Winter wonderland

(This was a post drafted in January 2011. Time flies. It is now three years later. I am still walking the trails. Here it is--------)

I dreaded when December came, thinking that the nice weather in which I go into nature was about to change.

Four years ago (2009), all I did during the winter was to walk along the main road. At times, it even became too slippery to walk and too freezing cold to be out and about. I did not want to imagine how much worse it must be on the side trails.

I just didn't want the winter to come and disrupt the visit to nature.

December came and then it turned into January. I still go on my walks and love it even more.

Nature turned into a big white wonderland in the dead of winter!! There is something magical about this solitary world of white, the light seems brighter, the senses seem sharper, everything around you seem to give out energy of tranquility and sacred intelligence.

Fewer people to be seen, the ones on the trails are all bundled up. Everyone seems to retreat into their own world of layers of clothings. You become totally self aware walking on the road of silence, even when occasionally another walker passing by.

The year of 2011 has had more snow. I never did leave the lake trails behind, still walking into them every weekend.

Walking in the snow and ice, I had to concentrate totally every step I take. It's just me, the lake, and the icy snowy world. The sense of silence and awareness is overwhelming.

Sitting next to the lake in a snowy morning, moving energy through the body, it is as if the essence of nature running through me, crying for no reason sometimes. This has become intimate and personal experience--me, inner energy, and the nature.

In this vast silence and solitude, miracles and magic are more bound to happen. On the small walk bridge, the mantra "Rebirth in Pure Land" that I had forgotten for 30 years all of a sudden came back to me. Three white tail deer crossed a few yards in front of me like nobody's business a few seconds after I asked for a miracle of some sort. A Canada goose was rescued from the middle of the frozen lake on a Sunday afternoon "sitting dock" froze its bottom half. A hawk grabbed a squirrel from the ground in the middle of the trees and flew off right in front of me.....

In warm weather, a 3 feet long black snake slither right past me while I sit by the water. Fish jumps out of water for nothing. A dozen of birds dip into water from the air repeatedly for quick drinks of water. Three wild turkeys appeared out of nowhere a few yards ahead of me, walking gracefully ......

In this place, being with your own self sometimes get you to weep, for no particular reason.

Tom Murphy hikes alone in Yellowstone all by himself every winter, Richard Proenneke lived in his own cabin in Alaska wilderness by himself for 30 long years---Suddenly I feel like I could be one of these die hard nature lovers. Every time I finish the walk, it is as if I had just come out from another dimension.

I said:"If this is not heaven, what is?"

Nature is home. Nature is temple. Nature is miracle.

Teaching of Seth--the Higher Being

I bought the book "The Seth Material" in 2011, but haven't had time to really read it.
After trying tarot card, and the miraculous turn of event that I reported in the post A Miracle, in 2012 I started to get very interested in channeling. I read through books that I have in related topics, went to a couple of workshops on other topics, pray for highest energy before falling asleep every night. One day, I took out this Seth book that's in the back of my book shelf. I did not put it down for quite a while.
What a blessing to be able to connect with ascended masters this way. There have been quite a few well known channels such as Kyron and others. Somehow the Seth Materials drew me a lot.
The author Jane Roberts connected with Seth, the nonphysical being, spontaneously, and then had 500+ channeling sessions twice weekly. Besides various topics human still can't wrap our brain around, such as dreams, reality, reincarnation, health....Seth also read minds, or give Jane and her husband advices on where to live, and how to arrange their furniture. As the result of the regular channeling, Jane started to develop abilities of her own--OBE, seeing past lives, precognitive knowing...After hundred of sessions with Seth, a future Seth whom Seth called "the Big Brother", from an even higher realm would turn up from time to time in a farther voice.
Everything about this is just fascinating. Even though this is now post 2012--the year of the shift, that is being highly anticipated. The 1960s Seth material struck me like a freight train.
I have had experiences of the connection. I have puzzled about the impact of what happens in dreams on the body once waking up. I have experienced a coming together of past event and present feeling, as if there is no past and present. Everything seem to happen simultaneously. Whenever I catch myself feeling sick or depressed, I found that I don't actually need to believe it, and then it would go away.
Seth even said that dream reality lives on. We have many many other probable realities going on. This physical reality is just one of the many. What goes on with the selves in other layers affect the I in the physical reality, and vice versa. We can even change past events by the present actions.
That says to me that I need to take this layer of reality seriously just like I would like to know about other layers.
A lot of times I would ponder about what to do with all these divine moments. They always occur when no one is around. When I do try to share them with others, I always end up giving up trying because I am unable to put them to words to give the whole picture and others were at a loss what I am trying to say.
What should I do with all these moments? I tried my best to share some in this blog, but this really is just a peek or a tip of the iceburg.
Praying for highest energy and pray for help to get to the next level have helped me a lot. I have had dreams almost every night where I am around that big temple. I know that I am making progress. I am sure that ascended masters are around and the help come through my intuition.
A couple of weeks later, all of a sudden I was told to be courageous and brave. I need to step out of my comfort zone, so that I can encounter more and experience more.

