The Point of Power is In The Present

(Title taken from ‘The Nature of Personal Reality: Seth Book” – Jane Roberts)

I have read that with the point of power being in the present, this signifies that your creation point, the point from which all reality will spring is in the Now. But when I speak of reality springing from this point, not only do I mean all future realities, but also the past.

Can we create the past? With our current concept of linear time it seems practically nonsensical, but it can be done. One very simple example of it in action, is an experience I had recently.

We create stories, a narrative around our lives. Just as with dreams, seemingly random events are experienced and in waking, we create a narrative upon which to hang the story of our lives. This becomes what defines us. I am this, I lived this, it had this effect, it thus made me who I am today. But all this is changeable. Nothing is fixed.

I grew up and held the narrative of myself as having felt separate. Since I could remember I felt apart, different, as if somehow I didn’t quite belong. I didn’t feel as if I fit, even within my own family. And so I drew to myself all the memories of not feeling understood, accepted, part of a whole. I defined myself through the language and remembered events of separation. That defined me and carved out my understanding of my own identity.

I suffered with this growing up and for many years. But later when I began seeking in another way I realised that it had been necessary for me to feel that I didn’t fit. It allowed me to always seek. I would not have been so motivated had it all been too comfortable, there would have been the danger of static complacency. I understood that I had chosen this and I grew thankful for those who had helped me in this way, knowingly or unknowingly.

But I still held the sadness within me even though I felt that I understood it. When I thought of myself as a child, I did not recall myself being happy. One day I made the decision to begin seeking those memories. To pull out from my life the times when I did feel loved and held, safe and whole.

It took time, because my other narrative was very well established. But I managed. I recalled sitting with my mother, I remembered Sunday afternoons, watching black and white films with her, eating pears in the kitchen in the commercial breaks. There was something so comforting and wonderful with those memories. I felt so close to the love she had for me, that it began to wash through me. I gave it the voice I had long smothered.

The story of my life began to change. I had another reference by which to recall my life, it had been eclipsed by the strength of my focus in another direction. Can anything be all bad or all good? Not in its entirety. So through choice we can seek the seed of the other from within our seemingly solid narratives.

I literally changed my life through my present and ended up changing my past and my future. My relationships began to change, because they were now formed and built on different events, different feeling tones.

We have this ability at all times in our lives. I have experienced it more slightly of late. I have not kept in touch with certain people I would have liked to. The fearful part of me says that if I haven’t done it up till now then it’s too late, it no longer fits. I’ve chosen a way and now I’m stuck with it.

But that’s simply not the case. I get to create from this moment, from my present and the only bounds are those I place around myself.

Seeking Alternate Dialogues – Drawing the Light From the Darkness

“A problem cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it.” – Albert Einstein

I have always understood this quote to mean that when a problem exists we have to come at it from another angle entirely, from totally outside of the box. When we focus only on the problem as it stands, we are serving only to consolidate it. But what if the problem we face is within ourselves? How do we go about creating an alternate dialogue, a totally new space from which to view and answer the problem?

Since this year began I have been having a very challenging time. I have been working through many old fears and experiencing the re-arousal of thought patterns and emotions I had believed I had long ago worked through.

In the case of all these challenges, the key point has been discovering an alternate dialogue, an alternate point to rest my awareness and focus. I have, since I can remember, had a very strong fear of rape, despite this experience not directly touching my life. But it has been a fear that has been calling for acknowledgement in my dreams and in my thoughts for a long time now.

At the beginning of the year I decided to go away, I needed some quiet time. When I got there, I realised it was really in order to work through this fear. I went to seek out some old rock paintings. I left my car on purpose about 3 kms from the car park and walked a beautiful, wild and deserted landscape. I revelled in the beauty and felt very connected to all I saw.

