Dear friends

I can’t tell you how pleased I was to receive an email from Global Mindshift about World Day of Interconnectedness.  Their by-line itself says it all:

“From I-llness to We-llness!”

Those of us who have been investing in personal growth will have no doubt been awakening to the truth of not just our ‘interconnectedness’ but our ‘oneness’, our ‘all-ness’.

Yes, our persistent human experience of separation is at the root of ALL suffering in all aspects of our lives – mental, emotional, physical and financial, personal and global.

When we wake up from this ‘optical delusion’ as Einstein so aptly described it, that persistent sense of separation begins to diminish and along with it, any thinking and behavior that promotes exclusion -

“I love some but not all”, “I love you more than anything or anyone else”, “You are the center of my world”.

Such narcissistic and disempowering world views can finally be replaced by ones that recognize, honor and celebrate the undivided reality that we are!

So, having just recently celebrated Fathers Day (here in Australia) and Labor Day (in the USA), can we not take some time on September 9 at 9am in the year 2009 to consciously connect with everyone and everything on this planet and throughout the universe?

Can we not empty our hearts and minds, if only briefly, of all the hurt, bitterness, loss, regret, disquiet, disappointment or any other such unpleasant feeling we may have, whether for those in our immediate sphere of experience or in the wider, global experience?

Can we not intend, if only with one thought, one intention, one moment of focus, to be the peace, joy, love, abundance, power and freedom that we seek, knowing that when we seek it for one, we seek it for all?

Yes, we can! (:))

Every change that we wish to experience must first be desired, experienced and given focus in our mind.

Please, vibrate with many, many others throughout the world at this frequency of ‘interconnectedness’ to bring it into conscious reality.

This wave of interconnectedness starts at 9am in New Zealand and happens at 9am wherever you are.

Make a note.

Place a reminder on your iphone, your fridge, your vision board, your desk, your dashboard…wherever you can’t possibly miss it.  And then take some time, even one minute will do, to consciously connect.

Then feel the power, the truth and the magnificence of this reality – We are One!

September 9:

World Day of Interconnectedness. 09-09-2009 (Find out more here)

Love always

Lucy

Awakening to Happiness, Abundance and Freedom!

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Have you ever experienced being ‘in the flow‘?  In fact, would you say you are mostly ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the flow?  Or ‘with’ or ‘against’ the flow?  Or in the ‘down’ or ‘up’ stream of the flow?  And what indeed is the ‘flow’?  Is it relevant to you?

I consider ‘flow’ to be the creative force of life.  The word ‘flow’ connotes ‘movement’ and the creative nature of life is what gives meaning to the notion of ‘flow’.  If life were not creative, there would be no flow.

Being ‘in the flow’ therefore means being in the creative mode of life.  It means being creative which is being natural!  We are by nature creative.  If this were not so, we would not be here!  Neither would the rest of life!

If we are in the flow, we are being our natural selves.  If we are not in the flow, we are not being our natural selves, we are being our un-natural, conditioned selves!  Consequently, it is easy to see why it is desirable and necessary to be ‘in the flow’, to be natural, not just sometimes but all the time!

What is natural comes easily, effortlessly.  Most of us have been conditioned into effortful living to the extent that we believe that it is impossible to achieve anything of value or succeed without ‘effort’.  Hence the old saying ‘No gain without pain’.

You can certainly achieve things with great effort but this is not natural.  What is natural is creating effortlessly and effortless creation happens when we are in the ‘flow’, in our naturally powerful, limitless, unconditioned, joyous and harmonious state of consciousness.

Now, I am sure that most of us would have had at least some experience of being creatively in the flow and accomplishing beyond expectation.  The trouble is, we tend to regard these experiences as ‘fluke’ or ‘random’, exceptions to the rule.  In one sense, they are, not because they are ‘out of the ordinary’ or ‘unnatural’ but because they are infrequent.  The important question for us to ask here is: Why are they infrequent?

The answer is simple:  We have learned to live effortfully!  We have, through conditioning, got into the habit of remaining in conditioned consciousness where fear and all its offspring – anger, guilt, impatience, doubt etc – dominate our attention.  These are all barriers to natural flow!

It is important to remember that effortful living is not natural and neither is fear.  However, these ways of being have become so dominant that we actually consider them ‘natural’, when in fact, what is natural is that state of consciousness that is in constant, effortless, creative, harmonious, limitless flow!

