Today being the tenth anniversary of the events that occurred on September 11th, 2001 brings on a wide range of emotions for people all over the United States, and no doubt in much of the world.  

Like many, I lost some friends and even some distant relations in this tragedy as well as a High School classmate that was a flight attendant on one of the planes involved.  Few in this country were not touched very personally by the almost three thousand deaths resulting from these terrorist acts.  As a result, the past ten years for many have been years of pain, loss, and in many cases an anger that has not diminished.

Many of us have committed ourselves to living lives of presence and enlightenment that cannot be maintained with these emotions and motivations as a constant.  And yet the fact is that the events of September 11th 2011 cannot be denied.

Living in denial of these facts would be just as destructive to the lives we are seeking to lead at any rate, so where does that leave us?

First let me say that I will not tell you that you should not mourn the loss of loved ones, friends or the same of those close to you.  Living a life of presence, consciousness and enlightenment doesn't mean suppressing natural emotions in such circumstances.

I will ask you to do whatever mourning you need to, and then to allow these people to be a part of that life you seek to lead.

With or without these types of  tragic events, lPeople will come and go from the fabric of our lives.  Yet these lives were taken from us suddenly and with savage violence.  We had no opportunity to prepare ourselves for the loss, and this makes the pain itself almost like a physical wound.

This is not a pain that you could or should try to suppress,  We must all accept the pain and anguish of these losses as real.  To resist this is as futile as it is dangerous to our own wellbeing: Physical, Emotional and Spiritual.

• The loss of these people from our lives is real.
  

• The loss of these people from our lives is tragic.

• The loss of these people from our lives is a fact that we cannot and should not deny.

The acceptance of the loss of these people from my own life and the lives of my friends and family plus the experience of mourning them as individuals is an important memory for me.  It is also a key part to living the life of presence, consciousness and enlightenment that I seek to live.

How can that be?

Accepting the loss of even those that are the closest to us means experiencing pain.  It means going through some sort of mourning and sometimes if there is someone that bears some direct (or even indirect) responsibility for that loss it can mean dealing with some anger as well.

Any one of these can cause all sorts of emotional paralyses or handicaps that render the individual unable to function with presence and consciousness because they simply cannot process anything else.

This is natural…

We are talking about some very powerful feelings because we are talking about people that are very important to us.  Trying to deny this is, again futile!

I wholeheartedly encourage you to ignore anyone telling you to "Just get over it!" and allow yourself to feel whatever it is that comes to you.  The very act of non-denial of these emotions will prevent the emotions from taking over your life, and therefore your presence and consciousness ongoing.  

People get stuck in emotional cycles that they deny, and not in emotional processes that are allowed to run their natural course.  

As we go through whatever emotional cycle of process is appropriate (for us and nobody else!) we will discover how this loss will fit into our continual presence and consciousness ongoing.  Be sure however, to do the following:

• Cherish the memory of your unique mourning experience for each individual lost:  This is the end of an important phase in your relationship with them.

• Don't assume your relationship is over:  The life lessons and experiences you shared with them will continue to instruct you, and perhaps with more poignancy than ever before.  

• Accept that the loss makes way for more connections in your life, and that this is no reason for any feelings of guilt.  You didn't ask for this gap to be created, so there is no possibility for appropriate guilt to be assessed.

Now let's talk about those heroic individuals that lost their lives endeavoring to save the lives of those caught in these attacks.  These amazing people dedicated their lives to protecting and serving their fellow humankind.  Such people are an enormous source of the most powerful and positive energy in all of creation.  

And their acts of selfless heroism and service to all of the victims of these cowardly and hateful acts are even more so.  This is really powerful stuff people.  In spite of the horrid nature of what happened, first responders and all of those that rose to this occasion imbued it with enough positive energy to do exponentially more good than the bad done in taking all those thousands of lives.

If you are like some that I know quite well, you may have lost quite a few people in your life that were first responders at ground zero.  Many of the rest of us also feel a connection to and a sadness for the loss of these amazing individuals as a direct result of their being the source of so much that is good and beneficial.  What is involved here is not just amazement and appreciation for their heroic acts, but powerful natural laws of attraction that we need to be in harmony with.  

But remember: First last and foremost, these were people.  Husbands, wives, sons and daughters.  And their loss must first be dealt with in those terms, especially if they were a part of our personal lives.

Considering how their dedication to their calling allowed so many to avoid a premature loss to so many can and should allow us to connect to the energy and essence of these individuals. This therefore increases our presence, consciousness and connectedness to the positive energy that continues to bring us all enlightenment throughout our lives.   

