The Camel and the Journey

What lands have you seen across this planet? How far have you ventured out of your neighborhood? Will you, at the end of your life, be able to say that you've seen this planet from a variety of perspectives?

Have you walked a ghetto? Have you cruised the Caribbean? Have you made a trek across the American West? Have you been Down Under? Have you visited a farm? Have you gotten to know a small town?

How many times have you flown? How many times have you taken a subway? How many different smells of the countryside have greeted your olfactory receptors? How many skyscrapers have you ridden the elevator to the top of? How many different climates have you experienced?

How many different kinds of food have you tried? How many languages do you speak? How many bodies of water have you dipped your toes in?

How closed and small is the opening through which you experience the world? How many strangers have you met and talked to? How far away is your closest friend?

When walking down a deserted country road, where are are your thoughts? Where are they on that crowded subway?

What kind of boundaries do you set for your self? What limitations do you put on your experiences and expressions? Will you talk to anyone you meet? How willing are you to learn about something that seems to have no relation to you?

When you get on the internet, where do you go? What are you looking for? What kind of energy do you expect to get back? How diverse are your internet experiences?

There once was an old man who tended camels. He fed them, lodged them, and looked after their health. He knew how to treat all their problems. He knew how to prepare a camel for a long rigorous journey. He knew their temperaments and their habits. He was a camel expert.

Except he had never taken a trip on a camel. He had never traveled more than a mile out of his own town on a camel.

How close to this man are you? Are there any similarities? Can this man truly be an expert? Can he possibly know what the camels know?

And can the camel truly know this man....or any of the humans who rode it across continents? The camel travels without judgment. The camel travels because it is its nature. It cares not for those humans it interracts with along the journey.

When the rider gets off the camel the journey, for both camel and rider, is uninterrupted.

The journey never ends. The rider, camel tender, and the camel never end either. It's only the awareness of the journey and its many ports of call that change and that may very well be an illusion, too. When you journey are you the camel, the camel tender, the rider...

...or the journey? Can you be all of those things? And if none of these things ever end what part of the journey do you concentrate on? What and where are you on your journey?

Copyright © 2007, by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.

Duality and Choice

When there are two different viewpoints on something, each being expressed vehemently, then that action activates the nullpoint in the center around which the opposing viewpoints circle. Without the movement the center point lies dormant. If only one viewpoint is expressed the center point also remains dormant. It takes the opposing energies to stimulate that center null point.

While duality can activate the center point that center point does not blossom fully until it is entered. We can stay with the opposing dualities spinning around the center point and much experience can be had but not until we enter the center point can we experience the one-ness and the full power and beauty inherant in the entire situation.

How do we enter that center null point? First, it involves experiencing the opposing dualities in their fullness and balance. This activates the center null point, opening it up for us to enter. We must then be able to release our hold on those outward opposing dualities. This draws us down into the center. Having released the dualities we can then focus on the center point and surrender to its gravity, allowing ourselves to be drawn down into it.

Our normal tendency is to attach ourselves to one of the opposing dualities. This keeps us from the center point and one-ness. We must be able to experience both dualities in order to find the balance necessary to release them and be drawn into one-ness. We can experience the dualities without getting stuck to them. We can embrace them without sticking to them. But our tendency is to stick to and hold onto the duality we choose. Choice is usually seen as picking one or the other of two dualities. But true choice involves going beyond the dualities to the center one-ness and then choosing how to apply that one-ness to our experiences. That is called choosing through wholeness. It is a more advanced use of our divine powers of choice.

Copyright © 2007, by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.

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The Surrender Experiment

Imagining

Imagine the most excruciating pain possible. Imagine the volts of electicity that pain is generating. Imagine that electricity being used expressing joy instead. Imagine being so overcome with joy that you are spilling over all around you. You are like a fountain. A fountain thinks not about where the water will land after being shot out into the air. The very next wave will land in the very same place. The fountain is only engaged with the water shooting through it. It is so preoccupied with that it can only see and feel that aspect of the trajectory. It is all it can do to maintain that opening.

How in tune are you with your opening? How in tune are you with the energy gushing through it? Are you tapping that energy? Are you receiving the messages attached to it? Are you even aware of that energy gushing through you?

Stop and take a step back. Look at the beauteous scene before you. How many parts of it are you actively engaged in? Can you see the whole picture? Can you feel the whole picture?

Can you be the whole picture? Can you embrace and let go of that which quickly turns into the past? While simultaneously embracing each new turn of the kaleidoscope? Can you find and maintain the equilibrium in the music you are dancing to? Are you constantly moving?

How emphatically can you embrace each new landscape as it comes into view? How easily are you there? How easily do you move into new feeling-tones? How easily do you weep at new vistas of beauty? How eagerly do you embrace them? How much joy slaps up against you as you move through the undergrowth? How much joy wells up inside you as you turn each new bend? How much joy keeps you moving and yearning for the next bend?

The universe is so unlimited that we could experience joy every minute from now through the next billion years. And nothing but joy. We could be so overcome with joy that we would merge with our essence and become that which we've always wanted to become: Gods of Joy. We would then be able to create entire universes all by ourselves. Because we will have learned how to build universes; with joy. Every single moment of joy is an entire universe. We can create as many as we want. They all last forever. And each and every one of them can only be found in the NOW.

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There are many ways to cross a valley. If traveling by foot, the journey will require a descent followed by an inevitable ascent. Once you've made it to the other side you can look back across the depths you had overcome back to where you started. You can see that starting point and all your memories of it are triggered. But having crossed the valley you are now a different person.

We can change in numerous ways. While the change is inevitable how we change is still up to us. Every moment of metamorphosis can be an epiphany of grand proportions. Every journey may have a destination. The best journeys have multiple destinations. Journeying towards that destination is where all the opportunities and possibilities lie. We have plenty of time to explore. As we move through our journey the destination changes as we do.

Turning a corner we embark on a whole new quest. Around every corner we find our selves; another part of ourselves to incorporate into the self making the journey. You cannot make a wrong turn because every turn leads to more of us.

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When there are no more elephants then you will know that everything has changed. When the sky is different, too, will our lives be different? Can you imgine such extreme differences? Can you imgine a whole new world?

Can you imagine having different bodies? Can you imagine a life so drastically different that it hardly even resembles life as we know it today? Can you imagine a life that is not centered around working and making money? Where will your attention go? Can you imagine a life centered around having fun? Can you imagine a life filled with joy all day, every day? What would be your reaction to this? Are we so conditioned to life the way we currently live it that change to a new way of life seems impossible?

How do we let go of our conditioning? How do we embrace a new way of life?

The first step is imagining. The next step is surrender. The next step is making movement. The next step is walking off a precipice into the unknown. The unknown is the canvas upon which we imagine. Without imagining we step off into air.

Copyright © 2007, by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.