So, is it possible to remain ‘in the flow’ rather than ‘out’ of it?  Certainly.  It requires practice.  It requires holding our attention in that natural, powerful, creative state.  It requires bringing our attention back to this state again and again and again i.e. every time it strays.

How do we do this?  Simple.  Pay attention to your feelings.  Every time you are feeling less than peaceful, less than joyous, less than free, less than open, you are going upstream, against the flow.  Shift your attention to the emotions associated with flowing downstream, going with the flow – peace, joy, freedom, openness.

Allow these emotions to flood your mind-body.  How?  Recall past experiences of these feelings or imagine future experiences of these feelings.  The important thing is to allow your entire being to be flooded with these emotions.  These are the natural currents of ‘flow’!  And notice how much more you will achieve and how effortless it will all feel!

Lucy Lopez

Awakening to Happiness!

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Click here if you wish to listen to the 3-Step Technique

So you’re going about your usual business, trying to get things done but finding that as the day wears on, your spirit seems to be flagging, your focus is perhaps not as sharp as you need it to be and, all in all, you’re not feeling satisfied with your lot.  Come to think of it, this is not an unfamiliar feeling.

You begin to wonder, and not for the first time, if this is really what you want to be doing.  You feel resentment rising to the surface.  Your life is precious, so why are you spending so much of it feeling resentful, unfulfilled and afraid to make a change?

If you were to die tonight, your mind would spend your last few breaths playing a time-lapse movie of scores of missed opportunities, regrets and failures.  You don’t want to go feeling this way, feeling as if you had wasted your life.  You don’t want to carry this anxiety and failure into your next rebirth.  You don’t want to…

STOP!

You’re spinning in a loop that could easily lead to depression.  You don’t need to stay in it.  You can get out of it instantly and here is a simple 3-step technique you can use:

1. Interrupt your cycle of thoughts by focusing on something in your immediate space.  It could be your breath, the back of your hand, a flower in a vase or the view through a window.  It could be the sound of traffic, the purring of your cat or the movement of your chest as you breath deeply and softly.  It doesn’t really matter what it is as long as you direct your soft focus on just that one thing.

Do not try to think good thoughts or fight the bad ones.  Simply focus on your object of choice and each time you notice your attention has strayed, simply bring it back, gently with a smile.

2. Redirect your attention by thinking of 10 things that you can be grateful for.  I recommend that at least 5 of these are really basic things like your ability to breathe easily, the complete set of fingers and toes that you have, the ability to hear, the ability to see, the ability to walk.  Really fundamental stuff.

3. Reconnect with your natural state of happiness by asking yourself this question:  What is the least effortful thing I can think, say or do right now that will instantly help me feel peaceful and happy?

Really keep your mind open, fresh as a daisy in full bloom and allow the answer to land on you just as sunlight lands on the flower – effortless and complete.  Whatever you choose, do it now.

It may be something as simple as thinking of something or someone, or smiling to yourself or someone else, or bringing your hands together and really tuning into how they feel against each other…beautiful, simple, raw stuff like that…which is so grounding!  So helpful in re-centering you!

That’s all!  Try this any time you feel overwhelmed, underwhelmed or simply wanting to sharpen your focus and regain your concentration.

Let me know how you go, won’t you? :-)

Blessings Lucy

Awakening to Happiness!

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What is consciousness? Where does it originate? What has it got to do with the brain? What is love? Where is our sense of happiness ultimately found?

CONSCIOUSNESS       ONENESS GLOBALIZATION    HAPPINESS INTERCONNECTEDNESS            THE WORK BEGINS NOW

This video features highlights from a conference of international scientists in Duseldorf, Wisdom and Science in Dialogue, in which the answers, long known to humankind, are once again brought to our attention.

Lucy Lopez

Awakening to our natural Happiness!

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I often feel like I am straddling two widely different worlds – the world of spiritual wholeness and completeness and the world of physical/material incompleteness.  It is perhaps the reason why I am capable of experiencing at least two completely different kinds of reactions to things that happen around me or to me.

Take for instance the Compassionate Blog Award that I received today from Maitri.  The spiritual response was one of spontaneous joy in the awareness of being connected to another being (and through the award, to several other beings).  There was also gratitude which to me means the recognition of goodness, not just in some things but in all things.  So that was the ’spiritual response’.

