Sunday, January 30, 2011

THE HABITS OF GOOD AND WORTHY WARRIORS GIVEN BY CORMAC

THE HABITS OF GOOD AND WORTHY WARRIORS GIVEN BY CORMAC
“The Irish Solomon”
From The Little Book of Celtic Wisdom by John and Caitlin Matthews © 1993

As we are all warriors in this life, on some level or another I feel that this is worthy of sharing with those who are on their journey of waking up. Cormac gave a list of dos and don’ts that can serve us all well .

Be not too wise, nor too foolish,

Be not too conceited, nor too diffident,

Be not too haughty, nor too humble,

Be not too talkative, nor too silent,

Be not too hard, nor too feeble.

For;

If you be too wise, one will expect too much of you;

If you be foolish, you will be deceived;

If you be too conceited, you will be thought vexatious;

If you be too humble, you will be without honor;

If you be too silent, you will not be regarded;

If you be too hard, you will be broken;

If you be too feeble, you will be crushed.

It is through these habits that the young become old and Kingly warriors.

As Evolution of Self teaches, balance in all things and the rest will take care of itself.
Bright Blessings,

Chessie

Sunday, January 23, 2011

FAITH; HOW DO WE LEARN IT?

FAITH; HOW DO WE LEARN IT?

A question was posed to me today; how do we learn to have faith? I have been pondering it all day.

When we were small we had faith in the people around us because we had to trust that they would support us while we were dependant upon them. Because we were totally helpless they literally meant life and death to us. With their help we survived and without it we didn’t. As we grew and started venturing out (arms length at first) we learned to have faith in our ability to roll or crawl away and faith that there would always be someone close enough to protect us. Soon we start to pull up to a standing position. This gives a totally new perspective, not only in what we can now see and reach but we begin to watch others to learn how to react, what to think about things and what life is all about…from the people around us. Here is where we start our long trip to autonomy as we begin to learn to walk. Since walking is just a series of controlled falls we must teach our feet and legs to handle that. Every time we fell down we had the determination and faith to try again until we mastered the task. In this act we reinforce the idea that faith in ourselves is possible and desirable. At this stage of the game we lived in a state of unconditional love for our supporting staff of caregivers. Their nurture gave us a sense of ourselves as people and we loved them above all else.

We are read stories and hear conversations and music (if we are lucky) and from all these, we learn the way our parents are as people and thus our barriers and perceptions begin to form. If there is any religious training we get that information filtered through what out parents think and how they understand life and faith. We begin to shape an idea of them (our parents and their ideas and beliefs), life and what faith/religion is all about and all of this is biased on our perception of what we believe we are seeing in them. In actuality we know very little about them as people, we see ‘parents’ and the people they are at that time in your life. Their past and deep down beliefs are usually hidden from us, not to hurt us, this is just their business and they rarely share it. So because of miscommunication and misunderstanding we decide who/what we want to be like and believe. Here is about where we begin to lose faith in everything we grew up with, ourselves, parents, faith and life in general and start to reshape our ideas about all of these things.

As we begin to get input from other sources we begin to ask questions that help us form our own ideas about everything in our world. This comes in stages, just like everything else and questions with their answers lead to more questions. This eventually becomes the basis for what will become our faith. Here is where we come back to a very important part of our babyhood, unconditional love and the ability to just let things be what they are without us trying to manipulate them into what we think they should be. As we learn to let go of the past while still honoring where we came from; while reaching for our future and allowing ourselves to grow, learn, share we begin to become what we are meant to become; a whole, balanced and loving person. All of this takes faith; faith in ourselves and our perceptions of what we truly believe; faith to embrace the courage to let that which no longer serves us fall away so that new understanding and connections with our own personal faith can blossom and take us to new heights and faith to believe that the Creator knows what S/He is doing with us.

Our faith starts out as a mirror of what we are taught as children. If we are fortunate enough we begin to see with new eyes and feel with new hearts. We begin to let go and allow. When this happens one of two things will occur, we will further understand and embrace our parents’ faith and grow there or, we will look in other directions to find what truly vibrates with us as individuals. Both of these paths take faith and courage. However we choose to connect with our source, as long as we are true to ourselves as virtuous people and act in a manner that is worthy of us as children of divine creation and love; can act/live in gratitude and tolerance, our faith will continue to flourish and grow; answers and enlightenment will come from our guidance and as we ask and learn to hear the still small voice of God that in within us we will become everything that we are meant to be. When we have matured enough to be able to return to our ability to live with unconditional love for others and ourselves we will have discovered…faith.

