The Shankari View

Intimacy

Without trust as the basis of your relationship, (with anything or anyone) there is no potential for true intimacy.

Why…because intimacy describes a ‘closeness’ only available within a trusting relationship.  I am not talking necessarily about sexual intimacy, which is specific to a certain type of relationship.  Rather, I am talking about true intimacy between people within a family or even a community.

True intimacy is the result of being free to expose yourself on your good days and your bad days…your ‘on’ times and your ‘off’ times… with no fear of losing the love or affection of those close to you.  In our fear of being judged, as we judge ourselves, we refuse to allow others close to us.

To know that you are loved and accepted, despite being ‘seen’ past all the masks and props of public life, provides an intimate relationship.

The minute there are secrets, intimacy dies…even if only one partner has the secret.  Falsehood kills intimacy.  Judgment destroys intimacy.  Control never allows for intimacy.  Why…because the need to ‘control’ within relationship is based on lack of trust, originating in lack of self worth. Your relationship with others begins within your ‘inner self’, then expresses out into the world as your caliber of worthiness for true love and intimacy.  You set the energetic venue for what you receive…by every thought word and deed you provide from within your inner self.

You are in search of intimacy.  It is the way we mortals come close to experiencing the love of God…by seeing the Divine within each other.

In many ancient traditions when a couple marries, the woman represents the Divine Feminine and the man The Divine Masculine.  Within the ceremony they symbolically wed (join) The God-force reflected within each other.

Intimacy is the result of trust and can only be broken by falsehood.  Do you have intimate relationships?  Are you in love and in a trusting, intimate relationship with yourself?  Until you do that, creating an intimate relationship with the love of your life is impossible.  You must start at the beginning with trust and work towards the end in an orderly fashion because intimacy is worth it!

Why…because it is another way of saying….Freedom!

Trust

Trust…is the opposite of fear…

The most powerful antidote to the disease of fear in our new millennium…is trust:

What does trust mean?

Trust is a derivation of ‘true’, which means ‘straight to the mark’, as opposed to ‘sin’, which means to ‘miss the mark’ (both terms are coined from the ancient martial art of archery). Arrows were always described as flying ‘true’ or ‘sinning’…by missing the mark. The terms were pre-New Testament and were used to describe these high concepts to the reader so they could understand the message the Master Teacher, Jesus, wanted to share with the world.   

‘Trustworthy’ describes something you can rely on.

True means in alignment with the straight path…no secrets, no manipulation, simply the ‘truth’…… something or someone you can ‘trust.’

Within the human condition, we manipulate the truth until we personally begin to trust no one and nothing because we see ourselves reflected in the world around us. We experience what is ‘true’ as rather malleable.  It can be molded into a form that suits our desired result….and makes us right!  And then we suffer, which makes us more right and fearful, resentful and angry.

To learn to trust yourself first is the key.

Stop your self delusion…the part of you that feels useless…the part of you that you can’t trust.  It leaves you feeling poor and powerless.  There is no poorer man than the one who cannot trust himself to be on his own true team.

You must listen carefully to the agreements you make with yourself and others on a daily basis. Then be sure you are true to your word. This is the first act of a true Warrior of The Light!

Trust is the product of being ‘true’ and flying ‘straight’.

Anything that is not ‘true’ does not really support you and your ‘true purpose’.  As you become more true to yourself, everything that is false falls away…sometimes with a little pain…leaving you free to build a new reality based on trust and truth…something truly trustworthy.

Are you a trustworthy Being?  Is your word your bond?  If you do not trust your self, no one else will either.  If you do not trust those around you, remember, you are looking at your own reflection!

Jelousy

Jealousy…

…is the present time fear…of a future time loss.

Jealousy is fear of loss….and fear is the poison of the mind. It immobilizes you, leaving you powerless to respond to your life with certainty, which feeds your natural feelings of abandonment.

So, if you find yourself experiencing feelings of jealousy, what do you know for sure?

