Get it While It's Hot, and Before It's...Not

I am here to point you to an archived "Expanding Awareness" show on WZBC radio wherein Victor Venckus presents (in part) Deepak Chopra's audiobook, The Book of Secrets. I hear grace and generosity in every word of this recording: a compassionate heart and an awake, aware consciousness artfully articulated.

"As proud children of science and reason, we have made ourselves the orphans of Wisdom," says Chopra. He invites listeners to step out of the illusion of separation into the "truth" of wholeness--into Flow.

The show will only be archived at this link for two weeks (it will disappear on February 12)*, so don't delay. Once you've entered the archive, scroll down to January 29, 10:00 a.m., then click on LISTEN. Note: the show begins at about minute 4, after a prelude of instrumental music. Click here to "[unlock] the hidden dimensions of life," for expert guidance in giving Love Its way.

*beyond that time, look for the audiobook in your local library or favorite bookstore.

Stretching

In recent weeks, I've been learning extraordinary things about energy, with grateful thanks to a gifted clairvoyant and man of many talents named Walter Ness, and to Linda Clave, also clairvoyant and a woman of many talents--and with thanks as well to a few other of their "students." That said, I can hear Walter say we're "students of the energy" versus students of theirs, that it's the energy that teaches us. We just have to engage it.

We have been meeting in various configurations--one on one and in groups--to engage the energy, with powerful results. Big things are happening--many big things. And many "little" things that are actually big as well in their consequences and implications. Like, for example, what happened at the pool yesterday. Something Jon shared the other night when he and Walter and I met evidently prompted me to try an experiment. I was so pleased with the result, that I wrote to share about it with them:

I was stretching after swimming laps today and it occurred to me (thank you, Jon) to stretch from the peaceful place (being there, vs. wherever else my consciousness/attn/
energy is when I’m stretching), so I did and the stretch felt like it just kept going! I felt like I had the flexibility of a child (read LOTS), and tensions, tightness instantly disappeared: suddenly I had none. It occurred to me this is because my current tension, aches, tightness do not exist in the peaceful place. It felt like I’d entered a space that was “story” free, i.e., without any life baggage. I don’t know if you know what I mean, if I’m describing this well, but suffice it to say, it was wonderful, fantastic, and eye opening. Thank you!

It's one thing to talk about Love's way, and it's another thing to experience it--and in a new way. To see conditions disappear in a split second like that, simply from moving the location (yes, location) of my consciousness from one place to another, rather amazed and excited me.

"You mean I don't have to meditate on a mountaintop for 100 days (or years) to attain samadhi?"

That's right.

A few months ago, I learned from Walter--in about 3 minutes, from a radio show about Neuroplasticity--how to access this "peaceful place" as he calls it, located in the center of the brain. Language is tricky. I say it's a place and it is a place, but it is also a being-state. With energy and awareness located in this peaceful place, I am ever present, still, unflappable. I am not concerned, not sad, not enthralled. Neither am I impressed or unimpressed--with myself or with anyone or anything else. That "I" is tricky too. Because "I" am not "I" there, exactly. And stretching from the peaceful place, I was not "me stretching," so much as I was the act of stretching: I was what "stretching" gets to do in a human body when there is no story, no baggage, no weight.

Jon responded to my note about my discovery by sharing a similar story:

I understand what you mean by "story free." One winter's day I had returned home after being in Vermont for the weekend. It had been snowing all weekend so there was a lot of shoveling for me to do before even being able to pull the car into the driveway or enter the house. My body was sore from the car ride and I felt even worse in my lower back when I started to shovel. For some reason (and I don't know how or why - this was before I knew about interacting with the energy or meeting Walter) I saw the events leading up to the pain in my body as a story I was telling myself like the story was a cage that was keeping in the pain. I stopped judging and qualifying this pain and became very in tune with the present moment and my present body sensations The cage opened up and the pain freely escaped as a caged wild animal would do if you gave it its freedom. I felt healthy and able and shoveled snow for about 2 hours. I didn't get hurt or feel sore later or the next day. My body responded to my mind in a miraculous way!

I can attest: these "story-free" moments do feel miraculous when they happen. But actually, they are the natural consequence of engaging simple techniques. Activating the peaceful place and acting or responding from this dynamic still point is one such technique.

