awakening Archives – Page 10 of 10

March 21, 2015

Your Hands

Several days ago I was approached by a woman on my website: www.spiritual-intuition.com with a question that I have tossed around in my ponderings for a long, long time and which I feel is important for anyone who is seeking to become more aware of the otherness we all seem to know exists beyond our three dimensional reality. I share the question and my answer here:

Question:

“The greatest difference between the power of intention and caring is that while caring attaches us to illusory outcomes we have accepted as important, intention is detached from any conception of caring.”

Your quote. Actually, I am EXTREMELY inspired by this . . . because “caring” doesn’t mean very much in the world of “doing.” I have thought about this tremendously because of what I do for a living and YES! “intention” is really what is the driving force behind “being.” It is interesting in that I work with people every day and caring is . . . nice . . . it is intention that creates all the little miracles. It isn’t belief, it isn’t faith it is intent. My question is: I find that my heart has love for them. I can’t DECIDE what is happening but INTENTION works with the healing. When they leave I send them off with “Courage Mon Brav.”. Does caring have a place where there is intention? Is “caring” unlike “loving” because love has no attachments where by definition “caring” does?

My response:

Cheryl,

Thank you for your question and sharing an example of intention. I love how you say that “it is intention that creates all the little miracles.” How poignant your expression and how interesting your detection of this in your practice.

Your question is one that I ponder quite often because “caring” is such a big part of the landscape of modern living and weaves itself into virtually every aspect of our dealings with other humans. In extreme cases of “caring”, aggressive action is often sanctioned because of it and virtually all forms of right or wrong can be justified under the umbrella of caring or, for that matter, love.

Intention, as you mention, has no focus and yet it does, as well, yet we cannot know what that focus is. We simply know that it is and without the discussion that it is this or that, we sense the power of it when it is working. Many times you might hear people say things like “I’m not sure what that was but I could feel some force or power”, or “I just knew what to do and did it without question or concern.” You experience this in your work. Intention is there and when we give ourselves to this power it becomes apparent that we, too, are the power. It is our essence and we are its.

For me love and caring are completely human, and mind based. We hear a lot these days the admonition to “love unconditionally,” however, if people were completely honest they could see that the propensity to love unconditionally is not possible if for no other reason than they have to say it is. Love and caring show up most powerfully in our own dependence which most of us will never admit. That is, our own need to look to others for any kind of approval. “You don’t care” or “you don’t love me” are examples of the outward expressions of this dependence. Perhaps another way to put this is to say that unconditional love or caring requires no dependence on “me” to notice it. Very hard to do.

The roots of caring and love are formed in the past, whereas, intention is always something that plays out in the present. Broken down, caring is a product of something that does not exist while intention is always at play in “what is” right now and only right now. Intention has no power in the past or in the future. Your example of “miracles happening,” in your own practice, occur while you and you alone are focused on anything but your caring. Miracles, as you are experiencing, don’t wait to happen. They just happen!

On the other hand it is difficult to sustain any action based on something that does not exist in present time and yet we see over and over those who try to do so and they’re “burning out” long before reaching the original objective of their caring. We use words like hope and faith to motivate our caring and watch the collapse of those whose actions seeded great good under the pretense that “caring” in any form could possibly sustain any action long term. Caring has to have the attachment to an idea or outcome that originated sometime long before this moment. It is completely unsustainable and it is always, always, always attached to “conditions.” Intention knows no conditions.

Caring is the strongest cord of ego and virtually unbreakable. It is the justifier of our causes and the power behind judgments of ourselves and others. It is full of conditions and rules. Intention is devoid of description and so just is; it is a force without reckoning of any kind. Intention supersedes loving and caring and I have often used the term “compassion” synonymously with intention. Both are unexplainable. It might be said that intention and compassion are the non-human forms of love and caring but having said that, it is a weak comparison. Neither intention nor compassion carries any meaning in human terms and yet those who know them, “know them.”

In conclusion, and I suppose the real answer to your question, is to say to you, send them away with both your love and your caring. The compassionate work has been done; intention has played out and while they may never know what it was, they will have felt it through your hands. Your hands, Cheryl; hands that have the amazing ability to touch reality and heal the world.

