Jeff Brown ― Ascending with Both Feet On the Ground: Words to Awaken your Heart

These quotations are but a glimpse into the many gems found in Jeff Brown's book, Ascending with Both Feet On the Ground: Words to Awaken your Heart. Wonderful medicine for our hearts and needed transformative wisdom for our world. ― Molly

It is important to grant yourself permission to wander as part of your spiritual journey. So often mischaracterized as lostness, there is a kind of immersion in the not knowing that is actually quite necessary if we are going to find our way home. So much information can come up when we are looking in no particular direction. By surrendering to the unknown, we create space for a deeper knowing to emerge. In the heart of not knowing, the paths that we are here to walk reveal themselves.

Real presence comes through the open heart. You cannot heal and resolve your emotional material with your mind. Your emotional material does not evaporate because you watch it. You can only heal your heart with your heart. 

I am not interested in enlightenment if it means detachment from the emotional body, the earth plane, the challenges of being human. I am interested in enrealment, because it means that my most spiritual moments are inclusive, arising right in the heart of all that is human: joy and sorrow, shopping list and unity consciousness, fresh mangos and stale bread. Enrealment is about living in all the aspects of reality simultaneously rather than only those realms that feel the most comfortable We are not just the light, or the mind, or the emptiness, or perpetual positivity. We are the everything. It's ALL God, even the dust that falls off my awakening heart.

All too often, the positive thinking movement becomes a bypass of reality, a skimming of the surface of our inner lives. Too many have followed this approach to transformation and lost their way, making major life changes without the ground to support them. Don't be intoxicated by the allure of wish-full thinking. Instead, focus your energy on genuine foundation building, doing the painstaking work to clear the inner channel and learn essential lessons so that your quest for true-path is solid and true. Divine Perspiration begets Divine Inspiration. The universe responds to authentic change ― nothing feigned will do.

Excessive analysis perpetuates emotional paralysis.

If we don't embrace our confusion, we remain trapped between worlds ― on the one hand, old ways of being ready to die; on the other, new ways of being eager to be born. By holding the space for all possibilities at once, clarity emerges on its own terms. The bridge from one side to the other is confusion. We must learn how to cross it on our way home. 

Befriend your confusion. Don't be fooled by its chaotic appearance ― confusion is a sign that your soul is in transition. Welcome it as a friend that has come from far away to bring you home. Be open to it. Keep it close.

* * * * * 

It's important to recognize that to live in a continuous state of detachment is to do the spiritual bypass and miss the moment altogether. It is to trip out of the body that carries the karmic seeds for our transformation. It is to leave earth before our time. To be sure, there are times when detachment is necessary: when we need to be reminded of something beyond our localized perceptions, when we need a peek into a vaster reality, when we need to distinguish between that which serves us and that which derails us. Indeed, we are far more than our monkey mind, our neurotic patterns, our unimaginative lens. But perpetual detachment is self-avoidance masquerading as enlightenment. At some point we have to come back down into our body and work with what lives inside us.

Quick fix, Looooooong suffering. 

The more emotionally unresolved we are, the denser the message we transmit. The trick is to clear ourselves out from the inside-out so that we are emanating from a clear and unified channel.

It doesn't matter how much two people love one another if they are developmentally incompatible, or if there is not a shared willingness to become conscious. This is why they call it a relationship instead of a loveship. Love alone is not enough. If you want it to last, you have to relate to each other in ways that keep the ship afloat.

There is a fine line between relational passion and avoidant intensities. There were moments when my passionate nature was a direct reflection of my aliveness, but there were others when I was just using intensity and drama as a coping strategy, a way to actually hide from a deeper experience of the moment, some kind of addictive anti-mellow drama that procrastinated my relationship with reality. Somewhere below the drama was my real life, waiting in the wings to be lived. It was scary, but it called to me, reminding me that there is more to this life than sidestepping of the inner world. There is the avoidant life, and then there is the one that is vulnerably true. 

We often talk about living in the moment but it is my experience that we cannot live fully in the moment if we are not living our truth. Without truth, our breaths are somehow incomplete, our presence shrouded, our intimacy half-hearted because we are not fully there for it. The moment we own our truths, we get truth-chills ― little signs of relief from our body temple ― as the veils to clarity fall away and our divine presence enters. Here we are. Here now.