You know you have lost your center and your personal power in the moment and your self esteem is very low. Then do something about that, rather than look for evidence to make you right.

If you are choosing to be conscious and live in present time where the power is, jealousy is a field of energy that immediately lets you know you are out of balance and need to address something inside yourself before you go out and share your personal reality as a victim with the world.

You always create relationships that mirror your parents’ behavior?

Why…because when you were born, your parents represented God to you. They were all powerful in your life. They represented your protection from the big bad world, your sustenance, and became your role models, no matter what they did or how badly they treated you.

They became less God-like as you grew older but whatever they felt about you is what you think God thinks about you! There’s the big problem…right there.

What do you think God thinks about you?

Are you in fear of being exposed as a fraud? Do you trust yourself? Jealous behavior always has it’s origin in the low self esteem of the accuser.

On two separate occasions in my life, men (both Taureans, since they are the ones that move from devotion to dedication to obsession in three easy leaps) wanted to physically kill me because they were jealous. On both occasions, they had absolutely no reason to be since I am far more interested in my creativity than creating outside relationships.

It was transference.

I discovered much later it was they who had been unfaithful and were feeling so guilty they were making it up in their heads. They convinced themselves that I must be guilty of the same behavior…only they didn’t know about it yet!

On both occasions, which were years apart, (my patterns of abuse were obviously still interlocked and unresolved) I was astounded at where their minds went and what they thought I was capable of. For example, it was dawn on New Years Day and we had been up all night at a party. The kids would be awake soon and I wanted to swim in the ocean before they did. I walked down to the beach at the end of our yard in Bungan, Sydney. I was blissfully swimming in the cool water when I looked back up the sand to see my partner walking towards me down the steep incline, almost marching. Every now and then, I kept thinking it wasn’t him since he had a strange stiffness to him as he walked.

When he got to me, I came out of the water to greet him. He grabbed me and shouted with deep hurt and rage in his voice that he had seen me from the veranda. I was flirting with that fellow over there. He pointed to a male swimmer about thirty yards away that I had hardly noticed. “I saw you. You were swimming in the ocean with another man!” (He was so distracted, he honestly said that.) He then proceeded to attempt to strangle me in front of a gathering crowd. Some helpful people pulled him off me. I was in absolute shock. This event showed me a great deal about the mind and how it can destroy our peace in a moment if we allow it to be in the service of our fragile egos.

What do you make right? What do you project? Who do you trust?

Planting

Planting…love?

I have been planting all over the property in Ocean View.

It is a very difficult environment. There is no earth so we have to make our own by hand: organic chicken manure with crushed black cinder and macadamia nut husks. There is no water so we have to pay for it and have it hauled in. There are regular gale force winds pounding anything living to death or at the very least working on dehydrating the little moisture left in the earth after days of beating midday sun.

I am not known for choosing easy tasks.

I once had a five page article written about my gardens in Bali at Sacred River Retreat in Australian House and Garden Magazine.  That place was originally a disused quarry. I had to return all the earth before I began to plant.

Why do I love to green the difficult parts of the earth…because to green the earth is to bring back love to the places that have been abandoned. To take care of living things is to claim an important role in the web of life and feeds our sense of self worth. 

Everything I plant here, every stone I move, all the seeds I bury are symbolic to me. Anything that can withstand the elements and prosper here is symbolic of an individual that survives the challenges of their life. There are people living and succeeding under difficult conditions all over the world who will one day come to benefit from our work here.

The place is looking more beautiful every day. The Divine Mother is smiling upon us and the Earth Devas have been awakened. I have orchids blooming in the wind and incredible miracles occurring in every corner of the yard. Recently the stralitsias, the ‘birds of paradise’, have flowered, providing an incredible slash of orange against the black of the lava. The gardenias are in bud and the blood red geraniums are taking off.

