Stand tall in your canoe - it all comes back down to practice

I’m getting good at multi-practice. On the walker doing my cardio (practice), listening on my ipod to the Essential Shift Series run by the Institute of Noetic Sciences on their Shift in Action website - broadening my horizons (practice) and dictating insights into my digital voice recorder for later action like blogging (practice)... could this be getting ridiculous?

... so anyway, I’m listening to Elisabet Sahtouris, the evolutionary biologist, talking about her practice if at any time she loses hope. She uses the concept of "standing tall in your canoe": The inidigenous sailors of the Pacific in their wonderful, sleek, double-hulled canoes had umpteen ways to navigate without compasses. From stars and cloud patterns, ocean wave patterns and seaweed drifts, fish migrations to seeing clouds over islands from a distance... and then they would say "When all else fails, stand tall in your canoe until you can see the land". In saying this, they were recognising that we have the power to take our point of consciousness - that usually feels like it’s in our bodies - outside our bodies. So that we can take that point of perspective above our bodies - to rise tall until you can see this human drama without being caught up in it. That’s a big picture perspective. Then you see that the bad guys and the good guys are equally important in playing this out. You cannot have a drama with only good guys. And you never hate the villain as an actor... we need the villains to make a good drama. So when you rise above it and you see that, you have that perspective on it, then you can slough off your bad feelings and remind yourself: "I’m here voluntarily to play my role. What is my role? Am I off my path? How do I get back on?" (All this is Elisabet, by the way).

And that got me to thinking: Why can we not all do this? Why cannot we do this always?

As synchronicity would have it, next play on my ipod was the Reverend Michael Beckwith, another "essential shift" conversation. Michael teaches meditation, affirmative prayer, service, fellowship and study as a five-pronged approach to practice. "When a person really engages in their life," says Michael, "when their way of life includes these components of meditation, prayer, service, fellowship and study, they become available to have a real, genuine insight into the nature of reality, and they begin to eliminate the static that would prevent one from hearing the still small voice or intuition or the higher mind or the oversoul...

"The average person has a tremendous amount of static that prevents them from hearing something that’s always guiding and speaking and pulling us to the next level of evolution. That static includes fear, doubt, worry, a sense of separation, a feeling that there is not enough time, that there are not enough resources, that we live in some kind of lack... And that static then allows us to see the world from a very narrow paradigm, and when you see something from a very narrow point of view, you tend to experience what you see. And so you end up flailing around in a reality that you’re creating yourself from your own perception.

"In moving into a way of life, not just a life style but a way of living that invites insight and revelation, that invites growth - I live to become more myself, we live to grow, develop and unfold, we live to release our sacred talents and gifts, we live in a progressive universe: something is always unfolding. When one wakes up to that and begins to live a way of life that embraces that, that individual is then privvy to insights that come without even a process of reasoning. You start to know something without even knowing how you know it! Your way of life is then strong enough to hold the energy. It can hold the insight, it can hold the revelation. Every day of their life, people have insights and revelations, but they don’t know what to do with them! Because their way of life is not built to carry them, to hold them, to use them and embody them.

"Like an individual who is looking for the big wave to surf, and travels around the world, seeking that big wave, but along the way, never actually practices surfing. So when the big wave finally hits, they get wiped out because they haven’t been practicing along the way. In spiritual community you are invited to a way of living that makes you a candidate for insight, so when revelation hits, it fits into your way of life, you’re able to hold the energy, much like a lightbulb that cannot hold a large wattage because it’s too small, if your way of life is not about spiritual development, awakening, service, or whatever your entry point is, the insights just become like fleeting thoughts.  I had a good thought the other day but I didn’t move on it because  I had to watch "American Idol"...  People are wasting away..."

(All that was Michael, by the way...)

But the long and short of it (this is Helen speaking now... not an original thought for five paragraphs, you note!) is it all just keeps coming back down to practice. If you want to be happy, practice. If you want to evolve, practice. If you want to contribute, practice. If you want the world to change, practice. If you want to change the world, practice.

If you want your life to have meaning, practice.

If you want to know the meaning of your life, practice.

Practice.