The Nature of Exposure

My mind is at it
My heart is in it
My spirit is throughout it

What is it? It is right now; it is right this moment. The product of this moment is directly dependent on us. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, right now. Not the pains and the scars of yesterday, or the dreams and fears of tomorrow.

It's easy to expose ourselves physically, we do that by getting out of bed. To expose ourselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually is something no one eagerly signs up to do. We mistake the raw nature of exposure with pain.

Look beyond the feeling of this moment, not just for yourself but for others as well. It is through both ourselves and others that can broaden the power and potency of transformation.

Without exposure, we cannot help ourselves. With exposure, we can free ourselves of the weight that holds back our transformative potential.

Expanding Awareness, From the Source of Hope and Dream

Hopes and dreams can be so exciting and inspire us to action, to reaching beyond today by letting go of yesterday. Our actions from the source of hope and dream have an appearance of purity and light. Then, we wake up, and we realize that purity and light do not simply live in a vacuum.

The light of the sun dawns and shines on half the planet while the other half remains darkened. The darkness is real, but the light is also real. Both co-exist and are also inseparable. To purify water, the impurities are extracted, but not disappeared. The other-than-pure can never be eradicated from the universe. Other-than-pure is made of the same stuff as the pure. There can be no separating the two regardless of how obvious or apparent the separation might be.

We must move our awareness beyond the whimsical and the simply feel-so-good. Expanding our awareness to include the total of our existence and the total of all existence is essential when working from the source of hope and dream. We change the world by simply breathing, and we can breathe with no attention or intention. Imagine breathing with full awareness of the change we breathe into the world with every breath in and every breath out. Imagine breathing into this world change that is infused with intention and action.

We breathe out. Others breathe in.
We breathe in. Others breathe out.
We are connected. We always have been.
We have goals; we have objectives. This desire for all to not suffer, to not feel pain, to flourish and to flower instead, cannot be some lollipop ideal we lick to feel better about ourselves and what we’ve been doing with this life. What have we ever really done to reach anything or anyone in a sustained and purpose-filled way? We must move our actions beyond the surface-altruistic, beyond the easy, the comfortable and the secure. It is easy to help a child in need, not so easy to help a hardened criminal.

We must challenge the idea that some are worthy and that others simply are not. We all breathe in and breathe out the same air. The most effective initial effort to help a hungry child is to feed the child. A more substantial and lasting effort than providing a simple meal could be an education and training in how best to grow food where the child lives. If the child is growing food in a dangerous area where criminals can steal the food from the fields and the tables, perhaps this is not the best approach. This happens every day.

These may not be the most effective efforts to expand the life of a criminal, either. Maybe, this criminal needs as much awareness expansion as we do. Let us start there, common ground. The potential for transformation in our communities lay with working with the hardened views we hold and in the hardened views of others.

Challenge yourself at least as much as you challenge others.

Criminals feel disconnected from the results of the actions they take. These people often feel no connection to others; they have been disconnected from the source of hope and dream for a long time. It is this extended period of disconnection by a growing number of people that must be met with compassion, patience and understanding. If we become frustrated so easily with others, especially those who we don’t even know, our own disconnectedness is being exposed. This is a blessing.

Generate as much compassion, patience and understanding for ourselves as we do for others.

These have been missing for so many for too long. We must be the first to give these to begin our own healing. We have an infinite capacity of compassion, patience and understanding within each of us. We need only to attempt to generate these to discover the source within us. Learning to sustain these for extended periods of time can help heal our life, our community and the world.

And, there is much healing that must take place. We must transform how we think and feel about others, all others. Feeding children is vital for their survivor. Healing the hardened is vital for our civilization’s survival.

We start with the child and the hardened heart of our self. We then expand until it encompasses all others.

Our life is an array. It’s a set of principles, environments, capacities and needs that constantly evolves and interacts with the arrays of others. Our principles shift, environments alter, capacities adapt, needs shift. The orientation and stability of our life array determines how best we can transform the world array that we inhabit. The orientation of our life array is perception-guided. The stability is garnered from our expanded awareness of our role here. It is up to us how we perceive this life and our role in this world.

