Welcome to Happy Snowflake Dance!

It's my experiment in joyful, marrow-sucking living.
Inspired by George Santayana's poem,
There May Be Chaos Still Around the World

" They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe
A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw. "


My Mission: a daily journey into Openness.

I hope you'll come along!

Friday, August 28, 2020

Inner Peace now




Wow. It's Thursday morning here. I feel rested. And as I get ready to listen to my daily dose of Tolle, I am feeling really content. Peaceful and excited, too. I feel joy and gratitude welling up in me. I can't even explain why. I just do.

Well, we know why... I'm finally "getting" what Tolle has been saying for over 20-25 years. It's sinking deep into my spirit. And my spirit is finally waking up.   Yes, there are still thoughts and ideas, but this goes beyond words.  You can feel deep within your being, not just a new mental position or belief system or dogma.

I never really thought about death much. But now, I can honestly say that I am TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY at peace with death. I am not afraid of death. At all. I mean ALL FEAR IS GONE. I guess I never realized that, even as a Christian, I had been afraid of death. It didn't consume me, but I avoided the thought of it. Now, I am at peace.

Not that I plan on dying anytime soon, but I am at peace with death. I am at peace with this moment. I can feel a subtle shift occurring in me. And I feel it subtly changing my relationships. When I feel irritation over a tiny thing, I can catch myself almost immediately. Then, I stop and remind myself that what is...is. There is no use in complaining or grumbling. I accept what is. I don't have to be controlled by my thoughts or emotions or even my pain body and its triggers ever again. I can be at peace with what is in this moment. 

If you want to find out more, you can access The Power of Now for free on YouTube. Here's The Power of Now audio book on YouTube
https://youtu.be/kgqrLg-__9M

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

What does my ego look like?

 What does my ego look like?  

You can tell by things/ people/ ideas/ situations that I resist.  My ego likes to define itself as “right”, super intelligent, etc. Hint: if I am arguing, my ego is still operating.  If I am trying to prove that I am right, my ego is in control.  If I am trying to change someone else, or their minds, beliefs, or ideas, my ego is in charge, not the real me, the I am that I am.  If I am boasting or showing off about something I know or did or think I am (like how spiritual I think I am or self righteous), then I am completely given over to egoic self.  


The spirit part of me accepts what is now, including others’ disbelief or egos. Jesus died to self long before he went to the cross.  Jesus accepted suffering.  Sure, he had triggers for pain body like when he angrily threw out the money lenders from the temple.  The more I resist my family, my situation, my dislikes, the more unconscious I become.  Rather than becoming more spiritual, I continue to judge and be judged. 


A translation of the Indian greeting “Namaste” is the supreme lightness of being in me acknowledges the lightness of being in you. 

When I operate from the ego-self, I forget all about Namaste, that I am so much more than what I think, that others are so much more than what I see.  We are interconnected.  


What triggers my pain body? Pay attention to my emotions: anger, irritation, grievance, self-pity, judgments, rejection by family.  

This is why Jesus said if you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven.  What we do to others, we do to ourselves.  This is why he said to love our enemies. Why he said to live the golden rule.  Treat others the way you want to be treated.  We are not separate from each other.  We are each other.  We are part of the whole, the whole is in us and always has been.


If I want respect, I must respect.  If I want unconditional love, I must love expecting nothing in return.  If I want acceptance, I must accept without preconditions.  


Ego, as Tolle describes it, is our pre-existing mental patterns and those things we tell ourselves about who we think we are and what we think the world should be like.  It’s a list of likes and dislikes in our heads, judgments shaped by our history, cultural identity, family stories, family preferences, all conditioned as mental structures on which most of us spend our entire lives, never stopping to examine the deeper awareness that is our consciousness, the awareness of presence, which goes deeper and beyond words or ideas or thoughts.  So much of our lives are lived unconsciously, just programmed reactions to outward stimuli, things we like or don’t like, want or don’t want.  Not lived in the moment, but in rehashing the past or in some imagined future.


Fr. Richard Rohr’s book, The Universal Christ is eye-opening, spirit-awakening.



It made me think of e.e. Cummings’ poem:

                              "next to of course god america i"
                                                              
 
      

next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

                By: E.E. Cummings

We see the ultimate outcome of unconscious living: war.  

I’m listening to Eckhart Tolle read “Stillness Speaks”. Oh, this…



I'm listening to Eckhart Tolle read "Stillness Speaks". Oh, this little book is so profoundly beautiful. Beautiful seems too small a word to point to the deeper reality that is hidden in us, in the moon, the cosmos, this rock upon which my physical body (form) is resting... I had to stop. Rewind. Replay the intro and chapter one again and again.

It's just so sweet. I feel the unending, eternal grace, divine presence, universal Christ presence, the divine sweetness and light, whatever you want to call it, as I listen to these opening words. It's like a call to return home, not a physical home or even home with our sadly dysfunctional, yet beautifully broken family home. It's like a call to our real home, home in the divine sweetness and light and creativity and joy that has always been in us and through us and in and through everything.


I'm listening to Mandisa in the morning now. Her lyrics start to get to the heart of this:
From Dance, Dance, Dance

"Maybe you don't understand why I gotta dance
There was something had me down but it's over now
I'm a throw my hands up
Wave 'em all in the air
'Cause all I wanna do is dance, dance, dance
They told me you ain't good enough
Don't look good enough
Don't sing good enough
Maybe you should give it up
And if I would've then I never could've received
None of the things that He planned for me
So I waited a little longer
Grew a little stronger and then
I realized something was happening
It's so incredible, it's unexplainable
You oughta try Him for yourself and see because
Maybe you don't understand why I gotta dance
There was something had me down but it's over now
I'm a throw my hands up
Wave 'em all in the air
'Cause all I wanna do is dance, dance, dance..."

