Cristen Rodgers's Blog, page 18

The Windows of the Soul

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Recognizing beauty is as much about the eyes that look as it is about what they are looking at.

We peer into the world through the windows of our souls – and covering those windows like sheer curtains are all of our beliefs, our expectations, and our assumptions about what we’re looking at.  This semi-translucent veil colors and distorts our view just subtly enough that we don’t tend to notice its influence.  Hanging between the world as it truly is and the world as we think it is, it glosses over all of the complexities, the nuances, and the depth that make things what they are.  Without these characteristics, what we see is just blurred enough to seem periphery, while our beliefs themselves take the center stage.

When we dare to challenge our beliefs, we pull that curtain back and the unfiltered light of reality begins to shine upon us.  If we go through life with an open mind and we are courageous enough to check our assumptions and to let go of the ideas that no longer serve us, then pulling back that veil is a freeing experience.  It leaves us refreshed and invigorated, like we just did spring cleaning in the dusty corners of our minds.  But if we have allowed that curtain to grow thick with too many layers and heavy with the dust of inattention, the sudden light of unfiltered reality can seem too bright and we will be tempted to close our eyes to its truth.

No matter how blinding that first glimpse may be, however, it is well worth the time it takes to adjust to the brightness.

Once the veil of pre-conceived notions is pulled away, the whole world is transformed and suddenly everything comes to life.  Every wildflower and cloud, every smile and breeze is vivid, crisp, tangible, and exciting.  The world is ripe with inspiration and overflowing with energy, breathtakingly beautiful.  What before seemed mundane suddenly appears magical.  Where once there was only darkness there are glimmers of light reflecting hope like glimmering dewdrops in a deep forest.  The fogginess of belief dissipates and in its place are all of the complexities that make everyone unique, everything special, and every moment irreplaceable.

All it takes is a little bit of courage to pull back that curtain and peer into the brightness for our view of the world to be renewed – and with that renewed vision, we become new as well.

 

© 2016 Cristen Rodgers

For more of my work, visit cristenrodgers.com

The Architects of Love

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We are all on the same journey.  Though we move at different paces as we make our way across varied landscapes, we all must take the same steps.  And what every traveler eventually discovers is that these many steps aren’t carrying us forward but inward, farther into ourselves to discover the secret of who we really are and what exactly that means.  It could be said that the spiritual journey is cloaked not only in mystery but also in irony, for it is often the desire to become that leads us on a long, spiral-like journey to discover that all we had to do was learn what it means to be.

It’s for this reason that each person must follow their own route, and why no one person can show another when and where to walk.  The path is invisible to all but the one who walks it; and the process is the most deeply personal one that this life has to offer – developing and nurturing an intimate communion between one’s own mind, body, and soul.  It’s as subjective as a thought, as unique as a smile, and as transcendent as a spirit.

The deeply personal, inimitable nature of the spiritual journey is what always leads teachers and healers to the same conclusion: that the highest calling is the humblest act.

It is simply to love.

Perhaps the job of the teacher isn’t to be a guide so much as it is to be an architect.  Maybe our noblest endeavor is to build a cocoon for the soon-to-be butterflies of the world.  In this cocoon of love and acceptance, they need not waste their precious energy worrying over, doubting, and trying to hide who they are – instead, they can focus that energy on who they may yet become.

The longer that I walk my own path, the more I believe that it isn’t about pointing the way; nor is it about pointing out flaws.  It isn’t about pointing at all.  It’s more about letting people know that the path is within them and that it’s okay to look in there – that if they walk through their shadows they will discover that their own light is waiting just on the other side.

And the best way to teach someone not to fear their own shadow?  It is to show them that we aren’t afraid of it ourselves.  This means that we do not judge one another, for judgement is nothing more than an expression of fear.

True change doesn’t happen from the outside in but from the inside out; we must love and appreciate the caterpillar for who she is, without criticism, so that she might accept herself enough to venture in there and get to work.

Let’s aspire to become the architects of love.  Let’s resolve to build a community that allows and encourages people to be who they already are so that they can – in their own time and their own ways – learn what it means to become all that they can.

