Awe’s Earth Heart Quest

There was once a little Asian girl named Awe Tzu, whose name meant Grace. 

She lived alone with her sickly mother.

Since she was very young, Awe had learned to use everything they had. 

It was no accident that the letters in Awe's name spelled AwakenWithEarth, because she loved to roll and play in the dirt and even sleep on the bare ground.

Food was scarce.

One day Awe was very hungry and could not find any food. 

She was afraid to go out to the nearby forest alone. 

Then she saw three eagles chasing each other in a heart-shaped circle in the sky, and her fear became transformed into courage. 

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Then when Awe went into the forest, she noticed how her heart expanded and she began to feel great comfort and safety.

  

It was as if her mother was holding her up.

While walking the pine needle path she was approached by a very old man picking up herbs.

He greeted Awe, saying that his name was Lao Chi, which meant Wise Energy.

Lao Chi said to Awe, "All great things come from the Earth and from the heart."

He shared with Awe the herbs, greens, and mushrooms he had collected.

Awe shared with him her tears of joy, and her eyes sparkled.

From then on, she would go outside her village to find food in the forest, thanks to Lao Chi's help.

Awe took care of her mother by getting her food, and now she wished to show care for the earth for giving her that food and comfort. 

One day when she found some wild strawberries, she wanted to show her thanks.

 

She noticed that when the wild berry was pulled in half it looked like a heart.

Contemplating this idea, she was filled with the wonder of a devoted heart.

Sharing the experience of many wise Masters, her heart was awakened by the Earth.

So when she finished eating the wild strawberry, she thanked the plant for the beautiful idea it had given her.

She invented a game she called "CaringForMa."

Since this is what she was doing already for her mother, she wished to extend this thought to all things that touched her heart.

In this game everything is connected and has great value.

CaringForMa was about awakening the heart by loving the Earth.

Every day, when Awe returned from the woods, the villagers would see how radiant Awe had become.

The more Awe played her game, the more luminous she became. 

It was as if Awe was turning into a human light bulb.

One day the Queen of this region was passing through the village.

Awe was just returning from the woods with her bountiful gifts from Nature.

The Queen and Awe encountered each other.

The Queen was stunned by the twinkle shining out of Awe's eyes.

The Queen said, "I have never seen any person's eyes sparkle the way yours shine. Their light is greater than my diamonds and they twinkle more brightly than the stars at night."

 

How can this be? Where do you go and what have you been doing?

Awe paused and gently responded, "I go into those woods there, and when I search for food I play a game I made up called "CaringForMa."

The Queen said, "I wish to take you to my husband the King, and his Royal Council, to share the treasure of your eyes and your ways."

Awe entered the King's Council with a delightful smile and radiating beams of light that filled the giant royal courtyard.

Immediately, the entire Council was taken by her luminous energy and loving presence.

The King said, "My wife tells me you have a secret treasure to share with us!"

Awe responded, "Dear King, I know only what I have been blessed to learn in the forest thanks to Lao Chi."

 

Awe shared, "I was afraid to go out to the nearby forest alone.

"Then I saw three eagles chasing each other in a heart-shaped circle in the sky and my fear changed to courage. 

"When I entered the woods, my heart expanded and I felt great comfort and safety. It was like when my mother used to hold me.

"I found food for myself and my mother.

"I show my thanks for this gift by playing a game I made up called CaringForMa."

The King asked, "How is this game CaringForMa played?"

Awe responded, "I learned this game when I bowed before the spider's web, seeing that all things share a web of connections.

"All things are connected with one another in a magical way. 

"I give thanks when I see one form helping another form to live. I show care for the forms with my gratitude.

"So I play, sing, dance, and laugh every time I see a new thing and make a connection with that new friend I have taken into my fellowship. 

"The mushroom on the path I make my uncle. The frog I adopt as my aunt. In CaringForMa, all things are my relatives." 

From the Council, a well-dressed Advisor spoke,

Awe immediately recognized it was Lao Chi.

"Awe, I find all sorts of herbs for food and medicine from the woods, and now you have given us an amazing remedy.

"Many hearts in this land have been starved and broken.

"Your game CaringForMa is a remedy to restore the spirit and stimulate the heart.

"The diamond light shining out of your eyes has given me a tremendous insight.

"Your loving kind vision of three eagles chasing each other in a heart-shaped circle in the sky did this.

"Our Earth is our heart and our heart is the Earth."

