“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” John F. Kennedy

God has always lived as human. You, exactly as you are, are the Divine Expression of God. You don’t have to change one thing. Relax into your inheritance and settle into this moment’s expression of God. It is possible to live in a world where we stand in awe of each other, where we don’t assimilate in the melting pot of conformity, or face exhaustion censoring the true expression clamoring to ring clearly through us.  This becomes reality, as clear as our face in a mirror, when we appreciate this startling truth – God is everywhere. God is everyone.  Nothing but God is.

Three years ago I began volunteering at the state’s medium security prison.  Speaking about my work there I said, “I teach meditation to the men.” From the first day it was obvious though, that while I did bring something of importance, they were in fact teaching me. Last week I attended a volunteer appreciation dinner. The evening was delightful. The food was entirely paid for and prepared by the inmates. The meal was delicious but my heart was fed by the twelve men, men whom many wouldn’t see as this Divine Presence, who articulately and heart-fully shared their appreciation for the volunteers who had impressed God upon their lives.

I listened in awe as one by one each man took the microphone and expressed his gratitude in an openly, shamelessly. The beauty inside each man and the beauty inside the walls of the prison touched me deeply. The words were beautiful. It didn’t matter whether the volunteer being honored was Muslim, an Evangelical, Buddhist, a Russian or Hispanic Christian, Jewish, Native American, Catholic or simply practitioners of yoga or meditation. It was clear that each preference, and the men who chose to devote their hearts to that path, were perfectly matched. My heart opened in a new respect for this incredible unfolding of God. What had previously appeared as paths of insurmountable differences were simply unique expressions of God, perfect in the wide-ranging variety. Through the diversity everyone’s needs were met; no one’s heart was left untended.

Sitting there it dawned on me that I had a bird’s eye view to a miracle. Here, in one room, were all the world’s religions.  People were smiling. The joy and bottomless appreciation was palpable. The barriers that commonly separate had fallen down and shattered into the nothingness they are. That bright and sacred evening, two hundred prison inmates and religious volunteers from every persuasion showed the world how to live.

The door clanged shut behind me as the evening concluded, the men waving across the impassable distance, and I proceeded towards the guard shack.  A woman walking next to me mentioned an inmate from her group, a man I didn’t know. He’d heard about two children who had witnessed their father beat their mother to death and felt duty-bound to raise funds for counseling for the kids. He knew, all too well, how the trauma could have long-lasting effects, up to and including a life behind bars if they didn’t get help. Raise funds he did. Due to his compassion, a powerful letter writing campaign, and many partnerships, a check for twelve thousand dollars was sent to ‘The Dougie Center’ in Portland, Oregon for the children’s therapeutic care.

This inmate recently stood in front of the parole board, not for release but to determine whether or not he was worthy of being rehabilitated. If deemed competent he would receive education and opportunities leading to eventual parole. If not, he would remain one of the lost souls with no hope of societal redemption. The woman, a hint of anger in her voice, told me the parole board had recently decided that he would not be rehabilitated.

Standing there in the guard house, feeling the pain of being believed so unworthy, my heart collapsed. The words struck something profound, a deep-rooted human fear of being unlovable, and I began to shake, reverberating at the core. As quickly as the shaking began, it ended. In five seconds, something vital had shifted in me. Instinctively I knew that something had cleared within the collective consciousness and for the inmate, the man I had never met. This man had value. His story healed me.  Each of us holds this amazing potential to heal all others as we are willing to stand in one another’s shoes. Stand in awe. God is present.

No one of us is useless. No one of us is so lost as to be unworthy of being found. Our own potential grows as we embrace each person. We acknowledge our native genius as we cherish the participation and well-being of others. Gayle Gregory, Workplace Evolution.

