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BIRTHDAYS AND DEATHDAYS

BIRTHDAYS AND DEATHDAYS

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Birthdays and death days are markers on a soul’s journey into awareness and freedom. Not all souls choose experiences of physicalness – learning in the domain of time, space, matter, and duality that we call home for a short time. In fact, in which we experience time. I look at each incarnation into the Earth school as a dramatic act of spiritual responsibility and each departure of a soul from the Earth school as a return to nonphysical reality – our common home before and after our experiences on the Earth.

Only a soul knows when it will return home, and when it decides to return home, nothing can stop it. Until then, nothing can make it return home. This may sound strange because so many forms of death, such as illness and violence, appear undesirable to us, but what your soul wants and what your personality wants are not always the same, unless they are aligned. My adopted Sioux uncle spoke of the “other side camp” where we travel after death. When I ask him about it, he would answer with a story, as he often did. One of them was about a relative (he saw all people as relatives) whose death was deeply grieved. He described him as walking up a ridge toward the setting sun. There is much wailing and cries of “He’s going! He’s going!” When he reaches the top, he turns his back to the sun and waves goodbye a last time, and then he turns toward the sun again and disappears over the ridge. A great cry goes up, “He’s gone! He’s gone!” On the other side of the ridge another great cry goes up, “He’s coming! He’s coming!”

We come from love and we return to love. What we do in between is the substance of a life. In my opinion, the purpose of every life is now to create authentic power – to align your personality with your soul – and thereby give the gifts that you were born to give. Our gifts are many, and the only thing between us and giving them is fear. Creating authentic power is learning to distinguish love from fear inside you and choosing love no matter what is happening inside you or outside of you. This requires practice. It requires awareness and volition. What else do you have your life for?

I have lived seventy winters in the Earth school, and I am grateful for all of them, even those that were painful. My life did not need to be so difficult – I didn’t know about creating authentic power earlier – but the richness I experience now is a result of taking advantage of opportunities to grow spiritually that each year in the Earth school gave me. We all encounter continual opportunities in the Earth school to grow spiritually – to create authentic power. My greatest joy is using mine wisely and supporting you in using yours wisely.

I am grateful to share this anniversary of my entrance into the Earth school with you, and to honor you.

Love.
Linda & Gary

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FORGIVENESS AND FREEDOM

FORGIVENESS AND FREEDOM

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The idea that forgiveness is something you do for someone else results from the perception of power as the ability to manipulate and control. The unconscious intention behind not forgiving is to cause pain in someone you feel caused pain in you, and thereby alter his or her behavior. This never works because the origins of your emotional pain are inside you. When you choose not to forgive, you inflict pain upon yourself. Not forgiving is like trying to cause someone else pain by breaking your fingers. You are the one who is hurting when you do not forgive. There is nothing healing, nurturing, or even slightly positive about not forgiving.

Not forgiving is holding someone else responsible for your experiences. The emotional pains that you feel can be created only by parts of your own personality, not parts of someone else’s personality. Other people can activate these parts of your personality, such as the part that will not forgive. They can treat you cruelly, abuse you, even torture you, but only parts of your own personality can create your emotional experiences, including your painful emotional experiences. The longer you blame others or circumstances for these experiences, the longer you experience them.

Forgiving is something that you do for yourself. When you forgive, you stop holding others responsible for your emotional experiences. You step into a position of power because you cannot control others, but you can choose within yourself between the parts of your personality that create emotional pain and the parts that create experiences of gratitude, appreciation, contentment, and joy. Sometimes the pain is so great that an individual cannot find the strength to forgive. In these times, it is enough that she or he pray for the elevated perception, the Light, the Grace, to forgive. It will come.

In all cases, the healing dynamic of forgiveness requires you to look inside yourself instead of outside yourself for the causes of your emotional pain, and challenge them by not acting on their justified anger and righteous rigidity and acting instead from the most healthy and wholesome parts of your personality that you can access in that moment. Forgiving requires you to change yourself for the better instead of blaming. It requires you to heal. Forgiving is consciously choosing to leave behind the prisons and torments of your fears. It is also the creation of authentic power.

