Don't wait for the final "MakeOver." Embrace Yourself NOW!

Happy Father's Day to ALL: See post this blog on June 21, 2009,"Trust In the One Father of Us All."
The 1927 poem, Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, (1872-1945), always has been one of my most favorite poems. From about the age of 12, I got a hold of it and since then, no matter how far I've traveled, how long my road has been, this poem, more than any other, resonates with my soul.

Most recently the last verse of the poem "with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it still is a beautiful world," has been replaying in my mind.


Maybe because in the most recent years and times, I have experienced all of those things: sham, drudgery and broken dreams.

The thing is...I would not have changed one aspect of one day.

I give the Glory for this to God: it still is a beautiful world.

It still is a beautiful world...with all that is sham...broken...and not at all "exciting."
With all this, I would still choose to walk the walk.

You see those of us who have walked on the corpses of our broken dreams, felt the anguish of drudgery and overall disappointments in our world, know this: nothing...nothing...NO thing can replace the power...the joy...the richness...of the journey and the acquiring of Peace within our Souls, even in the very midst of these seeming crises.


Many fortify themselves with large walls and a safe life of frugal living, sticking to themselves and their own "kind," not daring to venture out beyond the circumference of their "local" communities. I honestly cannot say I blame them; the world can be a scary place if you see it only with naked, human eyes.


Yes. I have dared.

Yes. I have suffered.

Yes. I have bled.

Yes. I have shed.


I have shed...

I have shed...

so many layers of my "previous" self! This was mostly based on ego's struggle against Spirit's urging to show up more at the center of my life.

...so many layers of dreams that were built upon false premises and assumptions about the world.

..so many layers that could not see through "the sham"...and the "dreams"...that at their core had absolutely no soul.

All I feel now is...gratitude.


I feel so grateful for the pain....the sense of displacement ... and, yes, the disappointment...I must have been... to so many in choosing the "simpler way."

I have dared to live a life that is all my own...that evolved singularly from my own soul...not by imitating or emulating someone else's walk, beliefs or philosophies about life.

Sure, I've seemingly made many mistakes and missteps... and in the most recent years... my life has evolved to a level of simplicity that required no more than following
the next step, not knowing where it will lead.

It is truly living on the edge and not at all pleasant. But there is a certain freedom there.


There is an absolute freedom that comes from not knowing...not expecting...not disappointing...not caring. It may seem to those people "of the world" like defeatism...that you've given up.
Except.

Along the way, and in the midst of it all, you know you have a silent companion.



This "Presence" urges you on.

It urges you on when you have no more wind in your pipe...can feel no more wind at your back...and no more hope in your heart or soul...

Oftentimes, too, the urge to keep going also may come from the one or two friends who have remained faithful with you throughout the darkness.


They, acting as agents of God, keep nudging you forward, urging ,"You can do it. You have done it. You will do it."

I hear the voices of the people who have proven to be my best friends, some for decades, a few for just a few years, urging me on.


So, you inch along, holding on hard to any evidence that comes along that affirms for you: "I'm still here...I'm still moving...I'm still growing."

Then one day you discover the *Glory of God in the midst of the *darkness, and you gather your "belongings."

That's the time I urge you to start over...right where you are.

Don't look back.

Don't look back at the people, places and things that caused you to know a world full of "sham...drudgery ...and broken dreams."

Start over with those people in those places that are still there. Hold on to what little may be left... after the earthquake, the tsunami, the tornado struck your life.




Hold on.

Keep moving.

Keep striving.

One step at a time.

Joel and Victoria Osteen's message on Tuesday, June 14, 2011:

"This is a new season, and in order for you to rise higher, you have to break away from relationships that are limiting you. You have to develop some new friendships with people who are going to pull you up and inspire you to rise higher."

This was inspired by Proverbs 13: 20:

"He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.”

When people see you walking in the light, they all want to join you, some even
walking so closely to you, they try to pull the very power from within you.

