Last month I spent 6 glorious days with my Warrior Goddess sisters and Warrior Goddess mama, HeatherAsh Amara. We worked and we trained, but mostly it felt like play to me. So, as you can imagine, coming back to the "real" world was disappointing to say the least. I watched myself slowly, or quickly, spiral into a negative, tense, and frustrating place. However, after a few weeks of poor me, I am such a victim, I called for some change. Last week I wrote . . . I "f**king feel like I am f**king starting over!!! Why? Why am I f**king here?" and more!
So, what did I do? I went back to the basics. I went back to a book I found strange yet wonderful 8 years ago when I first read it, I didn't quite understand it then, the book is "The Power of Now", by Eckhart Tolle. There are so many parallels in this book with the Toltec teachings, and the teachings that HeatherAsh presents in Warrior Goddess Training. I will address just a few . . . . . .
First, consciousness vs. unconsciousness. Consciousness means presence, it means you in your purest state and form, it means you are fully present in the Now. Everything that is beautiful and that truly matters in life happens in the Now. It comes from a place of stillness and presence in the mind. Unconsciousness comes from all of the noise in your mind, the mitote as the Toltecs would call it. Our mind makes it really hard to stay present and in the Now, our mind, in fact, tries to sabotage us by creating so much noise, by telling us we are a victim or by judging ourselves or others. So what we want is to find this state of inner connectedness that brings us to peace, stillness, and presence.
Next, the idea of the judge, the judge that exists in our mind that makes all of that noise, that tells you that you are not enough, and that tells you to judge others to make you feel better about yourself. Along with the judge comes the victim, the poor me, why does bad stuff always happen to me. All of this just circulating around in our mind telling us how awful we are and how horrible our life is, and if we just did this or that, then . . . If we focus too much on the future we create unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry and other forms of fear. If we focus on the past we create feelings of guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness. When we surrender to the Now and are fully present in this moment these feelings and noises go away.
Is this to say that the present is always perfect, NO! The present moment can sometimes be painful or sad or frustrating. But think of all the pain and suffering we can alleviate in our lives if we just focus on the Now, if we consciously ignore the mitote, the noise in our minds. Consciousness is a choice. We can choose to be awake and conscious, or we can choose to suffer and be unconscious. I choose consciousness!
Yours truly,
Rachel Warrior Goddess