It all comes down to truth ― truth or consequences.

* * * * *

I am in-countering terrorism of a shaming form. Ah, the inner terrorist. There he is, standing before me with his usual weaponry (disdain, despair, dogma), blocking the path home. I am quite habituated to succumbing to his shaming style, but this afternoon, I am looking the bastard in the inner eye, daring him to come a little closer. When he gets within reach, I am going to give him the hug he has been longing for since time immemorial. Maybe, just maybe, i can melt him with kindness.

Shame is rooted in the shame pit of generations before, perpetuating the self-hatred of the collective unconscious, still lodged in dark energies and imaginings. Your shame has nothing to say about who you really are, never did, never will. In truth, you don't need anyone else's permission to be here. God gave you all the permission you need. And who are you really? A divinely intended wave of magnificence, an ocean of gifts just waiting to be opened, a soulnami of epic proportions. First we clear the path of inner debris, then we walk our way home... 

I am cozying up to my pain-body this morning and thanking it for its presence. It doesn't want me to trip out of it. It wants me to nourish it and honor its wisdom. I mean, where would we be without our shadow? What would grow us? Not to glorify the challenges of life, but I expanded in my spirituality through a deepening interface with my shadowy material. Shadow as karmic fodder, Shadow as grist for the soul mill.

Sensitivity is a sign of life. Better hurt than hardened. I bow to those who keep their hearts open when it is most difficult, those who refuse to keep their armor on any longer than the have to, those who recognize the courage at the heart of vulnerability. After all the malevolent warriors end each other, the open-hearted will inherit the earth. 

If you can be in heartbreak, and keep your heart totally open, you are living very close to God.

* * * * *

The body is far more than just a vessel for the soul. It is the field where the soul's lessons are harvested. It is the breeding ground for the soul's emergence. Repressed emotions are unactualized spiritual lessons. In order to grow in our spirituality, we must bring our joy and our suffering through our emotional body until our lessons are birthed. We must 'cell our soul.' 

There is a time to adventure heartily into new possibilities, but there is also a need for quiet integration time on the self-creation journey. We can have all the peak experiences we want but the real work happens between peaks, while laying down and integrating on the valley floor. Growers are inch worms. Lasting transformation is an incremental process one soul-step at a time. This may frustrate us, but it's the only way to craft an awareness that is authentic and sustainable. 

Let's not throw the entire ego out with the bath water. I'm not talking about the unbridled ego, the narcissistic ego, the imbalanced ego. I'm talking about the strong self-concept, the boundaried sense of self, the healthy ego that helps us to manage reality and honor our purpose. Without a strong sense of self, we don't have the solidity to sustain the journey. Without a solid core, our forays into unity come crashing back to earth. Solid me, solid we...

We may not be only our stories, but we also are our stories. If we stay connected to the fact that our story has both a localized and a universal dimension, we are on the right path. Not identifying ourselves as our story, but identifying the juice at the heart of our story as fundamental to our expansion. In the heart of our stories are the personal identifications and unresolved issues that are the grist for our spiritual expansion. Never throw the story out with the bath water. Without karmic clay to work with, our expansion is stalled.

The only real homeland security is the knowledge that whatever the world brings your way, your soul is safe in your own two hands. A certain faith develops, not simply that the universe will provide for you, but that you will provide for you. They can shame you, they can obstruct you, but they can no longer alienate you from your own essence.

* * * * *

We have to continue to close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. This is the work of all spiritual warriors ― to clear the path of debris, to infuse the path with so much truth that others can find their way home. Truth workers untied under the banner of authentic self-revealing!

Grace is not something that pours down from the heavens. It is something that rises up from within us. 

Bringing our soul lessons through takes more than awareness. It is an active process that demands a courageous willingness to live our experiences right through to completion. This means staying with our feelings until they are truly done with us, no matter how uncomfortable they are. It will be difficult at times, but the feelings will only hurt until they convert into the lessons at their heart. Although we may not see it at first, there is a method to our sadness.