At the front facing the gate, I have planted an island with four coconut palms and a sea of colored succulents that become magenta pink in the full sun. Behind that, I have built an island under an old Ohia Tree with an altar to the Divine Mother of All Creation in a bird bath, since the water constantly evaporated.

Below the tree, I have a large stone statue of Ganesha, lounging in the sun. He has a flurry of green flowering plants and a dragon fruit cactus behind him with wild flashing red blooms to celebrate his pleasure. Ganesha represents jovial abundance, compassion and the remover of obstacles.  Who wouldn’t want him and what he represents at their gate?

Around the bird bath platform of The Divine Mother, I have created a mandala garden, using hearts and flowers, creepers, pink cactus like desert lotus blossoms and macadamia nut husks. The accents are in red and green cinder lava. It has a final row of white ghost plants that shine in the dark and make it clear where the bed is at night so no one walks into it by mistake.

Do you love the earth? If you put your hands in soil, do you know what happens? You connect to your organic source, relax your mind and extend your life.  You become a part of the healing process of the earth and heal yourself in the process.  What a gift the earth is!

Charity, Part II

The reason I know so much about this subject is because I had a very profound experience in India a number of years ago.

Dewa, my husband, my son Ahkasha and I went to India to see the Delai Lama up in Daram Masala in the North at the base of The Himalayas.  On first arrival, despite the fact that I had been living in third world conditions in Bali for many years, I was overwhelmed by the beggars and the deep poverty.  I have a big heart but I found myself closing down with the immensity of the problem before my eyes.

We traveled from Bombay to New Delhi, then on to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I was deeply depressed, closed off and in a kind of blind shock…unable to look at the beggars and completely unable to help them.  I found I couldn’t give them anything because I felt it was not going to change their life and I am a person who feels compelled to discover solutions, rather than create dependence.  I felt so guilty for all I had compared to how little they appeared to have.

By the time we arrived in Daram Masala, I was very sure that I needed to heal this pain within myself before I could travel another step. I meditated for a while and asked to be shown what to do.

Then I had it. I decided that I would give myself a budget for the beggars, who were all lepers in that town. I would then give this to them over the period of the four days that we were there.  We were staying at the Snow Leopard Hotel right in front of the Tibetan Monastery. I changed the money into small denomination Indian Bank Notes, Ahkasha came with me and we slowly went around the town, giving a ten rupee note to every leper we met. I would stop in front of them, look them full in the face, smile from my heart and say clearly in English for myself to hear and him to feel, “I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity of sharing my wealth with you.”

The outcome was far more wide reaching than I had ever imagined. The lepers had never been looked at with love before.  Usually people feel guilty when they see them and kind of throw money in their direction, making sure not to look too closely out of shame…the feeling I had experienced in Agra.  This was a bigger healing for them and more generous than they had ever experienced before. They became my fan club and would gleefully wave at me from across the market place…perhaps for the first time having a friend to wave to who would wave back!

They became my personal watch team for Ahkasha who insisted, since he was twelve years old, he was old enough to go to the internet café by himself (yes they have one up there too!)  The team of lepers would be on watch for his welfare and safe return home.

 

I was the one who truly had the gift.  It was the best money I have ever spent in my life…it opened up the flow…and I felt enormous joy within my own Being. I bought them all a blanket because they were all saying winter was coming and they would be cold.  Within an hour of receiving them, they were selling them back to the shop keeper. Why…because a beggar cannot afford to have beautiful things. Their stock in trade is your sympathy or guilt.  You won’t be so generous if they look warm or beautiful.  In fact to own such a blanket would be a liability.  Everyone else would want it.

I am pleased I had the opportunity to see both sides.  Give without guilt or conditions, and this will define and qualify what you receive.

Charity, Part I

Charity is for the giver not the receiver!

I know you may think this is a perverse statement but it is the truth. What happens when you give to another in need? Is their true need resolved through your gift? Is their life any different? Have you saved the planet or the whales? No!

