I have just began to read "The Not So Big Life" written by Sarah Susanka. Early on she writes "All of us have been conditioned by our parents, our schools, and our culture to become valued, contributing members of a society that depends on our willingness to play the game for its very survival. And we in turn oblige by going to work every day, bringing home a paycheck, providing for our famiies, and in the process purchasing an appropriate quantity of goods to support our consumer society. We rarely if ever stop and wonder if things are really the way they appear to be. Our conditioning tells us this is so, and we accept it. But could there be another way of perceiving things?"
I applaud Ms. Susanka's insight. Our response to the constant barrage of advertising to buy, buy, buy, had been to do exactly that. We buy because we are convinced we really neeed that excercise machine to maintain a physical appearance that will allow us to compete in the job market and the "relationship market" if you will. We need to upgrade our autos to stay in style and in step with the latest gizmos and add-ons. And of course how could we not respond to the call of the fashion sirens. We've made our lives so complicated that now we've created a market for goods and services that promise to simplify our complicated life. Stop. And when you have managed to become very still, listen to and follow your heart.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
New Age Spirituality
[The following is by Jennie Marlow http://www.blog.overcomingfearofuncertainty.com/. I loved it so much that I wanted to include it here. I hope you find it interesting and useful.]
New Age spirituality began in the 19th century with metaphysical movements like Spiritualism and New Thought. In the 1960s and 1970s, many counter-culture groups gathered themselves under the umbrella of the term. Some ideas that characterize New Age thought include reincarnation, an afterlife devoted to the soul’s journey of evolution in consciousness, and practices such as meditation, spiritual growth and energetic healing. Central to the philosophies of the movement are a higher purpose for a human’s life and the need for the individual to follow his or her own spiritual path. The New Age has sparked many popular life-style movements such as organic food, sustainable living, alternative medicine and an interest in Eastern practices such as yoga, tai chi and qi gong.
The “post-New-Age” is a term coined by Spotted Eagle to describe a shift away from the New Age idea that people can accumulate vast amounts of wealth and possessions through positive thinking and affirmations. Spotted Eagle disputes the validity of the core of these prosperity consciousness notions: the Ask-Believe-Receive model for “manifestation” and the “Law of Attraction,” an idea first proposed by 19th century lawyer and occultist, William Walker Atkinson, in a book entitled, Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, published in 1906.
Spotted Eagle’s post-New-Age model focuses, not on wealth creation, but how we want our lives to feel. His model emphasizes essence, the feeling experience we desire from our possessions, relationships, careers and everything else in our lives. He says that fear of uncertainty is the root cause of our suffering. By avoiding or medicating our emotional pain, we lose sight of essence and reinforce behavior and thought patterns that cause us to suffer the effects of what he calls the “anxious mind,’ the part of our humanness that craves the illusion of certainty and security. In his post-New-Age model, perception, behavior and choices are demonstrated to create the vast majority of the outcomes of our lives. He posits that if we root out the out-of-power distortions in our perception, and resist the temptation to medicate or act out existential fear, then our behavior and choices will be authentic, guided by our desire to experience essence qualities like joy, creativity, ease, freedom, fun, unconditional love, satisfaction, contribution, and so forth. In Spotted Eagle’s model, positive thinking, when fantasy-based and used as a cover-up for fear, can be just as destructive as negative thinking. In the post-New-Age model, neutral, undistorted thinking results from exercising dominion over the anxious mind through such practices as observing our “story,” waiting out our emotional wave and seeking emotional neutrality before taking action. Through undistorted thinking, our emotional pain will be allowed to move to its natural conclusion of acceptance and balance.
