“He not busy being born is busy dying.”— Bob Dylan
Anyone alive today is being given the opportunity to live in historical, planetary shaking times. From my perspective to be alive now and do more than survive, rather thrive, requires mastery. Mastery of what? Consciousness. A mentor decades ago told me that it was essential to take dominion of our own consciousness. In these uncertain times where so many structures we have used to organize our lives are collapsing, it is even more essential.
Thirty years ago, I was at my sister’s wedding having just returned from traveling around the world and living in other countries for five years. My Aunt, a Rhode Island Senator at the time, asked me if she dared mention the “J word, J. O. B.” The question stopped me in my tracks.
Part of the reason I had stayed out of the country for so long was I had come to realize I simply did not fit with prevailing values and definitions of success. The lives I saw most living made no sense to me. Since everyone seemed to be able to cope, I was convinced there was something wrong with me. I went traveling around the world with the young person’s aim to find myself. And I did.
Not then, not really until now. Yet what I did discover then was a way to write my own definition of success, my own values and guidelines for living. I decided there and then my job was the Joy of Being.
I have always resonated more with being than doing. “A Course of Love” tells us this is the new paradigm being birthed on the planet now, the Way of Mary, the way of relationship and being.
The key way I see this playing out in the collective now is through where the mass media chooses to direct our attention — to fear and separation. I used to find that infuriating. Now I can go meta and see it is painting the choice ever more clearly in black and white. Will we continue to choose fear and ever widening gaps of separation or will we choose only love, choose only joy?
Despite having the intention to live in and as joy, my intention remained primarily idealistic until about three years ago when on New Year’s Eve I again anted up with renewed inspiration and motivation. I would choose joy.
I received powerful and bizarre instruction on the winter solstice prior to making that choice. I received internal instructions to lay naked on some rocks on my very isolated rural property. Yet, as you can imagine, I protested. No way! It’s cold! The instructions were so insistent and explicit, I complied. And thus began a continuing journey of grounding.
Prior to that I saw in myself and in many spiritual people an inability or unwillingness to ground into the human experience, to embody. Many teachings lead to serious disassociation and ungrounding, furthering trauma. To deliberately choose to ground and embody on this planet with this current level of density, especially if like me you are very sensitive, is what I would call heroic. To understand that truthfully, we are not a body yet for now we do inhabit one, paradox.
Yet here is where the twist comes in. I have been studying energy for twenty years ever since helping edit a book by local author Luis Diaz called “Memory in the Cells.” It has helped me gain mastery over a previous lifetime of anxiety and overwhelm, often greatly overstimulated due to sensitivity to energy. I now consider this sensitivity one of my greatest gifts.
Back to joy. If one is aware of and understands how energy and consciousness work, it is blatantly clear how thoughts, beliefs, and where we place our attention are constantly creating. If we keep our attention on world events, in ways we are divided into supposedly conflicting groups, we will continue to create anxiety, fear, disease, conflict, chaos and broken relationships.
I am reading a book called “The Power of the Subconscious Mind” by Joseph Murphy. Like the classic “Think and Grow Rich,” it trains us to real eyes how every single thought, every single emotion is imprinted in the subconscious and thus has creative energy that will manifest in the form of y/our world. So it SERIOUSLY behooves us to be aware of where our attention is. Where attention goes, energy flows.
To even make this choice, one has to clear the obstacles to love otherwise known as doing shadow work, clearing inner trauma. We can also deliberately start our day with gratitude, daily count the things that bring us joy. When I started a gratitude practice years ago, I also trained my young daughter to focus daily on gratitude. I then started including listing 10 things I enjoyed from the day before. I begin each day focusing on gratitude, joy, the power of my true Self. Once we take dominion of our own consciousness, we can be sure of one thing, ultimately we will create a world that brings us more joy and contentment. We discover for ourselves that joy truly IS a state of being independent of circumstances. This knowledge is usually only available after a lot of twists and turns, false leads and external seeking. Those who choose Mastery will find the kingdom truly does lie within.
For information on private sessions or classes or to schedule a free 20-minute consultation, contact Savannah Hanson, M.A., MFT #40422 at (530) 575-5052 or RisingasLove@gmail.com
