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Welcome to Your Life

Welcome to your life, and you are welcome.

Wherever you find yourselff is the site for a significant human experiment in Love and well worth the investment of your presence and your response.
There are lots of ways to join in goodness, goodness knows, with
every form answering the One need.

We are all in possession of and in need of the very same thing, everywhere and all the time, that is the recovery, the uncovering of our honesty, of our true and essential memory of what is. We can learn to live from our authenticity instead of survive the imagined hell of being something we are not with all the frustration, anger and bitterness that comes with trying to survive our deep resistance to the truth- and calling it living- yikes!

In case you need a nudge for leaning toward peace and joy and the fullest memory of your innocence, I am sending my nudge in the primal form of my own answer to the call to awaken. And the reality is that the nudges we need are only waiting for our own willingness. We can tend the field and cultivate willingness etc. and in the end, the beginning and the middle, what we really do, is wait and respond, wait to be invited, wait until we are calm and neutral, wait for the moon to run her light over the whole face of what is before Us so we can feel the clarity of our choice.

Before knowing can arrive, the form of practice we have been employing to try and survive our fear of uncertainty will need to be surrendered. The form can only set the space to wait for the heart to respond. We can learn to trust and accept and through that acceptance we are carried across the gap between our concepts about what will serve us ultimately and the choices that reflect those concepts.

You are on The Way and I would say It gets better and better every day you practice correct response. Getting the lid off is the hardest part, then love comes tumbling down and takes you with It little by little, big by big. Of course the pattern of our fear (that we could somehow be other than love and so unworthy of It) will remain through this incarnation as it is our life’s work to meet the particular flavor of this fear tailored to the learning we have around the portion of atonement that has been assigned to us. I am encouraged to hear you speak to me of your undoing. It is very good news. Your pain is mine and I celebrate every step toward release.

We go, and we go together. That is the fact. You have my blessing. It is my intention to activate It by meeting my own fears.

Take good care. You are not alone

Coming Home

It was
it is
it will always be
sweet to connect
yes indeed.

I am blessed by your company.
I am blessed by your spirit
I am blessed by the heart full intention of your gifts.

I am truly grateful for all the support
and for the truth that encourages growth.
I exhale all that is now complete

and soften into this moment I’m meeting.

I open my body and turn and return
again to my home with all that I’ve learned
I cast it all into the water of me
out and into the wild mystery of my being.

Qigong

The dictionary definition for the word “qi” usually involves the meaning of “breathing”, “air”, “gas” and “vapor” but it can also be used in the context of describing the relationship between matter, energy and spirit.

The dictionary definition for the word “Gong” is that of achievement or results.

The two words are combined to describe systems and methods of

“energy cultivation”

and the manipulation of intrinsic energy within living organisms.

Qi-vital force
Gong- to cultivate

Gardening: June

Digging in the garden all day long.
Lifting the dirt
calling the air
to come infuse the gong.
Weeding with my exhales as faithful as new Love.
Inviting the fierceness of the lion and the gentleness of the dove.
I make a space for absolute Grace
and feel the Chi answer, by filling my vase.

Its so sweet to feel complete digging in the dirt of my home.

I am tilling and spilling all that I know

to grow what I have not yet been shown.
I dance with the wildnerness my heart beat is setting.
and enter the moment by releasing regret.

Your sweetness toward me is amending my soil
I fold you right in with handfuls of joy
I watch the thunder and hear the sight

of community in action, of change taking flight.

What will this good day of cultivation yield?
I aim for a vision from the unified field.

transmitting it now and here ...

Don't Forget

Don’t Forget

Stay awake.
Stay awake, and take your time.

Don’t forget.
Stay awake.
Stay right here, and remain calm.

Keep your calm by trusting now.
Trust you need not manage how.
Keep in mind you cannot loose the love you’ve prayed to God would choose you.

Don’t forget

you’re sweet and sour and so much more than that besides.

Remember what you’re here to do instead of reasons you should hide.

Don’t forget

I love you more today than yesterday

and even after time collapses the way is still the way.

Trust your heart and take your time

slow your tireless, anxious mind

and let the patterns of fear unwind
exposing perfect truth behind.

Peter Peter pumpkin eater

who’s a human being human.

So are you

working through

down and past what’s just not true.

Don’t forget

keep your calm

with open heart and open palms.

Find your way to stay alert

to the truth- truth can’t be hurt.

Most of all

have some fun

while doing your best to remember

We're One.

Sometimes Its Not So Easy

What a day.
Not sure what I can say
and this is me trying.

What a life.

Not sure what I need

and this is me exploring.

I can say this.
I am responsible for my experience.
I am responsible for my intention.
I accept that responsibility now.

I’m enjoying the ways and means community touches me
the means and ways common unity finds a way to be, and to be with the heart of me.
Thank you for all that you are that creates this, and that, and the other
and in this case
thank you for your love of life
and the lively music of your heart despite
the pain of being human
despite the training to resist what’s happening.

The forms that artful love can give and take in helping me to locate
the right prescription for myself
hold the blood of my full health.
The specific forms abundantly wealthy
with a healthy appetite for what in this moment is feeling essentially right for me
are rolling in with every breath.
The medicine of living these forms imbued with the spirit of me and the spirit of you
through the wisdom of an evolving context that understands truth
is carrying the means for me to travel much more accurately
toward the heart of the real workings of spirit and flesh dancing together now.
These forms are the holy son on which the spirit is riding from pain
to bliss and back again and again and again and again.
In the spiral from the unified center
it can sometimes get blurry and sometimes I can see to look to my intention
to what my heart answers
in order to find again a sense of the One Body living in form (or not).

Form lives through the essence of Love.
The essence of Love is the inspiration and animation of sustainable form.
This awareness is my answer sometimes.
And sometimes I run screaming from the building in(side) my confusion.

