Your Spirit-Led Evolution

“Evolution reflects the refinements of your awakening.”

Strolling through an Arizona gallery in 1997, like a tractor beam, a picture somehow found me. I cornered a partition and an image abruptly tussled at a submerged part of me.

I stood staring. Staring turned to weeping.

It was a rather ridiculous level of sobbing. I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop the obvious and necessary flow of life-weary tears.

Something beyond the portrait’s subject matter was prying surface resistance from my heart.

There was no other choice. Spirit-led, I purchased the picture.

Now, above the fireplace in my bedroom, hangs this illustration of Jesus pulling Peter from the water. As the story goes, Peter was embodying (or not) his faith by walking on water with Jesus. Peter panicked, lost it and sank. Jesus rescued him.

At the time, I had forgotten the message this image portrayed. Peter’s questioning faith. His denial of Christ. I had to read about Peter again and again.

For decades I’ve watched people come to alternative healing arts and the New Age, which are two separate categories. They come for practical holistic health reasons and for spiritual refuge.

The New Age or New Thought, all of which is really old, is especially handy and filled with respite for those who don’t resonate with, have been traumatized or disregarded by formal religion in some way. I sauntered there myself for a short season, as I, too, did not receive the answers to my deeper questions cloaked in traditional formality. Yet, I didn’t find answers in the New Age either.

I found my answers within my experiences of life, death, nature and being of service. I’ve found my answers through observation and my connection to God. I’m still finding those connected truths. Your journey is crafted in a similar manner, through awakened experience.

When we connect to the resonance within, I find that there’s not a single aspect of compassion-based religions, ideas or spiritual practices that one cannot, at least, appreciate.

Whatever path you choose, I’m confident you’ve discovered that it has both deep and shallow waters. It is in the abyss where we find ourselves alone. Alone to reflect and to be revealed to ourselves.

Our truths. Our hope, faith and power. Our connection to all things, suffering, and contentment, as well as all experiential points along that continuum of human existence.

It can be cool or publicly safer to say you meditate, as opposed to pray. Yet, social media is filled with requests for prayers. A good thing. Some say, “ Love and Light.” I’m always curious as to what that means…deeply means to that individual.

It’s important to ask questions. When you feel a ruffle in your nervous system, pay attention. Your life. Your truth. Your way. They are all speaking to you.

When I was a teenager, I watched my father radiate light, as he wept at the foot of the cross in the small monastery in Taizé, France. He was a theologian, a historian and a man devoted and in love with all faiths that build bridges.

I love Jesus. For years, I was cautious to say that out loud. Those days have long since passed.

I love Mary, Kannon, Quan Yin, and Tara, for all embody and reflect the highest all-encompassing lens of Divine Mother compassion.

I love flying Bodhisattvas and angels. They’re one in the same, from different cultures.

To love and embrace the Light of Christos does not mean the pendulum of your heart swings to extremes. To me, it simply means a connection — the feeling and respect of the grace-filled eternal presence exemplified by Christ’s compassionate love and power to heal.

I personally have a thing for him and that Light of his. It saved me during an encounter I had when I died. Truly, saved me. And not in a common manner. We’re talking pulling my soul back from the brink of extinction. Big juice!

I’ve always felt that Buddha, who was born approximately 600 years before Christ, showed us a pathway to awaken to our true nature within a single lifetime.

I also believe that Jesus showed us what it would be like to hold divinity within us eternally — pre-birth, through life and beyond death. Miraculous! 

I’ve witnessed that. I’ve been a part of that for others. I’ve been a recipient.

Buddhist perspectives on suffering, compassion and the expanded nature of one’s kind heart and mind has made me a better Christian.

The words Buddha and Messiah, both translate from their Latin root to mean “anointed.” This speaks to my point.

Love what you love and whom you love spiritually and religiously…there is always a golden thread of connection in between.

The psychological premise and mental trainings of Vedantic and Buddhist practices carry great benefits for the evolution for an awakened heart and the bridging of a compassionate humanity.

No matter where one is in the world, no matter the millennia, Spirit-led evolution has and will always be occurring. It began as soon as our human brains and nervous systems could receive and process that signal.

For the first signs of spiritual behavior and ritual are found in the Paleolithic epoch, 45-200,000 years ago. Give or take a week or two.

We’ve been honing the art and process of awakening a long, long time. And we’re not done yet. Far from it.

Lao Tzu (604 BCE)  offered ‘the way,’ the spark that gave life to Taoism. He and Confucius (551 BCE) were a mere 53 years apart. Each ignited evolutionary flames, which continue to influence human consciousness, art, philosophy, medicine and social systems.

Only 19 years before Lao Tzu, records note that Buddha was born (623 BCE) and evolved through his life’s experiences and taught us about the Middle Way.

Aristotle, (384 BCE) helped to up-level similar consciousness, as he taught The Golden Mean, which holds the same overarching premise as the Middle Way. Stay in the middle of the path…be mindful of extremes.

One of my favorite evolutions is Archimedes’ principle of buoyancy, which is basically displacement. I use this principle often in the context of spiritual healing and consulting, along with teachings on consciousness.

