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 By Marvin Luzum Speaking for myself I find that being in a state where my mind is at peace is oftentimes very elusive. I can’t help it that I am human and being that, I respond to the internal pressures, some innate, but most learned, that I must create security for myself. This in turn takes me from this moment in which I find myself, into future thinking and imagining a scenario of doom and gloom. If I don’t do something about it today, a very uncomfortable future awaits me. Now this is not to say that I should kick back and expect the universe to deliver without any effort on my part. Of course living in a material plane requires attention to the ebb and flow of resources and so allowances must be made for that. What I would like to emphasize here is that when I take myself out of this present moment and hang out in a state of worry and fear of what could happen, I am missing out on the peace of mind that is really there in most of my present moments. In those times when I can truly put aside the worries and concerns for the future that doesn’t exist I am discovering little essence rich moments that are making my life much more pleasurable.
” See yourself in a state of a simple and pure desire for your fearful mind to be at peace. Feel the sincerity of this desire. Feel your longing to live from this place. Notice that, in spite of what is, you can touch something, higher, something deeper. ” ~ Spotted Eagle from his teaching, Peace of Mind
Contributed by Marvin Luzum
 By Rebecca Traver “It is imperative that when we think of truth, that we understand it as more about our truth in this now. Otherwise, we might become confused by believing that there is some sort of universal, ideal, unchanging truth out there, and that when we discover it, well, then we will have arrived at some sort of divine state of perfection. Embodiment makes such a state impossible, even when one is a realized being. Even realized beings are not all-seeing and all-knowing.
The Universe holds her mysteries in what is unrevealed, unformed, and unforeseen. No sentient energy, no matter how evolved or powerful, can never fully know how all the individual choices, and the creation events that result from them will play out on a Universal scale in all of the dimensions of reality.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
By Rebecca Traver “Adaptability is the ability to fit our strategies to the conditions we face. Adaptability implies that we are able to modify something to make it more suitable to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. For many of you, this means that you must learn how to admit it when the universe is not backing your plans, methods, and schemes. It is often as simple as recognizing that, for some reason, the universe would prefer you do something differently. Where this is most evident is when we seek to specialize in or do something that is not supportable under the present circumstances. If we are unable to adapt when the form of what we want is not supportable, we lose touch with the reason we want anything at all, and that is the essence feelings that we hold in our hearts. Adaptability allows us to let go of what tied us to an old dream, and to take up the new trail marked by our essences.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
By Rebecca Traver “The present moment and what has been created in the universe has everything in it that you need: everything you need to learn, everything you need to see, everything you actually need to do, which may be nothing at all. Even if we talk about what we need to do, you’ll notice that the now has pretty clear choices; we don’t have that kind of clarity around these choices the minute we go into the regrettable past or the scary future.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
By Rebecca Traver “When we speak from our hearts, what that really means, is we are speaking the language of essence. We have to step back and take a breath. We have to say, ‘Okay, I know I am attached to the form here, and that is part of what is getting me lit up, and making me want to push energy in a direction.’ So, if I step back, and I take a breath, and I see that there is an uncertainty here that is causing me to be afraid, and that is a perception that is causing me to have controlling behavior. And that behavior is prompting me to make certain choices in the way I deal with this—with this other person whom I want something from. Then I can step back further, and say, ‘Okay, I know all of that is out-of-power. What is the essence I am really looking for here?’ If you have a conversation about your essence and the other’s essence, you can come to common ground pretty rapidly when that is the conversation because it opens up to the field of all possibility many possibilities that could be actualized in a compromise.
Compromise is a dirty word for a lot of people. Neutrality is a very important piece of this, and you have to have it, but it is more important that you learn how to have an appropriate compromise. What that means is you are willing to be in conflict—in other words, to not know what you are going to do to resolve this conflict—expressing your essence, and asking for that from the other, ‘What is the essence you want here? Here is the essence I am looking for.’ Negotiating a form that satisfies everybody’s essence allows for everyone involved to remain authentic, whether or not agreement is achieved.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
By Rebecca Traver “Other people do not take away your freedom. If you feel rejected, suffocated, angry, frustrated, or resigned about a relationship, it is time to examine your attachment to maintaining that relationship in its current form. If you cannot feel total freedom in your relationship, then there is a mechanism by which you are sacrificing authenticity, and that mechanism is fear. It starts when we are attached to having the relationship be a certain way, and then when the other does not react favorably to something in us – something that is essence rich for us – and if the other person threatens the withdrawal of affection, we adapt with inauthentic behavior, perceptions, and choices. In our effort to hang onto the relationship, we cover up what is real, bury what is conflicted, and protect ourselves through this escalating process of hiding the real self. Here we find a cage of our own devising.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
By Rebecca Traver “The conditions in the world do not take away your freedom. You may give conditions in the world power over your happiness by fearing them, but they do not have any power you do not offer up to them. Prudence is one thing; catastrophizing is quite another. If you find the Mind busy running through scenarios, or if you find yourself reacting emotionally to what is happening to people you do not even know, it is time to go inward and deal with the issues that are robbing you of your freedom to be in the world with ease.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
By Rebecca Traver “Pay attention to the truth that transition marks the death of the old way of being. It is not something we put off until we are certain what to do. People think they have to know exactly what will happen before they embark upon a change, but this is not where we start. Transition begins with identifying the essences, or feeling experiences, that are missing from what we are trying to transform. These missing essences are demanding expression, and this is the reason that the old way of being, doing, and living are no longer working for you.” ~ Spotted Eagle
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
 By Janice Hylton “If you are to move into your full power, you must detach from the fantasy that you can find and arrest in time anything you once held to be true. For example, let’s look at religion. Religious icons will offer up their understanding of the truth in the present moment in which they held it. Some time later, we read or hear what they said, or what the author understands was said. If we are believers, we will start to filter out the fact that these doctrines have taken what was once held as true – what was perhaps once the truth – and arrested them in a cultural, geographical, and historical context that cannot evolve because this truth has been codified and thereby frozen in time. Why do humans do this? For the same reason they do most everything they do: because it gives them the illusion of certainty, and medicates their fear of uncertainty.” ~ Spotted Eagle
My teacher Spotted Eagle makes a powerful point with his words. Creation is not static. It is very much alive and evolving.Therefore, whatever becomes static in relation to creation or the Divine, be it religion, doctrine, or every day thinking, dies. The vitality is always in the question, not the answer. The answer may be true in one moment, but not true in the next. So, our continuing growth and evolution can only occur in the space where we do not “know,” the space of uncertainty. The moment we decide we know, we have closed out all other possibilities. If we can un-decide our reality on a regular basis, we may be onto something. That place feels to me like one of great delicacy and power.