Form lives through the essence of Love.
The essence of Love is the inspiration and animation of sustainable form.
This awareness is my answer sometimes.
This awareness heals my world one breath at a time.

Today’s collection of events and felt circumstance, was not exactly a top 40.
It was very off Broadway.
There were not many parts of me waiting in line for a ticket
to the feeling of having the ground I know disappear under my feet.
A lot of me not is not particularly interested in today’s play
And the play of waving veins of emotion dragging me through the dirt is what I have.

So be It.

And sometimes it is not easy being an artist- sometimes.
Sometimes you are never seen very clearly for your art.
And sometimes you remember you are in fact the audience judging without compassion.
Remembering this can be painful.
And trying to forget what I know in my heart of hearts is a deeper pain.

Taking responsibility can be tricky if you make it that way
And either way it is very real. Startlingly so sometimes.
You are never the same when the water of realization recedes again.

You wonder who will recognize you.
Over and over you let go into more surrender
and the lies do not always go so quietly.
Realization is met with all the sweetness and agreement of legions of angels.
It is also met with layers of doubt and resistance.
Meeting each new layer on the way to a deeper knowing
can sometimes raise a little hair here and there.
Jane! Jane! How do you stop this crazy thinking?
Feels like suicide to stay and murder to leave sometimes.

And right in the middle of the swirl I can feel that I am finding comfort
in the forms that hold this moment with my heart.
I am learning to recognize the difference between my response and my reactions.
I am finding the company to move together and the courage to move (agh!)- apart.
What can I say about what I know from the knowing that everything I see is me
thrown into the action of love embodied?
God if I know!
And I trust that God directs well all that is seen and what is unseen as well.

Some days arrive through a (hard) radically different kind of perspective.
I slow myself down to feel for the ground.
These days I am left without cause to reach for anything else.
It is beautiful and horrible at the same time, leaving the old behind, feeling nostalgia and feeling hesitation even though you know you have to go...
It can feel a bit unsettling.

Good News

So, what can be said about any of It in a way that would tell the real story of the relationship between what we call heaven on earth and what we call living a hell? The words alone are words alone so how do they come to ring with the essential meaning for you and for me in a voice we are able to hear?

The best that I can say today is that when the words I speak are not orphans but are parented by an honest response to what I am feeling in present time, they are able to ring with the inspiration of the truth.

When the words spoken are totally embodied, they speak for the holy whole of humanity.

When the words and actions taken, and given, are calm and confident, irregardless of the particular company they find themselves, or the circumstance, or the time, or the form they use to communicate.

Words and actions that are faithful to an authentic response, will demonstrate faith and faith is the means to navigate uncertainty.

When we can stand on the board of compassion and balance the water with the wind and pulse of all of existence, along with our imagination, our emotions, and the inspiration of the unknown, the combined dance will speak to and from our absolute Unity.

This capacity is very good news.

What My Heart Knows

When we manage to accept the means to grow out of the holes of feeling loveless and lonely we transform according to love’s evolution.

And, we must stand ready, gentle and strong as we meet the resistance of our old ways of seeing, our habitual patterns of what we have thought to be knowing, as the questions rise…

Who will be my family when I arrive at complete acceptance?

Of the ones I am calling my kin today, which of these if any, are kin to my truth?

The course our questions sets must navigate the frontier between biology and psychology, between personal and transpersonal, between ancestors and descendants. Our questions are our transport in the current of sprit moving the infinite diversity of existence with absolutely integrated intention.

Standing on the cliff, with a stiff wind blowing, I open my chest and take in a full breath and shake in agreement with all that is present.

I take It All in and I let the breath go, and wait for response from what my heart knows.

Every Bit of Humility

When relationship has been confused with guilty obligations, when community has been inundated with fearful expectations, the challenge to feel our collective intention, to see each other without shame’s invention, can only be answered by finding a way to suspend our reaction to all that fear says.

So how do we feel the family we need through the smoke of reaction to the fear Love could leave us?

How do we learn to trust in the face of this fear?

What is correct to choose in the name of understanding ourselves instead of protecting ourselves?

The future is uncertain.

Practicing the willingness to know outside of what we think we know

can open us to the means to learn

how to trust what we do not now know and become humble, become certain.

And, learning to trust that what we do not yet know or see

Will take every bit of humility to see perfectly.

And if I am not seeing perfection, I am not seeing yet.

All the Way

What my fearful mind would call problem

my patient heart calls lesson

and every lesson

teaches the same solution

to every imagined problem

through forgiveness.

The capacity to surrender what I have thought to be

for the vision forgiveness wants to show me

is my single, primary, objective aim, is my transport mode

out of the blame and the shame that is holding

my love of living in chains.

The capacity to see through the old

all the way to the new and the innocent

in the light of this day

is the miracle of forgiveness.

Shifts

What are the patterns of fear and delusion?

Which are the seeds buried deep in confusion?

What, and where am I spending the life force

supplying my essence and connection to Source?

In my endeavor to increase understanding

I humbly study where supply meets demand

and look for relationships back to the whole

forth to my single and absolute goal

of peace.

I feel the bones of my thinking

and the muscle of my action

collaborating to form the body of my experience.

I look to the shifts

I can see now must happen

for my mind to be calm in the face of my fear

for my mind to accept and

trust what my heart sees so clearly.

'you’re free'

To understand my dis-ease

I must be willing to look where I am

starting broad and then narrowing in.

Lensing in, and lensing out

my careful attention shows me how doubt

has split truth into opposing opinions

Finding the willingness to question these doubts

enables new perspective to take seed and sprout.

I take in what Love reminds me I know

and plant it with patience and tend to its growth

through careful intention and dedicated practice

answering each moment with a growing capacity

to trust in what I cannot now see

to trust in the Love that tells me 'you’re free'.

Death has to Die.

