“Let Food Be Thy Medicine” Intuition Exercise

Next time you're in a supermarket, go to the produce section. Take a few mindful breaths, and use your intuition/feeling to select a fresh fruit of vegetable. Try not to go off what you're thinking, for example, what you've read about what is healthy, or what you already like, or already regularly buy and eat. You might be lead to one of these things and that's ok, but put aside rational thinking for now. If you have the chance to do a body scan ahead of time before going into the store, noticing where the energy in your body is flowing or less vibrant than you'd like, that's even better. If you want, you can also do this with the specific intention of addressing/healing what is feeling less vibrant in your body. 

Plants have their own unique healing properties, and you can tune into them (like crystals have unique vibrations, so do plants) and address what your body needs if you make the opportunity. 

A-parent-ly

Apparent, A-parent, a parent is something that we think is our source. Apparently, I came from Mom, apparently, my kids came from me. 

My daughter has complained the last two mornings because her older brother gets more scrambled eggs than she does. So two mornings in a row,  she has sat there without eating the eggs she has, complaining that there aren't enough. Today she said she had such a big appetite, and the amount she was given wasn't enough so she sat there refusing to touch what she had while it gets cold. I kept telling her, that there's no way I'm giving her more in the future if she doesn't even eat what she has. 

It occurred to me that this is exactly what we do to our Source when we compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. Or when we feel lacking in any way. The eggs are right in front of us, we say we are hungry but we refuse to touch what's there. 

The apparent need is not the real need. The actual hunger has nothing to do with the hunger to feel as equal as another, to know our worth. But because this equality (the fairest of them all)  is prior to the manifestation of being treated as such, we cannot force, control, guilt or manipulate others to give us fair treatment. 

While writing this is occurred to me that I shame myself for my own desire for equality, thinking it's silly. My judgement of my daughter as being a brat in this situation glosses over the discord and strong annoyance I felt while it was happening. So I look for the mirror. She is smaller, she doesn't need as many eggs. She is an annoyance. But what she is really asking for, although bratty, is equality. It's fairness. It's the inherent knowing of her own worth. And in shaming ourselves for our own desire, whether at first it seems to be for more eggs or on closer inspection for fair treatment, we are unfair to ourselves. We refuse ourselves the eggs and the fairness. Nothing lets go of a desire like owning it, not trying to own it as in screaming to get the more eggs, or the superficial manifestation, but owning it. 

Like Nisargadatta says, stay with "I am". Like Jesus, says, seek first the kingdom of heaven. Like Louise Hay says, approve of yourself, like Abraham Hicks says, get in the Vortex and then.

Book Recommendations

Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Ask and it is Given by Abraham Hicks

I Am That, Nisargadatta Maharaj

Self Love: The Original Dream (Shri Nisargadatta’s Maharaj’s Direct Pointers to Reality)

Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver

The Nature of Consciousness by Rupert Spira

The Transparency of Things by Rupert Spira

Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness by Rupert Spira

Presence, Volume II: The Intimacy of All Experience by Rupert Spira

Cleanse to Heal by Anthony William

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo 

Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Clarity by Tracee Stanley

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way - (Ursula K. Le Guin translation is a favorite)

The Gospel of Thomas (available for reading for free reading online) 

Knowing, the Known and the Knower

The knowing mistakes itself for the known. The knower is always actually the known. There is no known without the knowing of it.  (These three statements go full circle.)

“The knowing mistakes itself for the known.” 

There is no knowing outside of now, now is the only “time” that we can remember the past, or imagine the future. Now is not separate from past and future, and we cannot locate “now”. When we are “present in our now” we are aware and open, we are free of thought that says that there is past and future, that there is “other” apart from “this”. An open mind is the only way learning can occur, it’s the only way knowledge is let in and recognized, it’s the only way love and appreciation are allowed to be realized. It is a full letting in, allowing and acceptance. An open mind is simply awareness in the absence of judgement, or thought saying that it already knows what it is seeing. This open mind is all there is already, in the present moment. 

“The knower is actually the known.” 

It is when we cut ourselves off from the knowing by mistaking ourselves for the known that we can “forget ourselves”. This is how we seem to disconnect ourselves from the Love and Intelligence of the whole. Because this disconnection manifests in the form of negative emotion, it confirms that we CAN never truly mistake ourselves for the known. In our direct experience, our hands are not different from the table, keyboard, or anything in our environment. Our vision does not discriminate but with the addition of thought borders seems to appear. In feeling and sensation, the contact of our hands on any object is not of two things, but one feeling.The idea of our hands being part of our body and owned by us that is separate from the world is a thought, it is never our direct experience devoid of thought. The hands that feel are the felt. Of course, having this common sense knowledge and being careful to protect and honor the body is helpful on a practical level of understanding. However the deeply rooted belief may be examined because the emotional ramifications of believing oneself to be separate and vulnerable may have gone awry. 

“ramifications - mid 17th century: from French, from ramifier ‘form branches’ .”

Our thoughts tend to follow beliefs that have grown out like branches. Thoughts that do not align with direct knowing awareness are responded to with negative emotion. When we continue to think the same thoughts we perpetually feel negative emotions and believe that this is how things are. We may feel fear, hypochondria or milder forms, we may feel inadequate because of our physical appearance or health, we may feel we are defined and restricted by our gender and other’s expectations of us and impressions of us. We may feel wrong, bad or unspiritual for “having” a body at all. We may feel a whole host of uncomfortable feelings based on wrong assumptions about who we really are. In direct experience the body is love and awareness itself. While it is sacred and to be cared for, it is never a cause for concern accompanied by negative emotion. Our critical body functions such as our heartbeat, digestion and breathing already occur without our thinking about them. Stress is caused by misunderstanding ourselves and is detrimental to the body. Emotional well being and physical well being are intimately one. 

“There is no known without the knowing of it.“

In deep sleep we are not a body, not an individual. We may focus on certain uncomfortable truths, but we cannot focus on all the terrible things in the world, nor even think them at the same time. We also cannot find the solution to a problem if we feel that the problem is the known, while also admitting that the solution is the unknown.

Awareness, (the present moment, direct experience) is where knowing and unknowing merge. It is where the known, knower and knowing are not separate. 

When we are alert or are listening for something we have to drop thought and become totally aware. If you are out in the woods with a friend and they say “Listen!” you would likely stop in your tracks, and become completely present and aware. Likewise, at any point that you feel a negative emotion this is a clue to stop and listen. 

“It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” Mark 13:34–37

Motion and emotion are very related, but we never actually move. From the point of view of awareness there is no separate line between body and world that allows movement. You can switch your perspective by becoming very aware when you walk and noticing that the idea of you moving in a world rather than simply being pure “still” awareness, is an idea. Awareness is neither still nor in motion. You can switch your perspective to one resembling VR, but without a screen. Everything is coming TO you. 

This is the basis of the law of attraction, we attract with our thoughts, and emotions (feeling is always real time) are indicators of those thoughts. Thoughts can be mistaken as emotions, and feeling and awareness can be covered over with thought in this way. An emotion is never what we think it is. When we stop and listen, or FEEL as we do as in meditation or throughout the day, the separation dissolves between what we think we are and what we think the emotion means or is about. Don’t take my word for it though. 

Because the world IS your awareness, and is not made of different substances and is not material in exclusion of spirit, you are already intimately one with it. Every subject, or true form of intelligence can be understood on a deeply satisfying level when the subject of knowing is known to be the knowing itself.