What is a truly open heart? One that welcomes instead of resisting, gives and never desires, softens further after each new arrow, is wildly free yet wisely heeds its boundaries.

To stop trying, to simply experience and engage without interpretation or desire - this, more challenging than any other circumstance we may seek to overcome.

God: Long before I understood it, you knew my soul longs to be transformed in you. I pray to receive what you already give. Sometimes it is a burning desire, other times a quiet compulsion. Regardless, I ask for you each day.

To truly receive you, I must trust unconditionally that whether I feel pain or joy, what I request is being delivered. I must open my eyes and heart to receive, never thinking I understand or assuming I know what is yet to come - never guessing. I must allow all aspects of the lived experience to change. And continually allow myself to disappear, that you may appear in my place.

Do not identify with your thoughts or emotions. They are relics of the past and lies of the present.

Now is spoken only through the heart, from a space of grounded presence and openness to all that presents. Now is spontaneous, unguarded, lighthearted.

Sit

Are you truly reborn by changing your circumstances, by moving from one environment to another, switching this stimulus for that, attempting to rewrite your story? Emerging in a new land, a new situation, new conditions, what do you find except what you just tried to escape? Is this the way of living you will choose?

Or do you seek true growth?

Stillness and silence allow renewal at the deepest layers. To reach depths you must move beyond the surface, and to do this you must allow focus to shift away from appearances, action, images, words.

If you can hear silence or feel stillness, you have not gone deep enough. Listen-taste-feel-see-open beyond what you think is silence, and when you have reached it…sink deeper yet.

If there is no need to change anything, what is the purpose of trying to change even our human inclination to change things?

To learn how to more fully rest in what is, and to embrace all exactly as it is.

What is already perfect cannot be improved upon. Adorning what is already beautiful only obscures what we have been given.

The best way to understand how much of your identity is tied to something is by giving that thing up — whether it is an object, a person, a community, a career, an idea, or a belief. We think we know who we are, but we cannot experience our true identity without freely and fully letting each layer fall away. Grasping at what has been shed reflects a fear of the unknown and only obscures from ourselves the truth of who we are.

The trees speak to me.
The wind shows its careless strength.
I long to sink into these ever more deeply,
to rest in the trees, the wind, the dirt and moss, the snow.
To be restored.
Then, to return, truly myself and free —
finally, knowing my heart.
Rest now in the Sun, the wind, the waves,
the wildness of the tree that
is rooted precisely where the seed fell from the parent.
Rest in the wildness of the fox
that finds its territory and says,
This is enough.
Here is enough.
Now is enough.
All I have been given in this land!
I long to be free as the tree and fox,
to be exactly as I was made.
To be wild
and held
and whole
and wholly, unabashedly alive:
The human. This human.
Living at the intersection of human and Divine.

If it truly needs to happen, it will happen either fluidly (if we are open) or despite our best efforts otherwise (if we resist).

If it does not need to happen, it will fall away, either fluidly (if we do not hold on) or through extended turmoil (according to our level of attachment and expectation).

Asking for anything indicates that we think we do not already have it.

If a condition appears where we seem to receive the opposite of what we ask for, we are being given the opportunity to release a barrier we have created to receiving that very thing.

Embracing what Is

You already have exactly what you need (Now). The moment you need something different, it will appear.
You are already doing exactly what you need to be doing (Now). Action flows from one moment to the next.
You are already exactly who you need to be (Now). Each interior unfoldment occurs the moment you are ready.

Seeking to change what Is creates a barrier to what is natural and perfect. If Now is already perfect, why not learn to embrace it fully?

What is conceived in realms beyond physical drops into physical form, in alignment with Divine Principles. To better see God/Is in the physical world, come closer to living Now. To embrace Is, embrace all that is.

Deconditioning

Just as my body seeks physical homeostasis, so does my mind. I have accustomed myself to a certain level of mental, emotional, and environmental stimulation. If I choose to change a circumstance with the intent toward greater simplicity or peace, I do well to tame the inclination to increase stress in another area. I only succeed if I identify the tendency to fill in what seems to be missing

this is like what happens when we simplify our food - at first the food tastes bland, but over a few days we adjust to the new flavor, and eventually are ready for further simplification.

the trick to reducing the threshold for internal or external stimuli comes in moving inward, slowly but persistently, until the craving for noise (of any kind) is dissolved, replaced not by another noise but with an equivalent fullness of Being/God.

Open your heart to the infinite love. Allow this love to flow freely through you. Choose the path that will show you: THIS is what sustains and propels life.