Bright blessings, Chessie

© Chessie Roberts 2011, all rights reserved

Sunday, January 16, 2011

QUESTIONS FROM OUR INNER CRITIC

QUESTIONS FROM OUR INNER CRITIC

I was recently asked these thought provoking questions by a friend of mine,”How do you decide where to draw your line in the sand of what you will and won’t do, will and won’t go? How do you stick to those boundaries?

After a bit of thought I realized that I go by my guidance and core values. Now to some of you these words are old friends and for some they are new concepts so I will explain. Your core values are those values that you hold in the very center of you, in that special place where the hard shining truth of who and what you truly are; that place where no one goes but you. Those values are the ones that you will always uphold, the ones you will never forsake or allow others to push you across. They are different for each of us and if you have not decided what yours are I strongly suggest that you do so. Like the song says, ”You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything…”

Guidance is the still small voice that we often totally disregard. Over the years of listening to others in our lives that we feel know more than we do, our voice of guidance has been drowned out because it is so quiet and the world is so loud. Meditation is one of the ways we learn how to listen again. Guidance will never lead us in the wrong direction once we learn to hear and understand.

My friends’ next question was, “What about in times of great change?”

My answer was the same. This is not an easy answer and it came after a lifetime of doubting myself and living my life by committee. You see, we are taught to listen to the village that raises us and to stop listening to our ‘self’ (I am talking about our instincts) as well as our ‘Self’ (here I refer to our higher spiritual voices, the ones who truly know the answers) and listen to the people by whom we are surrounded. The ones who want us to think and feel the way that they do so that they are comfortable in their status quo. When we begin to follow our true path(s), we have the tendency to upset those around us who don’t want to be around growth.
The next thing she told me was that she tended to doubt herself too much and think too much. She felt that she is learning patience.

My response to this is, the reason we do this to ourselves is, again, that committee that always seems to know more about how we should be feeling and what we should be doing than we, who are living our life know about it. They mean well but their constant input creates doubt and the tendency to over think everything. The other side of this coin is that the constant input triggers our ‘shut down’ mode and we don’t listen to any thing from any where and we stumble around in ignorance, sometimes getting it right but, most of the time making the same mistakes over and over again. In order to break this cycle we need to master the virtues of patience, the ability to let go, the ability to listen and believe in your self and your guidance.

She then told me that her problem is her need to learn to believe; to build my own faith. She told me that she feels that it’s happening slowly.
I know all of you have heard the adage that “Seeing is believing.” And sometimes this is the case BUT, when you get into the higher levels of spirit and vibration (which is where this type of questioning occurs) you find that to believe is to see. Trust me when I tell you that the journey is rough because we are stubborn and don’t (at first) want to let go of those things we think we know, but as we come to truly understand and learn how to listen to our innate core values and guidance you will find that it is so worth the effort.

Happy growth and Bright Blessings,

Chessie

© Chessie Roberts 2011, all rights reserved

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Projecting Abundance and Gratitude Above the Fear Line

Projecting Abundance and Gratitude Above the Fear Line

“Because the Universe reflects back to you at the level which you are able to accept, appreciate what you have and project abundance in your emotions, self talk, your thoughts, and visualization. Remember that emotion is energy in motion and that is what drives all manifestation.” (CR)

I have had a series of Aha moments over the past few months. Moments that have brought the truth of something I said a while ago (the above quote) and made this concept crystal clear.

Emotions fall into two categories, love or fear. Any emotion that is at or below the ‘fear line’ will drag you down into the depths of stagnation and inactivity. Any emotion above that line will push you up toward happiness, joy and finally into manifestation.

I had, on one level, believed and understood what I was saying but, on a deeper level was missing an important point. As I have stated on many occasions I am, as we all are, works in progress so yay for finally getting it. The whole point is that down in that part of you where only you go, where the tough questions are asked and answered is where the acceptance of this statement needs to truly and gratefully happen; where you need to determine that you are no longer ruled by anything at or below the ‘fear line’. Only then will your ‘emotional energy engine’ crank into life and drive the upward motion that will create manifestation.

If you can honestly accept everything you have as a good thing and gratefully rejoice in your abundance with your entire being, you will touch this place within and begin to manifest without. EXAMPLE; your furnace breaks on the coldest day of the year and it is a holiday and guests are coming, how do you react? Lets’ face it that would be very upsetting on the surface of things but, since you know about emotions and manifestation, you are truly grateful for the fact that your oven works, that you have space heaters and blankets and that you know that your guests will understand and be just fine with it. You celebrate in joy, love and gratitude. You invite others to celebrate with the same attitude and, by your every thought, emotion and deed you turn the unfortunate happening into an exercise of gratitude for abundance and share that outlook with those around you, thus lifting you and everyone else to a higher vibration. In return you manifest the money you need to fix the furnace, your holiday was exceptional, you taught a valuable lesson without realizing it and your life stays above the ‘fear line’.

