We want to thank the hundreds of you who shared your love and healing energy with us through your thoughts, prayers and drumming circles, telephone calls, and cards – each action supporting us and one another through the unknown moments with grace.

This experience has been so very elegant – thank you, thank you, thank you!

Have you ever thought about your concepts of life?  How many of the concepts were built from models that exist outside of you? How much of your identity and self-image was woven directly with these concepts?

In our human culture, we invest a lot of value in our collective and individual rules for living.  These rules provide basic guidelines so that we can coexist. That’s it.  We agree upon these rules, and they have a certain purpose, but they do not define who we are, or what we like, or the unique gifts that we as individuals bring to the whole. Over time and perhaps with the loss of our awareness, we use these outside-oriented rules to judge our abilities and direct our life’s choices, rather than depending on our own feelings and guidance to understand our nature and our gifts.

Thinking Life happens with concepts. Concepts are one step removed from direct experience – they are descriptions of experience. Experience has no words. Concepts are the tools of the thinking mind. The thinking mind is useful (it allows us to communicate with words and live in community!) but it is also the part of us that is vulnerable to, molded by and a result of the rules of our culture. In this way, concepts are never free from influence, and most often are developed in response to external conditions. This even applies to our spiritual journey. Sometimes, without even noticing, we turn the tools we gather to assist us in our own awakening into concepts of how we ought to be.  Imagine that!

Instead, how about Being Life?  In Being Life, we remain present enough to experience directly, without immediate description.  Once we describe it (you’ve got it!), the experience becomes influenced by our larger cultural rules. The gift of Being Life is that we can more closely know our truth, our unity, what’s in our hearts, free from unconscious cultural influence. It’s not that the thinking component of us will disappear, we are human, and the thinking mind is part of being human!  It’s just that when we realize what it is, its role and how it influences us, we have the chance to balance Thinking Life and Being Life to ultimately live with just a bit more freedom.

Here are some tools to practice noticing the difference between Thinking Life and Being Life:

• Recall a recent memorable experience. Try to remember when you shifted from experiencing the situation directly to describing the experience – even silently to yourself! Recall several experiences this way and observe how your focus shifts.
  
• We have 5 physical senses.  When we are Being Life, we are most likely engaging all 5 senses.  Notice how many senses you are engaging when you are Thinking Life.
• Once you are aware of how the shift from Being Life to Thinking Life feels, set up some cues to help remind yourself to consciously choose Thinking or Being.  There is no right or wrong here, just an opportunity for conscious choice in the moment.