Charting transformation cannot be done with words or with actions alone. Transformation is beyond thoughts or feelings. Transformation begins with our own awareness. That awareness naturally will spread to the greater whole, to the greater array.

Our lives can manifest in infinite ways. We can actually affect the whole, and we’ve been affecting the whole always with minimal to negligent awareness. We can also affect the whole with expert precision or destructive obliviousness. We must be open to seeing life as it truly is.

Transformation happens through awareness alone.
I have never seen life as it truly is. I can see life as it truly is.
I have never seen people as they truly are. I can see people as they truly are.

Consider This: Making Transformation Possible

Every moment is full of change.

We must forge that change with intention and action, infused with patience for the outcomes, understanding for what we do not know and compassion for all, especially ourselves.

This is the way to make transformation happen, here, now and for all.

Consider This: Frustration`s Fuel

Frustration is potentially possible at all times. That frustration resides in our desire to have things our way.

Potency of Injury

Although change is within every moment, it is far more difficult to manifest a new reality with your own intentions and actions as the primary driving force.

Despite all evidence living offers to the contrary, everything is in a constant state of change, including our bodies and especially our lives. Our intentions and actions can direct that change by our own will.

Examine the life of a professional athlete. It requires years of concerted effort to drive their bodies and minds to what brings about inspiration and joy to many while those bodies and minds compete on the field or the floor.

Many of these athletes have also had to handle major injuries. Overcoming injury is what makes living so potent with possibility.

We are resilient creatures. It is our resilience that makes us human.

Morning Aspiration

This morning is the best morning of today.

Consider This: Trusting yourself

Trusting yourself isn’t about knowing everything or having any answers. Trusting yourself means believing that you’ll be able to get through this moment to the next.

We often get caught up in life not going the way we envision it. This can make us doubt we have the capacity and the ambition to strive to make our vision a reality.

Misteps happen, unexpected incidents occur, yet, we remain. In these more difficult moments, trusting yourself can be your buoy, doubt can be your anchor. Cut the doubt, lift yourself up and get on with it.

Consider This: The Breathing Connection

“Let this crisp spring day put a spring in your step.”

There’s goodness in every step we take and everything we do. That goodness goes beyond our own life, as the stream in and out of us firmly links us directly into the fabric of everything that makes up this universe.

In order to live, we must take breaths fairly consistently, all day and all night, aware or unaware. We can take those breaths for granted because breathing happens naturally and without any conscious effort.

•Breathing is our direct connection with the universe
•Breathing is our constant giving-and-taking link with everything and everyone
•Breathing imbeds us into the cyclic nature of life, matter and energy

We’ve been constantly giving and taking to and from the universe since before we were born. Mostly, we don’t recognize all the taking and we mostly ignore all our giving.

Taking from the universe continuously nourishes and supports this exchange. It’s the nourishment and support we consciously offer in return that can transform existence by consciously re-ordering it.

Cherish and explore your universal connection.
Imagine every breath you take meaning something--- because it really does.

Consider This: The Eclipse of Passion

Our passions in life can be debilitating at times. The intensity of passion may cloud our vision and muddle our action. Certainly, in our relationships our vision often is clouded. Depending on our mood, we usually see only the best or the worst in others; the more passionate the feeling, the more intense and vivid the thoughts can become.

Attachment can spring out of that vivid intensity. And, once we form an attachment, not to the person but to our idea of that person, attachment becomes an eclipse. The attachment gets between the mind and the heart. The clarity of the mind becomes blocked from the intensity of emotion.

Imagine letting off a firecracker in a very dark room, the collateral damage can be indiscriminate. The effect is the same in our life wherever attachment is generated.

Attachment here can be replaced with aversion. The person can be replaced with an object or an idea.

Attachment and aversion derive from the same origin, our mistaken ideas.

Consider This: Rethinking Reasoning

When you cannot reason with others, reason with yourself.

Consider This: Thinking As Hope

Thinking is where hope lives.

If people think just one additional minute a day about others, if we attempt understanding for just one person today, there's a little bit more hope in the world.

Imagine, if everyone just took one minute a day to generate understanding and consideration for another how that would transform the world.

Consider This: From Help to Truth

These people out there need our help, not in convincing them of our truth, but of convincing them of their own.