I consider my thinking and I think that if I, want to know how to live then death has to die. If I truly want truth to pervade in my life, what I need is to learn how to give up the fight. If, in truth I can feel free to accept the solution that will reconcile fear with love’s evolution, I must learn to accept that the truth of the whole is composed of One Love, expressed as each soul.

The Heart Of Me.

The parts of me torn asunder, long to someday feel the wonder, of living with loving, faithful intention, free from the fear of my mind’s intervention.

The part of me that boldly goes where fear warns no man has gone before, travels the vastness of the void forgetting the fear that has kept me avoiding.

The parts of me locked in defense can’t see how forgiveness can make any sense. The heart of me that knows to trust, does feel the drag of fear and rust, and trusts despite my fear of living, trusts that I can find clear vision.

This part of me that somehow knows is cleaning the closet of what my mind holds.

What will survive these shifts of mind?

What will feel right, what will be left behind when I find the faith to trust and release, all my fantasies in the name of everlasting peace?

Good Company

I need to hear the stories, the stories of coming to Truth. I want to know of coming to, and going all the way through, every lie ever told, every misconception that I hold, every habit born of fear, every attachment I hold dear.

I feel my story as yours is told, and I’m grateful for a hand to hold. My mind takes off at every chance, still, I want to take care of this miraculous dance of what is true for both me, and for you.

Through your tales of trial and error, I find real comfort for the terror of surrendering my grip on fantasy and coming at last, to a lasting peace. With your stories and my plans, like Dumbo on high, feather in hand, I’m able to test what I think that I know, as I dive into the indescribable, mystery below.

With your stories, and a gust of courage, I dive into what is yet unseen, yet unheard, yet un-thought of, still unknown, trusting that my trust in essence and my capacity to learn what essence is, what it looks like, what it smells like, what it is to accept only essence, provides me exactly, everything I need.

Your honest life stories teach me to trust the mystery, through what has taught you, to remember that you’re free.

March 13, 2010-50 years rounding the bend.

I write from the ocean, the South Coast Hydrologic Unit watershed in CA including Rincon Creek, Franklin Creek, Goleta Slough, Devereux Creek, and Gaviota Coast Creeks. The weather is cool with a stiff wind moving off shore.

The stiff wind is stirring the water today as stiff becomes fluid in the surf and the spray. The water and the wind they bend and they swirl, they ride and they glide, they crash and they curl. Together they move to carve the shape of the wind, into the jaw of the shoreline within me. The hills are rising straight up from the shore determined now to live as never before. They are blowing and glowing and covered with green sprouted by the faith in what is unseen.

I write to You now from the Ocean.

My mind is turning and churning the compost of my life experience, this moment, looking to the sea, this morning, writing what I see, this day, weighing all that I believe, this week, with views in every direction, this year of personal introspection, this decade of challenges told and untold, this half of a century now unfolded.

My mind is mulling and mixing my dreams and my hopes, my past as it relates to now, and my ideas of the future as they describe my trust in the Grace that allows me to accept my capacity to evolve gracefully.

The whole mind mix is turning and tearing, death and birth together preparing to become again the perfect earth to receive this moment and house the birth of...

what?

What now?

Honestly asked with patience, this is the question that is leading me to Myself.

This blessed and sacred now is the only place to view what with any accuracy.

So, what now?

The form I cannot exactly say, and say I can that it is good to feel, and see, and honor, and say that I love, accept and trust the perfection of ever story in the compost pile of my life’s experiences. It is good to feel and experience the capacity to surrender into the pile, every story and character without opinion or anxiety. It is good to feel and experience the refuse of my thinking, now dying to become the ground that will produce a more evolved, regenerative and composite philosophy.

I can say it is good to observe what I can about my priorities by carefully and thoughtfully paying attention to the broader patterns of my life as told by the remnants, the effects of my words and actions in the community. I study my habits and their effects on the environment I am living in by patiently and compassionately sponsoring and over seeing the decomposition of what has been my way, the way of my conditioning, my habits, physical and emotional. It is my choice to study and faithfully surrender all that I am moment to moment, into the hands of what is allowing what will be to arrive without debate or resistance, to arrive unencumbered by the chains of my fears and my insistance. I can say that to do this, I need faith and the loving witness that sponsors It. I can say that I need patience and trust and the place that I find what I need is always in the stillness.

I can say that it is in the stillness where I find wisdom and its strengths, patience, courage and confidence to remain still when the winds and water of evolution are throwing me into the rock of my resistance to being broken in the name of love’s perfect laws. I need all the elements of wisdom that support me in accepting all that must die so that Truth can be born again in me right now.

I can see it is honesty that assists in decomposing what is out dated, what is no longer serving, what has become dissatisfying, what is now ready to surrender its body again into the insistent, intelligent and loving hands of transformation.

I can say that my primary interest in living, is to accept evolution gracefully, according to Grace.

I can see it is my capacity to be honest that allows the truth to take up what is ripe and ready to transform in me, and objectively deliver it into a cycle of death in the name of life.

I can say that I am grateful for the friends who stir me, for the sisters and the brothers who turn me over with their earnest intention to learn and allow themselves to grow into the fullest realization of what it truly means to be a balanced member of the community, what it truly means to be a conscious human being living life in peace instead of relentlessly, unconsciously and franticly striving to survive the fear of uncertainty by desperately clinging to what is already dead.

I can say I am a human being in a field of humans being with the single and diverse need to learn to meet the transitional moments of evolution calmly while remaining in community actively and consistently in agreement with what is essentially true for every living thing.

I can say that my open heart, and the will to start and follow through all the way to me and you, is my gift to the world. It is my open heart and my commitment to live from my open heart that is my strength and confidence. Recognizing and maintaining this capacity gives my life’s purpose. I greatly appreciate the relationships and the community that support this purpose. I can say that living from my open heart describes my authentic nature and that living from my authenticity keeps my life vital, current, pruned, balanced, and happy.