Those often, too, are the first ones to go, when your light begins to grow dim, as you move closer and closer inward.


For many people, what they can't see on the outside, they deny exists anywhere.

So, it is.

Don't expect people to see the light shining in you when your outer circumstances have changed or have been shattered.

People fade, as the light fades.

That's a good...no...a great thing!



What God wants you to know and to see is that you're losing nothing by losing the artifical light that surrounded you.

God is looking for your full and total illumination that comes from the center of your being.

You don't have time to surround yourself with false lights. They will just try to pull you down or back to the life they have imagined for you.

Walk away...keep walking away...no matter who they are: family, kin, enemy or friend.

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."

E.E. Cummings



As God continues his "makeover" with you, don't keep waiting for it to finish before you begin to embrace yourself. Don't wait for others to embrace you first and praise you before you begin to praise yourself.

Embrace yourself...praise yourself...right when you see the "light"...right now...."with all the sham, drudgery and broken dreams" that may still surround you.

Look at you!


Look at the whole and total you that you have become...and are becoming.

God's work is never done, so there will never be a "final" to the makeover.

You'll always be a "work in progress."

So, you don't wait until your world on the outside seemingly is in "order," to begin to shine your light from within.

Let it begin to radiate now.

Don't keep it hidden.

Don't stay in the darkness of your own being.

Begin to let your light shine. Now.

Embrace yourself.

Walk into the light of your life...NOW!

As Debbie Ford, spiritual teacher, recently tweeted:
"Change doesn't happen in the future, it happens right now, by taking action in the present."

Don't forget to give all the glory to God!

Namaste',

Che'
*NOTE: See namastewholistic blog post on June 5: "Learning to Dance With and In The Darkness."

Learning To Dancing With and In The "Darkness"

Editor's Note: Namastewholistic celebrates its 200th POST today!

I didn't realize until recently: I'm learning to dance with "the darkness" in my life.

I understood I was doing this when I attended a recent AMORC networking event and heard the speaker talk about "learning to walk with the darkness." I wanted to holler back, "Not only learn to walk but learn... to dance... with the darkness."

What I know the speaker was referring to and what I meant, too, was learning to dance with the "unknown, trusting in the Spirit within to guide and direct your life."


I don't know when I gained such confidence about being in the "dark," but it's happened.


I guess this gift was "thrusted" upon me in one of the too frequent "challenges" I've encountered along the way on this spiritual path. I did not always realize "the dark" as a gift. So I fought and tried to claw my way through the dirt, grim and unattractive "settings" that we often associate with "darkness."

Then, one day I just stopped fighting. I could not claw my way through anymore. I didn't have the strength, and strangely, too, the desire to fight anymore. I guess, I wanted to walk that final mile into the darkness just to see what lay within.


The day after that day and night of allowing the darkness to swallow me whole, I woke up to truth:


"In the darkness, there is the biggest, brightest light obscured so much by living in artificial light that it cannot be seen, until our surroundings fade to almost black." Che'


It also was on that day I began to truly learn to live "day by day, moment by moment."

I understand more fully now, there is no other way to live. The "future" is just an illusion, as is our past.

Yes, we can look forward by dreaming ahead and holding visions of a future filled with our dreams. But it is not until we embrace the currency of the moment...whether filled with darkness or light...that we can create a pathway for our dreams to follow and be fulfilled.

In order to get to the light, there must be darkness. There simply must be some of that darkness, as without this, we cannot make the distinction.


Alas...without this distinction, we cannot truly know when we are in the light.

We heard the lamentations of Job, who may not fully have appreciated his prior life until he was fully tested to his limits in the darkest period of his Soul.

Many of us are like this, too, never knowing that we fully are in the "light," until darkness comes and we recall our "yesterdays" with fondness and nostalgia.

If we walk from light to light, there is no differentiation.