 

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

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For more information, visit cristenrodgers.com

 

Authentic Giving

Perhaps the greatest gift you could ever give to the world is the gift of your authentic self. When you give of your true, unfiltered nature, you pierce the barrier that separates us – and through this piercing, energy begins to flow freely and unchanged.  Your soul leaks out into your work, where it then tantalizes other souls, calling them to do the same.  When you give of your true self, the spirit within, the light that dims for no one, the gifts that are yours alone, you give to the world your genuine, natural beauty – the kind of raw, uncompromising beauty that can only be found wrapped up in imperfections and vulnerabilities.  Only with this kind of complete openness can pure, undiluted, unrestricted energy be exchanged.  It is where love and creativity are born; it is the place of infinite possibilities and uncompromising passion.  What gift could ever be more precious than that?

 

©2015 Cristen Rodgers

Don’t forget to leave your comments below and to see more of my work, visit my website at cristenrodgers.com

 

Listening to the Sound of Silence

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In a deep and untamed forest, there is both tranquil silence and the roaring sound of life.  Which one you notice depends entirely upon where you are coming from.  If you wander into the forest after a commute in rush hour traffic, the first thing you probably notice is the deep, soothing quiet.   But, if you have spent the entire afternoon wandering through it, it’s not quiet that you hear.  It’s a whole symphony of sound.  There are birds singing and squirrels jumping; water trickling and leaves rustling.   .

In much the same way, we too are simultaneously deep wells of stillness and brimming with mental chatter.  Deeper still, we are in a peaceful but not silent place where the wind whispers secrets as it brushes past us.   Which of these truths we experience depends upon where our attention has been focused.

In the forefront of our awareness there is the mental noise.  It is the endless and often times pointless clamor, much like the honking horns, squealing tires, and roar of rush hour.   The boisterous sound of the mind demands our attention but rarely benefits us; we consider it much more important than it actually is.  We consciously follow the trains of thought as they twist, turn, and crash into one another.  But they never actually reach a destination because the mind will switch from one side of an argument to another and then back again; anything so long as it can keep on making noise.

Once we become aware of this noise, we have stepped into the place behind our thoughts.   Here we can find peace and rest because we have rediscovered our true self; the being that observes the thoughts.   No longer are we lost within them, where the speaker is ruled by her voice.   We have taken back control and wrapped ourselves in silence, tranquility, and calm.  This is the deep breath of relief after we take our first steps into the forest, the moment when we notice the deep stillness and bathe in the quiet.

The longer that we remain fixed in this deeper state of awareness and the more that we lean into the arms of that calm, the more that the curtain of silence lifts and we begin to hear the sounds within it, much like the sounds of life within the forest will slowly become apparent the longer that we are in it.   When this happens, we have sat down in the seat of our soul, controlled by nothing but aware of everything.

This place of true communion is where the real work happens; it’s where questions that we didn’t even know we had are answered.  The only sound is the whispers of spirit.  They are subtle but engaging, gentle but compelling.  Once we hear them we are rapt because they are not just beautiful; they have meaning and purpose.

The center of our being, where these gentle whispers float by, is so unlike the roar of the mind.  We feel safe, loved, and at once exalted yet humbled.  It is the home of deeper truths and a place that we would do well to visit as often as we can remember.

When you start to feel uncomfortable, or you feel yourself being pulled down into lower vibrational feelings, take a virtual trip to the forest.  Ask yourself where your attention has been and give yourself the time to hear the soft buzz of life in the forest.  In doing this, you can continue on confident that you are where you should be and you are going where you are meant to.  In doing this, you have everything you need to put the brakes on that thought train, at least for a while, and just enjoy the simple sound of silence.

©2015 Cristen Rodgers

Leave your comments below and don’t forget to subscribe for email post updates.  For more of my work, visit cristenrodgers.com

Web of Life

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There is a pattern of sequence in everything, tying our worlds together.  It’s easy to miss because of its translucence, much like a spider web that, even when right in front of you, can only be seen when it catches the sun in just the right way.  Only when you become spiritually aware will you be able to illuminate these webs and see the connections.   But once you do see it, you will never again be able to overlook it.  You will never forget the way that every last strand gently vibrates across the entire web when you touch just one little corner.  It inspires both a sense of humility and of power that will stay with you forever.  The beauty, the passion, and the magic of true awareness is overwhelming, but you cannot look away – because suddenly seeing something so intricate where before you saw nothing is the kind of miracle that will stay with you forever, changing everything about how you see the world and how you see yourself in it.