Again thank you so much for this. All my love,

Carl

June 17, 2012

My Father Al; A Living Tribute

It may seem a bit odd to pay tribute to another human in the form of an obituary but what good are expressions about someone if they, for whom they are written, are unable to hear and know the depth of feeling a Son can have for his Father.

My Father Al came into my life after I had ruled out all adult humans as trustworthy and protective of those they were charged with caring for. My real father had left without having any contact and my life as I knew it then was forever over. I never even gave my Father Al a chance to be a friend let alone a father to whom I would look up to. He was just another Man, human if you will, who like so many others would find ways to hurt, abandon and abuse me and make my life a hell that would haunt me endlessly. I kept him at a distance but I never stopped observing his quiet, steady ways. Beyond that I never gave him much thought. He was not much more than an inconvenient intruder in my own already defective life.

As I grew older, I began to take upon myself, with great pride, the idea that having lost my biological father, I could pick and choose the men who passed through my life and take from them characteristics I admired and wanted to emulate. I prided myself on the great variety of virtues I was able to draw upon as well as the men from whom I would draw them. I threw my admiration at certain men from many walks of life and eagerly observed and adopted characteristics I felt were necessary to my own character building. Things like integrity, honesty, hard work, devotion to family, self-sacrifice, humor and love of life. As I sought these things, always, Al was in the background.

One rarely knows the “hows” of our experiences. Most of us come to a place in our lives where our own retrospection looks back on “what changed” or on “what just happened” and in silence we marvel at what we missed for so long. For me, like John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim” I travelled a long and desperate road only to circle around back to where I had started. In a moment of stark recognition I had made my way back to my original home and to that place where in my youth I had judged so harshly. The journey took me in countless directions and all that I ever sought was always right there where I had begun. The greatest of all men was there in my own backyard. He had not changed but I had. I now had eyes that could see that where I began, and where I had ended was at his feet. And in a silent moment of recognition, at one so great, I am humbled in his presence.

The light has never shined so bright as when I have been with him. My Father Al was everything I ever sought and even with the passage of time being so long before my own recognition I feel as though I have never “not” known. This is because of Him, as well. In all my travels he has never judged. He has loved as only a father could and I have felt that love and it is inexpressible. What was once the “least” to me, is the greatest!

My Father Al has gone home to a place we all know and from whence we have all come. He is with his “greatest of all possessions,” as he referred to my Mother, whom he adored every moment of his life. Another great quality of the man! We are forever drawn to the place he now enjoys but more importantly we are drawn to him. Like a fortress or a stand of trees or the inexorable pull of the moon upon the waters he will always be the force that draws us ever closer to eternity. The light in a dark place, never looking back but always looking forward. He is our guide, a sentinel, not guarding the way but protecting us along the way.

My Father holds many places in our hearts. To some he is “Al,” while to others he is “Dad,” while to some he is “Brother Yates” or “Grandpa” or just “Yates.” Some even know him as “Handsome.” Whatever the name we knew him as or the description of him we hold we are all united in our love for him and he always reciprocated by loving us. Not in grand and showy ways but quietly, completely and most of all purely.

Rest well my Father and know that in this place we celebrate the life of one so good we are all humbled to have been a part of the vast universe you created. Go in peace and know that we all love you.

I love you. God bless you my sweet Dad.

Your Son,

Carl

August 14, 2011January 1, 2021

A View on Compassion

Recently I was asked a question by someone visiting my website. Here is the question and what follows is my response. While the response is a bit lengthy I believe there is some important information for those who ask the same questions. I’d love to hear your response.

