How to Live Forever

"You must go through the way in which you are not.


And what you do not know is the only thing you know


And what you own is what you do not own


And where you are is where you are not."

~ T.S. Eliot, excerpt from Four Quartets

When I began deleting my personal history, as Paulo Coehlo describes in The Zahir, it was the most joyous and bizarre experience of my life: I was simultaneously aware of who I was and who I was not, and 3D appeared both silly and sublime. It was expansive, akin to the seatbelt sign blinking off in flight as the Captain announces, "You're now free to move about the cabin."

Similarly: In college I listened to Woody Allen's amusing audiobook Without Feathers. The title refers to the Emily Dickinson poem, "'Hope' Is the Thing With Feathers".

The idea of "giving up hope" is as intriguing as stepping outside our conditioned responses. The day before the U.S. World Trade Center attacks in 2001, I'd finished reading Beyond Prophecies and Predictions: Everyone's Guide to the Coming Changes by Moira Timms, and felt suffused with a calm knowing, a sense that something was about to happen. As 9-1-1 unfolded I sent out a global message contrary to popular reaction, and was castigated as well as thanked. (Email me if you'd like a copy of This IS A Test.)

In this first year beyond prophecy, how do we live beyond hope, beyond history, beyond how we might once have responded, and simply observe our unfolding? Will Linville conveys the evolving human condition with startling beauty, demonstrating what it looks like to live as "a constant stream of consciousness".

We begin by enlarging the lens from microscope to kaleidoscope, as Caroline Casey illustrates: "We are remembering our true selves, our destiny, our role in the Dynamic Mystery Play. You know how sometimes people ask that harumphitudinous question, 'Who do you think you are?' We reframe: 'Hoo-Doo! You think! You Are!'"

This is how we morph into "forever beings" says thought leader Soleira Green. "Forever beings are not trapped by history, by past mistakes, learning, cultural influences, etc. Freedom isn't a concept since there is nothing but complete and utter freedom on every level, available all the time.… A forever being lives within limitless possibility, seeking change and creation constantly and always. This re-orients us to the ever streaming NEW and not to the static past."

Without "hope," without history, we're closer to our true nature than ever before. Or as Linville offers, "If you lose control, you're free. And you have everything."

A Passover Question: Are You Fleeing — or Returning?

"You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you."

~ Isadora Duncan

Today marks the beginning of Passover, a holy week on the Jewish calendar that commemorates the Jews' exodus from Egypt and freedom from slavery. Yet the Jews were not only fleeing subjugation; they were also making a pilgrimage home.

Every encounter with what we might call the Divine presence within is a call to return home — not necessarily to a physical location, but to the truth of who we are. In a stunning essay on Moses' encounter with the burning bush, Rev. Charles Hoffacker declares, "The encounter with the Eternal is the essence of every call story … Eternity calls out to us through a moment of time, and though the moment disappears, Eternity leaves its impress and we are not as we were before."

T.S. Eliot poetically concurs in Four Quartets: "Quick now, here now, always — A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)." READ THE REST!

The Love of Your Life

This is excerpted from my February What Shines newsletter two years ago:

We become "the Light of the world" first within our own beings; then we're able to shine this radiance outward. It's like any other learning process: we can only serve others from a well that runs full and deep.
In this spirit, I offer you an evocative embrace from Derek Walcott (sounding remarkably reminiscent of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, and Rumi):

Love After Love

The time will come 

when, with elation 

you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror 

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat. 

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Remember that February 14th heralds the actual celestial alignment celebrated in song 40 years ago, and a true heart-opening opportunity for the entire planet ~ blessed are we to be a part of it!