©2015 Cristen Rodgers

What the Raccoon Taught Me

We have some furry little friends for neighbors, a whole family of raccoons.  I call them friends, but really we have been battling it out for a while over who has rights to the contents of my trash can.  In the end I won, as I was finally forced to move the can inside the garage.  But I didn’t win that fight without learning something valuable in the process.

Raccoons are pretty smart little animals.  No matter what I did, they would eventually find a way around it.   It turns out that they are just as ingenuous in the forest as they are with my trash can.   The last time that I had to rummage through the trees to reclaim the articles of trash that they so kindly dispersed across my front yard and through the adjoining forest, I noticed that they had dug a sort of rut in the earth from their constant trek to and from my trash can.  While it may or may not have been intentional, that rut in the ground must have made their travels a lot easier.  The more that they traveled it, the deeper that it got, keeping surrounding brush and overgrown weeds out of their way.  They had created for themselves a little highway through the woods.

While I was walking around this raccoon freeway and muttering some very expressive words under my breath, I realized that I was at that very moment traveling along my own little rut, but a rut in my mind.  The more that I pursued this train of thought, the more I realized that this must be true for all of us and that, if we aren’t careful, we might never explore the rest of the forest because the rut we’ve dug is just a little bit too deep.

I remember being absolutely fascinated in my psychology class when I learned about the way that we create neuronets in our brains, these networks of wired associations that are built from repetitive use.  And that is exactly what this idea of a mental rut is; it’s a certain way of thinking that we maintain because it’s easy.  And it’s easy because we’ve been doing it for so long.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s what’s best, or even what’s good for us.

I think that escaping these mental ruts might be one of the most difficult but also the most rewarding things that we can do in life.  After all, what do we experience in life that isn’t somehow filtered through our minds?  So if we are stuck in a certain way of thinking, then we must also be stuck in a certain way of experiencing.   Thus, breaking out of a mental rut is like stepping into a new world; we still experience all of the same things but in a different way that makes it all seem new again.

In that moment of frustration over the raccoons’ love of littering, the frustration itself was what made me realize that I was stuck in a rut.  We can tell by the way that we feel whether we are experiencing something as the opportunity it is, or in a way that we are used to because it’s what we’ve always done.  In that moment, I was surrounded by beautiful trees and had the warmth of the sun on my back.  I was getting exercise and had birds singing overhead.  But all I could think about was how pissed off I was at a family of furry animals who, although I was tempted to think otherwise, meant nothing personal against me or my front yard.

So, the raccoons that I started the day despising actually helped me change my way of thinking and let go of the tendency to interpret my experiences out of habit.   When I, later in the day, sat down for my daily meditation, I took a brief moment to thank those raccoons for their wisdom and for helping me step out of the rut that I was in to see the trees, feel the sun, and hear the birds once again.

©2015 Cristen Rodgers

Beyond the Veil

I invite you to come with me as I venture beyond the veil.

Together we can tear through the gauzy mirage that separates us from one another and from God. Perhaps at first our steps will be tentative, as we get our first glimpses of naked reality, with all of its pretenses and illusions stripped away. But surely with time we will grow courageous enough to tear that veil completely down and dance across the field of energy that stretches before us.

Let’s explore the world as it truly is, free from the illusion of separation, of limitation, and of fear. We can peek at the ripples and waves that we create as we move and dance and sing within this infinite ocean of possibility. At least for a little while, we can step away from our limiting beliefs and look upon the many faces of God; and maybe, just maybe, it will help us remember that we too are one of them.

Come with me, my friend, and together we can go beyond the veil.