“Evolution reflects the refinements of your awakening.”

Why am I sharing this with you?

Because, on some level, we are all experiencing what is normal within an evolution — a crisis of faith and the chaos that ensues. In our politics, compassionate care for others and within ourselves.

Faith, “a complete trust in someone or something.” Whatever you hold in your heart, is always going to be challenged when you’re evolving.

Your task is to listen within and pay attention. Follow the directions you are given; especially, if it calls you to stretch.

Evolution requires stretching!

Not to worry though. I believe that what we’re going through is Spirit-led. We're evolving quickly. Since the mid to late 1800’s we’ve been pushed, mostly by advancements in technology on the outside and Spirit on the inside. This juxtaposition can sometimes just plain hurt.

Evolution involves deep undergirding groove-making change. It can make us feel confused, hateful, hopeful and lonely.

It always brings to the fore what you really believe. What your standards are. What is out molded and what is emerging. What you’ve run away from and that to which you need to return.

Either way, you keep going.

Be mindful and settle into an even deeper presence within yourself, with your intuitive voice. This is why teaching about the voice within; one’s journey to contentment, happiness and truest nature; our connection to the divine voice and the intuitive system that delivers these connective messages is both passion and purpose for me.

If we don’t understand our intuitive system and become functional and fluid with it, we’ll end up vulnerable. Susceptible to all kinds of thoughts and ideologies, including technology and its advancements.

Perhaps, one day soon, a computerized dashboard will be in our foreheads? You may think that’s odd or extreme; however, that future is closer than you think. We are being warmed up to its convenience, while simultaneously being put to sleep.

A car phone as big as your shoe. A flip phone. A smart phone. A computer the size of a watch on your wrist. Medical data chip within your wrist’s tissue. Evolution.

Our intuitive system drives human creativity, critical thinking skills and our Spirit-directed purpose. We must take care of our intuitive connective tissue or it will be gone until….

Until the next evolution.

Fortunately, given the strength of your Spirit, you give me comfort.

I am confident in your intuitive skills and your willingness to use them. They will see you through and lift you upward and away from danger and doubt.

So how do you handle these changes? You practice compassionate hope (not blind faith nor wishful thinking). You begin by acknowledging what is good within you and within your life.

You practice being practical about the way you live, staying in the middle way of your heart, your work, your budget, your time and your choices. If not, off into the ditch you’ll go.

Take a moment and look around the room in which you're sitting. Connect. 

In this season of your life, look at things and people you have gathered around you. Do they provide peace, ease, inspiration and comfort? Is it time to let go? Is it time to create more closeness? Trust your voice within. You’ll know exactly what to do.

What projects at work bring you joy or jangle your nerves? Figure it out and see if you can make changes. Small steps can bring big miracles.

Sometimes we need to go slowly and methodically. Evolution is, after all, small adaptations over time. Think about what works best for you and make some moves; even if they’re incremental.

One of the things I've decided to do is not multi-task any longer. It drives me crazy and I'm rather ineffective at it. So I'm doing one project at a time these days.

The result is that I'm more efficient. Clearer. Increased unwavering faith. I’m also starting to feel more rested, which is a very good thing. And I'm excited about how life is changing from the inside out.

Bottom line, when I look at this picture in my bedroom of Jesus pulling Peter out of the water, I’m reminded to never lose faith.

We’ve all had seasons when faith has dimmed or downright taken a holiday. We all can be shaken by life’s losses and even its blooming. We must remember that faith remains within, like the mustard seed.

Have faith in yourself, your life and your God. You are not alone in this life.

Case in point, right before I died people gathered around me. Not my immediate family. They were sleeping, cradled within the darkened night. There were no nurses nor doctors.

Steve, was there. A neighborhood friend who had died at the age of 21 in a diving accident. My uncles Wally and Darrel Kamm and my Grandfather Alden stood beside me. My dad’s secretary Kate, along with her lanky and ever-kind husband Gordon were there. All of whom had made their transition years before that night. My apparent eve to exit.  

Angels hovered over me with God’s Light and grace.

I was not delusional. I was not afraid. I was not alone. No one is ever alone at the time of death. Nor at a time of sorrow, crisis or celebration.

What’s even more grace-filled is that you always know what to do for yourself and your loved ones.

Times are changing as you know. Trust yourself. Have faith. 

Sometimes that means fast action. At times, it means to pause and let that seemingly empty space of nothingness reveal itself.

Or you may be listening to those inner echoes, “I have no clue what to do or I know what to do, but I’m too scared to do it.”

If you know what to do, do it.

If you don’t know what to do, stand still. You’re not alone, nor are you lost. The solutions will arise.

I say, “Let the evolution continue!”

With gusto, embrace the wild world out there. It’s calling you to ignite what’s in you…to help create, generate or soothe some part of life’s angst and growing pains.

Whatever your path, listen and act. You’ll know what’s needed for you to resolve and evolve.

With embracing faith and love for you…until next time. 

“Trust your life ~ miracles follow.”