What this can mean cumulatively for all humankind is staggering.

Aside from the serenity, satisfaction and purpose that living a life of presence and consciousness brings, there is a far large issue involved.  The larger the segment of humankind living their lives this way becomes, the more this connection will benefit us.  

The size of this contingent of mankind is not just dependent on the spiritual curiosity that may or may not exist within our population.  We actually manifest that "spiritual curiosity" and in reality spiritual need for connection through the energy that we emanate.  

I would be the last person to try and tell someone that their father, mother, son or daughter was taken from them because "God needed another angel", but indeed there is more going on here than we are seeing on the surface.  

We each must find our own meaning in all of this, but the greatest tragedy that could come from any of this is that it causes us to lose our:

• Presence in the moment:  
• Consciousness of what is happening all around us in that moment.
• The Fulfillment and Enlightenment that comes from living our live thus…

This can still be how we live our lives.  Not just in spite of catastrophic events like those of September 11th, 2001 but sometimes it can be amplified by them.  Just remember:

Experience your loss, as you need to.  Don't let others define what an "appropriate" level of grief is, and don't resist the need for this pain and sorrow.

Accept that life has changed, and that it is in no way a betrayal for that change to become a positive part of your life going forward.  

Stay Present!  

Stay Conscious!

And most of all:

Seek to align yourself with the positive energy that is as much a part of these events as were the hatred and destructive energy were motivators for the perpetrators and architects of these losses from all of our lives.

We all have seen and heard the people that concentrate all of their energy and spend their lives on hatred and spite for the misguided and disconnected "evil-doers" of 9-11.  The energy of all types that radiates out from these events is undeniable.  Each of us will add to that energy by amplifying whichever form of that energy we align ourselves with.

Make no mistake, you must consciously and with present aforethought choose to align yourself with the energy of connectedness and goodwill toward all of humankind.  Otherwise your choice by default is to amplify the hatred, and ill will of the perpetrators through the dysfunctionally endless cycles of pain and sorrow they caused.  

And what kind of monument is that for those we have lost…

 

 

 

Popularity: 11% [?]

If you truly wish to live a life of enlightenment, joy and peace then there is no way around the need to eliminate Blame & Guilt from all aspects of your life.

I was having a conversation with a close friend today about how to connect with God, The Universe and the rest of humankind to attain a more enjoyabe, fulfilling and peaceful life.  As with many in this country, my friend had been brought up in a Christian faith, and the stumbling block that reared it's head was "The Old Blame Game."

As I work with individuals to attain their spiritual goals, it is almost predictable that at a certain point in the conversation they will say exactly what my friend did this morning: 

"So you're saying it's my fault?"

A conversation followed wherein I tried to assure her that this wasn't the case, but the reality of the situation is this:

To progress meaningfully in a spiritual sense, you will eventually have to opt out of the need for Blame & Guilt.

Obviously the need to assign blame has a different psychological need than to punish oneself with guilt, but they really are two sides of the same coin.  And the cold hard fact is that they are both destructive to what we want and where we want to be.

Letting go of these twin concepts will do more for for your spiritual progress than any other single thing you can address.

In spite of what I said above, it isn't just those with a Judeo-Christian upbringing that have this hangup, but with or without an ingrained need for forgiveness in one's belief structure we can logically eliminate guilt, and by extrapolation the need to find someone at fault.

Let's start with our Judeo-Christian friends:

• Needing Forgiveness – Most of us brought up in western society were brought up with the concept of sin being an ingrained part of us, and that we therefore have a need for forgiveness unobtainable except via a savior (Jesus Christ) or through ritual sacrifice.  Our inherently sinful nature renders us unacceptable to God without his forgiveness.  The answer to this lies in the definition of sin.  As used in the Hebrew Scriptures the word Sin carries the meaning of Missing the Mark.  So anything that leaves us short of the "Mark" or all that we should be, falls under "Sin".  

This concept of human perfection is one that leaves most people feeling needlessly hopeless in their pursuit of contentment.  So how does someone escape from this trap?  By understanding that Jesus role as savior and in the forgiveness of ALL sins, that any guilt that we actually have is already paid for.  So holding onto residual guilt is not just counterproductive and unnecessary, it means that we are not accepting the very vehicle that was set in place to allow us the peace we seek.

Having accepted the forgiveness the ransom sacrifice holds out to us means that we have perfection imparted to us.  And just what does this perfection mean?

It means that we once again can become perfect through our connection to God, his creation and our likeminded brothers and sisters in humankind.  

