Opinions come from mind; Love arises in the heart. The first part of the awakening process engages the mind where ‘opinions’ flourish. Once here we want to take everyone on board the truth train with us, save everyone we can from ignorance (we become truly annoying to be around). As we progress through the stages of awakening, we learn to quiet our mind, we listen more, we observe.

The first thing to understand is that emotions are not permanent. Even those you’ve engraved with your initials… Letting them go won’t diminish you, in fact it’s not even a matter of letting them go, they left a long time ago. What you are experiencing is an echo, one that keeps bouncing of your ‘mind walls’ and with every reverberation another emotion (that is identical to the last) emerges. It feels to us like the same emotion, but it’s more like a long strand of emotional wool that keeps unwinding

“It’s time to evolve, time to transform. Thank the Past for the hard but necessary lessons, you are now dissolving what you believed to be true and waking up to what is: TRUTH; the transparent honesty of it - with TRUTH nothing is hidden, there is no ambiguity, no doubt. You’re able to FEEL TRUTH in your body if you pause to sense it. You can finally understand that you are (and have always been) a receiver that can discern TRUTH from falsehood. There is so much to look forward to, so much to prepare for.”

In any given moment, there is a doorway that must be consciously opened. Becoming cognisant of the door and the opportunity to open it, is called Awareness.

Beliefs should not stop us from growing into our own Awareness, and they should be regularly reassessed, re-evaluated, and challenged.

The key is to not be attached to anything you currently believe to be true, allow the truth to take whatever form is non-illusory and if it doesn’t match your version of reality, let that be okay. You must be just as willing to be wrong, as you are to be right - or your experience will be one of great fear and suffering.

There’s a fast-flowing river of anxiety and fear moving around the world at the moment. We’re all dipping our toe in the water now and then, and sometimes we get swept away with the strong current. Imagine yourself sitting on a grassy slope by that river, being the observer, what would you see?

Some people are reacting with great fear, others with an almost cavalier nonchalance – both are valid responses however, neither are conducive to healing. These responses are protective mechanisms that we lean on to get us through rough times, the thing is – this rough time is going to go on for longer than we’d like, so the response you have to it must be calm, discerning, measured and immediate.

I have grieved for my Father, my Mother, my brother, and my nephew. While each loss felt different, I knew each to be like an energetic amputation that left me changed. It feels like you are smaller, sometimes my edges were jagged, sometimes they were soft and porous. Sometimes my body would feel unreal to me, lighter, nebulous, sometimes it would feel heavy, burdensome.

Jupiter in Capricorn – a reflection of what we are experiencing here in Australia. Jupiter is expansive, excessive, abundant, and is associated with the element of fire. Capricorn is associated with the element of earth, it’s Guide (Ruler) is Saturn, which is associated with restraint, boundaries, containment. Bringing these two energies together it’s not hard to see the connection to the fires ravaging this country.

So back to the book in my hand… each page is like a magic carpet with all the threads moving and undulating over a luminous aether of unseen energy. I gently turn the page and I’m struck by the little moment of joy, excitement, anticipation - the unknown words that are about to enter me via my eyes, my mind, my heart.

For some reason we are hard-wired to reject compliments but to accept and receive criticisms. We somehow believe that if we say ‘yes thank you, I love my hair also’ that we are being vain and that’s just not so. We may feel we must quickly offer them a compliment in kind, but this is in effect ‘mirroring’ their gift back and is a cunning way to not fully receive the gift offered to you by them. It’s like letting someone buy you a coffee and immediately reimbursing them for it.

Whatever beliefs you are wanting to change, you can do it. We’re not static beings, we’re dynamic and ever-changing. We are beings of unlimited power – living in a cage of our own making, a cage made of our beliefs about ourselves and the world we perceive with our senses. Make the change, it doesn’t mean you have to don a flying suit and jump off a mountain, it just means you can become the person you know is hiding inside.

I wonder if she realised how important that moment was to someone sitting in a car not 2 metres away… I doubt it, but then we never really know how our existence can impact another person, especially those we haven’t met. While she was experiencing the dandelion, I was experiencing her, experiencing the dandelion…

Self-Imposed Limitations are like unwanted house guests – we invite them in for cup of tea only to realise they’re staying the night and before you know it they’ve become part of the furniture and the idea of living without them is too hard to bear…so we keep them around.

This is how we should use the Precepts; they are the ‘finger pointing to the Moon’ – we should use them to grow into our Awareness but don’t consider for a moment that they are the Truth themselves. We can get caught up on their various translations, which one is right and which version is closest to what Mikao Usui intended, but to me, as long as it remains simple and true to his intention - whatever works for you.

To be whole again there needs to be integration, a joining of halves, a blending of lost parts of yourself.

There's a great mystery in the process, we know the scientific explanation but even knowing how it happens doesn't preclude the mystery. This is probably why we resonate with this cycle on a spiritual level; there’s a common sense of ‘not knowing’ what happens to us between our death and our birth as well, and here it is happening right in front of us but we still can't quite 'see' it.

So today, the Sun shone as Spirit through the Soul of the Moon, the learning we gained is best imbibed by drinking of it fully, until you are overflowing - then…like a teapot (or a bottle of wine) - ‘tip me over and pour me out’.

This is a world made up of opposites, this is why we have such a hard time understanding the concept of All is One, our brains are hard-wired to find comparisons with which to relate ourselves to.