Have you ever faced a problem or a cluster of problems so big that getting to the answer or resolution seemed impossible?

Have you ever looked at what was happening in your life and wondered, why is this happening to me?

Even when you’ve tried you’re best, given everything you have and things seem to be not working as they should. ‘Why God, why?’

It’s as though you’ve given every last bit of yourself and it’s not enough.

You are absolutely correct, it isn’t enough. You were never meant to carry such a heavy load on your own. When you come to the end of your efforts or strength, this is a sign of a new dawn in your life.

This is a time of awakening. For the first time, you’re waking up to the truth. The truth is, you can’t do this alone.

Your efforts can only take you so far, and when you’ve reached the end of them working you can finally begin to live a better life.

It means that in a sense, you’ve graduated from a level of experience in this life. The one where effort and strength reign supreme. You’ve reached the pinnacle of how far that can take you.

Welcome to your new life, where there is power beyond what you’ve known before. Here, there is more available to wield besides pure strength and grit. This level of life doesn’t reward you based on how much you suffer or how hard you’ve worked.

It can seem cruel and unjust, how could I not be rewarded when I’ve worked so hard? I’ve given everything!

Don’t be dismayed. This is a blessing. It is clear evidence that you have transcended the previous level of life experience. Let’s use this example:

Let’s say you’ve been with someone where nothing you did for them in the relationship was ever “enough”. You would travel the world over, do everything in your power to show that you care. Sometimes they would reward you, sometimes it was still not enough. You work harder and harder, building more and more tension and in the end, there is collapse.

Now let’s say you meet someone new. They don’t need you to work for them. They like you just as you are. They’re easy to love and they love you easily. But let’s say you’re still operating on the old system, in the old way. You are still fighting for their love, when it’s already available. They do not reward you for what you do, because they don’t understand this system of punishment and reward. And so perhaps you imagine that you are indeed still in the old system, where your efforts are not being rewarded.

Here, you can awaken to the truth that the reward is not available because you have transcended the entire system of punishment and reward, the withholding and offering based on exterior judgment.

Here Life says, don’t fight for me. Don’t work for me. Life says, be with me just as you are.

If you’ve been a fighter, a warrior, someone who takes ownership and honor in their ability to work harder than most, be more dedicated than most, and demonstrate resilience and fortitude where others would crumble, this can be a strange transition.

Your identity and worth may be tied up in this system of punishment and reward. You may still believe in working too hard. You may still be waiting for a reward from the universe for this work.

How do you begin the transition from the old system to the new way?

Here is one practice that is extremely important. And you’re ready to hear this, you’re ready for this practice.

Take an impossible situation in your life, big or small. Anything that feels “tight”. If you try to approach it, it feels as though you can’t move or it floods your mind with confusion.

Have you tried to work it out as best you can? Have you given it all you’ve got?

Would proceeding to ‘figure it out’ cause you anger or upset? Do you think, yeh I guess it’ll work out, but I’m miserable?

Perfect!

In the old way, your efforts led you here and you would persist. You would give yourself away, entangle yourself further, agree to things that were not good for you because “there is no other way”. You were not going to give up, you were going to demolish the problem, even if it meant demolishing yourself.

Welcome to the new way. Here, you pause when it becomes too much. You can tell it’s too much because you begin to feel powerless or overwhelmed, or as if life is against you. Notice these feelings. Notice your thoughts of powerlessness. These are extremely important.

Notice if you feel small or stuck. Breathe into and around these feelings. This is where in the past, you decided that it was ‘you against the world’. You had every right back then, to come to these quiet conclusions. Perhaps you never said it to yourself explicitly, but it came through in your thoughts and actions. In the, “fine I’ll do it myself”.

This is the exact point where change is occurring. This is where all that previous healing was preparing you for. Back then, there were no options. The stakes were high. All you had was yourself to depend on.

That was the old life, the old way. It has been retired, it no longer exists for you. There is only one way to move forward, to claim your place in this new level of life experience.

It is the way of Opening. It is quite literally, how life is born into itself. You’ll stand right at the forefront, where non-life meets new-life. Where impossible meets every possibility.

This is not for the faint of heart. It takes certain inner qualities to observe “no way” and to feel all your past responses to that idea of blockage, and then relax or expand into “open passage”.

It is the gateway between worlds, quite literally.

This is the new way. You stand facing an impossibility. You feel the tightness, the fear, the despair, the smallness. You observe your response to the problem. You observe your attempts to resolve the problem. You observe your thoughts as you imagine what you could do, and what those possible outcomes could be. You feel your response to those possibilities.

Then when you feel ready, you let go a little bit. You allow for an opening. This is literal. “Allow” meaning I’m willing, “an opening” meaning space between the thoughts and responses.

I’m willing to be open to an opening. I’m willing to observe any available space between these thoughts and responses.

You want the incoming perception of this “space” to be small. You want it to start almost imperceptible. You want to catch it when you’re not paying attention. You want to feel surprised by it, as though it almost passed you by but you caught it!

Now, let it grow. “I’m willing to perceive more space, is there more space?”

Notice: There is the part of you still “spinning thought”. A continuing cycle of thoughts, ideas, and your responses. And there is this other part of you, observing the process.

When you allow space, you allow for that other part of you to observe the spinning.

When you have created enough space, you’re able to let go of some lower level “effort”. You can begin to say things like, actually this is too much for me on my own. I don’t actually want to do things this way, it doesn’t feel good. I’m willing to find a better way.

It feels like a rush, and maybe it is. The stakes feel high, and maybe they are. But you didn’t come here for rushing or high stakes. Those were the things of the old way. You came to feel the sharp breeze of standing at the gateway of the Undone.