We have then "Hit The Mark!"  and are no longer imperfect sinners!  This leaves us free to make the connection we need to achieve peace, contentment and enlightenment.

• Not Needing Forgiveness – If your belief system has not ingrained in you a need to be forgiven, then we can approach this from a much more pragmatic standpoint.  Each and every one of us would like to be given the benefit of the doubt as we go about our lives that we are not trying to do something hurtful or wronging others.  It becomes very easy to lay aside the Blame & Guilt game if we just keep in mind that this is true of the people we deal with every day as well.

There is an old NLP saying that sums this up quite nicely:  "Everybody is doing the best they can with the resources available to them."

I probably say this to myself at least 5 times each and every day.  

Think about it:  You have no idea what the person that cut you off in traffic, or that threw an insult at you had happen in their life today.  You also don't know what their childhood was like, or what aptitudes skills and/or diseases they have, or lack!  

There is a whole wealth of information we don't have about that person, but we do know that they are using everything they have in them to deal with what life is throwing at them in every moment of every day.  We know this because it is true of ourselves as well.  

If we want the benefit of the doubt, that we are doing out best to deal with life's challenges then we need to give that same benefit to each and every person we come across.

And if we succeed?

Without the Blame & Guilt game obstructing us, we are free to connect to a higher plane of existence that is available to any and all that reach out for it.  

Connecting to that life will not necessarily make life's challenges disappear, but it will feel like it has!

I had this conversation with another friend a while back and when I ran into him again, I asked how he was doing with this and he said: "I'm working really hard on it!"

Don't do that! I said.  

We must each approach all of this very lightly.  If we are "Working very hard on it."  Then we are worrying or obsessing over it, and that will not work.  Just understand the unnecessary nature of the whole thing and lay it down!

That is the whole point…

Jim Patterson

Popularity: 21% [?]

Hello Friends!

It's been a while since I wrote here on the Living the LOA Now Blog!

 I've missed you all, as well as writing on my favorite subjeccts. I've come back  because this is where my passion is.  Exploring spiritual and emotional wellness issues is what brings me joy and allows me to stretch as a person too.

I am working on several books for publication so will have plenty of material and (hopefully) insights to share with you all.

 Looking forward to getting reacquainted with you all over the next weeks and months.  

My apologies for taking so long to get back here…

Jim Patterson

Popularity: 15% [?]

Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now exploded into the global consciousness in large part due to the fact that most people were not living in the present moment, and were finding the results untenable.  The actuality for many people is a life being lived for them where their actions are really more on the line of reactions.  And that is no way to live…

Most of us have heard the Socrates quotation “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well we have learned the hard way that neither is the Over-Examined life too hot either.  Living a balanced life however, is the best way of all.  Going about seeking balance has it’s own challenges that can only be overcome with Clarity of Mind.  In my experience, the best way to attain this is be associating with individuals and groups of people that have this in spades.  It isn’t even necessary for them to be people in the same fields of study and/or endeavor.  Neither do they need to be in agreement when their fields overlap, or even to agree with your own beliefs and perspectives.

If you take a look at the bottom of the sidebar of this page you will find the RSS feed to the TED YouTube channel.  TED is a group of 1,000 people that are invited each year to a summit where they speak on their own arenas of interest.  The best minds of the world from Tony Robbins to Stephen Hawking and from Rick Warren to Dan Dennett each speaker is an able speaker with an amazing mind.

If you want to stretch your mind and achieve clarity, you can do no better than to listen to these speakers.  Each segment is about 20 minutes long, and whether you agree or strongly oppose what is being said, I guarantee you will be benefited by the time you spend listening to these well thought out presentations.

Popularity: 59% [?]

I just read “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and immediately read it a second time.  It’s just that good.  And frankly that short.  Having immersed myself in Tolle, Troward and a host of “New Thought” authors recently this was refreshingly accessible in a much more immediate sense.

The book is said to be taken from ancient Toltec teachings, and does indeed have some interesting archival information on Toltec legend and how it leads into the main body of the work, which is made up of the Four Agreements themselves.

This part of the book is simple, straightforward and accessible without being tedious.  This may be why it is such a small volume, but don’t be fooled it is packed with useful and usable insights and teachings.  The Four Agreements are:

1.  Be Impeccable With Your Word. This may not sound like ground breaking stuff, until you consider what is meant by this.  Ruiz stresses the vital import of being impeccable with your word to yourself. It is made quite clear however that this is not just self serving but beneficial to society as a whole.  Seeking to do no harm by your words or actions so that your own path is not hindered is a vital aspect of the first agreement.