But to walk from darkness into the light...even the slightest improvement of light...seems like a form of "heaven." In the corporate world, even *Chrysler learned this lesson. I recently tore out a print ad for Chrysler 200 in one of my magazines to remember these words:

"When you've been through hell, you tend to appreciate Heaven." Beautiful as is the Chrsyler 200, I beg to differ with the ad's concept of "hell," often seen as "darkness."

The darkness is not hell; it is "illumination." It leads you to the controls in your life.


In the darkness, all the gifts of the Soul are illuminated brightly for us to see and to know what we have. We also are able to clearly see people, places and "things" for the "true" role they play in or lives.

We are able to recall the many gifts that we've taken so much for granted. These are gifts of intelligence, resilience, giving, loving, being that we often overlook in our daily walk.


Until we walk in the darkness, we cannot know or see that so much ...indeed...all of who we are is a gift.


The unique person, individual...wife...mother...child...lover...friend...worker...that we are in our daily walk in life is what we're called to be and to share in this world.


This is our purpose.

Yet, we overlook our uniqueness, thinking it is just an ordinary flow of our humanity.

No. NO. NO! It is not.


The characters...traits...beingness...that you and I are...are given to us solely for the purpose of serving the world. For us to stampede and trample over these "gifts" of our Spirit/Soul is to negate the very essence of who we are called to be.

Yet, we trample over ourselves...running headlong into a "future" we believe is brighter, because it promises us that we will be a better, wholer, richer, person than we are today.

No. NO. NO!

With all our mistakes...with all of our missteps...we are growing into the "light" of who we are. From those halting moments when we learn to embrace our inner selves to the time when we fully allow the Soul/Spirit to shine through us, we are on purpose!


It is only through the seeming mistakes and missteps that we learn to uncover the truth that lies within us.

Don't discard those as worthless and useless. They are the gifts of life.

Don't also walk headlong into a future that belongs to someone else.

Yes. YES. YES!




You may have heroes, but no idols, when you walk on the Earth.

You may have people you try imitate, but not emulate, when you walk on the Earth.
[Indeed both Lady Gaga and Bruce Springspeen, pictured above, sang of "Dancing in the Dark" of a different type.]
The only true "idol"... the only Soul...you may "emulate"...is that which resides within your own flesh.

That is the Spirit within you.

It exists only and solely through you for you to fulfill your purpose as you go about your Earthly walk.

We so long to discard aspects of ourselves when things go wrong.

But it is by becoming still and embracing the darkness that we can see the light of who we are shining through.



When we stop the struggle...indeed when we learn to dance...with the darkness, we begin to embrace ourselves and our uniqueness.

We are able to see clearly...in the dark...why there can never be two lights of the same hue, as they wash out the impact and effects of each other.

So, it is with darkness and light.

Except, we've got to begin to see things in a different way:

"In the darkness, there is light. In the light, there is darkness."

Knowing these truths, and learning especially to dance with the darkness...in the darkness...we will be illumined.

Namaste',

Che'
*NOTE: In these references, I'm alluding to Chrysler's 2009 bailout by the U.S. Government, even if the ad are not!

The World Needs A Facelift: Cracks Are Beginning To Appear!

According to some religious circles, you should not be reading this piece.

The world should have ended yesterday, May 21, 2011.



The fact that you're still here and reading this means that those people with their predictions about end of world times were wrong.

It gets me thinking about how many other predictions we make on a daily basis that simply do not happen and are just wrong.

We get to the point in life where we think that we follow the rules of life and certain things are bound to follow.

Live long enough and you realize that things are not necessarily that well ordered. In fact, you get to the point where you know the "world" we're living in is being "created" as we move along from family to family in generation to generation.

Yet, we're still doing a great pretense of acting with certainty about the world.



But cracks are beginning to appear in the carefully erected facade in the world that we have been living in.


If you look closely...through the cracks...you can see the crumbling and falling down. Not only the walls we've erected to separate ourselves from others...the outside wall...are falling, but the very foundation of the facade is begin to erode and erupt and crack!