The material response, on the other hand, included feelings relating to worthiness and deservedness.  After what seemed like a rather long spate of ‘arid blogging’ (no comments, no feedback, no praise, no criticism, at least none that I am aware of), I finally had a response and not any old response but a response in the form of an award with a splash of comments that was really encouraging.

Even as I write this, I am asking myself why I don’t just write a gushing ‘Thank you and How wonderful and What an honor and privilege’ post and be done with it!  Why don’t I?  For the simple reason that I was not drawn to doing that in the first place, and in the second, it would be a waste of an opportunity.

And what might that opportunity be?  The opportunity to share a couple of really important thoughts and ideas of mine with people who may never visit this blog again as well as those who are regular visitors.  Here they are:

Compassionate Blogging

The idea and practice of Compassionate Blogging is a beautiful one.  Even though I could not define it for you, what it suggested to me when I first saw it was enough to make me join the practice and promote it.  I imagine an ever-widening circle of bloggers who, along with their other interests and motivations, carry in their blogging the beautiful seeds of compassion.  Incidentally, this would be a perfect time to remind myself (and you) of what compassion means – deep awareness of the suffering of others with the wish to relieve it.  To blog with this in mind could not only be personally enriching, it could begin a transformation in self and others!

Beliefs in Worthiness and Deservedness

Here is where I return to my two worlds – spiritual and material – and where I try to explain why I did not feel compelled to write the ‘Thank you and How wonderful and What an honor and privilege’ post.  Actually, the ‘Thank you’ and ‘How wonderful’ bits sit perfectly well with me.  They are what I remind myself to think and allow myself to feel about the rain or the trees in my backyard or the ground under my feet or the body that I have.  It’s the ‘I’m honored and privileged’ bits that I shy away from.  Why?  Because, as they are most commonly used, they reflect beliefs in (un)worthiness and (un)deservedness, beliefs which arise from the mind that has forgotten its true nature.

And what is our true nature?  Why, we are limitless, free, complete, whole, peaceful, joyous, loving!  We are greatness itself!  Goodness itself!  Nothing less.  And as they say in Buddhism, Un-enhance-able and Indestructible!

Personal and spiritual growth is about waking up to our true nature and staying awake and that is less likely to happen if we keep feeding ourselves with false beliefs about who we are, about deserving this or that, about being honored by this or that as if any of it could possibly add to the perfection of that which we already are!  No, we are truly unenhanceable and indestructible and the more we can live out of that consciousness, the happier we will be and the more likely we are to awaken others to the truth of their true nature!

Right, now that I have said all that, let me thank Maitri for this gift of love.  May her work and vision flourish drawing many into the awareness of their purpose of service.   As she so aptly puts it ‘Each one, Reach One’!  Let me also wish her and all of us bloggers an ever-deepening awareness of that which we have always been – Great and Good!

To Compassionate Blogging and Beyond!

Lucy Lopez

Awakening to our Greatness!

PS As a special offer to visitors who have come here through the Compassionate Bloggers circle, I am offering a free intuitive/Tarot reading to you when you purchase The Love Course.

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What allows me to enjoy your being?
Or do I believe that I cannot afford such luxury?
Or that there are others more deserving of my time and attention?
Or that I cannot possibly enjoy your being when it is so different to my being, my beliefs and my values?

What encourages me to wish only good things for you?
Or do I believe that you can jolly well wish good things for yourself?

What persuades me to cease passing judgment on you?
Or do I believe that it is my business to?
And that, if I didn’t, why, you would spiral into moral decline or take advantage of me or act in ways that I do not approve of and ultimately, give me less and less reason to feel righteous about myself?

What compels me to listen to you with a wide open heart, with a mind willing to be changed, with a spirit basking in the wonder of your being?
Or am I too caught up in composing my response, or recalling my old arguments, or marshalling my defenses and launching my attack, ultimately seeking to prove you wrong or less or worse and me right and more and better?

What, in other words, my human being, convinces me that you and I are One?
Unmistakeably, unenhanceably, incorruptibly One?
Built of the same atoms and molecules as we are?
Spawned of the same cosmic dust?
Birthed by the One consciousness?

What?

One, Lucy

For Online and Offline Mentoring/Meditation/Workshops/Retreats Contact lucy@lucylopez.net
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