Wide Awake Living Newsletter

Rebalancing Ourselves,

Rebalancing Our World

As we talk about spiritual awakening, what we are referring to is a deep structural shift in the basic premise underlying thinking, feeling and behavior—a shift in the location of our sense of who we are.

This kind of a shift potentially opens the way for transformational change in the outer world as well as inner, because this new source-point becomes responsible for generating what we do, say and how we behave.

Throughout history, humanity has become increasingly dominated by the growing strength of our left brain conceptual capabilities and in the process we have lost touch with the right brain’s ability to directly apprehend what is actual as opposed to conceptual. Awakening is a shift which rebalances that dominance and allows us to experience the actual and still retain full use of all of our mental faculties.

We have been living in a mind-mediated world where we relate to our thoughts about everything (including ourselves) rather than accessing the sacredness and preciousness of each moment and all of life, a reality also available to us outside of our world of ideas. Religions and spiritual approaches have arisen to lead us back to connection with our true selves and back into balance. These are now coming to fruition for more than just a few special people, and many are finding themselves led into this kind of deeply transformational experience through their existing affiliations.

Many of the great spiritual teachers and founders of our religions have left behind wonderful pointers about the sacredness of life and the greater possibilities for humanity. Jesus referred to the Kingdom of Heaven; Buddha spoke of Nirvana. Long enough this possibility for our lives has been held up as a distant and almost impossible goal for ordinary people. The times now seem to be changing. Ordinary people are now not only being invited into awakening, but we are given obvious and immediate world issues that make our invitation appear somewhat pressing. It is an exciting time to be alive!

To continue...

This article is actually 3 pages long. If you would like to read the rest and/or print it out, click here to be taken to the Wide Awake Living website "articles" page where it is the top article (it is a pdf file). If this doesn't work for people let me know. It just seemed too long to put the whole thing in the newsletter, but it is definitely illustrative of the current direction of my writing.

What's

happening

with Alice?

I would like to tell you all for a moment about what is going on with me. Before my amazing trip to Chicago and the East Coast, my job at Stanford came to an end. I have always had a very hard-working, responsible (maybe over-responsible) personality type.

There have been a series of things that have happened both on the trip and upon returning home that seem to be clearly steering me away from taking another full time job. Right at the moment it seems clear that I am preparing to do more booktours, and give the book more exposure in this first year of its life.

There is also another thing which is happening and that is the creation of a day-long workshop which seeks to combine a satsang-like talking format with experiential work to communicate this work to people in an embodied way. I am drawing on all the experience of my years of working with groups from Findhorn to the present and am ready to take this on the road with me also. Just yesterday I made the initial contacts for going to the LA area and the Sacramento area, and am thinking that I would also like to do a loop into the southwest in August and September.

I am in new territory with all this, but am feeling very supported by the things that are happening in doing this work. Of course this could all change in a millisecond, but for now, it appears to be how life wants to move in me right now.

Right now I am at home doing all of the preliminary work and am unusually available for working with people in a telephone mentoring capacity if people are interested in that. When I'm actually on the road it will be harder, though not impossible to be there for people in that way.

Another book is also wanting to happen, and so my time is more than full as I rise to meet all of what wants to happen here. I also feel a bit like a genie that has been let out of a bottle, since I have all this time been working full time and doing everything else on the side. To tell the truth I couldn't make this change until I had fully processed my personal survival stuff. I could say it took me a lifetime to do that, but it would also be valid to say that it has taken me six months of delving deeply into the human striving for survival as I find it in myself, and letting go to the point where now it feels like "whatever life wants of me, that is of course what I want also". Including all the usual stuff about being a bag lady or being hungry or cold when I'm old. Whatever life wants of me, I'm ready. This is not pie in the sky. We are talking about dealing with major auto and dental bills just this week and how good it feels to let the energy of money flow as it will without fear. And there is also the beautiful gifts that are being given to me at the moment, from a wonderful break in my cost of living to the beauty of a deep meeting with a friend, or an email from someone touched by my writings. I can't say all this without also noting the beauty of the world around me as an ongoing gift also. I am so very blessed.

This personal news piece has also been posted on the blog (link below) and please feel welcome to talk to me there about all this. If you would like to suggest a place that I come on my travels, a group that would like to host me or whatever, I would love to hear from you.

Are there friends or colleagues who might be inspired by this newsletter? Share the inspiration! Click to Send this newsletter to a spiritually oriented friend in any tradition.

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