By: Gayle Gregory

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.  Anais Nin

Have you ever seen a ghost? I have. It wasn’t at all what one might expect – not a sprite and certainly not a howling demon. What could have been a startling experience revealed a surreal ordinariness that added new understanding to what it means to be alive. Watching not one, but many ghost-like presences, I felt as if I had passed through the veil of one world into another dimension.

It began as a normal day, well as normal as my world gets. I returned home from a delicious spiritual retreat New Year’s Day. I had been gone for a week, frolicking in the essence of ten amazing beings. To say I was open would be putting it mildly. As I looked into the refrigerator it was quickly obvious that a trip to the store was in order if I wanted to eat anything resembling real food. I jumped in the car with my sweetheart and off to the grocery we went.

As we walked through the aisles, the energy in the store seemed off. It wasn’t the building as much as the people. They were practically in slow motion. The shoppers seemed pixilated, fractured – just like the energy. I mentioned it to Ken and asked what he noticed. He smiled and said, “They aren’t really here, are they?” The word ghosts came in a rush of understanding.  While the store was full of people, no one was there. They were all inside their heads, wishing they were somewhere else, or much the same, absolutely absent, just going through the motions. They weren’t present, and I realized, they also weren’t quite alive.

As the word ghosts settled into awareness I saw the many levels on which we exist visually. The color continuum seemed to range from a one-dimensional, grayish, washed-out tone to a high-definition techni-color well beyond anything I had ever witnessed. As we stir from the dream, or nightmare, we awaken from a black and white existence into full color aliveness.

Have you seen a ghost? Perchance a more important question is, “Are you a ghost?” Are you going through the motions, but not really here? Would you rather be somewhere else, living a different life? I thought I was here. My heart was open. I was connected to God. Information flowed through my veins and appeared when I needed it.  A sense of peace and freedom accompanied me. Connecting to others had become easy and unforced.  And, yet I learned, I wasn’t here, at least not entirely.

Many upon the spiritual path are connected to Divine presence and have begun bringing that presence to earth, embodying the light. Last night after watching a B grade sci-fi movie I was compelled to sit down and meditate. In the act of sitting, before my seat hit the cushion, all of what I deemed impossible flowed out of my awareness and as effortlessly reentered the eternal flow.  As I sat, wholly entered into this body, anchored physically in form – here, and committed to this moment –  now, the plump acceptance of this holy instant flowed into this body and like a strong wind, swept through, exiting through the empty space that had been my back only moments before.

In that moment I knew anything was possible, that impossibility existed only within the confines of an errant mind. I am on board the tail of a mind-blowing comet and riding for all its worth, reveling in the mystery teachings of here and now. So simple, yet so profound!

Today is your day to dance lightly with life.
Sing wild songs of adventure.
Invite rainbows & butterflies out to play.
Soar your spirit and unfurl your joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A new world dawns!

What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new religion, spiritual ideology, or mythology. We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems. The change goes deeper that the content of the your mind, deeper than your thoughts. In fact, at the heart of the new consciousness lies the transcendence of thought, the newfound ability of rising above thought, of realizing a dimension within yourself that is infinitely more vast than thought. You then no longer derive your identity, your sense of who you are, from the incessant stream of thinking that in the old consciousness you take to be yourself. What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. The awareness that is prior to thought, the space in which the thought–or the emotion or sense perception–happens. Eckhard Tolle, A New Earth

The dawning of a new age! Can you feel its energy? It is like the sirens voice calling Odysseus—it’s draw unmistakable. It may feel like uneasiness or ache, perhaps a call to service or an irresistible need to drop to your knees in prayer. This week for me the energy has felt like a tearing apart at the seams, not dissimilar to a root bound plant outgrowing its pot; only no new pot can contain this that is being born.

For the past two days a new and unusual restlessness has arisen. At times there has been a most natural compulsion to pull a pillow over my head and scream for release. However, I consciously chose to study this that was tugging at me like two horses, one tied to my hands, the other my feet. In the past there had been delays, lesser and lesser over time, between the rising of agitation and my recognition of what was afoot. In that space of delay I had already engaged the drama, wanting it to be something else, anything else, before the appreciation of choice dawned. This time an immediate sense of separation lay between the body of irritation and the observer, handing me an opening in which to see clearly.

