Most of the time when I’m out for my daily hikes I feel like I become a free bird, released from the cage of my mind as soon as I hit the outdoors and begin to move my body. This is my time away from daily responsibilities. In the beauty of nature, I’m set free and feel infinitely expanded and empowered.

The Knower Knows Nothing 

So I walk on…and I breathe deeply…and I connect with the all my faithful nature friends — the trees, the sky, the deer, the grass, the wind. I’m at home here. Safe, and unhurried, I open like a flower and receive.

Before I know it, I’m aware that I’m thinking this thought, “the seeker seeks forever and never truly lives. The knower knows nothing and therefore only lives.”

Pure Creative Potential

I like this thought, but find myself doubting if it’s just something I’ve read before somewhere, or is this my innermost self speaking to me? Wherever it came from, it carries me along into a vast silence of nothingness.

This nothingness feels like pure creative potential. It contains no answers, only a silent stillness; until I make a choice about something I want or long for. Then a glorious cosmic dance of movement begins.

Do I go this way or that? Do I create this or do I create that? Do I take this job or that? Do I love this one or that one?

When We Can’t Make A Decision

We want answers to our questions and so we go about seeking a guru, teacher or the latest new fangled method of self-improvement.  We want to know we’ve done the right thing, or worse…that we are the right thing.  We want to know for sure. But mostly, we want someone or something else to tell us what to do. We don’t want to be responsible for our life choices.  We don’t trust ourselves.

If we are willing to be completely honest, it’s not an answer we truly want, but the sweet relief from the paralysis of not choosing, of not being able to make a decision.

Accountability For Our Thoughts and Actions

Perhaps many of us have felt the comfortable malaise of not having to feel responsible for the problems in our lives. It’s so easy to say, “it’s Gods will,”  as we tread the hamster wheel of our repetitive thinking day in and day out. It behooves us to admit to ourselves that this way of thinking has made it very easy to live without accountability for our thoughts and actions.

This is the crossroads we’re standing at in our evolution as individuals and as a whole. We still feel more comfortable relinquishing our power to something or someone outside of ourselves despite the massive world screen of suffering and imbalance that we witness each day caused by such beliefs.

No Guru, Teacher or Method

Once we can grasp this, we can begin to see that in the vast cosmos of nothingness, we are responsible for choosing, for committing our energy to something we want.  No guru, teacher or method can make that choice or commitment for us.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”   -William Hutchison Murray

Power, Humility, Reverence

We have such power, but we don’t know how to commune with this Cosmic Intelligence.  It helps to let ourselves be humbled by its benevolence towards us.  It helps to have reverence for its ability to only give, expand, increase, and it helps to do these things not for Its sake, but for our own, because whether we learn these things are not, we will receive what we’re committed to.

What Are You Committed To?

If you want a clear picture of what you’re committed to, just take a close look at your life and how you feel most of the time.  Are you committed to beauty, joy, loyalty, abundance, connection, balance.  Take a good look…or are you committed to striving, stress, chaos, anxiety, and lack.  Your life and feelings tell all…

What I Used To Be Committed To

There was a time in my life when I was committed to impoverishment but I couldn’t see it because it was too close to me…it was a feeling buried inside created from deep childhood losses.

As an adult I could never shake the feeling of impoverishment, even when I had a husband, a child, a house in the country, and a job, and it wasn’t until my marriage dissolved and I was a single mother at thirty eight with a three year old, that life gave me the perfect opportunity to commit to something else…and so I did.

And I’ll admit, at first I sought out many teachers, gurus and methods in a panicked attempt to feel better, but in the end, it was my commitment to radical self-care, daily walks in the forest, feeling and breathing deeply, and healing…lots and lots of healing…

Gratitude – A Calm Quiet Joy

One of the most powerful ways I learned to heal was to commit to gratitude. Gratitude works like a magnet for blessings and it also naturally moves us to become more aware of what we already have to be grateful for but may not have noticed, even if what we have is modest and humble.

Gratitude also fills us with calm.  Like a quiet joy, it feels trustworthy, powerful, anchored to the deep recesses of the heart, and feeling that calm, quiet joy, to this day, remains my barometer for well-being.

Looking In The Mirror of Consciousness

To transform into the full potential of who we are can be downright excruciating as our comfortable illusions shatter to pieces, but resisting this process only makes it worse.  To be able to look in the mirror of consciousness and say,

“Yes, I see. I see the places within myself that have hardened and grown cold. Yes, I see how my allegiance to my own self-hatred has kept me separated from the truth of my divinity. Yes, I see how my heart and my mind are miles apart and how my mind feels more comfortable to live in. Yes, I see that to live in my heart would bring me to my knees with the agony of knowing how false I’ve been, how much I’ve hurt myself and others, how ignorance of my divine nature has created and contributed to all suffering and imbalance. Yes, I see that if I could only go there and feel that pain and let it run out of me that my mind and heart would melt into one. Yes, I see that then I would be free to create anew.”

God As Consciousness

No one is going to save us from our pain and suffering, and this is a big mind shift to adjust to because deep down inside all of us, we’ve been taught to give our power away to parents, teachers, gurus, governments, doctors, methods, authorities, and a false idea of God.

Peter Russell, M.A., D.C.S., member of the faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a fellow of both The World Business Academy and The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest writes the following,

“God is omniscient, all-knowing. So too, consciousness is the essence and source of all our knowing. It lies behind all understanding.  When the great mystics say “I am God,” they are not talking of an individual person. Their inner explorations have revealed the true nature of the self as consciousness, and it’s this that they identify as God. They are claiming that the essence of self, the sense of “I am” without any personal attributes, is God.”

Become Your Own Master

What’s it going to take to see that we are the ones creating our world?  It’s not an angry God punishing us for our sins. It’s a lost us creating each moment based on our ignorance of how consciousness works and who or what we really are.

To be the master of your own life is to stop giving your power away from a place of victim or martyr and becoming 100% accountable for your thoughts and actions.  Suffering will happen in life.  It’s part of being human.  It’s how the soul evolves. The trick is not to remain there…but to heal and move on…with much grace and courage.

From this place, creating a life unique to your authentic individual rhythms and needs, rather than dictated by the past, social conditioning, a guru, teacher or method, is entirely possible.  It’s called saving yourself…

With love,

Heather xo

P.S. If you have friends, clients or colleagues who want to be the master of their own lives, send them this blog. Empowerment is a form of mastery.