When I got to the cave, I walked up to it and stopped there. It was at that point that two cars drove up and 8 men in total got out. They were young men and looked a bit rough, they were swearing and kicking at the cars. It didn’t matter who they were, or what they were really there to do, my fear kicked in and paralysed me. They had been transformed into potential attackers. I hid behind a rock, wondering if they were coming up, but instead they went off talking loudly into the woods. I stayed frozen.

I didn’t know what to do, to wait till they came and left, though I didn’t have much daylight left, or to begin walking the 3kms back to my car with the chance they would overtake me on the way. I stayed terrorised like that for a time.

Eventually I got myself together and decided to walk. I tried to feel the previous connection I had to nature, but I could sense so clearly that when fear is felt the heart shuts down. My heart was closed and constricted and I couldn’t make the connection. I have heard it so often said that fear is the opposite of love. I was living its reality.

As I walked, I called upon protection. I know that I am never really alone and I asked for all that is around to surround and support me at this time. So many thoughts went through my mind. If I know myself to be a truly infinite being having an experience here on this plane, why does this fear have such power over me? What exactly is this fear made up of?

For the first time I had the mental space to really enter into the fear. I no longer ran from looking at it. I could see so clearly what it was composed of. I could see how much of it was truly mine and how much was inherited. I could see personally that I was afraid of pain, I was afraid of experiencing something that would change me forever, which I wouldn’t come back from. In my case this was the root of my fear, the fear of annihilation. This fear has played out previously and since in the fear of losing my mind, it is the same fear, just dressed up in different clothes.

In the case of rape I also understood that there was a large inherited component. Throughout history in battles with tribes or armies, the conquerors typically raped and pillaged. Women, I felt must have this memory somehow imprinted on a cellular level.

But then I saw the flip side. I had made these men into potential attackers. The reality was that they were probably picking mushrooms in the woods with no knowledge or interest of my existence. But I was living another reality. We create our reality based upon our beliefs and perceptions and this was a case in point.

I have done a lot of work on healing the wounded feminine and connected with the sacred feminine. It came as a real eye opener a while back when I worked to heal the wounded masculine in my family line and connect to the sacred masculine. It was humbling and very beautiful and I saw how quick and trained I was to stereotype. As I was clearly doing in this instance!

I was often told that it was important to work with the masculine as I contain a great part of it. When we speak of the Shadow, we tend to think of all the negative things. But Jung describes it as that which man has not claimed, that we do not yet own. There are of course the more negative aspects that we shirk and avoid individually and collectively, but much of our true potential lies there too. Many of our gifts reside in the Shadow, for the Shadow, as I understand it, is where we do not shine the light of focus.

In my case I have been more afraid of claiming my own power and light than I have been of exploring my darkness.

I allowed this fear of rape to play out in order to seek out the solution. I spent a further night of terror, yet I spent a lot of time in meditation and openly seeking guidance. By the next morning I had come through. I worked with a release, stating what I no longer chose to define and limit me and choosing with intent what I wanted in its place.

In the end it was about accepting my power, my creative energy that I had blocked for so long through shame and fear and that I was now ready to accept.  I wrote a release and burnt it and did the same for 8 following days. 8 was the number that seemed right to me for this release. It was very powerful and I have not been the same since. I no longer carry what I have carried for so long, I felt reborn.

I later remembered that 2 years ago on the first trip I had done by myself I had come up against this same fear. Again I had been on a deserted path walking to the beach in nearing twilight, 7 kms away from the main road. I had seen a lot of rough looking men and gotten scared. I had walked the 7kms back in record time, but in absolute terror, even hiding in bushes when I heard a car coming.  This time round I was being given another opportunity to work through the fear.

Until we work through a fear or a limiting belief that we hold, I believe that we will continue to encounter it. It is not negative, though it may feel to be that way, it is an opportunity, a call to seek another facet of consciousness from which to view and approach it and then ultimately to go beyond it. 