Awakening--Returning to the original state

I was going through a huge stress about something that my whole body tense up and ache all night long. The despair was almost equal to the destruction of this life.

I have had this type of dooming worry before, the sense that all will turn against my advantage, and that all grace, hope, diginity will be rubbed from me. The severity and intensity depends on what might be about to happen.

At such moment of high worry, it feels like every fiber in my body was dreading, refusing, and simply do not want to go forward. It felt like every little bit of me was against my own existence. How wonderful if I was not I. How wonderful if I simply did not exist.

The biggest example of this was bearing the whole burden of my story of losing my ex-boyfriend.

This time, although it lasted just about one night and one day, the intensity was such that by the time the issue was seemingly resolved, that familiar substantial feeling re-appeared in my solar plexis. as if something in me gather and congregate again.

After the experience of original state comes back, I started to sit down and organize and clean up my messy desk. I picked up, looked at, and examine every single item with care and love and tenderness, as if I can be with them and do this forever. Time and space were not important or relevant.

I went home to make something to eat. Normally I ate in front of the TV. But this time, I brought my food and sat down in front of my bedroom window to eat my dinner slowly, which I haven't done for years. This bedroom window was where I sat for hours every night during the height of my awakening. It just felt right. I just wanted to sit there.

When I noticed that this old familiar experience has just returned, it was a surprise. Why am I having this familiar experience? What did I do? Am I having an awakening in a smaller scale?

Before my first awakening, I had had big stress happened to me too, When it is resolved, it was just a relief and I move on to the next thing. After the awakening, there has been perhaps only one or two huge stress that could defy who I am, or cause me to lose everything. When I slowly crawl out of the deep hole, I experienced similar peak experience in a smaller scale, 10 times less intense, and 10 times less distraction than my first awakening.

For me, because I have worked through most of my issues and attachment, I am able to notice and recognize the original state very quickly, anytime after a major stressful event.

What happened was that we have attached our self identity to an external target.

When we are confronted with the loss of this external target, it is like we are losing our self-identity. We felt the threat in every fiber of own body and being.

When the threat goes away, whether we give the target up with great pain and hence no longer experiencing it as a threat, or by regaining the target with ecstasy, a peak experience is resulted.

If it turns out that we do not actually lose the target, the peak experience is distracted by the target. We are conditioned to believe that the target equal to peak experience. All the wonderful body sensation, emotional attachment overwhelms the deep sense of inner energy. All we feel is the surface. When one day we forever lose that target, we are left with the craving of the target, the body sensation, and the emotional attachment that we can't let go.

First the suffering come as losing something we really want, disbelief, denial, anger, and when we decide to surrender and accept, the suffering comes as peeling off the layer and layer of attachment on the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual level.

After all are processed and die down, we can then feel and sense that deep inner peace and our original state. This is where surrendering and acceptance lead to, after a great suffering and an extremely difficult process. 