I can say that my joy arrives through my relationship with the community starting with the community of my own body, mind, and soul. I can say that my joy begins and ends with the Love and acceptance I find for myself in relationship with every other, in this moment, including everything I see, and feel, and know.

I can say I am continuing to think of me and you and what I have heard you say about what you need and what you want to do with this life. I am continuing to hold and consider your needs as my own and my own needs as shared by you. I can say I know we absolutely go together in this way.

I can say my prayers and good intentions follow you each and all the time as I love and care for myself.

I can say I see you and feel glad when I feel seen.

I can say I feel you and I feel glad to feel you feel.

I can say I need you to love and trust yourself.

I can say I trust you as I trust myself.

I can say I respect you. I honor you. I pray for you. I bless you.

I love to say, especially when you’re listening that

I love you now in all the ways that I do.

Now I see from inside of me, from the ocean of this humanity, all the lines of Our true blood moving out from the mystery, every stream of water and blood, moving to write our history, all the lines of our lives together moving with uncertainty, spiraling out and spirally in, turning all ways to return again to the sea of Our shared need-to trust the presence of eternity. I feel the touch of Love’s intelligence, guiding me to set me free.

I can see the degrees of separation dissolving and dissolved, forming and reborn from and into the absolute and infinite balancing point of Zero’s stillness.

I can say I am held in my own loving hands with you and all of creation right now.

I can say I am right now … glad.

I can say I am glad to know I write from We,

I write to you, I write from me, from the Ocean

with a ripened heart ready to serve

with an open mind, happy to learn

with a head bowed down In humility

with an appetite for joy and peace.

an Appetite… for joy and peace.

I will swallow all the pain
all the joy of this world
the whole strange mix.
I will bite
chew
swallow
and digest it all
sending Love into the bloodstream
of the One Body.

Look at the plants that chew the rocks
and release the same minerals into my body
when they break against my teeth.
I too am food for life.
I accept I must be broken
to be chewed
to be swallowed and transformed
into the bones
and flesh
and blood of the Truth.

See me now.
Feel me however you can.
Gaze until you feel the water of our lives together.
Let your appetite build from the bones of your truth and savor the empty space in your belly.
Move from your true hunger.
Come and drink and take a bite.
You are not stealing.
You have been invited to the table of this moment.

Empty your head of opinions and allow
your plate to be filled with the All that is here, with All that is now

The time is here, from fear let us now depart

I am so happy to know now
I feed your heart with my heart.

May 2009 Update

Greetings All

I am
returning
to Indiana in May
however
I am
keeping the shop door closed for now
for continued personal inventory.

In solitude
and gratitude
for the Silence that translates and informs.

May we find and receive the Grace
that allows us to hear The Truth
and see it in everything.

All is well :)
Take good care

~meg

A Three-strand Cord is Not Easily Broken

I want to bare witness and open dialogue for the experience of living, for the experience of practicing, for the experience of practicing together in the classes at One Body, and specifically for the experience of cycling class. I started this blog after a particularly hair raising (in a good way) ride in April and I have been chewing on it since then. By now several classes have come and gone and I have wandered off to Roma for the 2nd annual Gyrotonic Conference. All is well. I am a feeling it all, physically and emotionally, learning to trust in the process. It blesses me to receive myself through you and I invite you to share your own story of riding this thing we call life however you can.

I was thinking, and feeling, and thinking about what I feel and what I notice, as I examine the life I am living. As I learn to trust what I am given, I meet support or resistance according to my opinions. When I allow Grace to find me, my judgments are suspended, and in that space, All that is left is trust. It is All that is left and it is enough. Trust allows me to see through my opinions to the plain truth. It enables me to see, and know that what ever is occurring in this moment, is certainly arriving in response to my genuine need. And the way it is arriving is perfectly designed to help me learn how to trust It. My part is simply to meet the moment and everything It has brought along with It. When I practice welcome, my wellness finds the means to come to me.

Humbly submitting myself to a practice of learning to trust, locates my real strength. This strength is my truth and It is the only thing I need to face the fears that hinge on my doubts about who I Am in Truth, and my purpose relative to that identity. So my learning in this world is not about acquiring knowledge but is more a process of elimination or surrendering what is not true. When I let go of what I think I need or what I think I know, when I suspend effort, when I surrender my opinion, I find my home. Like Dorothy I can click my heals and forgive any time I choose, and in that instant I uncover the Truth that there is no place but home.

Surrendering to Truth is a simple process when I let it be simple…and I can generate a lot of drama when I don’t. We all know what it feels like to extend ourselves without feeling solid ground to extend from. It’s kind of like jumping on ice. We know it’s not a good idea but with every reasonable alternative buried in our fears, the only thing we can see to do is to get really busy building reasons to do it anyway. This is usually uncomfortable, sometimes it is terrifying, and it is always exhausting.

When I am able to look at the truth of It, my suffering never comes from outside of me. It always comes from my own decision to hold myself separate from the Love that I want, the Love that I need, the Love that I Am. So how do we find the way out of the bed we have made? From within a thought system that believes we need to do something to arrive at ourselves, the answer to that question quickly becomes immersed in grand plans to escape, strategies to win the war. When we are under the influence of doubt, we grab for the grand accomplishment that will reconcile our shame. Mother Theresa said there are no great acts, only small acts done with great Love. So we hear again It is not if we win or loose, It is only how we choose to play that creates our experience.

We cannot buy an experience. We cannot hand someone else our experience. We can only hold intention by intending, and wait for the truth to rise out of the ash. I can tell myself it is impossible to fall out of God’s Grace … and I must tell myself that every time I feel shame and guilt rise. People ask me how may times a week they should exercise, and the answer is you should exercise your demons every time and place they show up. Practice small acts with great love whenever you feel afraid. The perfect amount of times to tell myself that I am loved is relative to how many times I feel the influence of believing I am not. Some days are smoother than others and that is another opinion. So what I am interested in is remembering, every time I forget. What I am interested in is building a practice, in establishing a system that helps me remember. I am interested in spending less time swinging out over the ocean of shame and guilt that can open up when I leave my doubts unchecked. And to do that, I need a practice to help me stay awake.

