Category: heaven is here

Here is where you may find inspired accounts of remarkable human interactions and actions, or unusual events that manifest heaven.

Sensitivity

Here is an extraordinary opportunity to feel into our world. We are the most sensitive, accurate instrument that exists for examining and discerning truth in our world. No statistic, no expert can discover that for us. Each individual is gifted with very specific and unique window on reality that is their very own special taste of the divine, here is where miracles occur. Most of us are sensitive the obvious input like the feelings of our loved ones, in fact we are sensitive beyond our typical awareness – we can sense a mood when a loved one enters our room behind us even. This is perfectly normal. What is also perfectly normal are many greater and finer layers of sensitivity that we have forgotten as a culture.

Sensitivity to our world and the creatures we live with is perfectly normal. In England we had a saying, ” A little bird told me” for when someone learned something they perhaps might not have heard about yet. With today’s telecommunication and instant messaging we hear just about everything instantaneously. But not too long ago getting the word across distance was not so easy. In our mythologies of the world there are many legends of great beings who communicated with animals, plants and even the land itself. This too is normal, we just don’t use that skill. It is one of the talents we are born with that rests within our “junk” DNA waiting for revival.

Today I had a most delightful experience. I am reading Penney Pierce’s book, FREQUENCY and enjoying it very much. Her clarity in describing layers of sensitivity and how to use and develop it is inspiring.  It is so inspiring that I found it working spontaneously today. As I lingered in my last moments of sleep this morning I was disturbed by a neighbor’s dog, a German shepherd, barking – woof, woof, woof, woof. Repeated at a specific rhythm again and again. Finally, I popped out of bed, OK the day had begun. As I walked to brush my teeth my mind was stuck in a phrase, much like when you get a song lyric stuck in your head, “What do you do?” “What do you do?” again and again. I noticed that it was the same rhythm as the dog’s bark.  Again it repeated in my head and I thought, “Why the heck am I thinking this?” A quick memory scan identified that it was not part of a song lyric that I’d heard yesterday and it dawned on me that the phrase was what the dog was saying, “What do you do? Then I knew it, that it was most definitely true. There is a knowing with something like that which is irrefutable. What a blessing, a magical insight into the mind of another being, a connection which dissolves the lines of separation between us.

Once many years ago I had a very clear understanding of a thought that popped into my head during a meditation retreat that I knew was not my thought but that of a man across the room. I have written about this in a previous post, I think. This is sensitivity which only comes with clarity, through an uncluttered mind. A  mind that is full of preconceptions, distractions, rules of engagement, cultural and tribal biases and other thoughts irrelevant to our fullest experience of this most precious moment in reality will miss too many opportunities and delights. For me this kind of sensitivity restores the magic and miracles to my world. It is a much more comfortable, exciting, delightful place than it was for me when I thought otherwise.

Sensitivity restores our own autonomy and authority over our own reality. We are bombarded today with millions of bits of data telling us what to do, what to wear, where to go, how to raise our children. As a result most people are numbed and stressed. Numbed to protect themselves from the overwhelming vibrations created to generate fear, our mainstream media mandate seems to be specifically to ramp up the fear factor and drive us to think and do things we would not necessarily do with our clarity of mind and heart fully aware. We are stressed because we buy into the machinery of manipulation and “need” this and that to make our future or past complete while forgetting about this moment which is all we have.

Feeling into the now, letting go of all other ideas, needs, wants, histories and possible futures is the first step into the magical world of sensitivity. It is the most precious gift we can give to ourselves, it is our birthright, it is the attitude that will reveal to us that we have never left that primordial garden, Eden. We live in God’s backyard, this is Heaven.

Love

We cannot solve our problems from the consciousness that created them. Yesterday I received a recommendation from someone I love to watch a vitriolic political youtube rant; you know the kind. Everything the ranter said was of the same quality as the things he ranted against, his recommendations for dealing with his problem with others exactly the same as the actions of others that he decried as evil and  tyrannous. It is surely now the time to step out of the mindset that has separated our world into us and them and to embrace our own longing for belonging and communion.

