Friday, March 30, 2012

ILLOGICAL LOVE

The vast majority of the world’s population is trying to love from a mental perspective. The filters of programming, mores, and tribal conditioning create a lens through which we then decide whether or not to give and/or to receive love. The reptilian brain is standing between the mental protective shields and the open welcoming heart. If you really stop and feel deeply and directly into it, most of the times that people say I love you there is no real emotional connection to it. It is the thought of I love you landing somewhere between the well intentioned mouth that is saying it and the slightly wincing ears that can barely hear it. The unconscious fear of love is the chasm into which falls the intimate direct connection to our Source and an undefended experience of each other. We are terrified to really be exposed, vulnerable, defenseless, and limitless in our loving. When we were the most open, loving, and authentic, we were hurt. We perceived rejection, and the energetic protective walls went up. This wounding is precognitive, and if you think it isn’t true for you, stop thinking and start feeling. Feel behind the urge to really give irrationally of your love. Are you even in touch with that urge? Feel into the subtle desire to love in spite of. Feel the incessant prompting to release the painful withholding and perceptual pullback. The greatest desire of the heart is to live in integrity with its true nature. Contraction is a natural part of our heartful rhythm. This contraction gives way to and becomes the velocity behind giving the love we are in Truth. To withhold love is to be out of synch with our authenticity. To recoil in fear is the forgetfulness of who we are. Love cannot be rational. It cannot be defended. It cannot be earned. It cannot be conceptualized or thought. It is radical and relentless and non-resistant. It is meant to flow unimpeded from center to circumference. The pain of perpetually withholding will break us in our humanity. It will choke out our life force. We will love or we will die. We love not so much because we choose but because we must. Our evolution is the process of becoming the love we already are. To be too defended to love is to live in a tortuous knot of unexpressed and so unrequited love. To recoil and to hide in perceptual and protective lovelessness is hell. It is hell.

It took me decades to realize the extent to which I was defending my wounded heart. It took enormous amounts of painful withholding to find I was locked in a prison of false identity and lost expression. It took the death of many dreams to realize the fearful inner atmosphere in which I was living was not conducive to living a life that was beyond that fearfulness. Many friends have been lost to the pullback of perceived slights and unmet expectations. It took even longer to awaken to the truth that a life of service is a one way extension. What anyone else thinks of my lectures, writing, teachings, forms of creative expression is none of my business. If I find that I am giving or loving in order to receive approval or affirmation I stop whatever it is that I am doing and I feel the fallacy of that arrangement. The truth of my Soul contract is that I am here to live, to give, to serve love from the Essence of my being to the circumference of my expression. The only seeming loss of love in my life is the love I am unwilling to give. No matter how defended or contracted you may be I am here to love you in and beyond that pretense. It is too painful for me to stay in pullback. It is too tortuous for me to remain in recoil. I am here to love because I must. I must because love is what I am. I am loving beyond reason and beyond duality. I will see the unconsciousness and unskillfulness and I will feel the defense of what is True. And I will love. By staying in vibrational alignment with the One Source of all Love I will choose to be that love. Especially when it makes no sense to this programmed and conditional head, I will welcome you into my open and tender heart. I will risk giving you my love because it is too painful to live in the fear of not doing so. Undefended and undivided no more, I am loving you exactly as you are and I am loving me exactly as I am. In that way, I get to be the love I am in an integrated and embodied way. I get to be a verb of unconditional love. I get to be the love I truly am.

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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

A SPRING FREEZE

I love the feeling-tone that is energetically behind and pulsing forward as what we term the Spring Equinox. I totally relate to the impulse of emerging and expanding life, and I recognize at a deep level that the reason I do so relate is because the same impulse is at work within me. It is not theoretical for me that creation is forever expanding Itself through Its creation in order to Know and to experience Itself in Essence and in form. While the flowering forth of spring is more subtle for those of us who dwell in a sub-to tropical climate, the dynamic is none-the-less engaged. I feel the shifting of the seasons in the intensification of the process of coming forth from seed to flower to fruit. I hear and sense this synergy as it moves and dances through the birds and the other wildlife so prevalent in this part of the globe. Life had taken a respite called winter, and is now busily using this renewed energy to literally spring forth as creation.

I was speaking to a dear friend that dwells in the northern part of the country, and who was describing what she viewed as a kind of spring confusion as a result of a warm winter followed by a late freeze. The flowers were already blooming when a snow and sleet storm dumped frozen precipitation down on the tender new blossoms. There was understandable fear that the storm would deprive that region of a much anticipated floral array of color, fragrance, and natural spectacle. It was a great reminder for me of how crucial climate variables can be to the manifestation of creation. As she was speaking of this in terms of flowers, trees, and shrubs, I was relating to how the very same dynamic is at work within my own internal spring.