There may be a moment of respite or an unusual treat. Perhaps the rent gets paid this month or they can feed their family a few more days…. but what happens to the giver?

The frequency of the giver has moved into the field that affirms they have more than enough…so much in fact, they can afford to share. This is the energy of abundance…the field of generosity.

What happens when you are in the field of generosity?

You express the energy of the ‘gentry,’ the upper classes of Europe. You are claiming that you have more than enough and, as you give, you set up a dynamic that allows for greater receiving. The more you give, the more you receive is a true statement because it is an expression of flow.

If you don’t want the world to be stringy with you, don’t be stringy with others. Now this doesn’t mean that I am suggesting you dash out and start giving away your possessions. It means that from now on, you may consider the benefits of sharing a little of what you have with others. Try this for your own sake so you can enjoy the feeling of giving and develop your sense of personal abundance. This doesn’t mean that you will give to others in order to control them…or save them so they will love you. They never will. They can’t from their point of powerlessness. Remember, to be able to love another, you must first be able to love yourself.

Successful giving needs to be executed with no strings attached.

A generous spirit wants for nothing because it is aligned with the field of successful abundance through Divine Right Order. If you would like to play with these ideas you can kill two birds with one stone by clearing out your clutter, allowing for more flow, inviting your friends over and asking them to choose their favorite piece for themselves. What remains send to Good Will or simply leave it in an area where it may become treasured by others.

Are you generous? Do you feel abundant? More on this tomorrow…

Responsibility

Responsibility….what does it mean?

Obviously, it means our ‘ability to respond,’ but what qualifies that ability?  What is it, above all else that increases our ability to respond to what is occurring in our life?

The quality of our ability to ‘respond’ is determined by our ability to be in present time and to focus.  Being in present time has an enormous number of advantages. Primarily, it’s our point of power that allows growth for change along our journey.

We can never alter anything in the past, nor can we ultimately predict the future, since everyone’s destiny is a moving target…..being created in the moment by the combination of our thoughts, words and deeds.

                         

So if it’s as simple as being in present time, why doesn’t everybody do it? What an amazing place the world would be if we could all come into present time.  In present time, there is no space for pain from the past, no place for fear of the future. Simply the joy of the present moment becomes the whole generous reward. In this place of joy and balance within our consciousness, great healing can occur. Disease dissolves and the true power you hold over your physical body is recognized.

Living in present time is an ‘anxiety free’ zone, so it automatically prevents ageing and restores confidence.  Disciplining ourselves to be ‘in the present moment’ creates advantages…..why? It’s the only way we ever learn anything new.  Why…because to learn something new, we need to be physically and mentally present, able to respond.

To be joyful, we must be in present time.  Joy is the most attractive element in our potential repertoire of frequencies of being human.  Joy allows us to live a long healthy life with more beautiful skin, better sleep, and wiser choices!

Do you focus in present time, the past or the future?  Do you hold your responsibilities with the highest regard or do you resent them?

Live in JOY….’Eola’…..let it live!                            

Worth

Wealth – Worth…

Do you know there is a powerful misconception about wealth and worth?

To know what someone is worth is to know what they think of themselves…and this has nothing to do with money! The difference between worth and money is that worth measures value and money measures energy.

In fact the most powerful misconception of our whole human condition is that there is not enough money o feed the poor r get you what you want r change the nature of the inner city ghettoes of the world …right? Wrong!

The fact is it’s not that there’s not enough money, it’s that there’s not enough love in the world….that’s what creates poverty. Why… because your sense of self worth is based upon how much you felt loved and valued by your world as you were growing up. Many citizens of the world do not come from loving families, thus their sense of worth has to be established in their adulthood by their own choices.