Caught between a rock and a heart place, I am trusting the universe to bring me through the openings... the just right karmic crevice, the crack in the heart where the rivers of truth flow through. Ah, to continue to be a conoeist of the heart, riding the rapids of a growthful consciousness, coming to rest on the tender shores of my own essence. I mean, isn't that the harbour we seek?

The very fact that we are trying to heal our hearts in a world where so many have had to bury their hurt is already extraordinary. It may not seem like such a big deal, but when the energy has been moving in another direction for so many generations, it is quite a challenge to turn the tide. We are breaking new inner ground, after all. Recognizing this should translate into giving ourselves a break when we can't quite get it perfect. It's a long path back to the receptive heart, one opening at a time...

Honor your inner champion, the one that chooses to confront and work through your obstacles to wholeness, the one that slays the inner dragons with tenderness and persistence. Isn't it time that we soulebrated the courage it takes to confront our patterns time and again? Isn't it time for an up-framing of our often negative view of our challenges? Instead of "oh no, not that pattern again", how about recognizing that we are CHAMPIONS for simply taking them on? How about seeing ourselves as some of the first humans with the blessed opportunity to shift the negative patterning intrinsic to the collective unconscious? We are PIONEERS, for God's sake! What a fantastic thing to be pioneers in the inner world! Every little step is a radical paradigm shift for humanity.

― Jeff Brown

Excerpts from Ascending with Both Feet On 

the Ground: Words to Awaken your Heart 

 

 

Please go here for more information

on Jeff Brown and this book:

https://jeffbrown.co/ascending-with-both-feet-on-the-ground-words-to-awaken-your-heart/ 

 

Barry Lopez: That Is Everyone's Calling, To Lead a Life That Helps

 In memory of Barry Lopez, a man whose wisdom 

and great heart is a gift to us all.

 ― Molly

 

 

How Is One To Live a Moral and Compassionate

Existence and Other Quotes by Barry Lopez

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. 

The range of the human mind, the scale and depth of the metaphors the mind is capable of manufacturing as it grapples with the universe, stand in stunning contrast to the belief that there is only one reality, which is man's, or worse, that only one culture among the many on earth possesses the truth.

 
To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, "There could be more, there could be things we don't understand," is not to damn knowledge. It is to take a wider view. It is to permit yourself an extraordinary freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you may be right.

 

No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself. 

 

The cold view to take of our future is that we are therefore headed for extinction in a universe of impersonal chemical, physical, and biological laws. A more productive, certainly more engaging view, is that we have the intelligence to grasp what is happening, the composure not to be intimidated by its complexity, and the courage to take steps that may bear no fruit in our lifetimes.

 

Our question is no longer how to exploit the natural world for human comfort and gain, but how we can cooperate with one another to ensure we will someday have a fitting, not a dominating, place in it. 

* * * * * 

We keep each other alive with our stories. We need to share them, as much as we need to share food. We also require for our health the presence of good companions. One of the most extraordinary things about the land is that it knows this—and it compels language from some of us so that as a community we may converse about this or that place, and speak of the need.

 

I believe in all human societies there is a desire to love and be loved, to experience the full fierceness of human emotion, and to make a measure of the sacred part of one's life. Wherever I've traveled--Kenya, Chile, Australia, Japan--I've found the most dependable way to preserve these possibilities is to be reminded of them in stories. Stories do not give instruction, they do not explain how to love a companion or how to find God. They offer, instead, patterns of sound and association, of event and image. Suspended as listeners and readers in these patterns,we might reimagine our lives. It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us.

 

Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.

 

If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

 

* * * * * 

 

What does it mean to grow rich?

 
Is it to have red-blooded adventures and to make a ‘fortune,’ which is what brought the whalers and other entrepreneurs north?

Or is it, rather, to have a good family life and to be imbued with a far-reaching and intimate knowledge of one’s homeland, which is what the Tununirmiut told the whalers at Pond’s Bay wealth was?

Is it to retain a capacity for awe and astonishment in our lives, to continue to hunger after what is genuine and worthy? Is it to live at moral peace with the universe?

 

* * * * * 

For me, the ability to listen carefully to another person’s perspective, rather than summarily deciding what that person means, is in keeping with the behavior one expects of an elder. And the ability to understand what someone else is thinking is the foundation of stable social order.