Finding liberation from the patterns that seem to hold us prisoner is what we all say we are after. Experiencing real change requires a real change of mind and to do that we have to subject our plans to the fire of scrutiny and the simple and consistent commitment to surrender. Again, easier said than done but we must employ some form or practicing right action, of trusting our mind and our limbs to the movement of Love through Faith. And it is the experiences from this practice that will change our minds and transform our lives.

It is good to have a plan but whatever the plan; it is only the means to an end. When we arrive we do not continue to invest in the vehicle. It would be like flying to paradise and never getting off the plane. Even so, in this world where we believe we need to do something to be free, we cannot arrive at the end without the means.

It is impossible to think your way out of an insane thought system from within it. Given that, I depend on miracles, and they usually come in the form of my friends. So pick a plan, give it the intention of freedom (Peace of mind) and be honest about choosing your friends or honest about accepting the ones who are honestly contributing to the cultivation of real freedom.

It is essential to have friends to help you stay honest and while no body can do It for you, there have been countless songs and poems about the importance of friends. Nothing feels impossible in the company of friends. A trusted friend is the often the means to deliver an idea that would be dismissed out of hand. The miracle of forgiveness is just more possible to see and accept in the company of others who are sharing the intention to trust the wisdom inside of us, to trust the reality that We Are, together One Body.

A three-strand cord is not easily broken and two or more gathered is a powerful dynamic. The only real place we can join is around the Truth. This common unity is the source of strength and encouragement we need to ride straight into our established patterns of thinking. The music in class, the arrangement of the bikes, the design of the building and everything in it has been employed to encourage the movement of the breath in order to find a view inward to Our collective Wisdom.

The cycling classes at One Body can absolutely kick up the dust and It is really good to have friends to look to for encouragement when the dust of our objections is blurring our vision. When we find ourselves at the cross roads of faith and fear, the cross roads of staying calm and pulling up our feet, it is the miracle of trust that enables the miracle of Truth to choose for Us. It is the miracle of trust that allows us to stand and face the moment, no matter how hair raising, no matter how long it seems to drag on, no matter how extreme our objections become. Trust enables us to stay long enough to let the moment teach us what we cannot quite see yet in the face of our opinions and the established habits born of those opinions.

When I practice trusting that the Truth is absolutely living in me, I find the faith to surrender opinions rooted in fear. I find the faith to withdraw my investment in my best efforts and I find the trust needed to let the life I have built fall to dust, revealing the life that Love is intending for me to know. This all sounds pretty tidy and we have to go beyond theory to realize the gifts of practicing surrender. Sitting at the computer reading this, it all sounds like a great idea. What could be more simple- stay calm, trust, surrender and be happy.

What I know about challenging my conditioned mind, the surrender part, is that giving up my opinions is not without sensation. The lies do not go quietly and the experiences of testing my capacity to surrender them, is not typically an easy one. I can be quite attached to what I think I know, quite adamant about what I think will serve me. Sometimes it takes a real storm to loosen my grip on what I have decided. So I pray to be delivered and often find myself cursing the means that arrive to deliver me. So I pray for release, and before that I pray to know how to pray, and I pray for the acceptance to trust that I can hear the Truth if I listen, no matter how loudly my ego is objecting, and I pray to receive myself as a friend to my hearts intention.

In the land of relativity, big deception takes a big storm to bust it up. And you never know when the big storms will hit. Monday night’s ride felt like a fire storm for me (in a good way) and while I am writing now to bare witness, I am writing at the same time, to ask for your witness. It is something like looking around and asking if anyone saw That! The experience of our evolution can feel really big and it can be difficult not to try and defend against it without the help of our friends.

My practice is not about learning to work harder. I have been teaching movement classes for almost 30 years now and based on my experience with thousands of people, it has never occurred to me to coach anyone to try harder. On the contrary my teaching is aimed at finding the faith to trust something more than our efforts and the patterns associated with our decisions about what we think we need to be O.K. My practice is not about how hard can I work. Prizes for enduring pain and living to tell about it is not what I am seeking. Witness for how much I can endure will only serve my belief that my best hope is to learn how to endure. My practice is about examining my mind and challenging every unforgiving thought that is binding my body. My practice is about surrendering the burdens that tie me up so I can dance to the music of my heart. When I bare witness to this intention I find witness for this intention. The only way I know to feel the presence of what I am, is to look for it in everyone I see and keep looking until It is All I see. This is my hope, this is my vision.

As I was riding Monday night and felt the Spirit moving, so to speak, I marveled (once again) at the witness I find in each of you. Every time I felt my old patterns bracing to meet the challenges being presented, I found, through your company, a way to see past them. I was able to see another way represented in each of you and, through your company, I was able to locate the gentle strength to respond to the moment, as it arrived, with all the different rhythms -flying down hills and climbing mountains. It is a miracle to me to feel the presence of another way emerge, even in the middle of the swirling sensations that kick up when we test our bodies and minds. I am learning more about responding with ease by remembering I am not alone, that I cannot, in truth, be alone. I am always encouraged to see my friends witnessing the trust that carries us all past our ideas of separation into a fuller view of our One true Self.

I have had several of you drop me a line about what was happening for you during class. It is always helpful for me to hear from you. We build this practice together. Companionship makes the experience of personal transformation feel more possible. When I am inclining toward panic I find calm with the help of my friends. When I am feeling uninterested and starting to fall asleep, I find a reason to care with the help of my friends. It is good to have friends and it is priceless to be in community. We certainly do no thing alone and are never alone in experiencing the effects of our thinking. The honest intention that arrives each week for cycling class, for Gyrokinesis class and Gyrotonic sessions, are a gift of immeasurable value and I thank you for your presence and for your courage.

