For me it is early Monday morning and the whole weeks lies before me like a new journal without a single word on any of its pages. When I think about the week with that realization I know I can write anything I want on the pages of the days to come.

So as I sit here I imagine it is Sunday and I am looking back over the week. What do I want to see there? How do I want to feel about this little block of linear time called last week?

Do I want to look back and smile because I was able to bring joy into someone’s life? Do I want to have a profound sense of gratitude because I spent most of the week profoundly connected to my spirit, fed by the sweet nectar of that love? Do I want to feel a sense of accomplishment because I finished all the tasks I wanted to get finished? Do I want to have savored every moment of the precious gift of life?

Once I know how I want to feel next Sunday I simply need to make choices moment by moment to make that so.  Each day I set my intent and get clear about what I DO want to create. Each night I review my day.  I gently and lovingly notice if I need to adjust some of my choices, release any emotional baggage or make amends to someone for being less than loving.

The more consciously I make my choice the more magnificent my days become.

So what are you planning to create this week?

With love and aloha,
Susan

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I was thinking about writing this post and goggled fear. I found this video and loved it so I thought I would share it.

With love and aloha,
Susan

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Aloha everyone,

In the Toltec tradition fear is considered one of the obstacles to achieving personal freedom. The main objective of the tradition is to change your point of creation from your mind to your spirit. When you are aligned with your spirit you are fearless. When you are immersed in your filter system fear is everywhere.

One of the ways to use fear is as a guidepost helping you realize where you are in the continuum between your connection to your filter system or your spirit.  So you can use fear as an exercise to expand your awareness.

When you notice fear spend a few minutes and track your thoughts. Notice what you were thinking and how you disconnected from your spirit. By doing that you will diffuse the fear and unravel another piece of your filter system. You will be one step closer to achieving personal freedom.

With love and aloha,
Susan

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Aloha everyone,

My dad died Tuesday. At times he was a difficult man. I used to have a story about my childhood that was filled with abuse and violence. Then I began my spiritual journey. I worked the twelve steps of a 12 step program and I used the tools of awareness, transformation and intent as I moved beyond forgiveness and into gratitude, wonder and awe. Life is an amazing journey in which we get to see our filter system and if we choose to pursue personal freedom let it all go and step into love.

Life is and then we tell ourselves a story. As I sat at my dad’s bedside watching him slowly transition I had many insights. Perhaps the most profound was the fact that all he ever wanted was to be loved.

What a gift it was to be able to see my dad as he truly was rather than how I had learned to think he was. He wasn’t a cruel man but rather a gentle loving soul struggling to live in this crazy world. He never had the gift of realizing life is an illusion and that all we ever experienced is our filter system until the very end.

I am so grateful I can now see my dad’s love and his gentle spirit and totally release all my stories about anger and abuse. Perhaps next time I want to react it will be far easier to respond from love instead. Life is too precious a gift to hold onto stories about the past that only hurt us. It really is never too late to have a happy childhood.

My childhood sent me in search of freedom and the ability to love and it taught me to find true happiness instead of settling for the illusion. That is an incredibly precious gift and I thank you dad for helping me find it!

With love, gratitude, happiness, joy and sadness,
Susan

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I had a student that was really struggling with the idea that suffering is optional. She felt that many spiritual philosophies made suffering wrong. The gift of the Toltec tradition and Hawaiian spirituality is they both allow you to move beyond judgment and into a place of true freedom filled with love, joy and acceptance.

Imagine learning a new language. You thoroughly learn the vocabulary but totally ignore the structure, grammar and syntax of the language. You try to talk to natives of that language using your old grammar with the new vocabulary. Communicating complex concepts would be next to impossible.

The world created by the language of our mind is based on domination and the experience that we are all separate entities. The world inhabited by our spirit is based on dominion and the experience that we are one, part of a greater whole that is expansive and limitless. They are totally different languages, totally different ways of being in the world.

When living life from dominion the concept of right and wrong no longer applies. An event just is, until we tell ourselves a story about it, then our story creates our experience.

When I look back at my childhood some of the most ‘abusive’ events produced some of my most profound insights later in life. Once I used those events to deepen my connection to my spirit they became incredible gifts. Had I continued to tell myself the story that I was victimized and emotionally wounded I would have missed the gifts. If I chose to focus on suffering instead of expanding my awareness I would be a very different person today.

So it comes down to a simple choice: What do I want to create? Do I want to hold onto my story and be right? Do I want to deepen my connection to my spirit? Do I want to continue to experience what I am not, fear or experience myself as I really am, a limitless being of love and light?

Here is an excerpt from my book, The Toltec Way about dominion and domination that might help:

The Concept of Domination

I think you’ll agree that our society is based on the concept of domination, in which we seem always to be in opposition to something. Domination requires that someone is better than you or inferior to you, that events or actions are right or wrong, and people are richer or poorer. It is almost impossible to feel safe or to relax when the world is your opponent. This paradigm pervades society and contaminates most of our thinking, leading us to a limited concept of reality.

Whenever you judge yourself or someone else, or you find yourself comparing yourself with others, or in some way measuring anything in your life against an external source, your thinking is based on domination. In domination we don’t feel safe so we try to control the events in our lives, other people, or ourselves. Domination causes us to make our decisions based in fear. The best result we get when our decisions are based in fear is to generate more fear.

A society based on domination creates some very limiting beliefs about conformity and about shame. There is no room to embrace pain or limitations; you must overcome them; you must win. The very nature of domination requires us to struggle.

Living in a world founded on conflict, we feed ourselves a daily diet of insecurity. If you are honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you sometimes compare yourself to others, or even the media version of who and what you should be. You are better than or less than, you do not have enough or are not successful enough, you are too fat or too thin. You feel pressured to conform. This type of thinking is very narrow and polarized. Domination can be symbolically represented as a line.

The Concept of Dominion

If, instead, we shift to a paradigm of dominion, our vision of life becomes expansive. In dominion, everyone is part of a greater whole, everyone is an equal and integral part of the circle of life. We are no longer residing in an either/or situation; the whole and the person become one. A person truly living in dominion cannot make a choice that will harm another. Rather than being fear-based, dominion is based in love, unconditional love for the self and all other beings great and small.

Within the context of dominion, the people in our lives become our assistants instead of opponents. The idea of competition no longer makes sense nor does it have any value. It is a totally different way of viewing the world, one in which peace of mind becomes a way of life. Viewed from this perspective, life becomes limitless. We can afford the “luxury” of treating everyone and everything with compassion, love, and equality. We are able to embrace everything in our lives because we no longer need to struggle against anything–we are accepting of who we are as we are. A person is honored for merely being alive; no one is ever judged. This kind of thinking is expansive. Dominion can be symbolically represented as a sphere.

We aren’t trained to think in terms of dominion, so the concept seems frightening to many people. How do you live in a world based on domination and yet get your needs met if you remain in dominion? Won’t people just walk all over you? Well, sure, perhaps some will. However, I believe that for the most part, we receive what we give. When we are loving and non-judgmental, we are treated in a loving, non-judgmental way.

Finally, when we perceive our lives as lived in dominion, the process of our personal transformation takes on a sense of gentleness and safety. As you work through the Toltec Masteries you will learn who you really are and to love that person unconditionally. This will be extremely difficult if you remain in a judgmental state of domination.

So is abuse okay? I choose to look at it as an event that is neither right or wrong. It is an event in which two spirits come together and do a cosmic dance. They both take part in a cosmic play and they both get to write their own ending.

So what endings do you want to write to all of your cosmic plays?

With love and aloha,
Susan

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