Each one of us has the power to shift the conscious resonance of our entire world, it is our sole and most important duty as the ones being born into this duality now. Any time we deny the rights of other we shut off a part of ourselves, we make ourselves smaller. Forgiveness is not for anyone other it is only for our own self; for the acknowledgement and blossoming of our own heart.

This is where faith comes in, do we have enough faith in ourselves to know that if we grasp acceptance and forgiveness and if we embrace those we make war with the battle really will dissolve or is our faith such that we will we be swallowed up and destroyed as the myriad voices of doom insist?

It is time to seize the power of our own heart to release its power of love and to embrace all of our world as part of ourself. It is time to require our mind to join with the highest of ourself and deny those who would insist that war is necessary, deny those who insist that “the other side” is wrong, evil, stupid, going to ruin the country or whatever. None of the seeming “terrible” things out there are real, they are projections of our inner duality a tangle between the wise and profound love of the heart and the controlling machinations of the egoic mind. Let go of the constructs, the work to keep hate going is overwhelming us all and must finally be dropped.

Blessings Abound

When we are awake and aware it becomes apparent that the next reminder of our divine origins and our residence in heaven is always in front of us. I have said it before and say it again it’s about focus or attitude. We see what we choose to see in life, the first step on the path is to wake up and recognize this and then to make a slight effort, a loving effort to see more.

Our natural buoyancy is up, around the heart, not the head but the heart. The head is too high and can topple too easily from its own constructions of what the world is. The heart though knows what’s what, it recognizes the blessings and that which we must avoid. The head can rationalize just about anything but the heart knows without a doubt what is right and true and good for all. Here is where blessings are birthed, not from a distant deity, or goddesses on a pedestal but from our own heart. We are equally capable of receiving blessings as of giving them. If we feel we need one then lets just give one, a blessing costs nothing takes no effort, reduces us in no way and only opens us up the flow of grace within us.

You know what is interesting to me about this post right now is the turn that it has just taken. I intended to write about how we can discern blessings out in the world like great teachers, uplifting music and artists, the gift of family and friends and pets and yet in the writing I was immediately directed inward to the very source of blessing; our own divine core. This is where we give thanks and generate grace and forgiveness. This the place where blessing attracts the great teacher, the healing, the blessing to our waking daily consciousness where we can incorporate it into our uplifted life.

We are moving to a time where smallness, victim state, manipulations and general postures of powerlessness will shift. If we want to claim our power and make the blessing that is our Godlike right we are more than welcome to at this time and space. We are not made in the image of God we are made of the same stuff and no-stuffness as God so we are God. With tenderness, humility and love I welcome all to step into power. Blessings to all.

Activating the Dream

For most of my life it has seemed as if we come into a society where we as individuals live our separate lives and try to get the most of it in a Darwinian, “survival of the fittest” kind of a reality however, praise the universe, now it seems that mode of operation is finally changing. No I am not going to talk about the financial crash and the burgeoning of socially conscious entrepreneurship, I have done that already and will do it again. Today I want to explore a fascinating trend shift in entertainment that speaks eloquently about the collective shift in consciousness that we are all participating in.

We have all noticed the overwhelming popularity of ‘reality programming’ but we have spent little time examining why it is so popular. I think there are two kinds of this ‘reality programming’; first is the winner take all competition, the dog eat dog fight for territory game show and second is the talent competition. To me the first kind of show sticks with the old paradigm. Contestants play to win a cash prize and will do almost anything toward that end – eat bugs, get slammed by a wrecking ball, vote each other off the island, put their kids on display and who knows what else they may come up with. This is a kind of desperate grasping for the brass ring without any sense of morals or consciousness. The second kind of game show is of a far higher spiritual value  and as far as I am concerned is far more entertaining. To me this is spiritual entertainment. These are the shows that afford opportunities for people to reach out to grab their dream. They are shows like Project Runway, Top Chef, Dancing With the Stars and America’s Got Talent.