This place-state is present in and accessible to each and every one of us. And by following a few simple instructions, anyone can reach it, almost instantly. Don't overlook the powerful implications of this! Learning to direct one's energy-awareness to one location opens up the possibility of directing it to any location. I have learned, for example, to listen from my ear lobe, from my elbow, from my heel to preserve energy at times when it previously would have been drained. I have learned to locate energy-awareness in my cat or my client or my friend for diagnosis, understanding, direction and vision. I have located it in other dimensions, with enormous benefit to the here-and-now. And I have only just begun.

This energy is ever ready, able, and willing to serve. To engage it is to engage limitless possibilities: its domain is infinite.

Sounds like Love to me.

The Lost Episode

Way back in March--wow, almost a year ago!--I shared here about my television appearance with Michael Koran on AHAH! What I didn't say then was that the show in the time slot that follows AHAH! was not filming that night because the host was sick, and that this gave Michael and I the option (with encouragement from said absentee host) to continue for another half hour. And we did! So "Love's Freeway meets AHAH! Part Two" was created. When CCTV put the shows up on the web, Part Two wasn't functioning properly, so I refrained from announcing it. Michael said he'd see about getting it fixed. I made a mental note to check on it later, then moved on to other things

Well, "later" has turned out to be now, in the middle of January of 2011. I just watched the show for the first time...and I like it! I am pleased to share it with you now--in perfect timing, of course :).

In this 26-minute show, we discuss:

~What Love is and isn’t
~Getting unstuck
~Tips and techniques for finding your own answers
~How Claritywork works
~How Life speaks to us

and more! I hope you'll tune in, and if you do, I hope you find it time well spent.

Bonanza

When Cleo died last June, a neighbor friend brought a condolence gift of sweets and snacks to me. With an artist's flourish, he decorated the white box with a small bouquet of flowers he'd picked from his garden. I placed them in a small crystal vase, then set it beside Cleo's photo--a Love's Freeway card I had taken out for display when I was preparing to leave for Vermont a few weeks prior. It was one of those half-conscious things we do, in this case as if to say to her many caregivers that weekend, "This is the dignified creature you're looking after," as if I wanted them to remember her--to see her--as able and strong.

I kept that little vase going for months--removing dead flowers and replenishing it with fresh

ones from my garden. I never really decided to do this--again, it was one of those half-conscious things. Still, I've continued to keep it going. I keep thinking I'll stop it, that it will come to a natural conclusion. But it doesn't, it hasn't. Not yet.

It was easy in the summer and through the fall to come up with replacements. I thought winter would be the end of it, but then the Christmas cacti started blooming, in succession. One by one they've had their turn in the place of the vase. But the last cactus's show is pretty much over.

Yesterday I looked over at that spot and thought "white carnations." I could see them there--the miniature ones: clean and perky and spicy. And that decided it. I would go buy flowers. Besides, I needed cat food.

Off I went to the Stop & Shop, with the its previous store's abundant floral case in mind. Their new and improved, "Super" store, unveiled about a year ago, has had very little comparatively in the way of flowers, but still I was hopeful. Alas, there were no white mini carnations to be had, but I chose a pathetic little bouquet of four or so assorted stems that was the next "best" thing, along with said cat food, and got in queue to pay.

"Don't buy this bouquet," I thought--or heard. It absolutely wasn't worth even the $4.99 price tag. I hated paying for flowers that weren't fresh. I really thought I should put them back. But then what? "You came for flowers" my mind reasoned. So I bought them, such as they were.

How silly I felt when I spotted basket upon basket of fresh, vibrant flowers overflowing from the cemetery dumpster on the way back. I'm sure I was bug-eyed. I've never seen such a riot of flowers left for dead. Having overfilled the dumpster, they had left several baskets beside it even, on the pavement. There they sat: practically flawless and stunning and ready to love. I was parked beside them and filling the car before I could say "Oh my goodness."

Odd to say, but it felt like rescue. I had to work fast. Some were wilting. There were roses involved. And snow was coming--a blizzard, no less. By morning, they would all be smothered to death. Crazy but true: it was a triage moment. I could feel myself assessing their conditions at a glance, choosing those most likely to survive, turning away from others that could make it... but there just isn't room for them all.

Night wasn't far off: they wouldn't have a chance after that. I can't keep all these I thought as I put two heavy baskets in the trunk. I felt torn: take them, or leave them? Would others come for them in time? Who could I call? I felt guilty, greedy, then reassured myself: I could share them with friends.

