Gazing out the window of our holiday cottage in the mountains I watched a swallow being buffeted high in the sky by the afternoon breeze. It didn’t look graceful. It didn’t look fun. It was being thrown from one side to the next and then up and down. Yet I could see that it had complete faith in itself and the process. Despite how bumpy and rough its ride was, it was not giving up, nor was it preparing to land and effectively stop what it had set out to do.

This made me realise how much I had started to doubt the process when it had only just begun. I had been so excited by the launch of the website and everything else that was going on in my life that you could have said I was flying like that swallow: high and free. Yet the first blast of a breeze and I was considering giving it all up. When that is when more strength, determination and, above all, faith, is required.

So I give birth to the concept that we are all responsible for absolutely everything that we manifest in our lives: Oh God Knows. Even the breeze that buffets us when we are flying like that swallow is a complete manifestation of our greatness. The very things that make our journey uncomfortable are placed there by ourselves to remind us of the lessons we need to learn to achieve our own greatness… with which we created ourselves.

Trust me: you know exactly what is going on in your life and why. Tell yourself the truth, focus on your own greatness and enjoy the ride in the world you created. Congratulations.

Peace is Not the Ultimate Answer by Andrew Cohen

It continually amazes me that the majority of spiritual seekers from the most affluent countries on our small planet seem to be looking for one thing above anything else: Peace. Peace? Why on earth would the luckiest people to have ever been born express their spiritual aspirations through questing for relief and release – for peace? Why are we looking for a way out of the challenge of human existence? I mean, has our lot in life really been that bad?

So why, then, are we still looking for a way out when we look to spirit? I understand that just because many of us have been graced with a high standard of living, it doesn’t mean we don’t suffer at an existential level. But I wonder if we haven’t fallen into the habit of giving undue significance to our existential angst.

It just doesn’t make sense that the experience of relief and release from the very process that produced us should be the goal of the luckiest people who have ever been born. Why not? Because the very energy and intelligence that gave us life, that produced us, needs us lucky ones to take responsibility, to wholeheartedly participate in the life process in a deeper and more authentic way than most of us ever imagined possible.

As long as the focus of our spiritual aspirations is relief and release rather than a much more profound relationship with life at the deepest level, we will never be of much use to the energy and intelligence that created us. To put it in theological terms, we will be letting God down, because we will always be seeking for a way out rather than wholeheartedly engaging with the life process, with other human beings, with our own highest potentials. As long as we are seeking peace above all else, we will never know what it means to live at the very edge of the possible. In order to be truly available to the energy and intelligence that created the universe, we do have to transcend our angst-ridden separate selves. But the motive for doing so is not so we can abide in a state of peace and freedom beyond the process. Our motive is to become passionate and egoless vehicles for its own ongoing evolution.

–Andrew Cohen, from WIE Magazine

Greg’s response…

Wow! This is a mind-blowing stand point! I have to agree: aren’t people constantly trying to make things easier in order not to be responsible for hardship? Actually, not to be responsible for anything. What is the “peace” that people wish for? Let’s look at the paradigm view of peace – a state of ease, no need for “difficult” communication, no disagreement, no conflict, everyone having what they need and want. Everyone having what they need and want? It brings us back to the point that the collective unconscious views Soul as a mushy, lackadaisical entity that chose life to “chill”. Why? Why would Soul choose to come to Earth and not experience everything that is unique in this existence? This includes experiencing duality that is so a part of this paradigm; duality that includes hate, fear and angst. We must accept that this is the world we have chosen to be in and, in order to make a difference, we need to convince people to live in their highest esteem and enjoy the spiritual fruits of the experience. Stop worrying about the world and how we can fix it while we have not even fixed ourselves.