2.  Do Not Take Anything Personally. A very difficult agreement for many to keep if you consider the animosity between people as a matter of course, but quite simple in application.  Once you understand that people are reacting to their own internal dialog (or dream as Ruiz teaches us) it becomes much easier to separate the words and actions of others from ourselves.  This agreement brought to mind the NLP thought: Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.

3.  Do Not Make Assumptions. Closely related in some ways to the second agreement, this deals with our tendency to not take into account that there is almost always more to any situation than we are aware of.  Acknowledging that we are not omniscient removes so much emotional detritus from our lives that this agreement alone will relieve a huge amount of stress from our lives.

4.  Always Do Your Best. The part of this that makes it such a vital agreement is understanding that your best will be a dynamic thing.  Your best will be better at some times than it will at others, and you must accept this!  If you always to the best you can in that moment then you can be at peace with the results, knowing that your effort held all you could do with the knowledge and resources at your disposal.  Notice the synergy with the previous two agreements?

An important aspect here is that these four agreements are ones that you are making with yourself.  As such they require the cooperation of no other individuals, and are therefore adoptable by any one that chooses to do so.  They are meant to replace agreements you have already made with yourself: agreements that are destructive to yourself on almost every level.

Integrate these four positive and constructive agreements with a life lived in the ever unfolding present moment and it will add joy to your life, and even more importantly remove pain and stress from your life nearly effortlessly.

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom,

A Toltec Wisdom Book

Popularity: 52% [?]

In spite of the title of my site (LOANow), I have held off writing directly about the Law of Attraction because of the prevalence of information on the subject that makes the LOA sound like a Cosmic ATM!

Visit any forum on this subject and you are bound to find threads by people looking for help manifesting  new cars, luxury homes and stacks of cash.  And this by people who have no interest in the more basic forms of manifesting that deal with day to day issues of peace and harmony within their lives.

This is not possible!

You must address these issues as a basis for progressing in manifestation.  Attempting to jump ahead, so to speak would put you in a position where you were in conflict with the LOA, not working with it.

The Law of Attraction is a natural law, like gravity.  And you ignore it’s basic tenets with the same degree of danger you would have if you ignored gravity.  This means that if you want to harness this power, it is necessary to experience it as it occurs in everyday life as an observer before you even attempt to steer it with your own thoughts and energy.  Even with the Law of Attraction you need to be able to crawl before you try to run a marathon…

We have each already observed the Law of Attraction at work whether we realized it or not.  How often have we seen someone put out negative energy in the form of anger only to get anger back?  How often have we seen that some people never seem to have a problem with anyone due to their own calm demeanor?  In each of these cases, the party  with the greatest strength behind the type of energy they are emanating will prevail.  With one seeming exception, which we will get to later.

So each and every one of us are manifesting through the energy we emanate through our thoughts, words and actions.  You are already interacting with the Law of Attraction by thinking, speaking and going about your business every day just as you are interacting with gravity by failing to fall off the planet!

What we want to do though, is to learn to interact with the Law of Attraction in a beneficial way.  And when we say beneficial, we mean beneficial to all.  As if we seek to manifest in a way that is harmful to others in order to benefit ourselves, our efforts with fail.  They will fail because by definition they are in conflict with the Law of Attraction.  To attempt to manifest something that is good for the manifestor at another’s expense is a selfish act and will attract selfishness from others, hindering the desired results across all aspects of the manifestors life.  See how this works?

So the first thing we need to develop in order to begin even the most basic forms of Law of Attraction manifestation is to develop Awareness.  What is meant here by Awareness is first of all to be Aware of one’s own identity as opposed to the over-identification with one’s own positions, and identification with the content of life that is so common today.  Awareness also includes being cognizant of everyone else as something other than competitors.  The best way to accomplish both of these is to meditate on the following affirmation:

Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.

This helps to build our empathy with the condition of others and eliminate our feelings that we need to overcome them as such.  Awareness is key to success in your efforts to use Law of Attraction manifestation techniques.  This is one of the reasons that I have given more attention to writing about The Power of Now issues as they help to overcome the out of balance ego that the majority of the world struggles with.

Developing this kind of Awareness will result in an existance marked with peace, harmony and a comforting realization of where one fits in the Universe.  It also will give you a much better feeling about all of the other individuals we come in contact with on a daily basis.  Yes, even the ones we don’t really like all that much, lol…

Awareness is also the energy that tips the scales in favor of the Aware.  Remember the one exception to the rule that the one manifesting with the most energy will prevail?  Awareness trumps all.  You can come up against the angriest of individuals with their yelling and cursing, and overcome them with far less energy as long as you are acting out of Awareness.  This is because the energy that Awareness brings is of such a higher order, that it trumps just about everything it comes up against.

