Howard McQueen's Blog (436)

© 2011 Howard McQueen

Idle conversation,

Just speaking to throw in your own ideas,

and not really listening to content and following a thread,

can lead to confusion,

can lead to others not feeling heard.

And folks either need to risk repeating themselves,

or they decide to risk asking you “are you not listening?”.

When we really listen,

when something of real value is needing to be conveyed,

let…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

Every thought deemed disagreeable,

every thought deemed desirable

emanates from the inner, mental judge.

Installed very early in life,

the judge is conditioned to expect drama,

expects to have the courtroom schedule fully booked.

To sustain this virtual courtroom,

a host of other internal mental characters are empowered: detectives, witnesses - and an extensive lexicon of injustices is…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Like a job you would be loath to show up for,

like a bad dream that seems to want to stick and not go away,

what you have grasped and hold to be your identity 

can be our very own mind-spun spider web,

catching and binding us to suffering.

If no web is spun,

there is nothing to create resistance.

Nothing becomes snagged.

The endless stream of thoughts and concepts,

free of…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

That we appear contained within a separate body

has no real bearing on establishing our identity, what we really are.

Yes, a part of our experience is hard wired into the sensory organs.

This is what makes experience sometimes so very delicious,

sometimes so very frightening.

That experience is ever changing,

that experience can be re-interpreted,

that our ability to become increasing…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

There is a fundamental "grace" manifest and underpinning life.

This grace can be seen in the expressions of life as unconditional love.

If this were not true, every resentment would grow

into an insurmountable and impenetrable wall.

We would then strive to stone each other unto death.

That resentment and violence are even temporarily entertained, or acted out

is a sign that unconditional…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

There is endless investigating,

endless searching and seeking,

endless manipulating

in order to shape circumstances that create and sustain happiness.

There is endless efforting to try to scrub clean (or eradicate)

what we refer to as the ego and all of its bruises and wounds.

Why not drop all this stress-induced restlessness

and no longer make any attempts to personalize…

(c) 2011  Howard McQueen

"I am" points our identity to the here and now.

Now, release this notion.

What are  you (your identity), if you are not

 the body

 the thoughts

 the memories

 the fleeting circumstances?

Yes, you are "the witness" of all this in the here and now.

Your true identity contains and enables "the witness" and all that is witnessed.

Now, release this notion.

So,…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Initiating a full-stop within 

is not creating silence.

It is no more than no longer believing in what the mind wants to dictate.

It is suspending belief in all the cascading judgments,

the inner urges,

the conditioned beliefs,

the false assumptions,

the remembered anxieties,

the fear and grief.

Secretly we hold on to and feed the mind,

hoping that it will protect and…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

For there to be suffering,

experience must be personalized,

experience must be resisted (i.e. resented, feared, i.e. singled out by the mind with judgments).

It is the mind that constructs and creates ongoing beliefs that create suffering.

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

Some memories, when accessed,

bring with them sensations of anxiety.

When we have spent extended periods of time in these valleys of anxiety,

we forget how acclimated and infused we became,

how we held on to this environment,

as if it held a sense of our true (dark) identity.

While in these valleys, the mind frantically struggles,

generating stress, until, often

we feel and…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

You may come to realize that you are not

the limited, cut-off, defective and helpless self.

You may have felt  like that and told yourself and others stories until

this formed a temporary and wavering sense of identity.

If your essence and nature are not this self, then what are you?

The sweet simplicity of confirming and affirming what you really are

will put a full-stop on…

Howard McQueen (C) 2011

Choose to be with the truest emotion alive within you.

There is no need to manufacture any reaction to that emotion.

Awaken from the endless sleep-walking dream of reactive disempowerment.

Stay with whatever is real in this framed moment.

Allow the moment to play itself out,

and you will find, within yourself,

the seed from which to be at peace.

We have so little control over what life…

Howard McQueen (C) 2011

Survival of self, at any costs

does not make for a noble beast,

nor a heart-felt community,

nor a vital village.

There is this Darwinian, strangle-hold grip we use to ensure the survival of our identity.

It may just be what is holding you and me in our self-imposed sense of separation.

The more we try to protect and defend our identity,

the more intractable and mired we become in the…

From The Daily Don Miguel Ruiz Inspirations

Our emotions are real; the voice of knowledge that makes us suffer is not. Our suffering is true, but the reason why we suffer may not be true at all.

This is a re-posting from this time last year.  Anahata had their 2nd Annual Summer Cultural Evolution Camp.  I attended this first year (last year) and wrote this to commemorate the impact on my life.

Writing from the Anahata community, Floyd, Virginia

At the conclusion of Summer Evolution Camp.

(c) 2010 Howard McQueen | Version 2.2 8/31/2010

There are places on this earth

fully ripened,

ready for your initiation into…

Version 2.0

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Before pulling up the covers of comfort,

 let us not settle for the suffocation and stagnation of sameness.

Life is change.

Change is the destroyer of hardened habits.

Change is the sandblaster aimed directly at the separated self.

Resist the messenger of change and become intimate with long-suffering.

Embrace change and the web of inter-related aliveness is…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Within the inner chambers of the heart,

 patiently waiting to be reclaimed,

 is a vast cache of feelings.

The heart offers us its innate capacity to become fluent feeling our human-ness,

 to become intimate with all that is overwhelming

 in our experiencing the unfiltered, unguarded life.

To be fully present, 

 to be fully invested,

 to allow yourself to open to your feeling…