Be Yourself

The Art of Stepping Up – It’s All Coming From You We like to think that the world is coming AT us. It is not. The world is actually coming FROM us. In taking responsibility for ourselves, we truly accept that our life is in our own hands. Only then can we make the changes that will change our life. This is when we transform. This is when the world we experience begins to transform. When we are all doing this, it will be a very different world. In shifting our view of the world from being a victim of it, to being an active participant in it, self reflection and inquiry, courage and integrity, perseverance and a healthy sense of humour are essential. This shift also requires deliberately and consciously choosing to operate through the matrix of love and stepping beyond the matrix of fear. In life we are faced with this choice continuously and the commonalities we all experience as human beings, are in fact our greatest opportunities to exercise this choice. A matrix, according to the 2nd definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary is 2a - an environment or substance in which a thing is developed. Or 2b. - A womb. Initially our human form develops in the womb and we take on the external environment sensed through our mother and internalize it as our own. (Franklyn Sills- Being and Becoming). Then, with fluctuating awareness, from birth until death, again and again, ad infinitum, we continue to develop in the environment in which we find ourselves. The matrix of love, in brief, appears to be an environment of acceptance, personal responsibility, allowing and trust. It creates sensations of space, unity, freedom and peace. It honours inter dependency. When we view the world as coming from us we are in communion with the world and All That Is. By operating through the matrix of love, we move WITH the world. We move towards others and our authentic self. Our communion nurtures our innate nature and consciousness. This transforms our experience of the world, the world we experience and the ‘us’ the world experiences. The matrix of fear appears to be an environment of judgement, restriction, limitation, blame and doubt and it creates the sensations of contraction, separation, pain and suffering. It thrives on co dependency, as we relinquish personal responsibility and attempt to make others responsible for our happiness. When we perceive the world as coming at us, we separate out from All That Is and we interact with the world largely through the matrix of fear. We separate from others, moving away from them under the guise of disappointment and this disconnection feeds our neurosis and global unease. Observations of the world illustrate all too clearly, how we are encouraged to operate through the matrix of fear. There has generally been less encouragement for operating through the matrix of love. As a result, it seems we are rapidly forgetting that we are so much more than we believe ourselves to be. We are something at our very core which is so pure, so free and so intrinsically perfect that we appear to have become a mystery unto ourselves. We are human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are pure energy manifesting in something we label as human form. We are intrinsically connected to nature and it mirrors back to us, again and again that which we be. When we disengage from what we really are, we disconnect from the heart and identify ourselves with what we have, what we do and who we know. None of that is us. It is our armour and it keeps us at a distance from the fullness of our lives, the fullness of our being and the fullness of our connection with each other and ourselves. We spend so much time looking outside ourselves for validation and approval, for how to be, what to do and what to have, that we become riddled with self doubts and indecision. Our energy gets all tied up with trying to hold on to it and protect it. When we doubt ourselves, we lay ourselves open to manipulation, coercion and persuasion. At times we find ourselves on the receiving end and at others we are the ones manipulating, coercing and persuading. It is little wonder that we find ourselves in a world where our voices seem to go unheard. We have stopped using them as we have disengaged and disconnected from our true nature. Yet in order to take personal responsibility for ourselves and to be ourselves, we need to look at who we think, perceive and believe ourselves to be. In accepting that the world is coming from us, we also need to look at our projections of whom and what we think, perceive and believe others to be. For us to mirror back to nature that which it is, we are called upon to drop out of our heads and to fall into our hearts. We are called upon to engage with life and with each other more fully. We are also called upon to disengage from our all too convenient shields of disconnection. What if all we need to do is to actually look inside ourselves for a while? We are no different from nature. We are in fact nature expressing itself in a human form. Just for a moment, remember that we come into being just like seeds in nature come into being. The seed becomes a sprout. As a sprout pushes its way through the earth to the surface, what shows itself first is the tip of the shoot. As it unfurls there are two leaves joined like wings and from the wings emerges a single primary leaf or heart. After the heart comes the main stem, the leaves and the roots, connecting it to the earth. We are the same. Our very inception is a miracle and our conception, a collision of energy in space. Those seeds, ovum and sperm, which merge and find a secure place to grow, transform into an embryo. Nine months later, if there is a natural birth, as the baby and mother push its way out into the world, it appears head first. This is followed by the arms and from these emerges the heart and from the heart the torso, the legs and the feet, connecting us in turn, to the earth. At our very core, metaphorically speaking, we have wings followed by the heart. Our shoulder blades and arms are reminiscent of wings. We are in essence love, Angels coming into land. If only we could perceive that everything in the world is emanating love, starting with ourselves, what a different world we would be experiencing and creating. The thing is that even though we may be emanating this as a new born, the world around us is all too often emitting a rather different message. This happens if we are born into societies and communities that are governed by the matrix of fear. Beliefs, thought patterns, identities and behaviours are activated and quickly incorporated into the perceptual field of the new arrival and imposed upon what was once definition-less awareness. The wings and the heart, overwhelmed by layer upon layer of counter viewpoints to our innate truth, seem to disappear. They are however, lying low deep within. How can we touch back into who and what we be? This requires showing up and embodying the body, dropping out of the head and into the heart and really allowing ourselves to touch the earth, grounding and connecting. We can do this by building a sacred relationship with ourselves, one that expresses reverence for our life and moves us from ego to our innate nature. To live life is to feel life, to taste it, to vibrate with it and to colour everything we touch with it.