It was very similar to what I experienced several nights ago when I went to bed after a day of amazing clarity and presence, and was overcome with an immense fear. This fear was far vaster than any I had encountered before. It felt profoundly primal. Mind and emotions were not caught up in the energy. In fact, mind was curious and not at all anxious. As I lay there I began probing to see what it was that was in bed with me. It soon became obvious that death had deftly slid beneath the sheets and no safe place existed for me on this earth.

Minutes later Ken crawled into bed I shared what I was seeing. He gently chuckled and said, “You know there is no safe place”. Yes. Mind knew. Emotionally, I knew. Spiritually I knew. Evidently, physically, this body didn’t. It was pure body fear, ancient, something deep inside that lies beneath the more apparent fears of scarcity and self-worth, the fears readily recognized when we are willing to look. This fear is unknown to us until we strip away the outer layers and as I saw, it resides within each of us.

Over the course of the last three years I have learned to engage my fears. I am not fearless, just willing to walk into the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ and meet my fears, not out of some super-human ability or sub-human stupidity, but because I wholly appreciate the alternative. I have lived at the effect of my fears for too many years and am fully cognizant of the dark places they take me. The grand experiment has done its job and created an undeniable awareness. With that awareness, choice is easy and effortless, creating an unwillingness to continue the game.

When fully met, fears are like air inside a balloon after the balloon pops—dispersed into the sky! I no longer attempt to let them go, to release them, to surrender. I walk willingly into them, opening every cell, inviting the fears to show themselves, to return home, here inside me, where they were birthed. It is a reintegration, a healing of separation, a return to wholeness.

That night in curiosity, I invited the fear to speak. “What is it you have to tell me, fear?” Sitting right in the middle of fear’s energy and after a few uncomfortable moments, I heard fear’s voice. “Ken may die. Your future, the life you dream of is not certain. In fact, it is quite uncertain.” Again, I shared the words with Ken. I stated the obvious, a fact of which we were both quite aware, yet since the re-diagnosis, these words had not been spoken. His silence was not a silence of denial but of acceptance. What would be; would be. Looking back would do no good. Looking forward would only prevent us from enjoying the life, the joy available to us in this moment.

Did that mean we would not fight the cancer? Yes. Fight, we have both decided, is decidedly the wrong word and the wrong action for us. Fighting against would strengthen the cancer. Anything we resist persists. We would embrace it, accept it and learn from it, all the while doing what appeared before us to do in each new moment.

Normally, once I have thoroughly investigated a fear, I give it back, forgive it to the Christ consciousness, and am liberated from its grip. As I lifted it up, I heard the words, “not quite yet” and understood that I was to accept its presence completely, not wanting it to leave nor wishing it to stay, to enter into full and utter surrender.

In that moment, I irreversibly understood, at least a current best understanding, as everything I know changes and expands with each deeper level of surrender. Letting fear in is a pre-requisite step to letting it go. If we look at fear as something to let go, it becomes another little box, something we hold out at arms length, preventing us from fully embracing it. We see the fear, know we need to let it go, box it up and wonder why it hangs around to haunt us. We have yet to let our stepchild out of our own private dungeon. So very subtly, we hold onto our fear, keep it imprisoned. But as each denied aspect of self is returned and re-embraced, a new level of freedom is granted and the new world draws closer.

So much is stirring! The energy for transformation is present. God bends low to earth in answer to our prayers. Yet we have our own personal work to attend to, daemons to meet, disenfranchised parts of our selves to reintegrate in order to make these vessels more receptive. Now is the time to return to Wholeness. Listen. You can hear the angelic voices calling you.

I welcome your comments and thoughts and reply to all who are willing to share of themselves.