Category: Spirituality (Page 10 of 19)

“Where’s the sun?”  I repeat the question to the Universe that was suggested by a friend who seemed to be suffering at the loss of sunshine.  After all, cloudy days seem to bring out the “blahs” in most of us, and today seemed like no exception.

“It’s there, you simply choose to focus on the clouds,” came the reply.  The answer makes me wonder why we choose to see the Universe as this complicated realm of physics when it seems like nothing more than a simple expression of what is.  Yes, I chuckle even as I type those words.  Usually, the Universe answers me in the most simplistic fashion which suggests to me that I am the one over-complicating things.

The answer I got is certainly indisputable.  I’ve been on enough airplanes to know that a clear view of the daytime sun is only a few thousand feet from me.  So the question must be rhetorical because, after all, we all know where the sun is.  It’s there, it’s shining, and it is allowing us the ability to see the clouds we have chosen to focus on.  It is us that create the clouds into a source of suffering, and it is our choice to focus on that source rather than to peel away the layers to the Light that allows us to see them.

Love is like the sun.  When we become somber or angry, those emotions serve as the clouds that hide the sunshine.  We could make a choice to focus on the clouds or the light beneath them.  After all, it is that light that allows us to see the clouds, right?  Just like the sun, Love itself is not extinguished because of a few clouds nor does it vanish in the presence of fear even if we can’t see it shining high within us.  It’s always there, always shining, regardless of where we choose to place our focus.  If only we would look beyond the layers, beyond the clouds, and place our focus on the sunshine we could allow the clouds to be without distracting us from our focus.

I wasn’t done with this, so I had to “ask” what seemed like the most logical of questions.  “What happens if we redirect our attention from the clouds and focus solely on the sunshine?”

“Transformation.”

The Universe rarely speaks to us in words, and this answer really didn’t come in the form of a word.  I use “transformation” to describe the explanation I received.  See, I didn’t ask the question with words either.  Rather, I asked it by simply redirecting my focus from the clouds to the sunshine.  A smile crept upon my lips, and I actually laughed out loud.  That is “transformation” folks.  I asked properly and received a proper answer.  I could have asked the question verbally while still only focusing on the clouds and my answer would have been much different because the Universe answers true questions (actions) with true answers (actions, or what we call “REactions, see Newton’s Third Law).  Words are meaningless outside of our own minds and rarely have an effect unless used in an intense moment of stillness.

The blame we give to the Universe for not answering our questions is equally meaningless.  We simply are asking them wrong, and not seeing the true answer to the true question.  Ask (correctly) and you shall receive.  It’s a matter of action, of focus, not of words.  If you ask your neighbor for an egg while throwing them at his house which question will get the answer?  Right, the one you ask through action.

I have come to know myself quite well in recent years through tears, trial, tribulation, suffering, and the LOVE that allowed me to see them all.  I know that my mind reacts to certain stimuli based on the 40 some-odd years of conditioning that I have allowed.  I can be a cold bastard, a big bear, a manipulative asshole, a caring man all depending on how I let my focus be directed.  I am in control for sure and sometimes I choose to allow my conditioning to cloud the sunshine.  I love everyone, but get someone to cut me off in traffic and the clouds set in.  I am being less focused on the sunshine and more distracted by the clouds.  This discovery is the key to “transformation”.  Once I understand that I alone changed my focus, I then understand that I alone can change it back.  This seems to be true for each and every aspect of our human existence where we ourselves are the “Creator”.

In this understanding I also know that I can’t “beat myself up” for my distractions.  After all, we learn to appreciate the sunny days because of cloudy ones like this.  I desire to focus on the sunshine and allow those moments of lost focus to remind me of how much I love the Light.  Blindfolds always make the light that much brighter once removed.  Prayer, or meditation, should be the practice of removing the blindfold and of changing the focus point of our moments.  It isn’t that the blindfold is bad, it is simply that I wish to focus on the brightness the Light affords.  Each is perfect in its own way, and fulfilling its purpose regardless of what I create it to be.

Remember, in this perspective yoga is the question.  Meditation is the question.  Compassion is the question.  Charity is the question.  Exercise is the question.  Healthy eating is the question.  These are not answers to anything; they are merely the questions we ask the Universe to which it, of course, will answer.  In truth, no words are ever necessary in this dynamic and never-ending dialog between Love and the Lover.Anyway, there I go over-complicating things again.  Sometimes I wish I could just point at the silver lining I see and have that be enough.  After all, isn’t that how the Universe says it all?