Miracles always feel like a surprise as they are outside of my conditioned thinking. Thankfully, my life is full of surprises. Class Monday night was (another) reminder of what is possible outside of accepted conditions.

I am aware of the challenge I am presenting in class, to you, as well as myself. I am aware of the intolerance I am demonstrating for mindlessness, in you, as well as myself. I am aware of the ways I am trimming the sails so to speak, and calling to you, in no uncertain terms, to be, and to be present, to be, and to be on time, to set clear intention for your self and take personal responsibility for that intention in the name of the human race, to let your tongue be still and your mind be clear. I am aware that without clear and unwavering intention, We cannot travel into the mind field of our conditioned thinking without becoming lost in it again. Priorities are essential, and while I am clear that I am not personally responsible for your experience, I am dedicated to offering all that I am in the name of sorting the wheat from the chaff. I am willing to be the voice that invites deeper consideration; I am intending to be an example for another possibility. I am teaching what I want to learn and I only know that every resentment I allow to live in my mind will choke out my joy. I am aware that less than complete intolerance for unforgiving opinions yields nothing in the name of my Happiness. And so I offer my intention in the form of my teaching and in the name of collective happiness.

Every time we gather, I am humbled by the collective response, including my own. Every time we gather in the name of health and happiness I am encouraged and delighted to witness the group take a pass on half measures and keep traveling inside to the real source of strength. The capacity to stay together by remembering we are absolutely together is so clearly demonstrated for me in the class dynamic. Witnessing this is an absolute miracle to me. It is a gift to me, a blessing to me, and to the world.

When we try to articulate the experience of opening our prejudice and letting the breath in, when we attempt to describe the events of transformation, we challenge the capacity of one of our primary modes of communicating- our language. And while the truth is living in us, our opinions are living there as well. Everything in us is woven into our words and we perpetuate what we think is true, every time we speak. Searching our minds with the intention to weed out the negative thoughts is the practice. And conscious living requires a dedicated practice. Seeking an understanding of the Truth in us, and seeking the capacity to describe that Truth perfectly and consistently through our words and actions, is the work.

And so we sign up for classes, and use the time in class to examine the thinking living in our minds. Together we invite the fire that cleans the dead wood off our words and clears the confusion hitching up our bodies. Through our practice together we allow the capacity to speak and act with Love to emerge and inspire us. Sometimes the practice feels like a forest fire, heating up our opinions and exposing the Truth by throwing a torch into our survival strategies. Practicing together is a bigger torch than I can muster on my own, and the fire we generate together is powerful and important. Much was burned off in class Monday and It is still smoldering for me physically and emotionally.

I am speaking the new words that are rising from the ash, repeating them to myself like a baby learning to speak. They have been washed clean with fire and sweat and the gathering of beautiful hearts seeking the plain truth about what it is to be alive. Together we learn that together, we find the rhythm to Live by, the Light to Love by, the Truth to hold us.

We all need loving witness as we move in this adventure of life... Monday’s class was a big experience for me. I am still feeling it, and I am thankful, for your presence, for your faith, and for your willingness to show up and trust what comes by trusting your capacity to meet It with patience, with certainty, with community, and ultimately and simply...with the Breath.

Your choice to respond instead of react, to reach in when you feel a need instead of grabbing outside yourselves, teaches me that all I need is a reminder of what is possible. I have found this phrase on my mind since Monday, peppered with images of each of your sweet and faithful faces...All for One and One For All! We go, and we go, together!

Practice until you know Peace and no thing else. I am riding along side you, grateful to look over and see you there. Bless this practice and may it bring Peace to Us All.

Pause For Peace

Our release will never come the way we think it will… Our release, will never come the way we think it will. At every turn, down and in, we find the choice to either surrender, or continue investing in our strategies to survive. Our search for salvation in a world that does not recognize reality yields us nothing real. In Truth, there is no real place to look outside ourselves or anything real to find, because in Truth, all that is, is contained within us. We are complete, and so have no real need to seek any thing except a recollection of what is true. This recollection will simply rise in our minds every time we allow it to. Practicing forgiveness and forgetting our worries we remember who we are and welcome ourselves to happiness.

A good practice helps correct errors in thinking and brings new perspective by unlocking prejudices. If we are willing to look, there is always an alternative to suffering. A good practice keeps us conscious and reminds us we can pause, and consider our real choices, when fear appears to be taking hold.

A dedicated practice keeps our aim accurate. It may not be glamorous, and it must be consistent. And even with dedicated practice, direct experiences with Truth, or revelation, usually come only after we simply cannot run any more. Most of us need to directly experience the failure of our own best efforts to finally accept their incapacity to guide us. When we have finally lost hope in our way and are genuinely and humbly ready to hear, we will listen. To hear, we must stop… and listen.

The idea that we must work to arrive at ourselves, keeps us busy searching, like fish searching for the water they are swimming in. In Truth, the Happiness we seek, waits without opinion for us to come Home. And our arrival Home will never come through the efforts of our intellect. It will come through our capacity to trust, and our willingness to surrender our ideas of what we think we need, so we can begin to listen for what Is instead.

It is surrender that will slip us past our plans to search. And practicing surrender will eventually carry us all the way into the Mind of Peace. Along the imagined road Home, we will only ever meet our own resistance in the form of our fear. These forms will stand like sentinels at every turn, intending to do the only thing they can do to keep us from our Home. They will stand with one intention-to inhibit the act of Trust which is surrender, by frightening us into holding ourselves away from the Breath.

Since there is no thing to fear in Truth, no fear can create a real reason to be afraid. Fear can only create a lapse in consciousness, where we forget there is nothing to fear and react to this momentary insanity by holding the breath. Fear perpetuates the fear that we could be other than We Are but no thing can impose on our freedom to change our minds, even when we feel afraid. To turn our minds toward Home again, we only need an awareness that what we have been choosing instead is causing our dis-ease. When we slow down we can can see what our real choices are, and choose Happiness. When we are calm, the breath can easily move us according to that choice. Holding the breath is an act of denying who we are in Truth, and creates the fearful world we become so occupied with escaping.