I will be writing further about the Law of Attraction and Manifestation techniques.  It will be with an understanding that to even begin working to use LOA techniques as a steering mechanism, you have to start by developing Awareness as a baseline within your life.

Jim

Popularity: 89% [?]

I was talking with a long term client the other day, and was discussing his desire to lose twenty pounds.  When I asked what his weight currently was his response floored me!

“Oh, I won’t get on a scale so I really don’t know!”

This raised a whole new arena of questions due to the conflicts inherent to the specific situation.  Having a specific goal to lose twenty pounds while refusing to acknowledge ones current weight is self defeating from the word go, but that is not even the part that was most important to address.

A large part of what I try to help people to achieve is centered around Awareness.  Awareness of and presence in The Now.  Living a life of presence in this moment, not looking forward or backward.  Eschewing all of the folderol that accrues when we live our lives to be happy/content/relaxed “As Soon As…”

To do this in any full sense means also being aware of what the current moment is.  And being aware of it means also accepting what is.  To it’s fullest extent this includes being at peace with what is.  That may seem a bit much to expect to many people with serious challenges in their life, but it is achievable for all…

My client wanted to change his situation without really knowing what his situation was.  Anybody see a problem here?  If you cannot accept your situation (what is) then you have no real hope of changing it.   In actuality, willful ignorance of a situation he didn’t like was keeping him from not just changing the situation but also from real peace and joy right now!

How so?  Well let’s consider what happened next!

I trotted out my faithful bathroom scale and literally forced him onto it.  The result?  He weighed more than he hoped but less than he feared.  He was also only 18 pounds from his goal wieght.  Having become aware of his actual current weight, he was able to stop the inner stammering dialog that happened every time someone inquired about his weight, whether that was his wife, a friend or even just himself…

So one less thing had the ability to take him out of the present moment and toss him back out of Awareness of The Now!

The importance of this can not be overstated.  Every time we overcome one of these issues and take away that ability we gain greater understanding and skills that will allow us to maintain a life of Awareness and  Connection with the Dynamic Energy of the Universe and it’s Creator.

Awareness then leads to Acceptance as we acknowledge the reality of a situation.  This is key to our accomplishing any desired change in that situation we may want.  But how do we come to be at peace with a situation that we are at core unhappy about.

All situations fall under one of three categories.

1. Situations that we have no control over.
2. Situations that we have  control over.
3. Situations that are a mixture of things we cannot control, and those we can.

When faced with something that falls in category one, we can legitimately give ourselves a pass.  Accepting that the situation was not of our making doesn’t always mean there is nothing we can do to change things.  So if we allow for things that we had no control over, but take what action is available now we have the perfect basis to be at peace with what is…

Categories 2 and 3 are closely related, because if we had any culpability at all in the actuality of What Is, many people just can’t seem to let themselves off the hook!  This is a forgiveness issue, and will also usually be affecting people’s ability to offer forgiveness to others.  This will further hinder the achievement of joy and peaceful living in Awareness of The Now.

Let’s face it, most things fall into these two categories as we can almost always affect a situation by our actions.  With whatever we are faced with that we are not pleased with, we either did not take action, or our actions were not effective.

The first step to overcoming negative feelings about this aspect of What Is consists of meditating on that old NLP affirmation:  Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.

This includes each and every one of us.   I challenge anyone to really meditate on this and not come away being more at peace with What Is; In The Now.

Whatever we have or have not done that added to our current predicament occurred while we were faced with other complex situations.  By no act of will can we separate out the influences of those past moments in time.  To even go back and try is to take ourselves our of the present moment. Acknowledge this, and you are most of the way to a peaceful acceptance of your own culpability and present situation.

Am I saying that retrospection is always a bad thing?  That we should never try to learn from our past mistakes and errors of omission?  Absolutely not, but I am saying that to do so in even a slightly obsessive way is not only counterproductive but dangerous, and toxic to our Awareness and Presence in The Now.

Be Aware of all aspects of your situation without denial or obfuscation.  Accept whatever your own role is in any aspect that is not to your liking, and forgive yourself.  Acknowledge that you were “Doing the best you could with the resources available to you.”

This will allow you to accept what is openly and take appropriate action while still enjoying a peaceful existence in the present moment at all times.

Please share your thoughts on this post below!

Jim

Popularity: 51% [?]