©2015 Cristen Rodgers

Synchronicity

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Beat by beat, we each move to the unique rhythm of our souls, following the song in our hearts.  We spin and glide across the dance floor of the universe, flowing into and back out of one another’s steps.  We dance in groups and then in solitude.  We switch partners and we change speeds.  At times we become so lost in the flow, so comfortable with our rhythm, that we seem to float above the floor.  At others we stumble, our music stutters, and sometimes we even fall.  But even among all of this movement, there is a kind of synchronicity.  Even when our dances and our songs are at odds, when we bump into one another or we abruptly change rhythm, everything seems to flow.  It all comes together, and even the missteps begin to seem as if they are part of a larger dance.  It’s as if somehow, it were all choreographed from the start and, if only we could see it from somewhere way up high, it would be the most exquisite, most extraordinarily beautiful and perfectly synchronized work of art that any human eye has ever seen.

©2016 Cristen Rodgers

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Hollow Words

 

Image: Projection Lauren by cbanck on Flickr

Whoever said that words without action are hollow must never have become lost, drifting on the current of a captivating book. I imagine that they have never had to re-structure themselves after melting into formlessness from the heat of a poem’s fire. They must not know what it is to bleed ink upon a piece of blank paper until all the pressure within has eased enough that their heart can resume its beating.  Words are not something that precedes action.  They are action.  They live and breathe and it may even be true that their lives and influence far exceed that of other human actions.  A word could never be hollow because a word contains the soul of the writer, it reflects the perception of the reader, and it holds a moment in its form, its sound, and its meaning that may otherwise disappear, lost forever to the passage of time.

©2015 Cristen Rodgers

The Final Breath

New Year’s eve is upon us.  In many ways, it’s a day like any other.  It is another stitch in the fabric of our lives.  What makes today so significant isn’t that number on the calendar.  It’s the way that it makes us stop and think, the way it reminds us to look up from the counting of threads and take good a look at what design we’ve been stitching.  This night is a brief moment in time where the world, almost at once, finally pauses to catch their breath.  And during this brief pause, everyone shakes off the fogginess and looks out upon the fabric that spreads behind, before, and all around us.  We take this rare opportunity to appreciate the elaborate tapestry that has unfolded as a result of our many different weaves coming together.

This is a time of reorientation.

Tonight we stand along the shoreline of our own consciousness and we watch as the sun sets on the year that stretches behind us.  We gaze at the empty sky that this setting sun leaves behind.  We bid that now empty space a final farewell as it slowly dwindles from view with the fading light.  And in those last moments of remaining light, as the past year begins to wane, dropping ever lower on the horizon, we release our pains, we forgive our failures, and we inwardly smile in remembrance of the beauties, the loves, and the joys.

Just before that light completely disappears, we breathe out the last of what was, what could have been, and what never was.  For the briefest and most surreal of moments, we stand breathless – all has been released but no breath has yet taken its place.

And then we inhale.  All together.  We take in the breath of new life, of new possibilities, of new hopes and dreams.  The new year breaks.

For a precious little stretch of time, at once fleeting and eternal, we simultaneously experience what it is to be here and to live now.  And that’s what makes this night so very special.  For this one night, everyone comes together to recognize the power of NOW.  We all wipe the sleep from our eyes and we see clearly.  We see how all of the beauty we crave is right here, and how everything is happening right now.  All together we awaken from the illusions of yesterday and tomorrow, and for a moment we are alive with the energy of being awake today.

And then we dance.  We sing and we celebrate.  We kiss.  We rejoice because we remember that this is where the real magic happens, in the eternal present moment.

As we watch the sun set tonight and we exhale all that has gone away, and as we glimpse the first rays of the coming dawn and we prepare to inhale the first breath of our new year, let’s remember what we’re really celebrating.  Let’s remember that it’s not the falling of a burned out sun, nor is it the rising of a new ball of flame that incites our passions on this night.  It’s the realization that we are alive, we are in this moment, we exist here and now – that the magic of New Year’s is truly the magic of every moment, of every breath, of every sunrise and sunset.

And all we ever need to reignite that same thunder and lightning that erupts around us in so many forms tonight is to remember what tonight we are so blessed to see.  That yesterday is gone, that tomorrow is unknown, but that no matter what we will always have the possibility of today.