One Voice in Many: Part 7

I've been posting bits of an old manuscript I wrote in 1980 or so—and it's interesting to see that in my attempts then to merge into the collective consciousness and speak from that unified voice, so much of what was said is so simple and true today. The "We" voice could as easily be a divine voice inside anyone and everyone. Previous parts can be found on Jul 12, Aug 19, Aug 26, and Nov 4, 2010; Jan 15 and Feb 9, 2011.

There are no mistakes; recovery from loss is not necessary because to Spirit there is never loss; in truth, there is no meaning to that word. There is knowledge and experience of true self or lack of experience of true self. There is expansion, contraction, forming, and dissolving, all aspects of true self, but to call something a mistake is to stop this flowing oscillation of Spirit. You do not need to work to reverse any tide; all is a moving on toward evolution. Come from the still space where you are the true self and the tide turns naturally, no monumental force of will is necessary. There is always, and only, one simple choice. One choice and one moment. Sink back into the present and your choice becomes evident.

Open your heart to others first and foremost and all else flows with ease. There must be trust and after that, obedience to the Word—as YOU hear it. Trust, trust, trust! Be one who listens and moves in faith and certainty about the appropriateness of each choice. Dissolve doubt like a vapor. Toss away indulgence in worry, guilt, pain, and other needless things of the mind. Allow the light that is rightfully yours to shine out of you.

The many beings who make up the collective consciousness of the unified field are always with you, and even in you. And you are inside them. This is an intimate bond of mutual inclusion, and when you take time to feel it deeply, it fosters love. This experience is the maximum comfort, the most sense of good family you will ever know, the best divine marriage, the greatest loyal friendship. Put your attention on it, choose to experience it, and it will absolutely set you free.

The choice is simple. Remembering to choose is something to attend to every day and hour. This is the Path. This is the way Home. Use your personal will to choose the Divine Will. Your purpose is to serve your soul as the soul serves the collective and the collective serves the Divine. All parts cocreate and cooperate, in perfect harmony, with the perfect fit of need and provision, to expand the light of the world until it knows itself as Divine Light. Service is law. Freedom is law. And they are the same law.

What the Divine wants for you is much greater than you can imagine for yourself. No need to limit yourself with dreams of grandeur or glamour, but let those go and you will know a speechless glory that lasts forever. Don't plan. You limit the Divine Plan. Don't try to shape. You limit Divine artistry. Don't look back. You limit your unfoldment. Move on in total trust. At the start of the day, all throughout the day, and at day's end, attune to the Divine-in-Life, the Love-in-Form. Oh, joy! You are a vital part of this world and a cocreator with the highest ones.

Painting by Peter Doig

Get Your Spark of Madness On for Holy Fool’s Day!

I heartily recommend Gail Larsen's Transformational Speaking work. Here is her latest newsletter editorial; the bold is my emphasis.

“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” —Robin Williams

Lately I’ve been applying the above words from Robin Williams, one of my favorite philosophers, to the art of transformational speaking. Most of us tame our madness to fit into what others expect and never use our inherent spark to become the wildly unforgettable speakers and change artists that are needed in these times of shocking transformation.

How would your life be different if you didn’t care what others think? I sometimes ask that question in my classes and when an astute participant responded, “What if I didn’t care what I think?” I realized she was on to something. So armed with both those questions, and assuming you could give up editing and rehearsing yourself around what others may think, or what you yourself may think just for a moment, how then might you express your spark of madness? Would you be the first to speak rather than first feeling out whether your listeners would agree? Would you sing all the songs you know that have the word “blue” in them while waiting in line for a bus as Elizabeth Crook and I did at last year’s Folk Art Market ? (It took folks about 15 minutes of gawking before they joined in.)

Would you voice a wildly unpopular opinion and kindle a new discussion? Would you show up with laughter yoga at a public place like Katie West does regularly? Would you launch a new movement using social media and organize your own demonstration against injustice or corporate domination or nuclear power? Whatever you do, don’t get attached to the outcome. Just go for it, like a group in Santa Fe did on Christmas morning when they showed up on the plaza with signs offering free holiday hugs. (The scrooges I saw who refused missed some fun interaction with some very good-looking people, including local songstress Nancy Nielsen!)