Actually America’s Got Talent is the show that made me see this trend with great clarity and inspired this blog. Let me try to explain my reasoning here. In these shows ordinary people are invited to express their deepest hearts dreams. The competitions are tough, the dreams are real. It’s not about becoming famous for famous sake or rich for rich sake; its about being a great singer or dancer, or chef or designer. It’s about testing oneself to the limit and coming out on top of oneself, not on top of the competition as much as on top of the best that we can be. I applaud all contestants that put themselves in these competitions it takes guts and commitment. And they take their chances in front of all of us, how incredibly brave they all are.

This is a path of no holds barred, no looking back, no excuses and no complaints. We see contestants dive in completely and as far as I have seen for the most part with much grace reach for the highest within themselves. Yes, we see squabbling and theatrical spats for entertainment’s sake but look at the big picture. Here is a phenomenon for our culture that steps beyond the ‘find myself’ consciousness of the 80’s, the ‘victim story’ of the 90’s, the ‘consumer voraciousness’ of the oughts and lands us squarely in the ‘stepping in to the void’ consciousness of the 2012 ascension process.

Where are we going? Wherever we go we are not going to get away from ourselves. Our relationship with ourself is the one thing that has to be dealt with in the here and now. The minute that we realize our magnificence is the minute that we want to express it. We are all magnificent and we all want to be seen. As Rumi says, ” A human being is a star attached to a body” or something like that. I think I’ve said this before in a blog but it bears repeating. As we ascend we recognize this more and more, but we don’t need to ascend to know it, we are what we are: radiant light, extraordinary talent, a new song, a new invention, a magnificent artwork, a complex new social organization. All these things and much more we are and can be.

Here is the path to the ascended future in blazing lights. Shows like America’s Got Talent are beautiful windows for us into the ascended future of our actualized dreams. This is why the world was so moved when Susan Boyle of Britain’s Got Talent came on to the stage. She was a star from that first moment and our recognition of that lit the fire of our own stars and connected us to the dream of our hearts.

Sustainability

I delight in discovering new manifestations that Heaven Is Here in the mainstream news. Yesterday I saw a story about the kids at the oldest public school in the USA, Boston Latin School, working diligently to create sustainable roof scapes on their school buildings in Boston. I was so inspired. For many, many years now I have imagined green roofs on city buildings but had no sense or aptitude to pursue the vision. How exciting that these kids are making it happen. You can learn all about it at http://studio-g-architects.blogspot.com/2009/10/movie.html.

These kids are proof of heaven, they see a need, they manifest focused direction and draw those who can help to them. The envision huge without worrying about the scale of the problem and they offer back to the greater community the fruits of their discoveries. They also invite participation. It is a real community effort to change old buildings with heavy carbon footprints into sustainable spaces with ongoing learning opportunities for future generations of students.

These students could have stopped with their effort to reduce their carbon foot print at changing the light bulbs and lowering the thermostat but instead they leapt way beyond that and developed a truly inspiring program. Let’s hope that this kind of inspiration spreads across schools, universities, business and city apartment buildings. The prospect of locally grown foods, cooler roofs, cooler cities, reduced rain washes overflowing drainage systems is very promising and to me evidence of increasing awareness of our integral reliance on our landscape and responsible management of our resources. I applaud the students of Boston Latin School.

The Song in the Heart

Well, I am back. Just when I resolved to write everyday and amassed a nice list of subjects to inspire me my back went out of alignment and I couldn’t sit for a week. When it’s hard to sit, it’s hard to think and my goal here is to inspire not grumble. This was the old practice from my mother of, “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.” Maybe not exactly that but similar.

So today, I abandon my inspiring list and just free-associate. What is it like to live with pain and still know this is heaven? I don’t really know because I am very lucky and only get these occasional back spasms and cramps unlike many who suffer more kinds of pain than I can imagine. But I want to share my experience. Even though I was a bit miserable and whining a lot about the pain there was a song in my heart. This is the key to heaven. This song is always there, it makes me smile, it makes me see the world as it is and not as it is manufactured to be.