By Rebecca Traver One of the most important, yet undervalued, aspects of the transformational process is in realizing that we cannot transform anything that has not already been created. This may seem self-evident, but, really, is this the quality of awareness we typically bring to the work of making important changes in our lives? Creating substantial transformation requires more presence, vulnerability, and patience than most of us are willing to acknowledge.
It’s been my experience that when grappling with the dynamics of big change, we are liable to get stuck in a cycle of mental narrative that goes something like this: “This [job, relationship, health issue, etc.] has got to change. I know I’ve said it before, but this time will be different. I’ll try harder, do more, really apply myself this time because this [job, relationship, health issue, etc.] has got to change…” And so on. We tend to confuse will-power with the power of willingness.
When we are contemplating change it’s tempting to fall back into our patterns of reaction and response. Life has a way of revealing its essentially uncertain nature to us when we least expect it, and this can throw us for a loop, to say the least. As a rule, we humans are uncomfortable with the unknown and we struggle to return to the familiar version of things, regardless of how illusory or dull the tale. Or, we convince ourselves that the solution is to tell a better story, one with a happier ending, or a more colorful plot line. Unfortunately, all of these options lead to the same old place. Until we are willing to let go of the story and risk feeling the fear and the pain we try so hard to control, we cannot create anything new.
The way forward hinges irrevocably on noticing in ways both obvious and nuanced that our history is comprised of patterns. Recognizing these patterns is essential if we are to evolve our lives, but how do we do this without creating just another story? It takes courage and discipline to see ourselves clearly, to witness our issues in action, and to break the cycle of inner narrative. The simple truth is that the patterns reveal themselves to us over time as we engage in the hard work of growing our awareness, telling deeper truths, cultivating detachment, and living more authentically.
My teacher Spotted Eagle offers the following wise counsel from his series on transformation. I hope it serves your process as much as it has mine:
“When we are speaking of transformation, we need to realize that we are not talking about creating something out of nothing. Instead, transformation always begins with what is already there. If you want to know what area needs your attention, look for the area where you have the most resistance to what you have already created.
Transformation, at its essence, is about identifying the restrictions we ourselves have placed on our reality. It is really about targeting certain patterns of thinking and behavior for destruction so that these restrictions can be weakened, loosened, and ultimately thrown off. So, we begin our search by examining patterns of thinking, behavior, and perception whose meaning has been lost to us, but whose imprint remains.
If you look at an area of your life that you would like to transform, you must begin by asking yourself questions like these:
- When I compare this area to areas of my life where I am growing and evolving, what is it that is inhibiting my growth in this area?
- What is that wall that I keep bumping into? What threshold do I consistently refuse to cross?
- What is the pattern of what and how I create in this area of my life?
- What is the pattern of my thinking in this area? In other words, what thoughts consistently surface when I am feeling pressure in this area?
- These thoughts that consistently surface: when I scrutinize them, do they hold up to that examination?
- When did this thinking become real for me? What series of events in my life have reinforced this thinking?
- When I encounter events that tend to reinforce my thinking, do I just run with that? Or, am I able to see the trigger event for what it is? Am I able to recognize the issue that is driving my reaction? Can I notice that I have been ripped out of the present moment and tossed into the unresolved emotions I have surrounding this issue?
All transformation occurs in a cycle that must necessarily begin with the death of what we once believed to be true. There can be no transformation without a dramatic shift in our thinking. If it is a transformation we seek, rehashing old thoughts or trying harder will not help us if we continue to employ old concepts, methods, and techniques. It is also true that new ideas we embrace must significantly alter our perceptions, behavior, and choices if they are to operate in our consciousness as new, transformative thinking.
To transform what we have created, we must move beyond the patterns that are the framework of the old reality. We must move into an entirely new frame of reference, one that is capable of actually destroying and replacing the thinking that created what we now want to reform.
So, once we have identified and targeted old thinking, behavior patterns, and perceptions for destruction, what then? The answer is to enter the death cycle willingly and with detachment about when this transition will end.
Remember, transition is a process, not an event. Transition, like all present moments, is a process of discovering an emerging truth, a truth that is very different from what your old thinking was telling you to believe in.”
Contributed by Rebecca Traver
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