I suggest you no longer try to lose or suppress your spark of madness and instead give it a voice on April 1, which I have taken upon myself to rename Holy Fool’s Day. This festive and often annoying holiday suggests we play tricks on others with a jovial spirit and once we’ve duped them to yell with delight, “April Fools!” Yet comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell talked about the archetype of another kind of fool: the Holy Fool. The Fool is the most dangerous person on earth, Campbell explained, the most threatening to all hierarchical institutions. He has no concern for naysayers, and no one has power over him (or her). She is not limited, not stoppable, nor controllable. She knows what she has to do and is doing it, no matter what.

I think of the Holy Fool as similar to the Court Jester, the only person in the Royal Court who dares to speak truth to the King without consequence. Or the Koshari of the Hopi and Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, who in the midst of sacred ceremonies makes us laugh at ourselves by mimicking our behavior so we can see ourselves in a new way. Just this year on New Year’s I went to the turtle dance at a New Mexico pueblo and at two different times was the recipient of the untoward attentions of such “sacred clowns.” Their role is to create lessons at the expense of another’s seriousness, recognizing that laughter is a great shape shifter of old habits and patterns. I often wonder if the striped ceremonial dress of the Koshari isn’t designed to remind us that getting out of our self-imposed jails isn’t a really good idea.

So here’s a suggestion. How about on April 1 we engage in a dialogue with our inner Holy Fool and Spark of Madness and ask what she most wants to express, convention be damned. Ask where you are being duped day in and day out and not shining the light of your truth. Let’s stop concealing our greatest passions and be willing to say what we love and what we know without editing and rehearsing ourselves into oblivion. Let’s declare April 1 Holy Fools’ Day and engage the madly passionate part of us that has something important to say—and just say it!

Rumi said (and I paraphrase):

I used to be like you.
Calm, rational, controlled.
Now I am seized by passion.
Watch out!
No one’s safe!!!

© Gail Larsen 2011

How Interconnected We All Are!

WEST PALM BEACH - The devastating earthquake that shook Japan appears to have caused the water table throughout much of Florida to rise and then fall up to three inches.

The South Florida Water Management District reports that a network of groundwater gauges registered a jump of up to three inches in the water table from Orlando to the Florida Keys about 34 minutes after the quake struck on March 11. The oscillations were observed for about two hours and then stabilized.

"We were not expecting to see any indication of the geologic events in Japan given the island's great distance from Florida," Susan Sylvester, the water district's director of operations control and hydro data management department, said on Saturday.

Shimon Wdowinski, an earthquake researcher with the University of Miami, said the water table likely rose because of Florida's porous limestone, which allows water to easily flow beneath the earth's surface and respond to changes in pressure caused by a wave.

He said the flow of Florida's aquifer is quite fast. "It's good because we can filter a lot of water through there," Wdowinski said. "But it's bad because in the case of pollution, it can travel very quickly."

Changes in groundwater levels were also seen in South Florida after the Haiti and Chile earthquakes. Wdowinski said a 20-foot rise was seen after a 9.2 earthquake in Alaska in 1964.

photo copyright by Penney Peirce

New Video Interview: Lilou and Penney!

French Author and Journalist Lilou Mace and her crew came to my house and did a new video interview a few weeks ago; she's traveling on her "Juicy Living Tour." It was really fun, and I think you'll enjoy the interview. Watch it at:

http://juicylivingtour.com/raising-vibrations-following-intuitions-and-dreams-penney-peirce/

Polaroid photo of Penney at age 15.

Solar Flare Warning in South Africa

Mar 7, 2011 - The Hermanus Space Weather Warning Centre (SWWC) on Sunday said a large solar flare was currently being experienced in South Africa. The solar flare would result in higher radiation levels from the sun.