The way to ask the universe is often not best done with words.  Words seem too open to interpretation to me, too dependent on the perspective of both the listener and the speaker.  Most of the time we aren’t even sure if we are saying what we mean let alone if what we are hearing is what is meant by the speaker.  Words seem to fall short most of the time, either in describing what we mean or how we feel.  Truly, how can one really describe the way they feel at the first sight of their newborn baby, or describe the moments of inspiration seen at the first glimpse of a sunrise? Sometimes it just seems better to speak in silence which may, of course, be the meaning of the old axiom “he who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know”.

Now, we can speak a shared experience without words.  When we watch the sun rise together we can speak “wow” without ever saying a word.  Experience, it would seem, is a much better describer of things than our mouths or pens could ever hope to be.  Why, then, do we ask the Universe for stuff with words?

It came to me while walking in mediation this morning when I was “asking” the universe for answers.  I was reciting a prayer I read in Marianne Williamson’s “A Course in Weight Loss” when the answer was given to me.  The prayer goes like this:

Dear God,Please remove the wall that I have built around me.I have built it so strong,dear God,that I cannot tear it down.I surrender to You every thought of separation,every feeling of fear,every unforgiving thought.  Please, dear God,take this burden from me forever.Amen

It’s a great prayer, used to end the grip that fear has on me in its various forms (anger, jealousy, impulsive behavior) and it works for me.  It dawned on me this time, however, that I was asking the wrong way.  I was speaking the words.  Whether from my lips or in my head, I was forming words to ask for something that no words could truly describe.  I wanted freedom, and assistance, and health, and abundance but it seemed so shallow to simply “ask” for it in the manner I have been asking for over 4 decades now.  So, how do you ask for something without using the words?

Well, in that miraculous moment, I understood that my methodology for asking had to be something much deeper.  Rather than ask like this, “Dear God, please remove the wall that I have built around me” I begin hammering at the wall realizing completely that I am not doing it alone.  Rather than ask like this, “please bring me abundance” I simply do what I enjoy.  See, the Universe (or God) does not ever let you do what you can’t do alone, its mechanism is to always jump in to help whenever asked (and it knows when it is being asked).  When you forgive others their trespasses, YOU are forgiven your own.  You need not ask “God, forgive me my trespasses”, you simply need forgive others.

So today I asked the Universe for fitness.  I did not open my mouth, I just walked.  I asked the Universe for health, and I did not speak.  I ate an apple.  I asked the Universe for peace, and yet did not utter a prayer.  I became peaceful and guess what?  The Universe answered, not in words, but in every other way imaginable.

I guess that when we believe that God never talks to us, it is because we are waiting for words to come at us like orders from a drill instructor or for them to appear in the clouds as if written by a sky-writer.  Yet, it would seem that in most cases we get what we ask for.  A steady diet of McDonald’s will get us sick.  A high intake of salt gives us high blood pressure.  Overeating makes us fat.  Anger makes us mad.  We ask for everything we are given for the most part, with few exceptions.  Yet, when we get what we ask for but don’t like the results we blame God.  God listens to each and every one of our prayers, but it seems that God listens to the ones without words first.  So, perhaps it is time to know rather than speak?

Hmmmmmmm…


Peace. ☮
©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

On Sunday, May 29, I was challenged by a dear friend to ask the universe for something, “anything”, to which the universe would always respond “yes”.  Since I had no idea what I would ask for prior to the challenge, there was a moment’s hesitation between the challenge and the request as I thought about what I should ask for.  The shear number of suggestions that popped into my head during this moment was astounding.  Should I ask for abundance, love, peace, harmony, more sex, less sex (just kidding), health, joy?  Finally the answer was clear as if it was not really me making the decision.  Perhaps I had asked the universe for the question?  If I did the question I needed to ask became quite clear even if the answer itself was not.  Well, not at first anyway.

The conversations we have with the universe can occur at super-light speeds.   As quickly as I posed the request, it seemed the answer was echoing in my otherwise still mind.  It’s funny, but when you still your mind the slightest breeze in it can feel like a hurricane-force gale.  In this case, both me and the universe sounded a bit like Gandhi talking through a megaphone; peaceful and content but with a touch of force behind the words.  Such conversations often bring a smile to my face.

In this moment, the conversation went something like this:

“I want more love and forgiveness to come into my life,” I asked silently in the stillness of my mind.

“I can’t give you any more, you have all there is to have,” came the reply.

“Wait, you were supposed to say ‘yes” to each request,” I said rather abruptly to the Universe.

“I did say yes, long ago when you stated you wanted to know love and forgiveness.  I gave you all there is to give, you just don’t allow it in.”

“Then I want to allow more love and forgiveness to come into my life,” came my rather sarcastic response.

“Then allow it.”  It seems I don’t have the market cornered on sarcasm after all.  “I’m not stopping you.”

“Alright, then allow me to be a vessel of love and forgiveness.”