If we listen to the news and our panicking neighbors we can get very stressed out and miss the moments right in front of us. The song in the heart is always there, sometimes it is known as a whisper, sometimes the “still, small voice” and often the silence. AHHH! It is always available in spite of all outer events and activities and all personal conditions. All we need to do is listen. So my back was cramped and twisted and very noisy with aggravation and yet that unmistakable call to pay attention to the inner vibration of my own essential core called to me and sweetened my experience taking me beyond the limits of my own form.

I am now in physical therapy again and making very fast progress to general comfort, thank goodness for brilliant therapists who understand the workings of the human body with amazing clarity and specificity. So I can sit here and write again without distraction. I want to point out another thought about the song in the heart – it manifests outside ourselves too in the birds and in music, in the rustle of wind in the trees, the roar of the waves, AUM and other sounds.

Right now I am watching a small family of purple or house finches flutter on my deck. There’s a nest of almost ready to fly chicks under the deck right there. The ones flying were in a nest on the other deck just a few weeks ago. The noise of their voices is delightful, the mist wraps all the way up to the corner of the deck rail making it seem outside like we are at the corner of the world and high in the mountain peaks. The air is perfectly still. This is heaven.

Multidimensionality

Heaven is a realm of uncountable possibility. It is where we know ourselves as the omniscient, omnipresent beings that we are. But this is a leap for our time and space bound minds that only a very few wise ones have taken over millenia. Today many more of us are poised to grasp the consciousness of multidimensional beingness and teaching comes toward us even from mainstream entertainment.

I have talked a little bit about the concepts of super heroes and super powers and the relevance of these to our true nature today I am inspired to examine the idea of multidimensionality. If we are omniscient and omnipresent we are not truly confined to the here and now that we are all so familiar with and comfortable with. This is the most mind bending of the concepts of ascension that our spiritual teachers present to us. It is impossible for the mind to grasp the idea of being in more than one place or time. Our linear construct is so rigid and confined and just what the mind can grasp. What does multidimensionality look like?

There are amazing ancient spiritual texts that tell stories of this like the Yoga Vasistha or the Ramayana, some Buddhist tales and many fairy tales. Sometimes moments in those stories strike our super consciousness into remembrance. A moment like that is when Hanuman, the monkey god from the Ramayana, goes to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve Rama’s lost ring and he finds 10,000 identical rings there indicating that this moment has been repeated for eternity. When I read that my mind stopped, it became stuck in an open space of wonder and awe that I cannot describe.

But forget about the old stories for now, what about the new stories? Several TV shows right now toy with this idea of multidimensionality – Ghost Whisperer and Medium concentrate on how ghosts; us in another state, interact with the living.  There is an overwhelming fascination with death in today’s entertainment. And last week we discover that Lost examines ideas of what can happen in the other dimensions after death exploring a tangled tale of woe, loss and loves in the Bardo state of between life and death. The Tibetan book of Living and Dying explains this Bardo state in great detail. Basically it is a state of consciousness where a human who has lost form gets stuck attached to the realm or idea of form and moves through seemingly uncontrolled adventures spurred by the fancies of the mind. The natural process after death is to move directly to the bright light of the divine, which is God or our own highest self but sometimes we are so attached to the idea of a life in form that we get stuck thinking we are still alive. Or we may know that we are dead but for some highly charged reason we are unwilling to move on. This is powerful esoteric understanding that we are becoming familiar with through the use of popular entertainment. This is a great blessing for this age.

To my surprise after suffering through the last season of Lost, I stopped watching after the first, I liked the ending. It is my dream to create uplifting entertainment and I am impressed that Lost’s last show pulled off a miraculous feat of mind-bending although a bit too sappy spirituality.  The implications of the end are beautiful. When we wonder what multidimensional beingness might look like this could be it – parallel lives, friends who become enemies and then become friends again, a constant raw respect for living and a throwing oneself deep into the game of living.

Hinduism refers to life as a lila – a dance. This maybe what it would look like. The multiple arms of Shiva, of all the gods; stabbing, saving, feeding, stealing, sharing and depriving and then embracing each other. The dance of life.

