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How Self-Aware Are You?

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“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” – Maslow

ID-10080002How self-aware are you? Do you notice the patterns of thoughts and behaviors that may not be serving you anymore? What do you do in your everyday life to clarify this awareness of yourself? If you look and listen really honestly within yourself, you may begin to discover various thoughts, ideas, assumptions, expectations, beliefs, etc., that no longer serve you, and are yet the very things that hold you back and drag you around like a dog on a leash. These unquestioned thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions etc., can (and do) unknowingly pull you around and run your decisions, behaviors, and your state of happiness. These unquestioned thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions are the very veils that distort and cloud your clear perception and muddy your vision. Isn’t it time to really look at the thoughts and stories that bring confusion, stress, fear, and anxiety, that run your life? Through questioning, inquiry, and silence, you’ll discover the opportunity to uncover clarity, freedom, and a deep sense of who you really are.

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014

Infinity Dancing

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ID-10034363

 

Through the eyes of Infinity

No location inside or out.

I am everywhere.

Vast spaciousness.

Total Fullness and utter Emptiness

Infinity dances.

Uncontained by objects of time.

No-thing-ness.

Nowness

Endless Nowness.

Forever Mysterious.

 

Carole Griggs, Ph.D., 2014

Wildly Free

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ID-100145963Please don’t attempt to contain me, confine me to your ideals of what you want me to be ..the stories, concepts, and mechanisms that will make you temporarily feel safe and happy.
Please don’t expect me to conform to some box of preconceived notions of what a woman should be, should act like, “should” anything.
I am wild.
I am open, spontaneous, and incredibly unpredictable.
I am charismatic, undefined, mysterious, and bursting with eye-blundering light.
If you can’t stand by my flame, go somewhere darker.
This light will not dim because it squelches your stories as you get closer.
Join the light, or step away. But don’t attempt to pull me into your darker realms.
I am here to shine.
I am here to be.
I am here to illuminate as spacious nothingness; vast all-ness.
Please don’t attempt to contain this light.
It cannot be contained.
It can only shine bright, wide, long, deep, and penetrate every square inch of the darkest of places.
Be wild.
Be free.
Be everything.
Be nothing.
Don’t be “anybody”.
You don’t have to be anything.
You already are everything.

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014

Seeing You is Seeing Me

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ID-100109373The gift of “others.”
What bothers me about you, bothers me (is not accepted) about me.
What doesn’t bother me about you, is perfectly okay for me about me.
When I can’t find compassion for the things that arise and manifest in you, I haven’t found compassion for that very energy manifesting in me.
It’s really that simple. Not always easy to swallow, but simple.
Ultimately there is no “you,” so all my love for you, and all my frustration “towards” you, is merely a projection of the love and frustration within/for “me.”
Thank you for showing me where I need to love “me” more.
Thank you for showing me what I have still unaccepted in me.

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014

Let Silence Find You

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ID-100118293Stop.
Let the search be off.
Rest.
Just as you are.
Not when _______________.
Now.

Stop the search, and rest as Presence.
Rest; as that which holds the thoughts and stories that pass through you.
Peace, love, joy, are all found right here.
Right here in the Now of your very Being.
There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do, no-thing to get, no-thing that needs to change to experience the total fulfillment and satisfaction of this, here.
Simply stop.
Stop the search.
Rest, at home.
Let Silence find you.

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014 ©

Free Fall in the Unknown

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ID-100262203Life is an endless losing of what you think you know. It’s an endless losing of who you think you are. This constant feeling of losing, dying of belief, and grasping for the next concept is the root of suffering. This undoing – peeling of the onion – can be extremely unsettling… like the rug being pulled out from beneath you. That which you used to hold true, is seen to be unreal. What do you know, that you don’t want to know? When this is explored, we are often left without anything to stand on. We usually know what we don’t want to know, but don’t look at it, out of fear of falling on our face, with no ground on which to stand.

What are you standing on now? Grasping for the next branch to cling to, only brings further desperation in search for something else to stand on to call “home.” What new beliefs and thoughts about who you are and what you know are you creating to push away the truth of nowhere to rest, no belief to call home, and recognizing the actuality of life in groundless free fall? Life is actually in total free fall, and yet, we continue to desperately grasp onto the next new thought or concept to rescue us from feeling the truth of this groundless, unknown, vast emptiness. Recognizing free fall can be seen and experienced as a cyclical sensation of fear – in the recognition of the absence of “me” – and of freedom in seeing the truth of Life; Life in free fall, as groundless, empty, vast, objectless, boundarylessness …with nothing to grasp, nothing to cling to for comfort in the restlessness of the appearing time and space. There is nothing to hold on to; there is nothing to find, nothing to understand, no thought or belief that can satiate this empty, groundless truth. It’s like walking around naked without the masks of persona to protect you ….no skin keeping you from feeling life as it really is.