When individuals develop their ability to love rather than fear each other and the world around them, their own sense of worthiness will change dramatically. There are many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ‘do gooders’ internationally looking for a committee to sit on to ‘help the unfortunate.’ It’s part of their pattern to feel superior yet unappreciated. Why…because more often than not, ‘the poor unfortunates’ are left feeling powerless in the ‘do gooding’ exchange and consequently feel no value within the help provided. Rather, they fear control and respond by rebelling (you know, that’s what graffiti is all about…kids expressing their frustration at feeling no control over their environment).

When I was first studying Ritual Magic, I was taught a magical law, that life was a two-sided coin. On one side, there is indulgence which leads to death and on the other, involvement which leads to life.

The most profound change will occur in social, corporate and housing ghettoes globally when the individuals within these places decide to become involved with their own communities in a loving and respectful way, when they commence to love themselves, each other and their environment.

So much energy is wasted in the pursuit of complaint, resentment and revenge, most are unwilling to change their self description when given the chance because they are invested in the role of ‘angry, poor, unfortunate victims of a cruel and unfair world’.

Profound change can only occur when the individual is in present time and decides they’re worth more……then make choices according to their sense of worth.

When individuals take the Sacred tools of any indigenous culture (Tai Chi, Chi Gung, Bambu Kuning, Meditation, Hula, Sword Fighting, Chanting, Dancing, Yoga, to name a few) and use them to center themselves, release their belief in limitation and commence the process of true self respect ….. When this happens, their sense of worth will flow out into the community as Divine Nectar.

When the love of the earth is reborn in their hearts and flowers encouraged to grow close by…..when they use their energy to create order rather than chaos, beauty rather than disfigurement, respect rather than resentment……magic will happen.

They will no longer be the ‘resentful unfortunates,’ angrily believing there will never be enough for them. Is that what you believe? What is your (self) worth? Are you choosing to be involved or indulged?

Struggle

Do you find yourself struggling with all sorts of things in life?

Over the years, I’ve learned that struggle never leads to where I really want to go, which is joy.

You must admit, every time you struggle you get even more wound up…..isn’t that so? Think about all the times you have struggled through a project or a plan. Did you ever really succeed? Or, was whatever success you achieved tainted by the manner in which you achieved it (i.e., through struggle rather than joy….force rather than fun)?

When you lose the joy, you’re no longer aligned with Divine Intent, so everything progressively gets harder. You become your own worst enemy, cracking the whip and harassing yourself (and others) with threats and promises to achieve the desired outcome…..and what’s that?  To be ‘right’ (some times called ‘righteous’), to be the best one, the only one, the fastest one, the good one, etc.  All these labels originate from the idea of competition … comparison ….and the belief that there is something to prove to someone who cares enough to judge us constantly, who will decide for us that we are good or bad, right or wrong, a success or a failure, worthy or unworthy…..

Who is that?  That’s our surrogate parent….you know, the one we ‘set up’ to judge us (these individuals can change regularly).  Are you getting this? When we become invested in struggle we need a few disasters to make it all worth while.  They give us a broader canvas for complaint, comparison and successful competition.                     

God gave me the blessing of many children.  At the age of 26, I’d given birth to four who were all under the age of five. That could be described by some as a disaster and a sure recipe for struggle.  However, believe it or not, their job was to teach me how not to struggle…..

I must admit however, on a regular basis I’m forced to remind myself to stop, take a breath and ask myself, am I in joy? I get carried away....I’m a very energetic, enthusiastic, hard working, creative soul, who is frequently pushing the limits of everyone’s patience because I ask so much of myself and everyone who works with me or learns from me.  I am often reminded to stay in joy and leave struggle to other less enlightened souls.

Trust your own worthiness.  Give up struggle and agree to look for the joy in each moment, which will automatically provide love and approval on every level.  You know a joyful person is very beautiful and magnetic.                     

To struggle is to agree you cannot trust life.  Yet to trust life and live in joy is to become an active part of the global solution.  No one ever finds joy or freedom through a path of struggle.  These exclusively human activities are by definition mutually exclusive.  Living without joy….. What’s the point?