This is a time of total surrender, recognition, back to self, loss of pain/pressure/physical sensation, regain of inner awareness, return to our original state. At such time, I am in total connection with inner energy, the total focus and freedom, with no suffering and no distraction.

I have noticed this a few times. Whenever stress goes away, the state of deep peace and tranquility return right back to that deep peace and tranquility.

I can now see the mechanism of awakening. I have learned this pathway by noticing and discovering this familiar state of being. The pain is not any less each time I have to depart from something important to me. However, I am able to always trace back and return to this deep peace and tranquility of that original state.

Awakening is free from suffering. The less we rely on something else, the closer we are to total freedom.

Horrors in the "Solitary Nation" (on PBS)

"Solitary Nation" on PBS show Frontline is a documentation of inmates who are placed solitary confinement due to disruption inside the prison.
  The ones subjected to this punishment are originally put in there for a few months. Because of the inhumane conditions and unbearable rage, anger, screams, shouts, cursing of the inmates in that area, each of them quickly subcum to even more destructive behaviors. The punishment is then even longer time in it.
  According to the film, the concept of putting inmates into solitary confinement started in the 1800s. It stopped for a while but then re-started again in 1960s (if I remember correctly).
  During solitude, supposedly it is easier to process one's issues, emotions, thoughts, and get to the real self inside. It's not unheard of that inmates find God while in the prison and totally turn themselves around. However, if we remain our reactive ego and if the place is full of disruptions and violence, such process will not be possible, and one ends up becoming even more reactive from the hurt in the process, and from the built up emotions that gets more and more intense once in there. It's then unbearable both from the inside and on the outside.
  It is horrifying to see the conditions the inmates go through. The small rooms line up along the hallway and inmates can hear or see through the small glass window on the door and the gap under the door. They scream, bang/shake the door violently, curse at the system, or at each other, push feces and urine out to the hallway, , . Each day, they get one hour to come out to walk in an individual cage for exercise.
  The most horrifying scene is when a certain inmate is found mutilating himself in protest or despair, which is usually the last resort they turn to. A team of prison guards go in to bring out the bloody, pale, half dying inmate out for medical attention. It is horrifying to see the small cubical room overfloated with blood like a murder scene. The custodian is there to wipe off the place splashed with blood and sweep the flooded blood down the drain like sweeping flooded water.  
  It is just so sad and horrifying to see a vibrant, alive human being reduced to that screaming, half dying, bloody mess after just a few short weeks.
  Is this really the only way to try to turn a human being around? Is this even working at all?
  One of the projects the prison tries on one of the most severely dangerous inmates to himself is to pull him out in a separative area where he receives one on one counseling with a therapist a few times a week. after a few times, he started to open up and is able to share more and finally was able to be granted a phone call with his 2 year old daughter. This guy who was the most violent, disruptive, and feared turned into this caring, smiling, and joyful dad beaming with genuine love for another human being. He was then moved to a general area during part of the day where he was free to talk to inmates who are there free like he is. They play chess, eat on the table, and chat among themselves like in the high school cafeteria. These normal behaviors suddenly look so moving when it is from the guy who went through those violent horrors.
  Another guy featured in the solitary confinement was sent there just a few days when the show started. He looked at the camera and said that he feels that 4 months would go by fast and he should be ok. As time went by, he got more and more violent. He started to scream, shout, shake the door, curse at other inmates and guards. In just 2 months his time there was prolonged by 2 months longer. He became even more violent. His youthful, handsome face turned into this angry, mean, dry, desperate look. Pretty soon, he started to push urine and feces out into the hallway and mutilate himself. Toward the end of the show, it was the scene of him being taken out by the guards and doctors from the pool of flooded blood in his room. After treatment, he was put back into the solitary confinement for even longer time.
  The guy who had a great turn around had to go back to the solitary confinement after the project ended. He became violent again and his time was prolonged as well.
  Our planet is really not the easiest place for existence. We are born with limited capacity in our physical body, and then there are all kinds of circumstances in this human world we are facing with our own device. We are all loving and protective to our young children. We provide, teach, love, nurture, and care for them because they are young and innocent. The day they turn 18 years old, all of a sudden we require everyone to make good decision and be responsible for themselves. If they ever break the law, we mostly throw people into jail for them to learn their lesson. However, those who commit most severe crime often are the ones need the most help. Separation and punishment only push them deeper into despair and confusion. We put them in there to face their own music, to hopefully remove the danger and harm to other human beings.
  For most people, this system probably works fine, but for those who need help the most, is there something else we could do?
  I mostly ask for divine beings to help all of us. May all living beings have peace, joy, love, light, health, safety, and fulfillment. Shine your loving light on everyone of us on this planet and everywhere. Thy will be done. Thy will be done.