Look within yourself, and ask. “Do I want to do things the old way, or do I want to stand at the gateway of the Undone?”

This is where you lay down your sword. You stop fighting and you look forward and upward. This is where you step outside of time. You step outside of the spinning mind, and connect with a part of yourself that is The Holding Space of the spinning mind.

This is where you practice living with dual-vision. The part of you immersed in the every-day happenings, and the part that is the observer of the entire play. They are both important. You must be immersed in life, with the ability to emerge from the play and then return again.

This practice allows you to do this with more fluidity.

Now let’s go back to the part where you’ve made enough space. You’ve temporarily given up.

Fill the space that you’ve created with consciousness.

Imagine the sun, the sky, or the moon. As though you’re looking into a vast unknown space, and drawing from it like a quill draws up ink. Imagine you have a giant straw that reaches to the ends of infinite space, and with that straw you can suck up eternity.

Imagine this beautiful, infinite spaciousness joining you in that space you’ve created. Space itself, filling up that space you’ve created.

Here you are connecting with the very breath that breathes you into this life experience. You say “more please” to this breath. “More please.”

In the old way, it’s like you’ve tried to live off the vapors at the end of our oxygen tank. “I can do it! I don’t need more oxygen! I’ll make it there wheezing and dying, but I’ll make it!”

That way has been thoroughly experienced, it is expired and retired.

Now, let’s see what it’s like to live life refreshed. What’s it like to live on a full oxygen tank?

This will take a little time to get used to, but it’ll get more and more familiar the more you play with it.

You’ll be faced with all kinds of old messaging, how ‘nothing works’. How you’re in this alone, how things can’t get better.

That’s okay. You’ll come to feel love and compassion for those parts of you, for those thought streams. You’ll say, ‘oh hey it’s you again, I see you.”

You will not be eradicating these aspects of you. You will not be destroying them.

You will be making Space around them and through them.

Your task is not to destroy or fight yourself.

Your only task is to notice Space.

And when there is enough space:

Fill the space that you’ve created with consciousness.

Imagine the sun, the sky, or the moon. As though you’re looking into a vast unknown space, and drawing from it like a quill draws up ink. Imagine you have a giant straw that reaches to the ends of infinite space, and with that straw you can suck up eternity.

Imagine this beautiful, infinite spaciousness joining you in that space you’ve created. Space itself, filling up that space you’ve created.

Here you are connecting with the very breath that breathes you into this life experience. You say “more please” to this breath. “More please.”

You will begin to wield a power beyond what you’ve come to know. Here this is no punishment and no reward. There is only opportunity to observe, create space, and join more of life’s breath to itself.

You are the guardian and the portal for life to experience itself. Welcome to your upgrade, it’s time to level-up.

With Love,

Heba

The secret to life. I’ve got it. I’ve got a whole bunch.

[So does everyone else.]

Every revelation comes with this feeling of uncovering, a discovery, an unearthing. It’s like we’re all squirrels and we’ve hidden nuggets of wisdom for ourselves all over this life experience.

When it’s time to dig, we scurry all over and try to sniff out a distant remembering. Aha! There it is!

It’s nice to think that even in the coldest and darkest of times, we’ve left help for ourselves everywhere. With just a little sniffing and digging, we can find something to tide us over. Just a little something to get us to the warmer, lighter times when we won’t need those nuggets. And those little nuts can choose to grow big on their own, not waiting for us to find them, but melting into life itself and demonstrating the wisdom that was woven inside.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a prayer in my mind:

“Let my mind be open and willing to the best, the most soothing, the most loving, the most high.”

I felt like my mind was a wide open field, full of sunlight. Thoughts were little rain drops, clouds, or shooting stars that could pop in and deliver a message. I imagined receiving little light drops of Thought rain, each drop filled with a new idea. I felt such inner calm, as though I was smiling inside, sitting quietly and happily in that field-available to these thoughts.

That image and the calm stayed with me the whole day. Even in the turbulence of everyday noise, I would suddenly remember the Quiet and the Availability.

In this, I saw a duality. The part of me that scrunches up her nose at life and its annoyances, and the part that smiles and awaits the Good.

I found that sometimes things feel open and flowing and sometimes closed and difficult. I tried to express this on paper and ended up writing:

“I flow when I’m up and float when it’s rough.”

I could feel my spirit smile when I wrote that line. I felt an inner “yes”.

Yes, gather yourself and make moves when the energy is there and don’t freak out when things feel tight.

There is some secret in that, I can feel it in my heart. Like I’m digging out one of those nuts of wisdom. To cover as must ground as you can when the energy is flowing and just float when it’s moving slow.

There is magic in this back and forth, with more focus on the flowing part. Bring as much consciousness forward into the flow as you can. That’s the time to “pull up”, and then exhale when that flow subsides.

In my depression, I used to not flow when it was time. I would think, “what’s the point? I’ve already tried.”

But that is the whole point! It’s the compounding of the ‘trying’ that works.

The same way having the same realization over and over means it’s becoming integrated into your field. You do want to keep “coming around” to the flow, letting it become bigger and more pervasive every time.

Today I invite you to find where breath is in your life. Where can you feel ease and flow? It’s there somewhere. Find where it is, even if it feels small. Breathe into those places.

As a meditation, try to find the origin of your breath. What causes you to inhale? Where is it, that switch that flips and says “breathe”?

Try to look behind your eyes and see where the origin of your vision resides. What is there, behind your eyes, looking out onto the world?

You are Meaning itself, trying to find itself. Never be dismayed by this quest, because you can always rest inside yourself. Turning inward leads to peace, because you are what you’re always looking for.

With Love,

Heba

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