Comments: I just continue to have a problem with people who take other’s lives and rape etc. I find that difficult to be ok with and that it is the god within at work you have to be kidding me. How can we offer love to human life forms who are capable of this???? We must still believe that there are many who are not Intuitive enough to realize who they are or from where they came… so walk a destructive physical life. How can we be ok with this and offer love to these people??? Please explain to me…

My Response:

Vicki,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You ask, perhaps, the most complex questions that can be asked for any human living in this existence. There is no easy answer mainly because our egos get so attached to what they have determined to be right or wrong in the world. You must think of yourself (we all must) as two individuals. One that is human and one that is divine (God). The human is everything physical that you experience including your thoughts, dreams, aspirations, etc. The divine is the observer of the experience the human is having. The divine does not interfere with the human experience because, after all, the divine came here specifically to have the human (that YOU are) experience. It did not come here to change anything. I know this sounds a bit bizarre, but the essence of our human existence is to experience the wondrous-ness of being humans and to interfere (as gods could) would be to alter the reality of that experience.

After having established this, I will try to answer your questions. Let me be perfectly clear that “the god within” as you mentioned could be okay with rape, murder and all the other forms of violence we experience in the world. Gods, as I mention in my Book “On Being God-Beyond Your Life’s Purpose” do not encroach upon the experience of other gods. They have no need or inclination to do so simply because they possess all the power to create whatever they want. Having said that, however, as for this human experience the “divine” in us has also agreed not to interfere in the “human” condition as part of the overall “human” experience. It is the “human” condition that commits the acts of violence and control on other humans. It is the human condition that tries to stop it and it is the human condition that decides if it is “ok” or “not ok” to “offer love” to those who commit such acts. Nothing that is going on in the physical sense is “because” of gods. It is all because of humans.

As a human, you can decide whether to “offer love” to those who perpetrate such things on other humans or not. As gods the question of “love” doesn’t even come into question. What comes into question for the divine in you is compassion. Now, the world has misunderstood
the meaning of compassion. The world (egos) thinks of compassion as a higher form of love which it is not. Compassion has nothing to do with love. The only words we have in our human language (English) to adequately describe compassion is “acceptance of everything” (careful not to confuse acceptance with apathy). Gods “accept” what is because they know that in the grand spectrum none of what goes on here “as humans” has any significance in the “eternal” spectrum.

What has happened in this “human” experience is that the “ego”, both individual and collective, has attempted to “out do” what is divine in us and in so doing has gotten out of control, to say the least! In other words, those who commit such horrible things no longer know
what they are doing. They are, for the most part, cut off from the divine nature within and have been largely taken over by the egoic nature that always looks outward for satisfaction and satisfaction often takes on vengeful and inconsiderate forms. Vicki, “they know not what they do.”

Here is why I say that we try in every way to love such individuals. To be angry, vengeful and unforgiving of those who have lost their way is to put yourself in the same kind of mind-set as they are. In other words, the ego in you is saying “why should ‘I’ be this or that” when they have done “this or that,” which “I,” for whatever reason, believe is wrong. Do you see this? You cannot fight against that which you despise or don’t accept (these are egoic responses) and not have it running wild in your experience. Love is a verb. It is one of the only things that can “actively” alter the egoic nature of the human experience, be it, individually or collectively simply because “love” alters YOU – not them. If you are holding on to your feelings of disapproval, anger and indignation, you are being as “disconnected” from the divine in you as any of those you judge to have hurt you or others. Your path is as “destructive” as theirs; not to say that you harm or hurt others but destructive to your own spiritual well-being. Why would you do that to yourself, Vicki?

In the end, Vicki, you choose (as a human) how you can view this experience. However, in the infinite scheme of things, none of what happens here matters. You will proceed into eternity as the God that you are and you will not judge anything that happened here or anywhere else, because everything to our innately divine nature is wonderful. As gods we don’t “see” with eyes that judge. We only see that everything is “good.” That is the “compassionate” nature the god who dwells within you. Find the divine in you and you will experience this knowing. Question every one of your judgments for they are of the ego. This is how you can tell whether or not you are connected to the divine within you.

Long answer to your question, Vicki. I hope you will contemplate what I have said. As I state on my website, “my purpose is to help get you out of your mind”. When you discover that YOU are not your body, your mind or your ego you will be at the point of discovering “WHO” you really are. It will amaze you how that will change your life. I wish you all the best in your spiritual endeavors.

Blessings,

Carl