To read & learn more of Jennie's work please visit:
http://steeltoedmoccasin.com/ http://www.jenniemarlow.com/
New Age spirituality began in the 19th century with metaphysical movements like Spiritualism and New Thought. In the 1960s and 1970s, many counter-culture groups gathered themselves under the umbrella of the term. Some ideas that characterize New Age thought include reincarnation, an afterlife devoted to the soul’s journey of evolution in consciousness, and practices such as meditation, spiritual growth and energetic healing. Central to the philosophies of the movement are a higher purpose for a human’s life and the need for the individual to follow his or her own spiritual path. The New Age has sparked many popular life-style movements such as organic food, sustainable living, alternative medicine and an interest in Eastern practices such as yoga, tai chi and qi gong.
The “post-New-Age” is a term coined by Spotted Eagle to describe a shift away from the New Age idea that people can accumulate vast amounts of wealth and possessions through positive thinking and affirmations. Spotted Eagle disputes the validity of the core of these prosperity consciousness notions: the Ask-Believe-Receive model for “manifestation” and the “Law of Attraction,” an idea first proposed by 19th century lawyer and occultist, William Walker Atkinson, in a book entitled, Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, published in 1906.
Spotted Eagle’s post-New-Age model focuses, not on wealth creation, but how we want our lives to feel. His model emphasizes essence, the feeling experience we desire from our possessions, relationships, careers and everything else in our lives. He says that fear of uncertainty is the root cause of our suffering. By avoiding or medicating our emotional pain, we lose sight of essence and reinforce behavior and thought patterns that cause us to suffer the effects of what he calls the “anxious mind,’ the part of our humanness that craves the illusion of certainty and security. In his post-New-Age model, perception, behavior and choices are demonstrated to create the vast majority of the outcomes of our lives. He posits that if we root out the out-of-power distortions in our perception, and resist the temptation to medicate or act out existential fear, then our behavior and choices will be authentic, guided by our desire to experience essence qualities like joy, creativity, ease, freedom, fun, unconditional love, satisfaction, contribution, and so forth. In Spotted Eagle’s model, positive thinking, when fantasy-based and used as a cover-up for fear, can be just as destructive as negative thinking. In the post-New-Age model, neutral, undistorted thinking results from exercising dominion over the anxious mind through such practices as observing our “story,” waiting out our emotional wave and seeking emotional neutrality before taking action. Through undistorted thinking, our emotional pain will be allowed to move to its natural conclusion of acceptance and balance.
To read & learn more of Jennie's work please visit:
http://steeltoedmoccasin.com/ http://www.jenniemarlow.com/
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Overcoming Fear
"In order to overcome fear at the deepest level, we must first understand where the tendency to fear is sourced. The first thing we must embrace is that overcoming fear is the journey, our spiritual path, the reason we have come to the earth plane. When we understand that overcoming fear is our soul's intention, we can see why being human would be a crucial part of this experience." Spotted Eagle quote#
It really should come as no surprise as we consider this teaching from Spotted Eagle that we do experience fear on a daily basis to one level or another and considering the environment that we have created for ourselves as a species we seem to be very intent on learning this lesson. Perhaps a place to begin is to realize that in the moment that it takes you to read this you probably are not experiencing much fear. You are not hungry, you are not without a roof over your head and probably not naked. So perhaps in the moment is where we need to be. Not in the future imagining the worst or in the past berating ourselves with what we perceive to be our mistakes. If we have demonstrated nothing else we humans have demonstrated that we can and do learn. Let us put the lessons to good use in service to the good of all, to the oneness.
It really should come as no surprise as we consider this teaching from Spotted Eagle that we do experience fear on a daily basis to one level or another and considering the environment that we have created for ourselves as a species we seem to be very intent on learning this lesson. Perhaps a place to begin is to realize that in the moment that it takes you to read this you probably are not experiencing much fear. You are not hungry, you are not without a roof over your head and probably not naked. So perhaps in the moment is where we need to be. Not in the future imagining the worst or in the past berating ourselves with what we perceive to be our mistakes. If we have demonstrated nothing else we humans have demonstrated that we can and do learn. Let us put the lessons to good use in service to the good of all, to the oneness.
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