I invite you to examine your life as you start this new beginning in 2011 to find your abundance, joy and gratitude. Once you do that share that attitude with as many people as you can and watch your manifestations soar.

Bright Blessings, Chessie

© Chessie Roberts 2011, all rights reserved

Sunday, January 2, 2011

DENIAL AND OTHER OPIATES

DENIAL AND OTHER OPIATES

“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.” (Richard Bach)
Any addictive behavior that keeps us from fully living to our highest potential is a denial or an opiate. Some examples are; over shopping, hoarding, self pity, blaming others for unfortunate circumstances, drugs, alcohol, minimizing, religion, television, justification, denial of any cycle of behavior that creates pain and/or suffering. All of us use these, and other coping mechanisms from time to time and that is alright. Getting stuck there is asking to create problems for ourselves as well as for those around us.

One of the reasons we use to make relying on denial and the numbing of our feelings ok, is that we are trying to avoid pain, or our anticipation of it. We lie to ourselves to make it seem like everything is alright. Denial and numbing are normal and natural responses for dealing with painful or overwhelming problems. By using thoughts, actions and manipulation to defend against the pain of realizing the presence of things in our lives that we would rather not face, is just to prolong the inevitable. By sinking into addictive, manipulative or abusive behavior we just create more of what we don’t want, pain, misery and unhappiness. Once we begin to lie to ourselves, we think that we feel a lot more comfortable because we begin to believe that we are in control again. In reality we are not. The same is true of addictive or manipulative behavior. Addiction creates the dependency on the act of addiction we choose. We keep thinking (wrongly) that if we try the behavior one more time, things will get better. Of course they don’t, so we continue our vicious cycle.

The trap with the lying is that, since nothing terrible has happened as a result of lying to ourselves, we kid ourselves into thinking that our lie is now the truth. From here we progress to lying to others and this is where the trouble starts. The actual truth becomes further and further removed from our conscious awareness of what is worthy of us, creating problems within our mind/spirit connection. As this connection deteriorates our physicality gets in on the act. When this occurs, eventually the lies begin to show up as physical problems, aches, pains, illness and the like.

We sometimes see the advantages of denial as; having others feel sorry for us and so they try to ‘help fix’ us so we don’t have to do it, not having to take responsibility for our actions or behavior, not having to face what seems to be a problem with no solution, or not having to deal with a personal short coming.

Some of the disadvantages of using denial are; that it eventually blocks our recognition of our initial problem or flaw so we don’t see what we need to work on to make our life right. Denial and addictive behavior create the illusion that the problem is being solved or that there are more important issues to deal with so that the main issue does not need to be solved, or that it doesn’t exist at all. Denial and obsessive behavior are detrimental to all three levels of our life; body, mind, and spirit. These create the downward spiral that causes dis-ease, as well as an imbalance that will eventually become severe enough to make us ill.
OK, so how do you fix this? Well, dare to be honest with yourself and ask the tough questions. What problems do you truly have in your life, your job, and your relationships? Just where and what do you feel are your weaknesses, flaws or limitations? Are they really things that you can change or control? How long have you been putting these things on the back burner? Which aspects of your self do feel is contributing to these problems? Write them down and then prioritize them by their importance to you.

I caution you here to be loving and gentle with yourself as you ask and answer these questions. It has been your skewed perspective and fear that got you here in the first place so don’t hurt yourself further by being harsh. There is a difference between being truthful and being critical. Look for the good that is in you as you weed out what you want to change. Just understanding that there is work for you to do may be enough to start with. Shining the light of truth into those dark corners may seem scary at first but I tell you that is the most freeing and healing thing you can do for yourself. By keeping yourself in the dark, you are actually putting yourself at risk of your problems getting to the point that secondary ones develop as a result of not addressing your primary issues. It is like taking a pill to reduce a fever without determining what caused the fever in the first place.

Change is possible. It can be done. Your problems can be solved or effectively managed if you choose to take responsibility for your part in creating them and act with conscious awareness to do something about them. The choice to stay unhappy and ill or to become the healthy whole person you were meant to be is yours. Remember that “you cannot solve a problem with the same mind set that created it” (Einstein)
Reach your goal of wholeness.

Bright Blessings, Chessie
© Chessie Roberts, 2011 all rights reserved