Meditation and visualisations have been very powerful in helping me connect and expand into other facets of consciousness from which to view the problems. I could not free myself from my stereotypes of men and the masculine until I journeyed in a visualisation to meet the Sacred Masculine. It had absolutely nothing to do with the masculine as I understood it and it provided me with a difference reference point. Thus I had another reference from which to view my daily reality from.

For weeks though I have been awash with vey uncomfortable feelings and thoughts. The other morning in meditation I worked to explore it and it came to me that sometimes these habitual fears and thoughts arise, not to set us back. It is not a case of “I haven’t moved, I’m back to square one, I’ll never go further.” Rather, it is a way of consolidating one’s own power. Of getting to see by using familiar reference points, how much one has moved. How do I deal with it differently this time round? What tools do I have that I can work with? It is a way of taking stock of my power and progress in a time of strife.

Whether it’s true or not I have often heard it said that when a small child gets a high fever, they say that they will have a growth push afterwards. I felt that this is what was happening. The experience of fears, difficult and uncomfortable emotions and thoughts was a bit like having a high fever. I felt that I was contracting into myself.

I understood that after this period of contraction, when you begin to unfurl, you unfurl a little more than before.  It is actually part of the experience of expansion. 

Magical Intersections – Discovering the Black Tourmaline Pendulum

For an upcoming course I was told that I needed to get a pendulum. I went to a shop yesterday to buy one and when the woman in the shop showed me the display case with all the pendulums I was quite amazed. I knew nothing about them and had no idea how many different kinds there were of different forms and different materials.

I asked the woman if she could tell me about them, but she knew as much as I did! So I stood in front of the case, closed my eyes and opened my Akashic Records, then I asked to be guided to the pendulum that most resonated with me and that I would work with best. When I opened my eyes, I was looking at the left stand and one pendulum was swaying back and forth. I looked at the right stand and two pendulums were swaying. I looked at all the others and they were completely still.

It was only three crystal ones that were moving. But it was not material based as there was another crystal one that did not move. I looked at the first one I had seen, a clear quartz point with black tourmaline in an enclosed layer on top, on a silver chain.

I remembered how a while back I had been drawn to open the Akashic Records of the black tourmaline and what affinity I had felt with it since. The day before I had begun to meditate with a quartz, when I had felt a distinct intuition that I needed to sit with the black tourmaline. I had been feeling off key, a bit anxious and slightly irritable.

As I had sat with the black tourmaline I felt it working with me and I began to let the tensions go. They fell away and I became clearer and clearer, lighter and bigger until I felt myself bodiless and still.

It still took me a while to decide between the pendulums, for I was also drawn to another one, but in the end, the first sight and the black tourmaline won out.

I understood that there is an on-going dialogue such as the one referencing the black tourmaline. The different episodes involved in me buying the pendulum, seem to be separated by time, but when touched on felt as if they are all part of the same on-going experience.

I feel that these kinds of experiences help me to go beyond my linear perspective of time and begin to live time’s simultaneous nature. I know it as a notion, but it is hard to sense as I operate on this level of reality. But experiences like that lift my perspective allowing for it to be felt as a directly lived reality.

The other thing that I understood from this experience is that I had to be able to connect the dots so to speak. I could have these complementary experiences, but if I do not link them then they remain as random moments in my life. I give them meaning. If I did not have the predisposition to connect the dots, the material would still be there, but would remain un-attenuated, unseen.

I have seen in myself and with others that we only hear what we are ready to hear. We only see what we are ready to see. How much is being whispered to us that we are not ready to hear and how much shown to us that we cannot yet see?

For me the beautiful part of this experience is how magical it was. The magical often intersects on our reality, but depending where we are in our lives we are more or less open to see it. I feel though that it is happening all the time, that there is little distinction between the magical and the mundane.

I see my life as being an interplay of weaving strands, clouds of light, unfurling dialogues like the one with the black tourmaline that converge and diverge from the physical plane at different rates and intervals.

