Author Archive | Michael

Sanity is a spectrum.

Sanity is a spectrum.  And the degree to which I am insane is the degree to which I forget how utterly conditioned and entirely made up my beliefs and perceptions are in any moment, allowing me to slip into believing my ego-based thoughts as some insightful truth or ultimate reality.  Whoopsy.  When I’m sane, or at least more sane, I’m more awake to a radical sense of humility and the essential need to create deep understanding about anything only through the superior intelligence of my heart.

So it’s all funny, sad, ignorant and dangerous to think of ourselves as sane just because we don’t see ourselves as bat-shit crazy.

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To think you know someone is to risk objectifying them

We can never ever truly know anyone – friends, wives or husbands, strangers, parents, or even your own children… unless we make the space and have the humility to connect to who they are… in the moment.

To think you know someone is to risk objectifying them.

Our preconceived ideas of them often easily morph into projections. I’ve done this a million times, righteously missing some key piece of who someone really is, and thus missing some immense beauty about them. I gotta surrender some of my fear-based BS to follow my heart and focus solely on having a loving understanding.

We are all consciousness evolving, and so who you were this morning is in someway different from who you are now. To truly know you is to relate to who you are in this very moment.

The same goes for ourselves. We can as easily objectify ourselves when we lack the space to check in deeply with our hearts. All else is akin to living in autopilot.

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When an interaction lacks humility….

The degree to which I lack humility is the same exact degree I separate myself from others.

This is also to say that when humility is lacking, it is often out of fear – we are striving to maintain our identity and position, from the belief that such control keeps us more safe in our experience of life.  Considering our childhoods, this makes sense, as it seemed that the only way to survive emotionally at times was to become good, right, special, better than, impenetrable, etc.  

True connection is created when we can meet another person in their heart… safely, without trying to change them, or get them to have a certain desired opinion of us.  When we let our guard down, let go of our strategies, and see each other as simply human, wherever we are at in our individual process of awakening, we create space.  We close the gap between delusion and truth, disconnection and connection, fear and love, separation and an intimate unification.  Even if the other maintains separation from us due to where they are in their need to have that space, we do our part in moving towards connection with them, and most certainly with ourselves.

 

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What unconditional love asks of you

Loving unconditionally is not nearly as easy to embody as many believe it is – because it calls for your complete and total annihilation.

It will require of you to leave behind your beliefs, needs, conditionings, peripheral feelings, ideas, projections, and every single last fraying thread of desire to change anything about that being that you are loving.

When you are there, except for humility, acceptance, love and liberation, there will be utterly nothing else left of you.

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The exquisite beauty underneath reactivity

If we think about the sheer number of times when we were children that we perceived – on a daily basis, that we weren’t being positively received by others, we can then get a better idea of how our nervous system (and mind) became conditioned to vigilantly scan if we are being accepted or even potentially rejected… right up to this moment.

I didn’t experience much social inclusion until I was about 13, which was pretty brutal. And I’m realizing more and more the nature of my own mind chatter, and how it relates specifically to this fight-or-flight reactivity as a child.

We all want to be loved and safe, of course. And this makes us incredibly vulnerable. For me, understanding the exquisite beauty in this vast humility is primarily what has enabled me to unconditionally love myself and others.  Ultimately, I believe, it is only through listening deeply and lovingly to the vulnerabilities of ourselves and others that we can each begin to truly learn how to fully give and receive love in any relationship.  And if we are not seeing another’s vulnerability, we are likely caught up in the more superficial layers of either their defenses or our own projections – both born from this same kind of protective strategy I mentioned above.

I’m not writing this for “likes” or affirming comments, yet the wounded part will still be looking for it… even as I lovingly call it back into my heart.

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Embodied Listening

Feeling is embodied listening.  When I don’t slow down enough to feel, or feel deeply enough into my body or heart, I always – always… seem to miss some essential and helpful doorway that will lead to more ease, flow, compassion and connection. My mind loves to believe it knows what to do, when my body is already there, waiting for me.

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Vulnerability

Every single one of us, ultimately, is vulnerable and fragile… because we all want to be safe and loved. Our humble acceptance of and surrender to this reality is intrinsically tied to the personal experience of our own beauty.

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The 3 questions to ask when experiencing pain

When I am facing pain and challenge, and utter these questions deeply in my heart: What in me is getting triggered by this? What is in the way of me loving this? How is this experience my greatest teacher? – I find my way home with more grace, humility and gratitude.

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