Wow. I hadn't handled this many flowers since my funeral home days. And just like in the old days, I dragged out all my vases and went to work. I plucked, snipped, sorted, arranged. And I kept plucking, snipping, sorting, and arranging. I would think I was parking flowers temporarily to give away, but before I knew it, I had created another arrangement. I kept thinking I should call someone, send them down there to save the rest, post a notice on my neighborhood e-list. But I had a room full of flowers to attend to, so I kept at it. My kitchen had turned flower shop and had become quite the disaster area: crumblings of wet florist sponge, snippings of greens and stems and leaves, crushed petals, the casualties--all in a strew, everywhere. Creation is a messy process.

I made a mixed, semi-tropical bouquet for my friend who misses her beloved Puerto Rico, and brought it to her door. I delivered two bouquets of roses to other friends. "It's as though you knew without knowing," said one as he took his to his kitchen in search of a vase of water. In my frenzy, I had forgotten: he had surgery scheduled the next day and was nervous about it.

The roses were perfect, he told me. They would calm and comfort him.

Then came the clean up. And after that, all that was left was to enjoy them, the fruits of all that labor--four hours, all tolled--this gift of the Earth, this nod from the grave. I suppose these are "funeral flowers" around me. Second hand, and god knows why--fresher than the flowers I'd bought--set out as trash. All I know is they are beautiful--extraordinarily varied and beautiful: a feast, a festival in my midst--and I love them. I am delighted, as the snow continues to fly and pile higher and higher outside, to have saved them from an unnecessarily early demise. They had so much more Light to shine, so much more Love to give, so much delight to inspire. They are beaming--from table, from mantel, from organ, from bookcase, from staircase, from dresser, from sill, from floor. I am surrounded here, in the dead of winter, by the Love of the living Earth, greeted by It at every turn.

I could say this is thanks to Cleo--that is its own marvel. To think that honoring the dead could set so much life, so much Love in motion. It is marvelous, no?

Then again, don't we know: you just can't give It away.

The Heart of the Earth

I felt it in Ireland, and again last month in Costa Rica. What? I'm not sure, exactly. But I can say this: there is a pleasant hum in a place where life is lived closer to the earth, to the heart of the earth. We have paid a high price for our progress, for estranging ourselves from our earth-mother.

This hit me with a new force and clarity on a simple Post Office run just a day or two after my return to Boston. I had set out on my errand by foot because I had wanted the air and the exercise. When I saw what a mess it was out there, I was extra glad I'd left the car at home. There were vehicles everywhere sliding all over the place on freshly snowy roads. "Weather be damned!" their drivers seemed to be saying.

I felt a distinct overarching careening as I crossed the busy thoroughfare--a careening long ago set in motion, and going full throttle. And I felt, just as distinctly, that it was going to have to get worse before it would get better.

Industrialization, the technologies of our age have for the most part made things faster, easier, more efficient and convenient for us. And that's a fine thing. But something has slipped in alongside of the various advancements. Entitlement, domination, power over, "Get outa my way; I'm coming through!" has slipped in alongside them. The tail has unmistakably begun to wag the dog can you feel it?
Those drivers slipping and sliding about on that road: they were hell-bent, in the middle of their day, on getting somewhere--some, perhaps, on getting home. But for the most part--how do I know? I could feel it--this was a momentum, an automatic pilot sort of "getting somewhere" in motion before my eyes. There was a dream-like quality to it. Just as if a collective anaesthesia had been administered, and that collective was driving about seemingly awake, with eyelids raised, but actually, was in no uncertain terms asleep, blindly moving across an arc that, short of the one or many waking up in the interim, had to end in a crash.

I walked with this as I walked on. It was sort of an eerie feeling, glimpsing the inevitable bad end of something set in motion that could not be stopped--as with a long fuse on a brick of dynamite: light it, and there's no question what will happen when that fuse has burned away: ba-boom.

As if on cue, on my return from the Post Office, I came upon a bad accident, on that same thoroughfare. There was a fairly new Explorer or the like turned on its side in the middle of the road, and another car nearby with its front end smashed in. Presumably, the people in these cars had already been taken off in ambulances. There was a huge iron claw clamped around the driver's door, through its open window, by which a tow truck was dragging the vehicle toward the flatbed it would ride away on. I kept waiting to see the car turned upright. But I got cold, and it was snowing--and it was disturbing to watch, actually--so I continued on. Later it struck me: they probably never set that car upright. It was my sense of order that craved to see the injured vehicle up on its wheels again.

I think it must be the contrast I experienced in Costa Rica, reawakening the sharp contrast I experienced in Ireland, that has me seeing the "state of the state" here so vividly. I've just returned from living for about a week in the lap of the earth, in intimate proximity to her rhythms and expressions, where human interconnection is basis, is fundamental. In the air, on my skin, riding on the

fragrance of tropical flowers, in the squawks of exotic birds, I felt intrinsic to Nature--the way thread is not part of the cloth but is the cloth. I imagine it was like this for the settlers of my home region, long before automation, industrialization, depersonalization eclipsed the old ways. One worked and lived in collaboration with the earth, not in sovereignty over it.

It's not that we have no connection with one another up here. Yet some of the most social people I know are also some of the loneliest. In metro-Boston, at least (and in other metropoli?), it can seem that the fundamental human connection is obsolete, and that an integral relationship with the broader life matrix (barring household plants, pets, and gardens) has been largely abandoned, usurped by "divide and conquer" of some sort or another.

This is no rant; it is pure observation of what I watched playing out before me like a film on a mid-December day in Boston. An observation which apparently rose out of the clarity that sharp contrast affords. The contrast? How to put words to the prevailing cultural wind I perceived in Costa Rica. Perhaps like this:

We know where we come from, and we know where we're going. We come from the Earth, and will return to the Earth. We are of Earth, and sustained by Earth. We cooperate with Earth, Earth cooperates with us. Together with Earth we comprise Earth.

I saw again--saw and felt this time--what I had seen about ten years ago on my first trip to this tiny, peaceable country. There is a fundamental tranquility that underlies life, underlies living there. If qualities were tones, I would say Costa Rica's tone is equanimity--an equanimity definitely lacking in the running, driving, striving inherent in our "getting somewhere, and fast" up here. This is our overriding tone of life in these parts (and in other metropoli, I venture to say). Getting hired, getting educated, getting hitched, getting one up on the neighbors, getting the newest and the latest: always...getting...somewhere. Just where exactly do we hope to get? Domination over versus collaboration with our living earth: where has that gotten us?

Perhaps the background tone of equanimity I felt across Costa Rica is the natural con-
sequence of living alongside the constant breathing and steaming, stretching and spewing of active volcanoes 65 million years old. Perhaps it's a grace born of living free of the harshness of winter. Perhaps it's an effect of living amidst the sensual and exotic flora and fauna--myraid butterflies, hummingbirds, and palms; the sweetness of pineapple, banana, and star fruit; the plenitude of stars revealed by nights still allowed their darkness.

It was on my last bus to the airport for my departing flight that I realized I hadn't seen a single Tico cry. I had heard no hollering, seen no scuffles. It was only I who had cried publicly there. It was only we who'd hollered and scuffled. But we'd brought that with us, my travel companion and me. There, I'd seen kindness everywhere I went. From packages handed to the bus route driver-turned-courier, or down from a passenger window for the family members or friends or colleagues expecting them--sometimes in exchange for colones, but oftentimes for only a smile--to strangers anticipating a need or a question and, helpfully not intrusively, answering it. I saw kindness in people's mouths and eyes, in their motions and gestures--and even in the air itself, it seemed. The taxi driver who (seemingly) reprimanded us one day gladly offered his cell phone the next day to help us out of a fix. And in typical homes, very little divides indoors and out. That seems to extend to the lives lived in and around them.

There is more to ponder here, more to unpack. But I do know this: I lived happily, simply, and well down there at the heart the earth--grateful for the privilege of being in its midst, humbled by its quiet, commanding power, arrested by its breathtaking beauty, while sweetly savoring its delectable fruit. And I want this for all of us, no matter where we are.

A New Vibration

Hello 2011! According to a reliable source:

2010 was a "holding" or sometimes stagnant energy (the three vibration); the 2011 energy is a "push" vibration of movement, change and abundance (the four vibration).

Sounds good to me! And in keeping with the energy of the new vibration, I proudly present 136 new addi-
tions to the Love's Freeway Gallery for your viewing pleasure. There is a story to every image, of course. Sometimes I get to tell them, sometimes not. If you are curious to hear one, let me know. It just may spark a new entry here.

As always, all of Love's Freeway's exclusive images are available for purchase as finer gift cards (blank inside, suitable for framing), and upon request as enlarged and matted or framed prints, according to your preference. Should you wish to acquire an image for some personal or professional use of your own, please let me know. I welcome all inquires, as well as suggestions as to where I might show or offer these radiant particles of Love.

In the meantime, here's to a year of dynamic movement, change and abundance for us all. Happy New Year!