When seen in this way the living of life is a magical and wondrous experience, but it is one that I co-create. For example I get tune into certain material, but the way I choose to interpret it creates a reality out of it, another with the same material would create a different version.

We are, I believe, all artists and our life is our greatest work and the great joy is that we do not do it alone.

Playing With The Oneness

I remember a passage from a book I read a while ago called the Thirteen Circles (www.the13circles.com). One of the characters, Lemora, goes out into the early morning to sense the Oneness, to hail it, to be a part of it. But what does this mean? How does one begin to attenuate the Oneness?

I feel it now. I envision her going out into the morning knowing that she consciously enters into the fabric from which all is made and knowing herself to be a part of that fabric. There is no real need to go in and out, every moment, every breath, every particle is part of the same stuff.

I have been reading a book on Ancient Egypt (‘Imagining The World Into Existence’ by Normandi Ellis) and it recaps some of the creation myths. Atum resided in the Nun the darkness, the emptiness. Until Atum created Re, the light, he did not consciously recognise that he was God. It was the light of Re that allowed him to see who he was. Once he saw that, he began to explore himself.

Many of us are as Atum was within the Nun. We have not experienced the light to view our own true natures. Yet when we do we begin to seek that reconnection, we begin to sense that we are both a part of and are of the divine.

We can explore this in a myriad of ways. I find the more I follow one seemingly unique strand of thought or experience, it eventually leads me back to intertwine with all the others. It is like a DNA double helix, with multiple strands that twist and spiral upwards until all threads join. 

The more I sense this, the more I am able to live it. I am coming to realise that much of my feeling of separateness was of my own making. I would sit with people and be convinced that they did not think like me and so I was different, I thus stood apart. This gave birth to a distance that all parties then lived.

Recently I am not focusing on the distance. I can be myself without it hinging upon the expectation of another’s response. Anyone can teach.

By doing this I am amazed at the response of many random people. Those whom I would have previously written off as different leave me in wonder at the things that they share which I can relate to. Instead of putting up a wall, I have begun to open up a space and people are walking in.

Recently I was told that my seeking to connect shines through. I had never really thought of it as seeking to connect, especially to people.  Although I have always been seeking more of what I instinctively felt to make up our world.

But in retrospect it is true that I have been seeking socially too. I never wanted to be trapped within a particular social grouping, to be caught within one specific model. I needed to explore. I wanted to access and relate to people from all ages, cultures and backgrounds. Yet throughout all my life I believed myself to be a loner.

Someone recently told me that people see our gifts before we are aware of them. That seems to be true.

People reacted to the peace they said I generated whilst the last thing on earth I felt I possessed was peace. Talents that I never thought I possessed and would have denied as part of my makeup suddenly became natural. It is as though who we are exists in a huge cloud around us and all we have to do is step into it. But first we have either to recognise its possibility or at least not shut the door on it.

For everything that exists and has ever existed resides alive within the fabric of the Oneness. I had a vision when I was a teenager that stayed with me always. I was in a very black time of my life. I did not know how to live and whether I even could manage to continue living any more.

Just as I had seen people as separate, I saw God as separate and felt abandoned by something that would not answer to my suffering.

I went into the hills in Provence and sitting there, looking out, I imagined that fine spider webs of light connected each point I saw to each other. Every leaf of every bush, of every tree, every blade of grass, every stone, every twig, everything was touched and interlinked by these fine threads of light.

It was only recently that I began to understand the power of this vision. It left me with a feeling that had buoyed me for many years. I got to see now that when I had thought I was most abandoned in silence, I was always being spoken to. I was given little moments to keep me going which would later inform greater understandings.

Now I can sense the energetic network that enrobes, embodies and is generated by us all. It comes to mind easily. I can connect to it. Now I see that I did not perceive a picture apart from myself, I was an integral part of it too. It was this felt but below conscious understanding that had really buoyed me.