And alas, falling into the unknown is found to be the freedom you were seeking all along; just seeking in all the wrong places of the external, unsubstantial realm of time and space. Welcome home, to the groundless, full, empty, void, of all. Welcome home to wholeness, completeness, contentment, peace, and the ground of groundlessness.

 

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014 ©

Navigating Change and Transformation

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“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction”
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What do you do when things appear to be coming completely undone?

Change, transition, transformation, etc, often appears messy, out of control, and sometimes downright chaotic. When things start to shift and change – oftentimes prior to clarity and newness showing up – there can be a period of time where things inwardly feel and outwardly appear like life is falling apart and completely out of control. When this happens, old ways of doing things often no longer work, and no matter how much we try to do things “the way we’ve always done it,” it just doesn’t seem to work anymore. This can feel uncomfortable, out of sorts, clumsy, and appear like a crumbling house of cards. What do you do in these circumstances? How do you respond when old ways of being in the world no longer work and life seems out of whack?

Messiness and “falling apart” is the most natural element of growth, transformation, newness, and change. No matter how much we try to keep things “manageable and controlled,” the messiness is often just unavoidable. Old habits, activities, beliefs, patterns, etc. have to crumble and dissolve in order for there to be room for new perspectives and opportunities to arise and take place. You can’t hold on to old beliefs, AND experience growth and newness – you have to let go of the old in order to experience the new. The crumbling away is not always clean-cut and easy-going, but it’s absolutely essential in order for transformation and newness to arise and flourish. Are you ready to let go of the old and experience the depth and freshness of the new?

How might you embrace the messiness of the unknown during times of transition?
How might you embrace the appearing “destruction,” knowing it’s completely necessary as part of the growth and transformational process?
How might you navigate change with relative ease amidst the appearing chaos?

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014

Fully Present

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ID-10036124Your ability to be fully present is 100% dependent on, and in direct degree/proportion to, your ability to ‘hold it all’ ..your ability to be open to, and allow anything to arise – all paradoxes, all discomfort, all uncertainty, all unknowns, all pain… available to anything that could possibly arise without the hyper vigilance to filter, deflect, and sift out that which you “want” and/or “don’t want” to show up, experience, and fully feel. Without this vast openness – this vast availability – you will be lost in the dream-world of thought and/or lost in the avoidance tactics of distractive activity (and/or addiction)… all of which breeds the feelings of being separate, alone, confused, dissatisfied, and detached from love, joy, and the fullness of life itself.

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014 ©

How Big is the Container You Live In?

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Do you live in a tight, confined prison-like container of continuous thought-stream?ID-100220187
Are you held captive – mesmerized/consumed/distracted – by the stories and chatter that cyclically run through your head?
Is there space to breath in this mind-prison you filter and experience life through?
Do you find yourself gripping “good feeling” thoughts and sensations, and attempting to distract or escape “bad feeling” ones?
Living in the toying-play, the push/pull, gripping/avoidance, non-stop chatter game of the mind-thought-stream is an awfully painful place to reside.
Where’s the oxygen to breath here?
Where’s the connectivity here?
Is it possible to really feel “at home” with yourself when lost in the loops of spinning thoughts?
Can you really feel connected, and deeply relate to others when consumed by the circling mind-chatter?
Entertaining thoughts are the very smoke screens that keep you from feeling connected to yourself, and deeply in touch and connected to others.
It’s quite the oxygen-depleting desert.

Thoughts are actually never the problem.
Identifying AS (with) thought is where suffering is born and breeds.
Identifying AS (with) thought is the essence of feeling the grip of being in a prison you can’t seem to escape.
Ever feel like you want to peel away from the body and escape your own head?
We suffer in direct proportion to the belief that we ARE the thoughts in our head.
The more tightly bound we are to the thoughts, stories, images, and beliefs that pass through, the smaller, tighter, and more uncomfortable the mental prison cell is that we experience.
Feel the confinement? ..the discomfort, the dis-ease?
Crave some spacious freedom from the mental chatter, internal war, and constant dialogue of should/shouldn’t, do/don’t, right/wrong, good/bad, fear, etc?
It’s never a person, place, or thing we need to escape from to experience the freedom and space we seek.
It’s the mental prison cell we yearn to leave, we yearn to dis-identify from.
It takes no “time” to leave this prison.
There’s no lock and key, you can leave at any point.

In fact, we come and go from being in this prison to experiencing freedom throughout every day.
Step back.
Notice the space, the silence, between words that arise.
What would it be like to live from here more often?
Living between the words – the spaciousness that you are – is where your freedom from the mental prison walls resides.

