Be Still, Be Silent, Be Spacious my aching heart.

Original artwork by Jennifer Belanger

My heart is aching this morning.

Sadness has once again gripped my heart, my soul, rippling through my core and begging me to feel its tenderness, its compassion, its depth of despair, its meaning so that I may help those that I care so deeply for through this process of grief.

Another young life has succumbed to the epidemic of drugs and alcohol. His life ravaged by the pain of confusion and despair known only to himself. Hidden within himself so deeply that his clarity, he believed, came with drug use. Darkness pursued him, pushed him and ultimately killed him. Some call this type of mental anguish "Demons" in our soul.

I do not.

Demons are the characters of chilling stories, horrifying movies, figures designed to incite and induce fear into our ego selves beginning from childhood religions and fables passed down from generation to generation. Fairy Tales of hero's and villains, evil and light, good and bad.

No, demons do not the reside inside of us. At least not the oogy-boogie kind our images show us. No. Not demons. Ego.

Ego does.

The ego is an identity of our own construction, an identity which is false. If we take all the beliefs of what we are – beliefs about our personality, talents, and abilities – we have the structure of our ego. These talents, abilities and aspects of our personality will be attributes of our skills, but the mental construct of our “self” is artificial. Fake. False. Based in Fear.

"Fear= False Evidence Appearing Real "

And while this description might make the ego seem like a static thing, it is not. Rather, it is an active and dynamic part of our personalities, playing an immense role in creating emotional drama in our lives created by beliefs we interpret emotionally.

The ego hides behind the “I” and “me” in those declarative thoughts and statements about our identity, which again are Fear based...False...

"Fear= False Evidence Appearing Real"

When we have such thoughts and agree with even the slightest conviction that these ideas define us, then we are building, or reinforcing, an ego. We first have these thoughts when we are kids, perhaps when we were teased on the playground, or when reprimanded or praised by a teacher or parent. In all cultures, developing a self-image is a normal part of socialization. Problems arise, however, when that self-image is negative, inaccurate, or even overly positive. Considering that we develop our concept of “self” as children, it is inevitable that our self-image doesn’t map to reality as adults.~Gary van Warmerdam

"We see what we have been told, we believe what we are told which is based on what other people see and tell us. It is NOT TRUE!"

The ego is difficult to see, because it hides behind opinions that appear true – our attachment to descriptions of our identity – and because we haven’t practiced looking.

We have not been taught to look inside for the answers.
Why teach self observation, self love, self assurance and self discipline when it is so much easier to teach about demons?

To the unaware person, it is difficult to discern the difference between what is ego and what is really them. They are left to wonder, “What came over me that I reacted that way?” Even their post-emotional analysis lacks the consideration to see the different parts of their belief system at work as separate from themselves. As a result, everything they express is blamed on “themselves” by one of the condemning voices in their head...demons .. In effect, the ego hijacks the analysis and turns it into a self-criticism/blame process. When the ego controls the self-reflection process you have no chance of seeing the root cause of your emotional dramas, as the ego reaffirms itself and hides in the self-criticism. ~ Gary van Warmerdam

We are at our deepest level pure light. Light that comes from love. Love that encompasses all, that all is created from. Levels of vibrations are levels of love. Love is all there is.

John Lennon made famous "All you need is love, love is all you need."

Catchy.

Cool bumper stickers are made from this. Add a peace symbol and there is a real message. Only problem is very few really resonate with what the hell he meant. Catch phrases are a funny thing...they play with your ego mind by creating a rhyme, a tiny something that your ego mind can ponder over and over until it becomes a catchy phrase that we repeat. So while we repeat this over and over, our ego is satisfied, but our SOUL is not. Our soul desires its meaning. It desires to understand, to explore, to seek its self through vibration. Vibrations, high or low , stem from our emotional intelligence based on the level of love in which we are vibrating from. Resonating from. Think of it as a ceiling fan that is able rotate at the level of speed in which the knob is turned from the wall. Low to high, its main source is electricity, but the electricity current drives the movement which is controlled by the turn from the knob on the wall.

We are high functioning levels of vibration that seek to experience this life in all of its messy glory. From the deepest grains of despair to the highest growth of euphoria, our souls seek to experience it all. This is the meaning of life as I see it and have been taught it through my Angels, Guides, Spirit and Ancestral Realm as well as countless Earthly Beings of Light and Love. I know this to my core, yet my heart is aching and my mind is reeling. My soul shakes to the core with anger, sadness, confusion and a desperation to DO something to FIX this messy world we live in.

I can't.

I can't fix jack shit.

I can not magically erase the angst on earth. I can't eradicate drug and alcohol, hatred and bigotry, fear and scarcity. I can't do a damn thing to FIX this F'n world that is blinding us from the truth that "Love is all you need, Love is all there is".

I can't erase negative thought belief in someone else's ego.
I can't replace their fear with truth. Their evidence with my reality.
I can, however, hold space in my heart and my soul for love. I can meditate on peace. I can meditate on love and I can meditate on expansion. I can hold myself in the highest form of vibration that I am capable of at this moment in my souls understanding. I can continue to grow higher and higher with every breath and every intention I send out and seek in. I can bring change with my thoughts, my intentions, my love and my spiritual practice which continually seeks to give and receive love.

I Can.
We all can.

We can start by listening to our Souls voice. That still quiet voice that resides in us meant to guide us through the maze of experience. This is the knowledge we are to learn.

We do not learn to live our lives with intention. We do not learn at birth that we are grounded through our Root Chakra in love. We do not learn that meditation, stillness, spaciousness, silence are the keys to life. No, we are taught that money, success, "busy-ness" (business), ego, material gains, superiour strength, athleticism are the keys to happiness. We throw away nature to build an empire never really learning that nature is the empire in which we seek, where we grow, where our Souls have chosen to meet once again. To thrive in this lifetime together.

Let us be still. Let us offer the three pills of health to ourselves. Let us offer this teaching instead.

The teaching I’m referring to: Stillness. Silence. Spaciousness

In the words of the honorable Bon teacher, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, “With the pain body or identity, we ‘take the white pill’ and turn toward stillness; with pain speech, we ‘take the red pill’ and turn toward silence; and with pain mind, we ‘take the blue pill’ and turn toward spaciousness. As we enter the experiences of stillness, silence, and spaciousness, our pain becomes the path to liberation. Each condition transforms into a path that leads to our final liberation: connection with the changeless essence.”

If we are in a rush and feel agitated, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche advises that we embrace stillness and let the illusion of time wash over us.
When our ego begins speaking negatively to ourselves or others, he advises that we practice silence. If the urgency of life’s stresses, (busy-ness) are feeling too close or heavy, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche asks that we give ourselves some mental and emotional space from these external or imagined stimuli. The idea behind these three practices is to stop the pattern of reactive behavior and truly acknowledge the pain that is causing it. The pain itself is considered an entry point for inner exploration.

Stillness. Silence. Spaciousness.
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Let us all do some inner exploration today and every day. Let us heal ourselves and each other one single, deep, beautiful, loving, spacious breath at a time and when we are called, let us teach through our soul and leave our ego behind.

My heart aches but my Soul seeks your Soul and when we meet we shall say Namaste`.
Sat Nam.

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