We are on an ascended path, these remarkably esoteric entertainments are a cohesive part of the shifting process. They show us what is possible without ramming it down our throat like a religion might. We can laugh because it’s all fun and entertainment then we can’t get the ideas out of our heads and then we realize we are living it.

Bravo to Lost; it was definitely worth it. I think I am going to plan a Lost marathon.

Magic

Almost everyday I think to write this post and then another idea takes over but here we are MAGIC. Without it where would we be? Children delight in magic, magical stories never go out of style. Magical beings are fascinating to us whether in the form of dragons or super heroes. Popular media are swamped with magical tales from Harry Potter to Vampire Diaries and Witches of Eastwick. But what really is magic? I am going to tell you a couple of stories, personal experiences, these will not answer that question but to me they proove that something is greater than the mundaneness of reality that we accept and insist is all there is.

Last year here in Tribeca workers had just completed the plantings in a brand new garden greenway along the Hudson River around Murray Street. There was new dirt and tiny newly set plants for a few blocks along the river. I was walking home one day and I noticed that this small strip park was crowded with huge dragonflies, thousands and thousands of them. In over 30 years in New York City I only ever saw one of those big dragonflies and that was on 12th Street between University and Fifth Avenue, kind of odd also.  I stopped to watch the dragonflies. They were buzzing around in deliberate circles over the plants there was no still water as you might expect for these creatures. Suddenly it occured to me that I was seeing dragonflies because that is what my reality accepts but the thought hit me that they were not dragonflies but were actually faeries there to set the plants and activate the spirit of the new garden where no garden had ever been before. This idea felt absolutely right to me. I looked as carefully as I could at the dragonflies trying to see if I could see them as faeries but it never happened. Call me crazy, who knows what we see and how the mind interprets what we see. All I know is that there were all those thousands of dragonflies there for one day and now there is a vibrant and gorgeous garden there now. 

Another time I was walking in the woods of Vermont by myself. These woods were always very quiet and rarely were there any hikers going by except in hunting season. Suddenly I heard as clear as anything a set of pipes like the pipes of Pan. It was not windy. I could see through the woods in the direction of the sound and I saw no one. Again, I have no idea what that was but it was an undeniable sound.

Magic is that which leaves room for amazing things to happen. Magic is a harbinger of new rules for the way the universe, our world and our reality function which we don’t quite understand yet. Think of the things that we take for granted which would have been considered magic just a century ago: cell phones, TV, Satellites, nanotechnology, and so much more. If we deny magic we close the door to untold and uncounted future possibilities. We close the door to surprising nows.

Magic is beyond the idea of hope or wishful thinking it is a mystical knowing and practicing with the forces of life that produce space or possibility for different outcomes. Here is another experience.

I was working on a project for a summer spiritual retreat a few years ago which was a 30 foot wide and 20 foot high back drop for the stage where the festivities were to be hosted. I designed the back drop and worked with a crowd of volunteers and one other experience painter, together we pulled the bulk of the project together and to completion but it was touch and go and a big mess for most of the process. Finally we dragged it into the hall and laid it on the floor for the crew to hang it while we went to lunch. I looked at it then and thought, “Oh well, done is beautiful” a term from my costume business. And left for lunch thinking that the work looked a bit flat and maybe unfinished yet.

When we returned I ran straight to the farthest side of the hall to see what the drop looked like and when I turned around I was blown away. It was stunning. Somehow between laying it on the floor and hanging it up the drop had become infused. It glimmered, it sang, it came alive and touched places inside that reminded us of mystical connections. I don’t know how this happened and I have more to say about this drop which I plan for tomorrow’s blog. This kind of magic is the ineffable something that we always seek to create in the theater; that electrical magic that sweeps one away and sparks a connection to the mysterious lifeforce that inspires us all. That’s what magic is about, to deny it is to shut out the mystical part of us the part of us that nourishes our greater being and then that greater being that nourishes the form of us that we know.