The good news is that we can practice and learn, that when we are afraid, we can slow ourselves down and recognize there is another choice. We can begin to see by practicing trust in something other than our plans to escape. We can trust and choose to breathe, even when our fears appear to be holding a knife to our throat. If we slow down and allow the breath to move in us despite our fearful inclination to hold it… we can begin to break the cycle of thinking that does not serve our happiness.

Slowing our thinking enough to pause, locates the courage we need to stand in the face of fear. Seemingly small and infinitely powerful, the pause is the David to our imagined Goliaths. Even the tiniest of pauses will give us a view outside of our fearful opinions. Finding the means to see the Truth is a miracle and the pause is a vehicle to deliver miracles. Used consistently, the pause will deliver us to the Trust we need to surrender the life we have made, for the Life that We Are. Practiced consistently, the pause will offer correction by returning us into the wisdom of the Breath.

As we practice trust, our capacity to Trust will grow and become stronger. Through consistent practice, we will become more confident in peacefully resisting our fearful opinions. I don’t know if it ever gets easier, and I do know that as I build and maintain a daily practice intended to keep my focus on trusting the Wisdom living in me, I become less inclined to turn away from Myself. And this is my Hope.

We build a practice to support our trust in a new way, until we realize completely that Love, in every instance, is the only way, Forgiveness, in every instance, is all that is needed to see things differently. We may never feel like we are hitting homeruns in our daily practice. Our experience of meditating may feel pretty ordinary and uneventful. But when it is accurately and honestly aimed, and humbly and consistently engaged in, we will begin to see its effect on our words and actions. We will begin to see our lives changing. Determining if a practice is genuinely serving to steer our minds toward Peace, we can look to see if our words and actions are serving Peace.

It is said that talk is cheap. We can say anything…and, our actions will always confirm what we believe is true. So the words are the most of it, and the words are the least of It, at the same time. We will not find ourselves because of what we say, but what we say will certainly name who we think we are. And who we think we are defines our practice, our experience, our life. A conscious practice will help us become more honest. Through honesty we find the way out of conflict and confusion. Honesty will bring our words and actions in perfect alignment with our heart. This balance is our home in Peace.

Practice Peace today and remember who you are. Use the pause and breathe. Keep your pockets full of loving words for yourself and everyone who needs them. Keep an eye out for less than loving thoughts and simply, and consistently, refuse to lend your tongue to them. Liberate your body from the shameful acts of a frightened mind.

You don’t need anything except to remember. When you forget and become uneasy, pause, and be determined to listen for the song of Truth. It is always playing. Choose to listen to It instead and let It replace the old tape that fear is playing in your head.

Practice Peace and find Peace arrive before you and behind you. Pause and see Peace standing at your left and standing at your right. Trust and welcome Peace as it fills the sky above you and saturates the ground below you. Trust, surrender, and feel Peace living in you, and in your surroundings. Offer Peace in response to everyone and everything you meet each moment and fill the Universe with the Peace that You are so you may know It and no thing else.

Bless

The experience of Truth

The experience of Truth comes through dedication, patience, and persistance. The way to Truth does not come without conscious intention as well as dedicated and consistent practice. My teaching and learning at One Body is my practice. I am using It to realize Peace of mind. I welcome All who are called to come and teach and learn with me. All that is required is your willingness to evolve.

My teaching and learning at One Body are all a part of my practice. I give everything in my life the purpose it has for me. And the purpose I give my practice, is to realize Peace of mind. I use my practice to learn and keep my mind tuned to that intention. It is not a matter of if my mind strays. The real consideration is, what do I have in place to balance myself when it does. I have to ask myself consistently-what purpose am I giving my practice?

I have studied many modalities in my life all with the aim of staying directed at Peace of mind, each one leading to an understanding of the connection between movement and breath, each one ultimately leading to a complete understanding that they are, in Truth, the same Thing. Realizing and allowing this communion to express itself in us and through us, is the means to a happy life. You can and will use anything and everythign to serve your intention. If you want to be happy, you have to practice keeping your mind aimed at happiness.

The world is full of everything and there are many forms available to design a personal awareness practice. Juliu Horvath’s Gyrotonic Expansion system is one such form. The tools in this system are abundant and offer seemingly endless opportunities to explore and evolve. I am have been using the tools of this system for years and it has continued to support my practice in an important way.

The new Gyrokinesis formats are the latest version in the evolution of Juliu’s mapping his understanding of effective alignment and movement, and his translation of that understanding into a form to find and maitain balance. The new shorter format was developed in direct response to the need for a hour class. In the 60 minute format, Juliu has lent his experience to the realities of the field where the work was living. Most trainers were giving feed back that they did not have more than 60 minutes to offer class. This shorter format answers this need. It is an accurate modification of the old formats for use when only an hour is available. All the same pieces are there as all the pieces are valid. For me, Gyrokinesis is the engine of the Gyrotonic System. Juliu has rebuilt the engine for more effeciency and effectiveness.

The new formats feel fresh and alive, a return to the basics but with an alertless, a clarity of intention that can only come from a body of experience. It is a blessing to have the creator of this work still so active and committed to keeping the work responsive to the needs of the people he sees using it without watering down the intention.

The experience of Truth comes through dedication, patience, and persistance. The way to Truth does not come without conscious intention and dedicated and consistent practice. My teaching and learning at One Body is my practice. I am using It to realize Peace of mind. I welcome All who are called to come to teach and learn with me.

I look forward to continued explorations in Conscious movement.