SWWC’s forecaster Kobus Olckers said people should be careful when they go outside. "People must wear high sunscreen factor at the moment or preferably go shopping," he said.

A powerful solar flare could overwhelm high-voltage transformers with electrical currents and short-circuit energy grids, with one such event in 1989 disrupting power across the Canadian province of Quebec.

However, solar flares are nothing new, with the first major solar flare being recorded by British astronomer Richard Carrington in 1859.

http://technology.iafrica.com/science/711810.html

Earthquake Strategy

I'm posting this because there has been some confusion about the most recommended way to find safety in an earthquake. This clarifies things for the United States, and perhaps for other countries with construction standards like ours:

http://www.bpaonline.org/Emergencyprep/arc-on-doug-copp.html

A Letter from Sendai - 3/14/2011

I'm passing this along, as it is so inspiring. . .

From Anne Thomas • published online @ Ode Magazine

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

It's utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that is much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me. With Love in return to you all,

Anne

Photo copyright by Penney Peirce

Discover the Gift Premiere

I will be attending the Los Angeles Premiere of the new film, Discover the Gift, Friday, March 18, at Michael Beckwith's Agape Church. If any of you are in the LA area, please come! I will participate in a panel with some of the film's other participants afterward.

Click here for information about the Discover the Gift Premiere.

More information:
www.DISCOVERTHEGIFT.com

The Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVBEEcmf9pI

What IS Lack of Motivation?

I've noticed something I was calling “lack of motivation” in myself lately, and wonder about it, as it seems unlike me. Am I blocked? Am I resting? Am I waiting? Am I finished? Is Saturn sitting on one of my major aspects? I decided to do some direct writing about it, to see what hidden influences and insights might be involved. What IS lack of motivation?

Spiritually speaking there is no such thing as lack of motive. Motive does not need to be generated because it is the life force itself, and if you're alive you have plenty of it. There is the possibility, though, of being unable to experience the natural life-flow. For example, certainly in these times of high vibration and accelerating frequency, it is common for subconscious holding patterns based on fear to shake loose and rise into your conscious mind. These residues of survival instincts from the near or distant past might include ideas like: "I will be abandoned if I outshine my mother," or "I will be punished if I pursue selfish interests." You can identify these by the "if, then" statements connected to the feeling of contraction or avoidance, and the relative silliness of the thought, once you bring it into the light as a mature human being. These outdated ideas are what you call blocks, and of course, you must unplug from them and not feed attention and energy into their reality or they maintain the life that you give them. Without fuel, eventually they will fade and not bother you.

But there are other situations that can give the impression of lack of motivation. You may have recently completed a period of karma or a growth phase and may now be in the process of integrating it and realizing the finality of the old, while simultaneously sensing and registering a new sense of what is to come. It takes awhile to break old familiarities and thought/behavior habits, and to set the new in motion. Old habits of identity and worldview can act as a severe form of clutter and it takes time to even recognize them for what they are since they are so intrinsic to the creation of your reality. Remember that at this time it is not just that you might move on to do something new, but you are moving on to understand how an entirely new reality will function. Though there are huge changes going on below the surface, to the mind it may seem that “nothing” is happening.

For instance, you may be shifting from an “old” purely will-based mode of ambition—ambition that comes from a desire for goals that distract from feelings of unworthiness, for example—to a more Intuition Age-based mode where creating comes from the desire for joyful service and fulfillment of destiny. This brings a variety of internal shifts that are emotional and physical as well as mental. The adrenal glands are stimulated less and the heart more, for example. This can affect neurotransmitters and hormones. Deep energy patterns are changing—ie, the way energy connects and flows is withdrawing from one entire constellation of logical procedures and is seeking new subtle pathways and braintracks for expression. This takes time to become normal and equalize through all the levels of self.