“Ok, you’re allowed.  Now what?”

I was a bit dumbfounded.  Was the universe that frustrated with me as to treat me so harshly?

“Fine, let me make this easier then, I want more abundance to come into my life,” I said in the matter-of-fact kind of way children usually reserve for those moments when negotiations for more TV time are breaking down.

“I can’t give you any more, you have all there is to have,” came the reply.

I was just about to respond with the “wait, you were supposed to say ‘yes’ to each response” part of the continual conversation when it hit me.  Here I was, proverbial mouth wide open, proverbial finger about to point, staring into the universe when I suddenly realized I was proverbially speechless.  I was having that “miracle moment” I had often heard described but never had really seen.  Not that they have never happened, I just haven’t seen them.  Yet here it was, in all of its glory, a miracle moment all of my own.

See, I have asked for it all at one time or another in this existence.  I have asked for help, love, forgiveness, money, strength, enlightenment, peace, victory, harmony, courage, understanding, and the zillion other things that have come up at one time or another.  Yet, in my very human perspective I have felt neglected in the answer.  I continued to make mistakes for which I believed I was not getting help.  I continued to feel unloved as the darkness fell all around me.  I felt despised for my mistakes and unworthy of either love or forgiveness from those around me and, most of all, from myself.  I felt money was always going to be an issue no matter how much I asked for abundance.  It seems that no matter how many times I have asked, the answer was usually a far cry from the “yes” I was told was coming.  Whether that small child crying for help under his bed, or that young boy asking for strength while hiding under the blanket he thought would make him invisible, I have asked for it all already. As a young man struggling for identity and some semblance of self-esteem I have asked for it all.  As a man working to provide for his family and wanting so desperately to see his family have the happiness he himself had never had I have asked for it all.

In that moment of realization, in that miracle moment, using that always perfect 20/20 version of hindsight, I understood it was never the universe saying “no” it was my unwillingness to allow the answer to be.  I myself converted the tests of my youth to fear in adulthood.  I alone created monsters out of shadows.  I alone was the creator of unhappiness in those around me and, most importantly, in myself.  I had asked the universe for a shovel to find gold, which it provided, and I in turn used the gift to dig a grave while denying that the gift itself was ever provided.

I smiled in that moment as I am smiling now.  Tears welled in my eyes as they are welling now.  A feeling of something, peace, love, harmony, whatever you wish to call it, fell over me and completely filled my body.  I understood in this, my miracle moment.

“Allow.”

“Thank you,” was the only reply I could mutter and it was the only one needed.

In this moment the universe had again answered my request in with a resounding “yes”.  What was different was that I was listening, I heard that “yes”.  In fact, it still echoes in my heart as if stuck in a continual loop.  I admit that there must be a million “miracle moments” presented to us in our daily lives and about a million that go unseen.  This one moment has changed me.  I love me, and I love you.  While that in itself is no different than before what is different is the simple (ok, maybe no so simply) act of allowance.  With this in mind allow me to leave you with one simple quote that is shouting from my soul at this very moment,

“In Gandhi’s time there were over a billion Gandhis in the world.  Only one had the willingness to allow it.”


Peace. ☮
©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

There are but two qualities that reside within me: that which I know and that which I believe.  What I know is rooted in Love and Eternity, what I believe is rooted in fear and damnation.  My life’s purpose is to let go of what I believe and let what I know fill the space.

What I know is not the confirmation of what I believe, it is what is left when I let go of what I believe.
What I know is not the ideas in my mind, it’s what is left when I let go of those illusions.
What I know is not the faith that my heart will beat, it is in the sound I hear when it does.
What I know is not the belief in the idea of God, it is in what I know when silent.
What I know is not the body nailed to the cross, but the Spirit that body and cross could not defeat.  It resides in each of us.
To know is to be enlightened, to believe is to be denied.

Peace. ☮
©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

The key to life is not in making sure you tell others how much you love them, it is in making sure you never have to.

Peace. ☮

©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

I struggle with your condemnation and your desire to create what you see with what you think; and I wonder, “What?”

Who is it that you are creating me to be?  In this moment, who is it that your eyes want to see?  Who is doing the wrong, and who is doing the judging?

I struggle with your understanding and your desire to believe what fear dictates you to have faith in; and I wonder “What?”

What is it that you are searching for?  What do you wish to create in the moment?  What is it you are truly trying to accomplish?

These are but rhetorical questions, as many I ask are.  I don’t seek the answer in you, I seek the answer in me.  Yet I hope in my search you may find an answer in you.  I forgive me for the question so that I may forgive you for the answer.  In this forgiveness I can see the meaning I give both the question and the answer, and the trouble that meaning may have caused in footsteps laid long ago.  Today there is but light, forgiveness, and the love that gives life to both.