Then the King proclaimed, "May all the people in this land celebrate and learn to play CaringForMa. Let us rejoice in the way all things are connected!

"May loving kindness cure our broken hearts and may we cherish our land by showing caring and thanks!"

Magically once again, Awe saw above in the sky three eagles chasing each other in a heart-shaped circle.

ART- Accept, Remember and Transmute

For a vast part of my life I have been inspired by resource conservation.  How I could transmute physical waste into new life.  Emulating nature and showing respect for my environment helped me feel better.

Today I wish to transform a different type of trash into treasure.  Emotional baggage: worry, anxiety and other forms of fear and feelings of inadequacy.  Since we all share in these bountiful feelings how can a take what is here and now and best go forth?

First step for me is to recognize I have a choice.  Years ago I shared with a therapist my feelings of anxious energy and how I felt like a buzzing fluorescent light bulb.  It has taken me many years to discover this feeling is my life force or chi energy. 

The difference is how I choose to perceive and look at my situation.  Is it filled with Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good or vice versa?

My choice toward greater freedom is when I pause and see everything as a blessing not a curse.  Many of my painful experience hurt so badly yet they provide me an invaluable lessons how I can lessen my suffering in the future. I can respond by pausing and reflecting or I can react sometimes mindlessly and face the consequences of not being fully present in my actions.

I grew up and live in a world filled with anxiety and worry.  However, I can creatively take this energy and best work with them to transform the crap into fertilizer. Since my thoughts can so easily assist me if I experiment with the power of my intentions.   At the same time my thinking can also enslaved me with doubt and fears.  Old ways of thinking can hinder me from fully understanding my true situation.  Such unproductive mental activity takes much effort and practice to change.  Releasing myself from many of my cynical mind-sets can provide me with less stress and more well being.

Moreover these same weather systems of difficult emotions has also I believe a corresponding external effect on the world we live in.  We all share a collective immune system.  When we add to it we prosper and when we subtract from it we suffer.  Becoming skillful how to handle negative baggage is an art. 

Accept, Remember and Transmute  (ART)

Accept what is emotionally happening allows me to see recognize my feeling/ mindset is not serving me or provides no benefit is paramount.

Remember that negative phenomenon also hold positive lessons or ingenious new ways I can best craft my mental lemons into lemonade.   Remembering is the key to stress management.  Do I wish to freak out or can I find more calming and useful ways to redefine my circumstances.

Transmute my old patterns of thinking from seeing my limitations to new possibilities. 

ART is about a three step process of being creative, flexible and wise.  What do I wish to do? Increase or decrease my suffering or add more drama to an already intense situation that so many times I have in the past created.  Or how can I best free myself from my habits that get me to take things too personal, serious or out of its true context.   ART is about healing and see the whole instead of the sum of the parts.

For example, when I am driving my car and the person ahead of me does not realize the traffic light has changed.  If I honk at them I create confrontation while if I pause and become curious when they awaken to the green light I find more peace from this experience.   

One of my relaxing experiences is kayaking since it teaches me to flow not resist the currents of the river.  Resisting life forces I always fail while when I flow with them I find grace.

My experience here can be painful, yet many times this pain also gives me insights to better cope and accept whatever comes my way.  This is an invaluable lesson as I get older since, old age, sickness and death are all inevitable.  The challenge is how I can best deal with life’s consequences.  Accept that worry is just wasted energy; Remember to let go; and Transmute to best manage my stress, is form of ART. I am not escaping my reality with ART, instead I am seeing how to be lighter and less dense with my life circumstances.

Earth/Heart Inner Light Celebration

May we celebrate the wisdom that illuminates from our heart and this earth. People all over are observing   this July 22^nd by showing gratitude to the teacher by their disciples. In both Hindu and Buddhist faiths celebrate the full moon day of worship known as Guru Purnina. For Hindu’s this auspicious day of Guru Purnima, observes the memory of their great sage Vyasa, who both wrote the Brahma Sutras and was born on this day.  Fittingly Buddhist honor this occasion since Siddhartha Gautama gave his very first sermon at this exact same time. May you celebrate your Guru. We all have the potential to be wise teachers if we find a Guru who helps us remember that we all possess this luminous potential.

May you contemplate that you are your own Guru. Quiet your mind and observe stillness similar to pure bowl of water. We are all Buddha's challenged to become lighter and less dense.  Just before Siddhartha's enlightenment Mara tested him with many tempting distractions. Gautama became AWAKE and as the Buddha touched the earth as his witness. Let us bear this same witness and touch our earth/heart. We all one and the same interconnected light awakening.  