I have always been blessed with a very alive and dynamic sense of creativity. It takes a variety of forms, and at times I feel as though I will never have enough time to bring forth into manifestation all of the ideas I would like to bring into form. I was born in the springtime, and remain acutely aware of the life force that is pulsing forth within and through me. I am also keenly aware that there have been multiple examples of me jumping forward with an idea, beginning to act from a place of what I knew to be Sourced-inspiration, and then fearfully freezing when I met the obstacles of my own perceived doubts and limitations. Emotional chaos is a vital part of all co-creation. Part of the way we humans evolve is by moving forward with an impulse or desire to create, and then by working though the internal barriers that the process of creation reveals. Challenges, obstacles, barriers exist in the creative process at every level. Can you imagine the force needed for a seed to crack open its protective shell, begin its ascent up through multiple levels of soil, and finally push up above the level of the ground in order to move vertically toward the sun? It is a force for sure and yet it is also non-resistant. As plants do not possess self-reflective consciousness, they are not labeling or interpreting the process as it is occurring. They do not become fearful and so try and retreat back toward the seeming safety of the seed. In fact, there is nothing left to return to. The seed has become the plant which is now already in process. There are certainly occasions where a lack of moisture, light, or necessary temperature can kill out a fledgling plant. This is a part of the natural order. But this is not due to internal conditions that are generated by the plant itself.

Our fear-based evaluations often create a climate that is not conducive to growth, and so countless ideas and inspirations die out before they are allowed to come to fruition. When in the process of bringing forth a seed idea we are faced with the programming and conditioning that reveals where our core beliefs don’t support the natural creative process, we quite literally freeze. We may blame or form excuses as to why we can’t move forward to actualize our dreams, but these are rarely valid. The truth is that we currently don’t have a quality of inner attention that will allow the full expression of our intentions, aspirations, and goals. The climate isn’t right. The inner realm is hostile. We fear really facing our fears and so we quite. We stop the springtime impulse that is moving forward within us, and every time we stop it, we die just a little bit. We kill our own creations. We abort our fondest dreams. We internally freeze out the garden of consciousness we have been given to attend. And then we rarely take the time to grieve the loss of what is so essential and true to our being.

And so dear reader, what springtime impulse is moving in you this day? What is seeking to flower forth, and are you willing to maintain an inner atmosphere that is conducive to the creative process? Are you willing to bring the warmth of Presence to the places that scare you? Are you willing to compassion the habitual reactivity of past failed attempts? Are you willing to stay awake and receptive to allowing the Universal Creative Impulse to move in you, to inspire you, and to also orchestrate the fulfillment of the dream? Are you willing to let Spring spring forth as you?

Be vigilant in this season to maintain an inner atmosphere that is aligned with Source Beingness. Surrender the fears and say yes to all that is moving forward within you. Celebrate as you watch your seed intentions come forth as flower and then as fruit. And then give your creations in service and in celebration of the One. Be an active part of this dynamic season. Spring forth in all your splendor. You are indeed the beauty of this season.

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

SURRENDER DOROTHY!



The best day of my life was the day I once again fell flat on my face, and I didn’t jump back up.


I know that the preceding declaration defies all conventional wisdom and blows more than a few Hallmark sentiments right off the rack. How many times have we heard that no matter how many times we get knocked down the important thing is that we get back up? Yet after unconsciously following that advice for a decade or so I found that the greater wisdom came from exploring why it was that I kept landing on the proverbial floor. After getting up repeatedly only to fall once again I began to get the sense that it was on the floor that I actually needed to be.

We are a take charge culture. We are a people that take the bull by the horns. The macro-power that is the United States of America is comprised of micro-units of making things happen individuals. If we are ruthlessly honest the vast majority of us are in many ways control freaks. We continually fight reality be it internal or societal. We are in a perpetual struggle with what already is. Even in areas of spiritual aspiration we demand that the Universe act in a way that we deem right and appropriate and comfortable. We decide what we think we want and we expect Life to line up and to give it to us in a certain way and in our specified time frame. And when that doesn’t happen we rush to blame any number of external factors from our significant others to our Kindergarten experiences. Or we simply think that our mystical magical wand is broken or that we aren’t in on the real Secret.

I am plum tired of fighting reality. I am worn out from trying to control what ultimately is uncontrollable. I am weary of seeking to manipulate Universal Principle in order to fix what my surface mind swears is broken. I am exhausted from pushing against the parts of myself I so want to be rid of. I have lost total interest in turning myself every which way but loose in an effort to get the love and affirmation I feel I’ve never had. I have finally accumulated enough evidence that my way isn’t the best way, and I am open to a Higher wisdom than my own perceptual system. I am relaxing open and exhaling freely into the Knowing that there is a flow to Life that swimming against will never prevail. Life is for me and it is only my fearful need to control and to manipulate that keeps me from the felt-experience of that Force.

I guess what I am really seeking to say is that I am surrendering my story into my Source. I am surrendering what I think needs to change into a Clarity that sees beyond appearances and easily orchestrates a blessed transcendence within me. There is nothing as futile as seeking to change what already is. There is nothing as freeing as releasing the grip and surrendering into a deep Knowingness that within the Flow of Sourced-emergence all is well and will always be well. The linear mind will never get that, and the heart has always known it. It is a spiritual axiom that it is only in surrender that True power is found. It is only in giving up the fight that the internal war is won. When we choose to arm wrestle with the Universe we will eventually wear down. And it is in that broken surrender that the resplendence of Source shines through. It is from the moment that you feel most weak that the greatest strength is born.

If you are tired of struggling, and straining and figuring and fixing and demanding and controlling: consider a different tact. Relax. No, really. Relax. Let go into letting Be. Feel the flow of Life that is seeking to Live as you. Surrender into that river of life. Let it carry you easily, gently. As I frequently tell a beloved friend; give it a rest. Surrender, Dorothy! And then watch what authentic power can do through you.


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