I do not need to seek the divine apart from others, or apart from myself. It is in us all and around us all.

We are an ever-expanding conscious universe within the consciousness of the Divine.  

Accepting Our Different Realities

Yesterday I read something that really stood out for me, it was in Seth, “The Unknown Reality” by Jane Roberts. In it he mentioned how a couple actually lived different realities. It was not that they perceived the events differently, the events themselves were actually different.

This resonated with me. Often people especially when married or together seem to exhibit a gulf in their understanding. They can hold to conflicting versions of an event and become infuriated that the other does not see it their way. But what if the supposedly same event each live, really is different?

I have often heard the saying: “there’s his version, her version and then the truth.” But I am coming to believe that there is no overarching Truth. There is only that which is valid for each person.

If we stop trying to persuade each other of the validity of our truth above anyone else’s, we can open up to a more profound communication and a much less conflictive one. This easily applies to all social relationships.

We live very different lives. Our lives are even made up of seemingly concrete sense perceptions that differ. What I physically see in my version of reality, you may not see in yours and vice versa. This does not mean that either vision is flawed.

We have spent so long in homogenising our versions of realities and I feel that we have done so out of fear. There seems to be a consensus of what reality and our experience within it should consist of, but it seems to become incrementally more limited as we progress. More fear seems to creep in.

There needs to be a common denominator that we communicate upon, a base through which we can reach other. However, there is a tendency to bulldoze out variety in favour of sameness.

The sameness, however, does not bring unity. I feel that it brings more fear. We attack what is different, we place blame, we feel threatened and our insecurity mounts.

It creates a conflict, because by not accepting the differences, we find ourselves at odds with it. We feel we should all be working from the same page and yet our experience tells us that we are not. We cannot accept this due to our beliefs and so greater disappointment and frustration is created.

What I have been experiencing is that the more I respect and honour the variety and difference, the more I apprehend and am overawed by the Unity inherent it all.  

In a homogenised view of reality, my potential will be limited, as will my view of others potentials. The more I loosen the grip on what reality should be, the greater expanse I have to tap for my gifts.

We can see this playing out in education. If I only look for and credit those who have a propensity to be scientists, I will not see the artists. The same occurs in my version of reality, if it is small and limited, only that which fits will be recognised. But what about all the gifts that lie beyond that scope? How could they flourish were another version given the chance to be possible?

If I can begin to accept that we are often living different realities that at times overlap and intersect, I can actually go further in relating and honouring another person. Instead of focusing on where they do not fit with or even replicate me, I can respect where they come from.

My reality is a product of my understanding and I communicate from this point. As my understanding shifts, so does my reality and so does my form of communication. I used to feel that if I spoke to another about their beliefs then I had to be true to myself, even if that meant being at odds with them. It was really about prioritising my model over theirs.

I see now though, that when I communicate, I can be true to myself through my intent, but I have the freedom to change my words. I can symbolically describe things that another can relate to, I can use the points of their model, though it does not have to be my current view.  My words can become a symbol of love as I seek the language that can most reach another person in their chosen reality.

I believe that part of humanity’s path at this time is to see how far we could go from our connection to the Divine. Once we were as separated as possible, the creative adventure is for us to explore the variety of ways to reconnect with that Source. As we reconnect, we get to tap the great love and the inspirational Oneness available to us.

Perhaps we are playing this out in microcosm with each other. We are seeing how separate we can become to each other in order to discover the love that exists in the journey of reconnecting?

By recognising the differences we actually honour the multitudinous pathways back available on this journey.

As we seek to reconnect in this way, we birth a whole new set of realities.

The Space in Between

How difficult it is to take up the space in between. I feel that many flee from this place. It is a very scary process to enter into the space where you begin to take leave of what you knew and yet where you are going is still unformed. You enter into an emotional no-man’s land.

Our beliefs create our reality and the space in between is the point where we experience the process of changing old beliefs for new ones.