This festival of honoring lunar light reflected by our sun reveals how a spiritual teacher similarly illmuinates their students.  When paying homage to the importance of one’s beloved Guru, known as the remover of darkness, the disciple benefits for keeping alive their inner lamp.  This ritual commemorates the Guru and the benefits of their wise teachings again and again. 

In India, Gurus are of supreme importance in helping their students transcend the chains of sorrow and death and become liberated by this profound experience of Consciousness. On this full moon please celebrate our evolving and higher self by our Immortal and individual connections. We all are illuminated by the reflection of this  cosmic lunar occasion.

Many blessings and truly, may you deeply touch the Guru that shines within and all around you! 

http://hinduism.about.com/od/festivalsholidays/a/gurupurnima.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Purnima

Be Well

Right now is a great time to appreciate being.  While death is inevitable choosing to fully live is optional.  Neither avoiding nor holding on too tight may I embrace the present experience as the journey.  May I be fearless, joyful and peaceful.  Fully enthusiastic may my heart be happy, free and well!

Since I never know when my last moment will be why not live my life as if every moment may be my last.  Not to be morbid yet fully engaged into my very being, fearless, awake, accepting to whatever comes my way.  Otherwise my anxiety of being stimulates greater fear and negative states of being.

Facing my mortality, and embracing to leave this dimension from an intention of enthusiasm and appreciation, may I remember that in any given moment I can be alive instead of holding my breath with each new development.

I can be filled with joy, presence and possibility or I can be sad, absent and stuck in the past.  Breaking from my ancestors negative messages I can reframe my fears into the gifts to be fully heartful.

How can I best cultivate a peaceful and free way of being?  Show the greatest form of self love where I embody grace, wise response allowing moment to moment awareness to be my guide.

Listening to my body I find my inner truth.  What has heart and meaning comes from me exploring discerning my fears and shadows.  Embracing them I find that home is right where my heart is.  All things are sacred if only I can remember to arrive back here and now.

It is time for me to let go of old ancestral messages that I am not enough.  For me to fully be I must walk new mental paths to promote grace.  Remember that to move in peace, love, and courage.   To fully be myself I must expand my frequency of possibility with light and compassion.

I am not tentative, I no longer doubt, I am perfect.  Waiting I find that harmonious relations will respond in kind.

Since all things are connected I can best serve by demonstrating being well. 

Attitude of Freedom

The last of human freedoms is to choose ones attitudes – Victor Frankel

Presently I have been reflecting what imprisons me? As Joseph Campbell once said, “Life has no meaning, what we are looking for is the experience of life. We shut ourselves off from this experience”.  Just think our individual brain is filled with one hundred billion of cells.  Each of use these billions of brain cells differently in our life that either liberates us or makes us feel trapped.   

The human brain has two separate hemispheres and communicates with each. The left side is about past and future.  It thinks linear.  All about organizing details and how we associate it. It thinks in language with a little voice that remembers to do things.  Also the left is the calculating intelligence and the little voices saying I am separate. 

Accessing my right side of my brain I experience myself as a consciousness being inter- connected. I feel greater freedom when I connect with the greater whole and now since my brain is too left dominated. 

Seeing what is positive or possible helps me better deal with my circumstances then saying what is lacking or critical.   When I reframe my cynicism to optimism I better activate my creativity and flexibility.  

In Learned Optimism, Dr. Martin Seligman promotes seeing the silver lining in the grey clouds.  The challenge is creating meaningful experiences out of what many see as a meaning less world.    

Finding greater clarity and truth in our individual circumstances can open the doors to greater joy and life purpose.  Also seeing with greater understanding allows me greater freedom to see why and how things are the way they are.  More freedom gives me greater choices.   It is not that pessimism is bad and optimism is good.  It is about finding the proper balance in every specific experience of each.  Greater awareness and practice of optimism expands possibilities, outlooks and options.  It is not to say that pessimism does not have important role in our lives, however it does not have to be the most dominant.  

If everything is my life is based on how and being more wakeful in my experience of life then having greater clarity will help me best go forth.  The more I can experience my true nature as pure, radiant, and peaceful, the more liberated I become.  All great champions train in contemplative practices to both visualize winning and program their brains toward happiness, love and wisdom.  Now may I please remember life’s most important choice- either I have an attitude of freedom or suffer the consequences of not doing so.