Love.
Linda & Gary

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STRETCHING YOURSELF

STRETCHING YOURSELF

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Commitment is a stretch when you commit to something new, something constructive and healthy, and stick to it, such as commitment to your integrity. How do you stay in integrity without being insensitive? How can you be sensitive to others and stay in it?

There are degrees of commitment, and each new degree is a stretch. It is as though we are individuals who are practicing yoga. As we stretch we become more limber, but we are always at the edge of what we can do. Individuals who come into the Authentic Power Learning Community may think that they are committed to creating authentic power and feel that they are committed, and yet as they begin to experience the depth of the transformation that occurs within themselves as they develop emotional awareness and apply responsible choice, they discover that they are indeed required to commit yet again.

Having a child is a commitment, and as the child grows, parents begin to understand in more fullness the demands of parenthood, and as they do, their commitment deepens or they fall into despair. As the child grows into adulthood, the commitment of the parents must deepen yet again to provide the love and wisdom they want to share in ways they are at the same time learning and learning how to share.

 

Having a child is a commitment, and as the child grows, parents begin to understand in more fullness the demands of parenthood, and as they do, their commitment deepens or they fall into despair. As the child grows into adulthood, the commitment of the parents must deepen yet again to provide the love and wisdom they want to share in ways they are at the same time learning and learning how to share.

It is the same with creating authentic power. The more you enter your life consciously, the more challenges and opportunities appear in equal measure. The more difficulties and tumultuous emotions you experience consciously and challenge, the more potential for freedom from fear and the spaciousness of joy appear. The more you stretch yourself, the more you gain. And you gain nothing when you do not stretch yourself. Creating authentic power is stretching yourself in every way that counts.

Love.
Linda & Gary

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CONNECTING WITH AN OPEN HEART

CONNECTING WITH AN OPEN HEART

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Last week I received an invitation from a small town in Wyoming to a ceremony for Vietnam veterans. The names of each are being etched into a plaque to be mounted in the town square next month. They invited me as one of their own – a vet from Cowley, Wyoming. I felt the depth of the honoring this town has for me and for my fellow veterans that came from there. I was so appreciative, but the thing is, I am not from that town!

I was busy, but I emailed back: I served in Vietnam, but I am not from Cowley. Thank you so very much for thinking of me. I feel like I have been adopted. Love, Gary. Within hours another email arrived: Hi Gary. I do not know how you received this email. I am aware of your great work. I love your books…and am baffled as to how you landed on this list. Love, John

Now I have a connection with Cowley, Wyoming, and John and the people in Cowley and the people from Cowley who served their country. This came at the perfect time for me. Linda and I live in a small town, also. Sometimes I forget how many people have read my books and appreciate them. This unexpected invitation helped me to remember, and it filled me with joy. I cannot say it was a misplaced invitation, because it found the person who needed most to read it. Me.

If you think you know all you need to know to reach beyond your familiar environments – to create authentic power – please consider my story. Without reaching out to others, you will never swim in the vast ocean of meaning and fulfillment around you. Like a small fish that has never left a coral reef, you will live in the illusion that you have experienced all your life offers you and that your joy and freedom demand. This is the life I was living when this picture was taken.

Connecting with others with an open heart is the greatest challenge and reward of the Earth school. Only frightened parts of your personality resist it, and they are the parts that confine you. The next time you feel withdrawn, uninterested, preoccupied, or overwhelmed, try giving the frightened parts of your personality the strongest challenge you can. Open yourself to someone. Open your heart and share your attention. Share the precious presence you are in the Earth school. See what you can learn about yourself. See what you can contribute to others.

You may also want to look at other frightened parts of your personality that could be keeping you from connecting with your heart, such those that are extroverted, the life of the party, gregarious, full of themselves, and too busy to answer an email that obviously doesn’t pertain to them.

Life beyond the reef is amazing.

Love.
Linda & Gary

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