The Biggest Challenge...

The best time for me to meditate is in the early morning - before the sun comes up. That's when my house is the quietest, everyone else is asleep - excepting the three meowing cats, but once I feed them all is clear for take off.

I light candles. The flames flicker all over the place and bounce off of furniture the walls, my own body, making curious shadow shapes on the ceiling and walls. As the sun rises outside my shadows, distinct and obvious in the dark, fade, and there is only me, sitting quiet in front of the flickering light.

Then the challenge becomes obvious. It's a matter of being mystical and real at the same time. I'm working on that one today.

(The photo was taken by Anne Jablonski at our beloved Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana - one of the most mystical, real places on the planet.)

Redirecting Worry

It's easy to spin - to freak out - about nothing at all. Once we start we can create all sorts of unreal dramas, conflicts with everyone from our supervisor at work to the mail man, potential scenarios that will maim and disfigure those we love. (Any mother will attest to the pit in her stomach that churns into panic as she "invents" possible disasters that might attack her children.)

It's not that worry, fear and doubt are wrong, but that they are a misdirected expression of our energy, a mental miscue about what is happening around us. The key is to redirect that fear energy into something real, something productive, something that demonstrates the truth of what is happening.

Imagine the capability of that mental energy if it were not swirling around and around all over itself in the form of worry! It's not just worry that distorts our energy flow - addictions, perceived jealousies, threats - all are mental examples of trapped, misdirected power. To fall prey to them is to become locked in a cycle of error.

Fear is the error; love is all that is real - all there is. To operate from a state love instead of fear is to allow our energy to morph, to flow with the movement of the life around us. When we do that, we are truly free.

Joy and Empowerment

We can feel stuck by past decisions, when really we are innocent, innocent, innocent, and perfectly free in every given moment to choose joy. It's simply a matter of realizing that the past is no longer with us. We aren't bound by it, because it isn't real.

Any prior decisions or choices we may or may not have made back then are gone, no more substantial than smoke from an extinguished candle. AT NO TIME DOES THE PAST HAVE ANY POWER OVER THE NOW, and how we are living.

Within each now moment, within every instant, we have the opportunity to choose joy. Guilt and regret have no function because they exist no where except in our own heads. Any residual pull we may feel from them is simply habit.

There will never be any situation without hope. We always have some inkling that if we simply turn within, we can go back to joy. It's not like we don't know where joy is. We always know. It's right there inside us all the time. It's not like we're floundering anywhere, ever, except in our own heads.

The Phantom of Here Right Now

A dear friend of mine is in love. You can tell when you look at her that love is the case because of the way her skin flushes, and her blue eyes meet everything they take in with an undeniable sparkle. Her hair has taken on a new sheen too. It's cheaper than any beauty treatment on the planet - falling in love.

But when love comes our way, sits right in front of us, declares us "lovely, lovely, lovely," we tend to shy away in disbelief - "Who, me?" we might say. And then we back away.

On the deepest level we know it's right here, now, that we are indeed lovely and lovable. That kind of gut level knowing is horribly romantic; we know love is there in a primitive, basic way; we remember it, and our bodies light up when they are reminded of it.

We wonder - "am I pretty enough, am I witty enough, am I enough?" But love hangs on - it appears in dreams, whispering over and over again - "Now, now, now" and even though we don't feel ready, that now is here, and our own misguided disbelief is all that's keeping us from joining what's already happening right now: love, at an explosive, uncontained, pure level.