Surrender-A Perspective

This practice, our lives, is how (and where) we seek to release our demands on the moment. Our practice is how we seek to be released from our ideas of achievement. It is how we seek to be released from the limited perspective we are using to interpret the dream we think we are seeing and find The Last Dream at the end of all dreams moving at last… and forever… into complete Peace of Mind.

Our judgments must be surrendered again and again and again and after that...again, into the hands of Wisdom. When we give everything we do or say the purpose of locating genuine happiness, time will be able to show us what we are not seeing now. When we offer everything we do or say to the Wisdom that directs us to our Peace of Mind, time will finally be able to show us that if we are not experiencing Joy, it is only because we are not able to see what is Now. And the only thing that can block the experience of our Happiness, is our demand on the moment.

An honest practice humbly aimed at Truth, is simple and patient. We may not make spiritual home runs, we may not have Oprah coming to ask us how we did it, but if we remember the whole world is watching and the whole world is learning from everything we say and do, we can choose to release our demands on the moment, and listen. When we listen, we can learn about Happiness, instead of how to try harder.

Our practice delivers us to what ever we have our hearts aimed at.

A heart aimed at Happiness requires us to surrender our agenda and trust what comes. All the words and actions aimed at our ideas of success will sabotage real Happiness. We may think we are getting somewhere and invest our energy in capitalizing on some sense of gain, when we are actually shooting the means to our happiness, right in the foot.

Our fears operate on the belief that we need to take care of ourselves and to do so we need to get something. This willfulness is satisfied through our imagined ideas of achieving success according to our fears. The achievements that satisfy our fears come in a million colors and shapes and they are all a carrot on the end of a stick. This willfulness generates constant demands on the moment and continually feeds the fearful need to control what is happening.

We can get excited when we think we are coming very close to actually getting our hands on a carrot. When we feel we are finally on to something, we can let enthusiasm for the idea of gain run rough shot over our Peace. We can let our fear driven ambition block the Son of our Trust in something larger than our small idea of ourselves. Under the influence of fear we must strive and then try to imagine happiness coming through our striving. And when we stumble upon some form of what we think is going to take care of us, we can be blinded and walk right past the hand that will truly feed us. When we find ourselves engaged in trying to get ahead, we must pause and surrender our efforts into the hands of our faith in what we are not able to see because we are so busy striving.

It is our fear that we are lost from God that destroys our Peace of Mind. It is our sense of being lost that makes us strive to find Peace when in Truth, it has already been given to us. And it is our idea of needing to get somewhere that generates our demands on the moment. While we are still in doubt about what we truly need, we will keep pouring our energy into our plans for survival. It is the act of striving that denies the fact that we are, in fact, in essence, the very Peace we seek.

In survival mode, everyone is seen as either for us or against us. Surrounded by enemies, we cannot find the company that blesses us and reminds us we are blessed. We cannot find the enlightenment that will release us from our struggling.

Money and position unto themselves will not answer our whole heart, yet all the money that comes to us, and moves through us can be given the purpose of serving true happiness, but not without trust. We must trust the moment. We must let It come, and let It go with our blessing. We must learn and trust that money will come, and it will go. Relationships will keep changing, and the Love will stay the same.

When we receive and trust everything that arrives in the moment and bless It as it goes it’s way, we locate the way to live in Peace. We only need to watch for our inclination to strive, and let our practice calm the fear that spurs that inclination. Our practice can help keep us aware that we can always take comfort because comfort is always being offered through forgiveness. We can let Love carry Us along the Way instead of fearfully working our agendas.

Surrender your demands on the moment. Surrender your ideas of what you think you need, of what you think should come next, of what you think others, enlightened teachers, or bumbling dunces (as you name them-so you name yourself) are doing to you, or for you. Stay awake, notice when you are not happy, when you are not relaxed… pause…trust…and listen. Return to the moment in front of you with as much humility as possible and let yourself dance with the moment and all it has carried to you, without expectation, without judgment.

Every time you look back at the dream you call your life and see, in hindsight, you had the choice to trust in every instant were you choose to worry and manipulate. You can look back and see it was not exactly fun trying to control everything, and it is tiring seeing everything as an attack because of your doubts.

Everything teaches. You will come to the lessons you need, and you will listen, or you will not, until you do. Keep in mind that the most powerful addiction in this world, in my opinion, is the addiction to spiritual experiences. These are sometimes the hardest to surrender into the hands of Widsom. And so you must, in the name of the Peace that you seek, faithfully and patiently, surrender it all… and keep surrendering.

Through practice, you will eventually see, and feel real ground to stand on, real ground to live on. Trust that every other is doing what they know to do, and bless them, nothing more is needed. In doing so, you find all the blessing you need.

Are your actions humble and simple?

Are you working to get somewhere?

Are you seeing even those you call beloved, those you call your teachers in this world, as a way to get a leg up, or a way to let your legs be still and find more faith instead?

There is no place to get to in this world. Striving is a vicious cycle and you will burn down your road to freedom with your own ambitions.

Who would like to be completely Happy?

Who would like to be permanently on vacation from worry?

Who would like to awaken each morning with their hands faithfully open to the day and all it brings, trusting that everything needed is present, trusting that everything happening is in the perfect order of Love?

Releasing our demands on the moment according to our fearful striving will deliver us from the war of fighting for what can never be true. Dropping our judgments and the perspective that tells us we need something other than what is, will uncover the path out of Hell.

In the name of Happiness, seek to be free and you will find the means arrive. Trust and let these means be built into your life, into your practice. Let your practice support you as you release your demands. Let it support you as you release your doubts, and deposit your life into the hands of Love.

Until we surrender our ideas of time-It will appear to take a long time. Surrender this idea as well and breathe… Ask for patience in the name of Happiness and listen. Open to receive the answer to every question you feel you are holding through your listening and let them all melt into a single request for the Peace that has already been given to you. Let your listening be a call number to pick up your Peace of Mind at last and forever! Your practice amplifies my own. I am so thankful for your company.

Blessings

meg