Beauty

To look around at the natural world is to encounter a plenitude of gorgeousness. The clouds, trees, flowers, glittering waters, birds, chipmunks and other furry things are stunningly beautiful at no charge. This is a truly smashing time of year too. Late spring brings a wealth of delightful vibrancy and a promise of more to come. Beauty has a power of affirmation about it, it opens the heart and softens the breath and quiets the mind with awe. All these causes are deeply needed tonics for our fast moving, high pressure lifestyle. “Stop and smell the roses” is a great and wise dictum. Stop and watch the sunset too.

How can a place of such extraordinary gorgeousness not be Heaven? Left unchecked by the interventions of mankind the natural order produces stunning landscapes, breathtaking mountains, fascinating minute plants and creatures, stars that stop the mind’s chatter and on and on. We hurry about trying to improve it all, making things and arts to make it better and yet all we need do is stop and take it in as the gift of glory that this realm is. Even the harsh salt flats, bare deserts, deep inhospitable (to us) ocean exhibit stunning beauty.

As a spiritual practice, recognizing beauty may lead to devotion and become a profound and transformative step toward fully embracing unconditional love. It is at once a gentle and a viselike path for once the eyes open and the world bursts into full color of exquisiteness there is no going back. Beauty will forever grab your attention entice you into rapturous blankness, staring at a sunset, peering at a tiny insect or into the center of a flower. Beauty leads one to a state of wonder and reminds us daily and even many times a day that the magic of creation is far beyond our understanding.

Beauty is always surprising. I am forever awed by the exquisiteness of a rose; it’s fragrance, it’s color, it’ vigor. I have seen fully blooming roses on the streets of New York City in December.

My personal exploration of beauty this spring has been gardening in my own garden and watching the Battery Park gardens here at the tip of Manhattan grow into the first season. I think after 25 years of gardening I finally get my own garden from watching the Battery Conservancy for the last couple of years. Check them out they are truly gorgeous.

http://www.thebattery.org/gardens/

Infrastructure

I am inspired by the Dalai Lama’s interview with Ann Curry not to share the meaning and value of his message but to examine the value of the fact that he is here and able to share his message with so many.  This is the infrastructure of Heaven, it is the subtle roads and bridges that allow us to navigate the treacherous territory of the mind. This infrastructure has been constructed over millenia of mankind begun by ancient Rishis and Gurus and continued by Saints, Sages, Shaman and Teachers of all cultures. I capitalize them all because they are great ones codifiying the divine conscious energies in such a way as to assist us all in our expression of a perfect life in form.

Imagine that once there were no roads; moving from place to place was difficult if not impossible because there were also just rudimentary vehicles. As time and civilization progress foot paths become wagon tracks, these get paved and carry faster vehicles. People come together to build trains, bridges, airplanes and everyone moves around from place to place with much greater ease. Then there is the communications system from telegraph to telephone, television, internet, multiuse PDA’s, what’s next? These tangible, physical infrastructures are directly representative of subtle infrastructures that have in similar ways developed over time.

These subtle roads are the roads to magical inner realms of peace, harmony, contentment, enlightenment. The vehicles are meditation, listening to the teacher – as you will, I hope listen to the Dalai Lama’s interview on the link below. Other vehicles or roads, or bridges are knowledge, self-examination, right attitude, good company, discipline, vigilance and I am sure there are more.

The infrastructure of assistance to us in these very difficult paths is extraordinary today. In the past very few were able to find a great teacher and follow a path of spiritual growth, today we are rich with all the world’s disciplines and a vast complement of teachers whose books, websites, videos, workshops and personal counseling are readily available to so many of us. Our physical infrastructure allows us to mix it up to reach for the teaching that we fancy or resonate with. The subtle infrastructure is so much more available and comprehensible because of the astonishing improvements in communication techniques over this last century.

We are very blessed; we have so much at our fingertips because the infrastructure of our world wide civilization is so strong and so far reaching. The Dalai Lama states that we as humanity are getting better.  Infrastructure has much to do with that; we are dependent upon each other, we resonate with each other’s difficulties no matter how far away or how different we are, we can now assist in ways that were never possible before with direct transfer of funds and goods to those in need.

Check out the video: