Are You Planting Flowers In a Bed of Weeds?

Due to the overwhelming interest in taking the ideas I have recently offered in the 4 Keys to Re-engaging seminars, a step further, I have two brief things to share:

1. An invitation to a Red Deer forum for Caring Professionals, starting in November.

2. An article/metaphor that might describe YOU!

Read on…

1. An invitation to a Red Deer forum for Caring Professionals, starting in November.

In November of this year I will be opening my Red Deer office to Caring Professionals by hosting a forum where we will discuss a variety of approaches to improving our work lives and our home lives.

We will explore and examine various practices designed to:

- Help us to bring light and love into a world that so desperately needs it.

- Assist us to work with difficult, emotionally volatile situations, at home and at work.

- Live deeply rich and meaningful lives, all the time, because as Caring Professionals, we deserve it, and if we don’t care for ourselves, who will?

Contact me here if you are interested: http://www.wakinguptolife.com/contactus.htm

2. An article/metaphor that might describe YOU!

Are You Planting Flowers In a Bed of Weeds?

When I was a much younger man, just exiting my life of darkness and ugliness, I realized I wanted to create some light and beauty in the world. I loved to have my hands in the dirt and became interested in gardening and creating spaces full of color and life.

But before I could actualize my vision of beauty, color, light and life, I realized I had MUCH work to do.

MUCH work to do.

You see, my yard was full of weeds, thistles, and thorns, and anything I could possibly plant would be choked out before it even took root. Before I could even consider creating my vision of beauty and light, I had to attend to all of the unwanted and life-stealing weeds that had taken root in my garden.

My efforts at creating beauty would NEVER take root in a garden as unwelcoming as mine. The work of creating beauty and light, should often begin with taking care of the ugly and dark.

Question: Do you find yourself falling short in your efforts at bringing beauty and light into the world, because you have neglected to care for those aspects of yourself that choke it out?

Fear, emotional reactivity, anger, hurt, confusion? Part of our efforts at Waking Up and being Awake, MUST involve looking at those aspects of ourselves that keep us Asleep.

If this sounds true to you, then I invite you to look more closely at yourself and to dedicate some time to becoming an expert on YOU, on October 1st.

Time and space are both limited.
Register here: http://www.wakinguptolife.com/wutthocworkshop.htm

Sincerely, Aaron the Wake Up Guy

PS: Don’t miss out on the bonuses for registering now. They are worth more than the registration fee! http://www.wakinguptolife.com/wutthocworkshop.htm

Waking Up To The Miraculous

Most people admit that it is very difficult to maintain a vast perspective. Instead, we lose the enormity of our lives, and of Life itself, in favor of fleeting thoughts and imaginings. The piece below is an excerpt from my book, Waking Up to Life! It was written to help us remember what is REALLY going on, in any moment that we forget the miracle of existence. It’s called, Waking Up to the Miraculous…

Reality, Uni-verse, Evolution, Life, Humanity. All here and now, Miraculous! Humanity is an expression of an unfolding Miracle that began in a place 15 billion years from here. We are children of a womb the size of a needlepoint that burst and gave birth to a fireball that burned a million years. All the elements of the universe, the stars and the planets, the earth’s oceans, forests, lands, and creatures, our bodies, our hearts and our minds, our memories and our dreams, our lives and our deaths were in that womb as a potential. It has taken 15 billion years of unimaginably complex unfolding for us to be here now. Each Life is a mysterious expression of a 15 billion year old miracle.

The odds against us even being here are astronomical. One metaphor suggests that the likelihood of Life coming to be as a random chance would be like a tornado blowing through a junkyard and constructing a 747 jet. On the day you were conceived, you won your first race, the sole victor of the Great Sperm Marathon defeating approximately 30 million others to receive the gift of union and conception. Against odds far greater than winning any old Boston Marathon.

When you were conceived a series of chemical transmissions and reactions took place. You started as a single cell measuring 1/1000 of an inch and contained instructions within your DNA that would fill one thousand books of six hundred pages each. These instructions were a potential in your parents, and their parents, and their parents, your children and their children and far beyond.

Physics has proven that, because we live in an expanding universe, every point can be considered the center. Each and every one of us are, in a sense, the center of the universe after all! It is very likely that it has been in your lifetime that physics has also proven that there are no solid objects. Your body is mostly ALL open space. As author and physicist Brian Swimme put it “if all of the space were taken out of you, you would be a million times smaller than the smallest grain of sand”. The book you are holding, the floor you rest upon, the lover you hug, all open space swirling and supporting, shaping and sensing, attracting and repelling, communicating and penetrating, open space. Acts of intimacy and love, violence and fear, creation and destruction, all expressed by open space within open space. Right now, open space reading open space!

I remember dissecting a (dead) cat in a biology class, and coming to see that a cat shares almost the exact same body structure as a human. Every bone and blood vessel, every nerve and organ, every muscle and tendon. And this is the same with all mammals. If you want to be shocked out of complacency, simply explore mammalian biological processes and functions. Do you know how an eye works? A lung? Have you ever read about the brain, or how a nervous system works? Cells, chemicals, electricity, organs, systems and processes. How does it all keep going? Absolutely miraculously freaky!  Have you ever seen a birth? A miracle! Have you seen the dying process end in death? A miracle! Each moment there are millions of births and millions of deaths, of plants, animals and homo sapiens. Lives coming into existence from where? Lives ending and going where?

Have you heard about the Mandelbrot Set? Seen the Hubbell Deep Field? Witnessed a sky burial? Flown in a jet? Looked at the night sky? Vomited? All miracles! Right now as you read these words, you are moving through space at 10,000 miles per hour, spinning 1000 miles per hour, sharing a great rock with an unfathomable multitude of Life forms, just the right distance from a star that not only sustains us, but also provides us with seasons, sun rises and sunsets. The sheer diversity of Life forms we share this planet with is enough to give one pause. There are over 30,000 known Orchid species. The sheer diversity of Life forms we share our bodies with may be too much to consider for too long

Our flesh both inside and out is host to whole living ecosystems. When you take your next breath you will receive some small amount of oxygen that has been shared by Moses, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Christ, Hitler, and Santa himself.

Have you ever had your heart broken? Crawled into a warm bath? Have you ever loved someone? Cried yourself to sleep? Felt helpless? Have you ever wakened excited because today is the day you …? Have you ever had a nightmare? A stomach ache? An orgasm? Have you ever had someone believe in you? Have you ever said goodbye, and knew it was forever? Have you ever given up hope, only to find freedom? Life makes these miracles possible. Prison and skydiving, compassion and homelessness, fear and lust; these are also the things of Life. When we are able to remember the miracle of Life in It’s totality, then everything stays in its rightful place, as expressions of Life. Life giving Life, living Life.

If you like this excerpt, you may be interested in my next
Waking Up to the Heart of Care workshop here.

THE Best Practice of All ‘Best Practices’

I want to tell you something that is provocative, maybe even shocking, but ultimately… life changing.

Before I do, I need to outline a framework for us to explore within, so here it is…

You and I both know that we all have moments or even extended periods in our lives when we are  disconnected from our present experience, daydreaming, inattentive and unaware. Our attention is lost in thought, daydreams or imaginings. Life is slipping past, unlived.

We are oblivious of our environment, our immediate experience, and especially the enormity of our existence.

We have lost perspective, lost ourselves, lost our lives…

Other words we might use to describe this diminished mode of functioning are unconscious, oblivious, on autopilot, mechanical, zoned out and lost. The term I like to use to call this lower way of functioning is, Asleep.

Asleep, eyes wide open.

What’s worse, when you are Asleep, you are not only disconnected from your present experience, you are often at your very WORST. When you are Asleep you are often struggling with your experience, recklessly impulsive and emotionally reactive.

These are the worst moments of your life. These are the moments when you have said or done something regrettable because you were lost in your experience, unable to contain what you were feeling and thinking.

Think of road rage… a partner lashing out at their lover… a parent slapping their child in a grocery store line up… a screaming child who doesn’t get their way in a grocery store lineup…

These are examples of emotional reactivity, regression, or what we often simply call, ‘losing it. The ‘it’ that we lost, was our maturity.

Conversely, when you are connected to your immediate experience, alert, attentive and aware, then you are what I call, Awake.

When you are Awake, you are functioning at your very best; you are in the groove. You are in flow with your experience, natural and spontaneously responsive. You are functioning effortlessly, calm, poised and relaxed.

Because you are Awake you are able to contain your painful emotions and destructive impulses long enough for your deeper wisdom to arise. Yes, that IS the definition of maturity.

Now for the provocative, shocking, and ultimately life changing part:

As a Caring Professional I often encounter the term, ‘Best Practice’. A Best Practice is defined as: a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark.

The practice of being Awake is a Caring Professional’s Best Practice, and the single Best Practice that underlies ALL other Best Practices. Period.

Beyond that, the practice of being Awake is THE ultimate core practice for parents, leaders, lovers and anyone for whom optimal functioning is important.

But I’m not finished…

Being Awake is THE Best Practice for
- Poise, confidence, equanimity…
- Relationships, communication, sex…
- Job satisfaction, performance and efficiency…
- Safety, security, and wise discernment…
- Stress proofing (Forget stress reduction!)

Finally, the practice of being Awake is ALL of humanity’s Best Practice in ALL situations and at ALL times.

Done.

If you know this to be true, and it is, meet me at the Waking Up to the Heart of Care workshop on October 1 at the Black Knight Inn. Seats are limited to 20, the last one sold out. Register here and change the rest of your life:

=>=>  Waking Up to the Heart of Care  <=<=

Aaron the Wake Up Guy

PS: Don’t miss out on the bonuses that are worth more than the registration cost.

=>=>  Waking Up to the Heart of Care  <=<=

The 4 Keys to Re-engaging Your Work, Your Love and Your Life Benefit Talk, Sept 12 at the Black Knight Inn

Yes, the 4 Keys seminar is a provocative blend of the practical and the profound.

But how would I REALLY describe the 4 Keys to Re-engaging Your Work, Your Love and Your Life seminar?

Simple:

In the seminar I will describe 4 ‘Practices’, or Keys, that when used consistently, will have the ability to dramatically change the way you see your life, the way you function in your life, as well as the way you experience your life.

They did for me. Big time.

As I will explain at the Black Knight Inn on Sept 12, these 4 Keys transformed me from bitter, volatile and destructive, into relaxed, composed and creative in a very short time. The 4 Keys are now grounded in my moment to moment experience of life.

But beyond that, I will also show you AND give you the missing link in almost ALL forms of personal and professional development. It is this missing link that often makes change so difficult, and it is this missing link that makes the ‘4 Keys’ seminar SO valuable and transformative.

All proceed’s go to the Red Deer Health Foundation. Registration information is here.

Someone Much Like You (Excerpted from Waking Up to the Heart of Care)

Sometimes, oftentimes in fact, someone much like you picks up a book much like this one, the one you are holding now.

 Oftentimes, that person is at a place in their life where they are ripe to inherit a deeper, more accurate way of seeing their life, living life and being alive. It happens everyday, everywhere, all the time. Maybe today, here and now.

 Sometimes, conditions are such that, that person much like you, reading that book much like this one, is introduced to a new way of seeing and being that becomes inescapable and unavoidable. Like knocking over that first domino, the rest is all but assured.

 Sometimes, conditions are such that, that person much like you, reading that book much like this one, is exposed to a perspective that acts much like a computer virus, spreading, infecting and destroying without any effort from its host.

 Sometimes, that person is left with far less than they had before the virus had its way with them.

 Less useless beliefs, less distorted views, less confusion.

 Sometimes, that perspective is more like a grain of sand introduced into an oyster. It just sits there irritating and demanding attention, eventually transforming into a pearl-like thing of rare beauty.

 Here, that person is left with more than they had before that irritant was introduced into their system.

 More wisdom, more understanding, more compassion.

 The words that follow were created as viruses and grains of sand, with the hopes of leaving you with both much more and much less than you presently are.

If you are interested in perspectives that may leave you with both LESS and MORE,
sign up now for the May 28th Waking Up  to the Heart of Care workshop in Red Deer
and get loads of FREE bonuses.

Two Benefit Talks Result In a $2200.00 Donation

After two benefit talks offered to Caring Professionals in central Alberta,  I was pleased to hand Karen Oatway of the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation a check for $2200.00.

Both talks were sold out with 40 attendees at each, and the talks were entitled: 4 Keys to Re-engaging Your Work, Your Love and Your Life.

If you would like to get these essential skills and perspectives in front of your staff, info is here: 4 Keys to Re-engaging Your Work, Your Love and Your Life

Do You Trust Life?

Some people define Spirituality as the process of ‘letting go’, because when you see clearly, you begin to see that there is nothing you can really hold on to. Or, more correctly, you can hold on all you like, but in the end it won’t matter. It all goes.

So most people like the idea of ‘letting go’, just as long as they can continue to hold on.

I thought you might appreciate a perspective that could, if the conditions are right, help you to let go of the tight grip you may have on your life.

It was about six months ago when I ceased spending time on my speaking and coaching business. I quit writing and marketing, I quit phoning and emailing, I quit networking and planning.

I was on the verge of losing my job at the nursing home I was working at because it was closing down. Money was tight, and I was feeling stale about the direction my life was headed.

I was curious as to what was going to come of my life.

So I simply sat and watched.

Don’t get me wrong. There were moments when I would try to force myself to do something, to make my life move in some direction I thought it should. But mostly I watched with curiosity.

Now, six months later, I have the nursing job of my dreams, my business is booming, money is everywhere, and I am going to Mexico today and again in a month.

The weird thing is, I had very little to do with any of these things happening.

Things happened.

In my first book, Waking Up to Life!, I included an excellent story from a favourite teacher of mine, Wayne Liquorman. It’s called’ The Motorboat Ride’, and describes how we often hold tightly to the wheel of our lives.

It’s just that that wheel isn’t really connected to anything. The wheel gives us the illusion that we are in control.

Life is ALWAYS having its way with you.
If you can’t see that, that is just  another example of
Life having its way with you.

Where Are ‘You’?

As you read these words right now, where are, ‘you’?

I don’t mean where is your body, I mean where is your attention?

As you read these words, has your entire life shrunk to the size of your computer screen?

Or, are you still in touch with the enormity of your life as you read these words?

Is it possible to stay in touch with your actual experience of being alive, while you also read these words?

It IS possible, but right now, is it possible for you?

In FACT, it is possible to stay in constant contact with your felt sense of aliveness, while also living out the details of your life.

In FACT, it IS possible to stay in touch with your felt sense of aliveness, while also watching a movie, eating breakfast, or hugging your lover.

In FACT, it IS possible to have your felt sense of aliveness become the ground of your entire life.

Like the wetness of water, the ground of your life is the felt experience of Aliveness.

Stay connected to the felt experience of Aliveness, moment by moment, while also living out the details of your life.

Who would live otherwise? Would you?

Life’s Big Question’s and an Ultimate Vision of Life

Most of life’s problems are not so big;
it’s that we become so small.

 In my talks to Caring Professionals I stress the importance of knowing your Ultimate Vision of Life.

There are many ways to explain what an Ultimate Vision of Life is, so let’s start here with a few.

- If you had to summarize your life in one sentence, what would you say?
- What is your main purpose of being alive?
- What would you like it to say on your tombstone?
- What one piece of wisdom would you pass on as you lay on your deathbed?
- What matters to you beyond all else?
- What is your deepest, most profound gift you can give to the world?
- If your life was a work of art, what would that look like and what would you use?

Of course you know I could go on and on and on… but the important thing here is to find your answers to life’s biggest questions.

The reason why it is so important to ask these questions and questions like them is because knowing your Ultimate Vision of Life is an essential piece of being able to keep things in perspective.

Now let me back up a moment.

In my work with Caring Professionals I have come to understand that one of the greatest sources of stress and suffering is the inability to maintain a proper perspective.

What this means is that Caring Professionals are highly vulnerable to losing touch with what is most important to them. The problem is this:

In moments of stress, emotionality, pressure, frustration and general unhappiness, it is easy to have the enormity of one’s entire life, shrink to the smallness of the passing moment.

In difficult moments it is easy to lose perspective and to become as small as a fleeting emotion, rather than to stay as large as your Ultimate Vision of Life.

But here’s the thing:

How can you stay in touch with the largeness of your life when you don’t even know how large it is?

Asking those deep questions above, or questions like them, is the first step in being able to maintain a proper perspective, even in the midst of difficult experiences.

What is the second step?

I’ll give you a hint: Pssst… you awake?

PS: Let me suggest you return to the big questions above, pick one that moves you, and focus on it until it answers itself. Soak in life’s big questions. Revel in life’s big questions.  Make love to life’s big question’s, until your life become its own answer.

~ Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it,
you will live along some distant day into your answers. ~  Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Are You a Life Artist?

The value of art is not in its practicality or utility, but in its beauty and its ‘such-ness’, reminding you that you are beautiful before you consider your purpose.

Like all art, you as a human being, are always already of value in your unique expression of Life’s creativity.

Beyond the beauty of your Being, your life can be seen as a living, breathing, art-form, as the mediums of flesh, speech and deed are woven into a living fabric of form, novelty and function.

As living art, you can use a variety of textures, colors, tones and visions of Life to build, paint, sing, or write your life with the care of an artist’s eye.

You can express yourself and your life artfully, attending to the subtleties, as well as, the more obvious aspects of your living, loving and dying.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
~ Emily Dickinson

Sometimes your Life-Art may be very extreme, abstract, surreal and unbalanced. The artful Life is not about health, growth, or balance, but about becoming an accurate expression of Life’s impulses and allowing Life’s beauties to flow through you, unimpeded.

It’s about seeing and hearing with many different kinds of eyes and ears, inner and outer, fleshy and intuitive, while being constructed by Life’s masterful hands.

This is another reason why being Awake is so valuable. Awakeness allows you to hear and feel the silent, subtle and invisible impulses and currents as Life communicates them through you.

With ears and eyes open on many planes of existence, you are much more able to hear and see your life in a way that is comparable to an epic story, a heart wrenching poem, an awe-inducing painting, or a great sculpture, simultaneously a work in progress and a finished masterpiece.

For if there is a sin against life,
it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life
as in hoping for another life
and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
~ Albert Camus

What does your life look like, when viewed through artful eyes?