What might life be like if you saw yourself from a much greater vantage than the small prison cell of the mind?
What might it be like to live from a spaciousness where there are no assumptions, story telling, making meaning out of nothing, heavy mind chatter of opinion, judgment, criticism, constant evaluation, division, separation, wall-building, internal mental wars, blablabla?
How big is this spacious container, between and holding, all letters, words, and sentences?

The more you see yourself beyond the confines of the limited body-mind, the larger your capacity/your container to hold/allow anything that shows up to arise and fall.
Here there’s no need to avoid anything, to block out aspects of life, nor suppress that which is “heavy” and “unbearable.”
All thoughts can come and go, without you being captivated and dragged down and around like a dog on a leash.
Fear, devastation, despair, terror, deep pain …all of this has the space to arise when the container is experienced as large enough for anything and everything to come and go.
In this spaciousness, nothing is repressed, denied, unaccepted …everything is allowed to show up, to be fully felt, and to pass through as it naturally does.
There’s insurmountable space for everything!
Thoughts, feelings, sensations can come and go and be felt, as it has plenty of room to show up, be seen and experienced, and move through with unsnagged ease and space.
These “heavy” thoughts and feelings are not who you are.
When you see yourself as you truly are – spacious, open, infinite, limitless – fearlessness arises as there is capacity to see/allow any “heavy” thoughts and feelings to be present, linger as they may, and dissolve when they do.
When you see yourself as limitless space, the capacity to simply be present – to anything that shows up – is infinite.

The clearer you are about the vast, infinite container that you are, the greater the capacity to “hold” anything in the presence of “another’s” deepest, darkest, debilitating pain and fear.
In the breadth of this container, nothing sticks, nothing is shocking, nothing is “too much,” nothing is shamed or denied.
There is room for it all.
It’s all fully welcomed. All, already fully “allowed” exactly as it is.

What’s it like to be around someone whose container to “hold it all” is huge, vast, infinite?
What might it be like to be with someone who sees their big container, and experiences life beyond the mind’s prison cell?
What’s it like to feel someone’s capacity to be fearless, calm, and still, amidst any appearing human storm arising – be it circumstance, people, place?
Have you ever been around someone that you feel you can say anything to and it won’t startle him/her? …as if nothing you say or do really ruffles their feathers.
What’s it like to feel this freedom – to have the infinite space –  to show up however you show up – with all your crazy colors – and feel it all accepted, all okay, and all non-jarring to this person?
What is it about this person that allows this depth and breadth of capacity to exist?
“Deep sea” calm – touching Vast Stillness – Presence that you are, is that which is unafraid to experience anything that arises.
Is it possible to experience this “deep sea” calm amidst the surface of the human storm(s)?

Your freedom is right here …in the depth and breath of your container.
How aware are you of your infinite, vastness?
Is there room to breath, to be with it all, and to hold/allow anything that shows up?
What if we saw ourselves as beyond the limitations of this body-mind space?
Your freedom depends on this discovery.
How big is the container you live in?

Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014 ©

Finding Peace in the Paradox of Life

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The Infinite Container that Holds It All

By Carole Griggs, Ph.D.

 

What does it look like to find peace, experience deep happiness, and live fully alive?

Is it gripping the “positive” and negating the “negative?”

Does grasping one end, chopping up life, really bring sincere peace and true joy?

Being fully alive requires one to be open to experiencing the expansive spectrum of the paradoxes of life.

…that something can feel so totally okay in the midst of pure tragedy.

…that love can be experienced in the midst of utter pain, despair, and deep sadness.

…that we can feel limitless freedom, while simultaneously feel our human finiteness and limitation(s).

…that total okay-ness can be felt amidst terror and shock.

…that joy and ease can be experienced in the midst of massive confusion, uncertainty, and the unknown.

How does all of this exist all at once?

Living from/as spaciousness – the vast “container” that you are – that holds/allows it all – leads one to the experience of peace, ease, grounded-ness …reality.

The tendency is often to make things black or white, yes or no, good or bad, right or wrong …to push one “side” away or pull one closer.

This energetic push/pull movement is painful …because gripping one side is only partial truth.

It’s only half the story.

Attempting to divide, to block out half of reality – half of what actually is – is painful.

Half truths (believed) are always painful.

Our systems are wired for truth.

When believing something short of truth, (if sensitive to it) you’ll feel it.

The full truth, the full spectrum, the total paradox…all of life … brings peace, deep happiness, and felt love.

To the degree we block out parts and pieces of reality/truth, is the degree to which we suffer (and/or experience peace).

That’s just the bottom line.

Experiencing the sense of being fully alive – fully free – is dependent on our capacity to see/be the expanse that holds it all – to stay wide open to the paradoxes of all of life…not just parts we think are true or want to see.

Open, rather than divide, and discover your expansive freedom.