Peace. ☮
©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ

Imagine for one minute you are sitting there completely devoid of feelings. You feel nothing, not contempt, not anger, not hate, not worry, not joy, not love.  You are still living, but you truly can’t experience the life you are living because you are unable to feel it.  Think about it, if you could not feel the moments, would you actually be able to experience those moments?  Would they have any meaning?  If the answer is, as I suspect, a resounding “no”, then it must be that feelings are not only the translation of life’s experience into thought, but also the translation of thought into a life’s experience.  They interact with one another, with one molding the other so completely as to change the fabric of reality within the artistry.  Both are that powerful and that necessary.

I was taught a lot about my feelings in the anger of a woman.  I was taught a lot about my feelings in the sexual deviance of a woman.  I was taught a lot about my vision of self in the pain of a woman. I was taught a lot about who I am in the rejection of a woman (in case you haven’t guessed by “woman” I mean “women”).  Yet despite all of these experiences and lessons, I learned the most about myself in the love of a woman.  Interestingly, I can no longer see these events as separate unto themselves.  Fear (anger, jealousy, hatred, contempt, etc.) is not a separate entity to love.  Rather, it is an opportunity for love to know itself, to express itself, to show itself and to understand.  Love is known because fear is known, fear is known because love expresses itself so perfectly that fear is allowed to be.  In fact, it must be.

It has been my life’s experience that pain is no small substitute for love’s understanding and that fear is not the absence of love as some may suggest.  I have looked at many moments of supposed lack, pain, anger, sorrow, etc. and can see the light of love beneath the basket of fear.  Love is like the tapestry to which fear is the seam, like a great masterpiece where love is the canvas and fear is the paint.  These things are not separate, they are one, unable to honestly exist without one another.  It is us who assigns “good” or “bad” to them, who separates one into the “good” pile and the other into the “bad” pile.  We create the idea of separation in order to feel special about ourselves when we spread love and demonize ourselves when we act in fear.  Yet, without this need for praise or rejection, love and fear operate within the same circle, allowing the expression of one through the experience of the other.  They are, in essence, perfect until we create them otherwise.

For me, I experienced fear most of my known life.  I was taught it from a young age and it was reinforced throughout most of my adult life.  I magnified the rejection of my peers in fear, the loneliness I experienced (often self-created) was enhanced by fear, I expressed fear in womanizing, in sexual deviance and in inflicting great pain on those who would dare get close to me.  I fought fear with violence, spread fear through anger, and basically created a universe of fear around me.  That was how I gave meaning to life.

Yet now, through the love of a woman, I experience love.  The sun has risen, the spring is upon me, and the thaw is creating vast rivers flooding my soul.  With no effort on my part, I magnify the acceptance of all things, feel equal completeness in being alone or in a crowd, express my love to all things and wish to be a vessel of warmth for anyone who would grace me with their presence.  I embrace love with open arms and allow it to spread around me in order to provide light, warmth and shelter wherever it is necessary.  Sometimes those things manifest themselves as a smile on the lips of a stranger, or an embrace of an old friend, or in one of a million ways love can show itself.  That is the goal and intention of each moment at least, the success of which I will leave to others who wish to do the separating.

And that is love, or at least the feeling of love expressed to me.  It speaks a word I cannot speak myself, describes a beauty that is indescribable, so therefore I realize I am probably not doing a very good job of describing what I feel.  Yet, I believe that once we experience love, we need not have it described to us…we can just allow it to be.  My goal here was not to describe love, but describe the perfection of fear as it relates to love.  I no longer hold the concept that they are different, or separate, or “good” versus “bad”.  One is not perfect while the other imperfect; they are simply One perfect expression of the Whole, completely reliant on one another because they are not separate from each other.  At their quantum levels they are the same experience expressing itself differently or the same expression of a different experience.  The are the white light we can see as blue and red.

At the end of the day, I was shown fear by a woman and shown love by a woman.  Yet, the choice of which to express and experience resided solely with me.  In fact, the choice resides solely with each of us.  If we blame another for our actions, we fail to recognize that we solely made the choice of the expression.  We fail to realize the wholeness of the stimulus to the response and the fact the we alone are responsible for the choice of mindfulness or forgetfulness.  Which do YOU choose this very moment?  Of course that question’s rhetorical, that answer is known long before you can express it.  Yet, if you can recognize that you are the soul Creator of the expression of who you are, you can become mindful of who you are.  It’s not a trick, or a gimmick, it’s a time-tested and verifiable way of expressing your Oneness regardless of the choice you make in how you experience the moment.

Enjoy in joy the moment, and your expression; and who you are.

Peace.


©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