With songs like True Beauty, What If We Were Real, The Definition of Me, Shine, Joy Unspeakable, Never Gonna Steal My Joy, Overcomer, What You're Worth, Stronger, Keep Getting Up, What Scars Are For, Free, and Good Morning, Mandisa's music appeals to the inner you. You can feel spirit awakening.




I am mountain

I am mountain

I am budding tree
I am crumbling rock,
Raging river,
Ebb and tide.

I am moon,
I am fading flower,
Eternal dance,
Ephemeral song.

I am spirit hovering over the deep.
I am form and formless.

I am Alpha and Omega,
Beginning and end and
All the nows in between
World without end.

One day this form will pass away, 
but who I am can never die.

I am the cosmos,
the stuff of stars.
I am life,
the universal Christ lives in me. 

I am created in God's image,
part of all creation,
yet never ending,
always existing.

I am that I am.
I am, but though I exist now in this limited body,
I am eternal.
I am connected to the whole of creation.

We are one.

I am the wind.
I am the red-tailed hawk upon the breeze.
I am the awareness.
I am peace, stillness, joy, love.

I am my brothers and sisters 
and mother and father.
I am my "enemy".
I am all and none.

I am the dash on my gravestone!
I am the space between 
those etched, but fleeting years.
Knowing this, I am free!

I am that I am, now.

I always am.

Selah.


Today's lesson: learning to accept what is and relinquishing "my" story. 

 What did I grumble about today? My sister worked in the yard. Yep, now that I say it out loud, I can see the absurdity of my ego railing against help.  

 Instead of rejoicing that she is participating in creation, I grumbled and complained and resisted what is. No acceptance. Instead, I filled my mind with judgments and imagined judgments from her. "I don't like the way the flower beds look, they are all chaotic, tangled, trashy." Instead of being happy that she was getting involved, I took offense. In my mind, I complained and defended myself and told myself over and over, with every snarky complaint from her, "Well, at least I TRIED to do something!" 

 I did not say it out loud, but I get why Jesus said, "If you say it or do it in your heart, you've already done it." I was defending my bruised ego all day, taking offense at everything she said, implied, or didn't say. "She didn't even thank me for spending hundreds of dollars every year on new plants and hours and hours planting them. Hmmmph!" See? I was totally identified with defending my sense of "self" or ego, instead of just accepting what is.

My whole day could have been different if I had just said to myself: "Hey, it's a good thing that she is participating. So what if she gripes about the way I did it? She can't help it anyway. She is unconscious. Not that I am superior. But I can accept what is. It is as it is. Complaining or grumbling will not change anything for the better. Stop seeing only her ego structures. Stop imprisoning your sister. Set her free by seeing the weight of glory in her. Let go of judgments against her, the situation, and me. Let it go. "

I can see now.
That anger was my pain body just reacting to a trigger which may or may not have been there. I have a choice moment by moment to settle for arguments, drama, ego v ego, and fighting against forms, or to live in my deepest presence now just letting go, accepting what is, and relishing the deep peace of inner self.

 And doing so, I set not only myself free, but I set my sister free from all my judgments against her.  I release her to be the divine presence that is her true self.  



Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Jesus and the ego self



In Lecture 6 from the Omega series: Tolle talks about presence as non-resistance to what is.  Jesus’ talk about turning the other cheek.  Turning the other cheek is exactly about this: not getting caught up in the drama of self-identity.  Not defending your ego.  It’s about being fully, deeply present now.  Letting go of the past and the future and accepting what is. 


Tolle points out that this does not mean that if someone is threatening your actual physical existence to just let them stab you, for example.  Being fully present may mean that I take evasive action, but I do it calmly without getting all caught up in some emotionally charged story about this moment.  I do not attack the other person out of a sense of self-identity preservation.  If I defend my body, I do that without the drama. I don’t turn the other person into my enemy in my mind.  And this is the critical piece of Jesus’ example: not making enemies in my mind of others.  See Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6(?). 


Imagine Jesus before the Sanhedrin with all their accusations, violence and drama.  They were beside themselves with indignation, self-righteousness, blame, trying to guilt or shame him.  They were livid, furious. 


Yet, because Jesus was fully practiced in non-identification with egoic self or the form of ego, he said nothing.  Not a word in his defense.  


When Pilate questioned him and repeated the accusations, Jesus asked, “Is this what you say or are you just telling me what others say?” Pilate replies,”So, you are the King of the Jews?” And Jesus basically says, “That’s your story.”  Because Jesus is not defending his image, his sense of self, because he is deeply present in this moment, calm, not dragged into the drama, Pilate recognizes this and pleads with the people to let him go, “He has done nothing wrong.  I find no fault in him.  He certainly has done nothing to deserve death.”  


But when we are caught up in our egoic self, our sense of self-righteousness often takes over.  We spend so much time and energy trying to prove our “rightness” to the world. And when we are identified with constantly having to prove how right we are, we make enemies in our own minds out of everyone else.   We are no different than these Pharisees and Sadducees who made an enemy out of a Jesus.  Jesus was not their enemy.  But in their minds, he was the enemy.  And when we make someone else into an enemy, it becomes much easier to murder or kill that person and feel fully justified and righteous in doing so. This is the drama of the ego mind. 


See the previous entry on Cain and Abel.