write.  I feel the energy in and around this body.  I disappears into it. . . . . . . .

Good by for 2008.

Greetings!  Another winter solstice and all that is wrapped around it.

In the back ground, fear and uncertainty are frothing.  Yet hope abounds.  A perfect polarity.

Nothing to do but watch the show as each new chapter is revealed.  The amazing miracle unfolds naturally, no effort required. The Consciousness that You are may awaken with the season.  Or not.  The miracle goes on with our attention or without it.   We are an extension of Consciousness.  What could we possibly need to change.  All of the minds positive thinking energies are overlooking the perfection of  all that already is.  So relax.

I say . . . give in.  Let it be as it is.  Put a little time into recognizing the blessing.  Kick up your heals and enjoy the season.  Be authentic about it.  There is no better time to remember who you are, and who you are needs no apology.  Let the love that is there pour forth.

My holiday time is blessed with my wife and two daughters at home, the garden just bursting with vegetables, avocados, oranges in season and a quiet confidence within.