By changing beliefs we change our lives. So the discomfort and unknowing we experience is in the space between two lives, it is at the threshold of the new potential life.

The other day I bumped into a friend who now has five children. She said that she wanted more and that she was sad that her husband did not concur. She said that she missed the time of motherhood. She did not want it to end.

I understood her. I understood how one could feel lost. When you live a period of time where you fill a certain role, where you relate to and define yourself in a certain way, it is saddening and confusing when that begins to change.

What is going to substitute your version of yourself? Who are you, for example, when you are no longer a mother who nurtures the baby inside them and then cares for them in a particular way? To give another example, who are you when the career you have no longer successfully defines you or your work is no longer satisfactory?

I have three children and I made a very final decision not to have more and it was very difficult. It was not that I necessarily wanted more, which I didn’t, but it was a change in identity.

I was stepping out of a phase of my life in which I related to myself in a certain way and marking a definite turning point. I even felt for a while to be in a period of mourning. I was no longer the person I had been and I did not know what this signified for the future. 

In my case a great part of it had to do with my relating to creativity. In a way, by stopping the physical creating part, I stepped into another relationship with my own creativity. It was a step further along in claiming responsibility for my creativity, physically independent of others, of claiming my own power.

When we step into the space in between, what happens? The first thing that springs to mind is discomfort, anxiety, sadness even. We feel the need to define ourselves and in the transition we find ourselves between definitions.

I suffered a lot as a child because I could not easily define myself nationally. I was  an Iraqi living in London who had never lived in Iraq. I could not pass as British and I was not really Iraqi. I was a person in between.

For a long time I regretted and mourned not being able to belong. But I see now how important it was and why I chose to come into this experience. Every time I got close to belonging, to adopting a replete cultural model, I broke it down in order to break out again. 

Who I was, was not served up to me easily and this naturally loosened the external cords enough for me to start seeking who I was from within myself.

A few years back, when I started awakening everything speeded up. Nothing was familiar any more. I was getting pieces here and there but had no idea how or if they would ever fit together. I remember asking: ‘how long is this going to go on for?’ The answer was, as can be imagined, very unsatisfying. ‘It varies.’

It was simultaneously exciting and terrifying. There was great discomfort involved. I did not know who I was, where I was headed or what was coming. These are not easy sensations to live with.

But it did all begin to loosely come together. It all settled down. It was beautiful to see how seemingly disparate things were now making a part of a whole. I started to see a greater picture.

Ideas that had shocked me and seemed so far out of my way of being and seeing the world, with no effort, became familiar. A framework was created to start building upon. I settled down into it.

It was a process and there is much to learn through the process itself. Though I became comfortable with the bulk ideas I continued to shift with my beliefs and each shift seems to open up a void and its corresponding sense of discomfort.

When I speak of “void” I mean an empty space, without the negative emotional connotations the word “void” may conjure up. In a way it is a highly positive space purely because it is space.

It is only when there is space that something else can come in. If I fill it up constantly I leave no room for anything new. If I talk constantly, I cannot listen.

But what I am discovering mirrors that which the physicists are discovering: that there is no empty space. Recently I was approached with a project. I had no idea how I would flesh it out or whether I was even interested. But as I worked at it ideas began to flow and they came from the space around me.

I had the clear sensation of how I could place my consciousness outside of myself or rather let my consciousness go and draw from the space. I had no expectations of what was in the space, but it flowed and the result was fascinating for me. It was combining my interests and learning in ways I could never have foreseen. 

This has been the coming together of many thoughts I have been having. It has been becoming clearer to me that I need to let go more. I have been very driven, especially on my spiritual path, but in part I have been driven by fear.

I feared that if I stopped driving things, seeking the next point of learning in books for example or experiences from within mediation, then it would stop. In many ways it had much to do with control. I was not comfortable to take up my space within the space.

I am coming to realise that just by being it will come to me. The more I step into the space, the more I actually become.