Forgiving the betrayal

  

  A friend of mine recently suffered a loss of relationship with her boyfriend, who she thought to be her soulmate. It came as a total surprise to her. She was head over heel in love. Even when a psychic told her that he will leave her, she took it as a sign that the psychic is not a great one, unable to see the deep soulmate connection they had. My friend has thought that her boyfriend is even more spiritually advanced than she is.

I did not sense great spiritual energy from that guy. I did not tell my friend, knowing that she would not have believed it anyway.

  The guy simply moved and relocated to another part of the country, without telling her. She had to find that out from social media. She thought they were moving in together soon, as the guy had moved some of his things into her place.

  Naturally I will need to say something to help her recover from this sad development, which brings me back to 11 years ago when the same thing happened to me. My boyfriend at the time simply moved in with the other girl, when I was going to bring him some items as he was moving into a new house.

I was hurt so badly that the pain led me to search my soul to the core. Here is the link to the post:

Waking up from my own story

The Turning Point

  I remember that the huge turning point is the realization that it really is not his fault. It is only from my point of view that he is at fault. Actually he is entitled to his own free will and his choice. Yes, he should not hurt anyone with that type of action—betraying me whom he knows would be hurt badly if he makes that choice of action. But everyone is free to make his/her choice and then takes the consequence of the action.

    The whole five year of this relationship was full of struggles and challenges. It was great at times but hellish at other times. I tried and tried, thinking that it would get better if I would try a little more. It's these activities on each level of mind, emotion, and soul that entangle every inch of my being into the mess. The loss of the relationship with him would be my worst nightmare that I would not know what to do or how to live with.

  Finally, the day came when the nightmare became reality. 

  While collapsed on the floor crying for days in disbelief and agony, it finally occurred to me that it is not his fault, and that he really is entitled to his own choice and his free will. Yes, it's so sad that he didn't pick me, but I have tried everything and done everything I can. At that point, that is the outcome and I can cry in every fiber of my being over that loss, or I can let it go and look toward the whole new world of freedom. 

   Even though the negativity still stuck to me like a bad disease, the brief thought/imagination of forgiveness started to feel liberating and healing. The willingness to dig deep to find it in me to forgive is the turning point.   

Then it is the months long slow and painful process of peeling off the layer and layer of attachment and entanglement. The key is to be persistent and never look back. In the process of complete peeling off and release, many other unrelated junks also go into the drain.  

  However, it was very scary to face the reality by myself. I was so busy dealing with him that I never deal with a reality without him in it. The loneliness, fear and anxiety , plus the anger, shame, sadness, regrets, and despair are simply overwhelming. I remember that my body ached and my heart was bleeding. Every inch of my being is full of pain and suffering, until the great transformation after period of very intense and deep meditation and spiritual transformation. 

     It is 11 years later, and it feels like a different lifetime. I become totally independent and clear. The spiritual practices and maturity enable me to be balanced, self sufficient, responsible for my own actions, and see the world with a deep understanding and realization. This compassionate perception of seeing everyone just like myself, knowing where they are from, really is the key to total liberation and freedom--free of negativity, free of karma, free of drama, and free of suffering.