You may subconsciously still be operating from the habit of forcing a new flow by moving from the left brain: What "should" come next as a logical outgrowth of what's come before? Who will I be as an extension of who I identify myself as in the world? Yet your soul would have you move from the right brain, heart, aura, and cells, staying in harmony with what the collective consciousness wants you to do for the joy and coevolution of all, including yourself. When the left brain rules, the bigger part of you that wants to evolve will rebel against the authority of the old way of driving motivation or of achieving goals for the "wrong" reasons. At a certain point, your inner self won't let you proceed from false motives. You don’t lack motivation, but are learning to sense a new kind of motivation.

Another reason you could feel a lack of motivation is that you may not yet be able to see what you will be doing—because it doesn’t exist yet. Your awareness may be a few "frequency degrees" from being able to envision a new development that will involve you. You may be missing vital information. The world is evolving rapidly and new opportunities and forms of expression are constantly being birthed. Your new direction may be one of them, due to appear any moment. You can feel it coming, but sense timing isn't quite right. Perhaps the other people who will be cocreating with you are not ready yet. So without a tangible goal that your body can be excited about, you simply wait. Your mind may misinterpret this lack of information or inner sense of premature timing as lack of motivation.

It’s easy during these transition times for your left brain to take over, since it is used to running things. It detests voids and pauses, and wants to fill every space with certainty, even if it’s a negative certainty. So when you are invisibly gestating a new life, your left brain loves to make pronouncements about how wrong-bad-flawed-hopeless-old-unlovable-or-dumb you are. Thus you may be tempted to give up, to become apathetic and lethargic. The turtle withdraws head and legs. This would be fine if, in the stillness, you could fill up with your essence and feel what your true self feels like, then come back into the world with childlike wonder and personal loving connection to all things. But too often, the left brain-egomind keeps thinking about the projected end result of “nothing happening”—death. It is contemplating its own death actually—ego death—but if you identify with this voice you'll assume you yourself are going to die, or that you should even kill yourself.

So when awareness of motivation fades, let your left brain rest in the quiet. Shift into feeling and directly experiencing the aliveness within arm’s reach. Don't project into the past, future, or positive or negative visions, but merge with what you have now, to experience it and know it personally—that what's with you in each moment is actually a living part of you and appears through the great love and service motive of the collective consciousness and unified field. Find a tiny motive rising from your depths—something mundane, close, and simple. Something that comes naturally, the way a child changes from a blue crayon to a red one just because it seems fun. Enjoy following your attention into the process of doing, and seeing how the doing becomes a physical result. And how you feel satisfaction at each stage along the way. And how attention waves away then comes back home to settle and rest, then rises again to flow into another endeavor.

Practice this in a small way again and again until you can recognize consciously the way this natural creation cycle works—in contrast to the joyless, uninspired, should-based cycles of creativity you may have routinely experienced in the past: “I have to wash the dishes again.” Stay with this new habit and slowly, more complex and expansive ideas will arise, which will seem easy to do and as thrilling as drawing with a red crayon.

Trust this: that while you are alive your soul—the real YOU—is being carried along with all other souls in a process of evolution, and like a stream, the flow sometimes dawdles and burbles, sometimes rushes and crashes. But that evolutionary stream IS your motivation and it will source your Inner Perceiver; it will give you curiosities and thoughts to consider and urges to follow. And what will further you is what gets through to you; you can trust this. Even if you have a blindspot and cannot see what's before your nose, even if you stall, it is only temporary. The stream will shift around your logjam and move through you in a slightly different way, so you see and know freshly. The life force does not stop. So do not worry about losing motivation because motive does not come from you, but from the Flow itself.

You are built to shape energy and awareness in a particular way and you will be used for that because you belong in the unified field and the collective consciousness. As you allow the Flow to move through you, it evolves you and what you're built for evolves so that you become capable of so much more, and interested in new ideas and goals. This is a natural process and requires no effort except noticing what you want to pursue with your attention, what experiences engage you totally and bring deep pleasure. As you do these things, change your self-talk so that you say things like, “I love this! This is really fun. No matter how many times I do this, it always feels new. I am always entertained by the surprising turns that bring new views and experience.” In this way you will reinforce a new habit of being synchronized with your own creative wave. Motivation, or lack thereof, will never be a worry.