 

For some people, who they imagine they are does not end where the boundary of the skin meets the world. It continues with the reach of their senses out into the land. If the land in which they live is summarily disfigured or reorganized by industrial development, it causes them psychological pain.

 

I arrived always at the same, disquieting place: the history of Western exploration in the New World in every quarter is a confrontation with an image of distant wealth. Gold, furs, timber, whales, the Elysian Fields, the control of trade routes to the Orient—it all had to be verified, acquired, processed, allocated, and defended. And these far-flung enterprises had to be profitable, or be made to seem profitable, or be financed until they were. The task was wild, extraordinary. And it was complicated by the fact that people were living in North America when we arrived. Their title to the wealth had to be extinguished.

 

If the real human environment in developed countries today is third-growth monocultured “forests,” tar-sand petroleum, cow-burnt grasslands, and smog-like clouds of microplastics floating in oceans where fish once thrived, then human cultures need to distinguish between sentimentality about loss and the imperative to survive. They need to establish a more relevant politics than the competitive politics of nation-states. And to found economies built not on profit but on conservation.

 

* * * * *

To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the Earth together.

 

When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language. In these ways we begin, I think, to find a home, to sense how to fit a place.

 

The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard...be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there. 

 

A fundamental difference between our culture and Eskimo culture, which can be felt even today in certain situations, is that we have irrevocably separated ourselves from the world that animals occupy. We have turned all animals and elements of the natural world into objects. We manipulate them to serve the complicated ends of our destiny. Eskimos do not grasp this separation easily, and have difficulty imagining themselves entirely removed from the world of animals. For many of them, to make this separation is analogous to cutting oneself off from light or water. It is hard to imagine how to do it.

 

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered Earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.

 

Because mankind can circumvent evolutionary law, it is incumbent upon him, say evolutionary biologists to develop another law to abide by if he wishes to survive, to not outstrip his food base. He must learn restraint. He must derive some other, wiser way of behaving toward the land. He must be more attentive to the biological imperatives of the system of sun-driven protoplasm upon which he, too, is still dependent. Not because he must, because he lacks inventiveness, but because herein is the accomplishment of the wisdom that for centuries he has aspired to. Having taken on his own destiny, he must now think with critical intelligence about where to defer.

 

At the heart of this story, I think, is a simple, abiding belief: it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to live well. And in behaving respectfully toward all that the land contains, it is possible to imagine a stifling ignorance falling away from us.

 

* * * * *  

 

We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.  

 

Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you? 

 

Lying there, I thought of my own culture, of the assembly of books in the library at Alexandria; of the deliberations of Darwin and Mendel in their respective gardens; of the architectural conception of the cathedral at Chartres; of Bach's cello suites, the philosophy of Schweitzer, the insights of Planck and Dirac. Have we come all this way, I wondered, only to be dismantled by our own technologies, to be betrayed by political connivance or the impersonal avarice of a corporation?

 

One emerging view of Homo sapiens among evolutionary biologists is that he has built a trap for himself by clinging to certain orthodoxies in a time of environmental emergency. A belief in cultural progress, for example, or in the propriety of a social animal’s quest for individual material wealth is what has led people into the trap, or so goes the thinking. To cause the trap to implode, to disintegrate, humanity has to learn to navigate using a reckoning fundamentally different from the one it’s long placed its faith in. A promising first step to take in dealing with this trap might be to bring together wisdom keepers from traditions around the world whose philosophies for survival developed around the same uncertainty of a future that Darwin suggested lies embedded in everything biological. Such wisdom keepers would be people who are able to function well in the upheaval of any century. Their faith does not lie solely with pursuing technological innovation as an approach to solving humanity’s most pressing problems. Their solutions lie with a profound change in what humans most value.

 

One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.

 

* * * * * 

 

The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.

 

The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.

 

Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.

 

The land gets inside of us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it. 

 

The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. To be indifferent is to not express love. 

 

The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason. 

 

Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty. 

 

I know of no restorative heart, body, and soul more effective against hopelessness than the restoration of the Earth. 

 

We cannot, of course, save the World because we do not have authority over its parts. We can serve the world though. That is everyone's calling, to lead a life that helps.

 

* * * * *

 

  More about Barry Lopez:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/obituaries/barry-lopez-dead.html