Every time a Soul breaks from the tradition of doing "evil," as the world is having some do, then a little crack appears. More individuals moving along that "fault line" add to the widening of the crack...until eventually that part of the wall falls down.

Look carefully around you...and more and more...you should see little "cracks" appear in an otherwise normal wall.

The thing is that it is "ordinary" men and women...who are causing these little cracks to appear...all over the surface of this facade.

The pretty picture that was painted already was beginning to look old...and faded...and now, with the cracks, there's no going back to that old picture!

The World Needs a Face Lift!
A New Order Must Be Put In Place!

The carefully erected world those of us who are of the Baby-Boom generation grew up in has long been discarded.

We know that certain "truths" we took for granted have been spat upon and broken down.



First, it started with a new generation of parents teaching their kids that they don't have to live segregated from each other because of race, color, creed or religion.

So the children of those Baby Boomers now are integrating in ways those parents never, ever could have foreseen as youngsters, though the consciousness had already begun with their parents' parents' parents.

As a result of those set of rules changing, we are now witnesses to an ever evolving, changing world.

*Barack Obama is president of the United States, elected by a coalition of people of all races, creeds, colors and religions. His parents, one black one white, could not have imagined or dreamed of this when they dared to strain the rules of integration by coupling up as college students.


By saying "NO" to the world that made interracial dating taboo, they said "YES" to the possibilities of tomorrow and the reality of today, where Barack Obama, an African-American, was elected president in 2008.

In more ways we're seeing the "old world" order fall apart.
But the world always has been falling apart. We just had the illusion that it was all permanently pasted together. The world has never, ever been stationary!


Each generation of people has had to deal with the changing world and "the illusions."

Today, many are waking up to the illusion of predictability in the stock market and real estate market. The old rules for money making and growing prosperous and rich that worked for earlier generations are now no longer a guarantee of a secure future or for "old age."

Many people are afraid. They are very, very afraid about their finances.

Job security?

Totally a thing of the past, except with very few organizations and entities.



In Egypt and in Middle Eastern countries we were witnesses this year to major changes. People born into hierarchical systems that kept average citizens enslaved to the wealthy, and women subjugated to men, began saying "NO" to those ways and "YES" to freedom.

As a matter of fact, this year alone we saw the toppling of several entrenched regimes, as people took power into their own hands and said "NO" to the old ways.


This was evidenced first, in Egypt, then Syria, Yemen, Baharain and Libya and other countries that had long histories of hierarchical and patriarchial rule.

So the evidence is clear.

What is not clear but still is central to our understanding of the changes occurring in our world is the mass consciousness that has developed and declared "war" on the old ways.

People have said "NO" to old ways for a long, long time. This was imbedded into the consciousness of each new generation that was born. It took decades...but eventually, the old ways of thinking, being and doing have given way to our new and evolving world.




Our parents' parents' parents did not live to see their consciousness interplay in their world for their generation. But their children's children's children are now beneficiaries of those "new thoughts" they imbedded.

Even though we may never directly reap the benefits of our current thinking and actions, we leave a legacy of those thoughts and actions for those following behind.

Since the old world did not give way and crumble as predicted yesterday, there's a question now for us all as we move into the "new world." What legacy are you leaving for the world?



What crack are you putting into the world's wall as you go forward in your life?

These are important issues as day by day, in what we may consider our limited way, we make a crack in the wall of "old" thinking and actions.

Your crack becomes the opening through which an entirely new universe emerges for yet another new world.

Think on these things. Then...

Get Cracking!

Namaste',

Che'
*NOTE: Oprah Winfrey also defied the odds by becoming the Number One Talk Show host of a day-time television show. After 25 years, on May 25, she's finally ending her top-rated talk show, begun in May 1986. Over the 25 years of her program, Oprah Winfred inspired millions to change their lives.