Spiritual awakening is not a process in time, it is neither an awesome experience you once had, nor a goal to reach later. Your memories of the past or our plans for the future are simply thoughts. Thoughts coming and going. Your luminous presence is always right here in the moment, fresh and impossible to grasp and explain with the mind. You can only live it, in moment-to-moment surrender.

The human mind has an extraordinary power to envision and to create, but we all know how it can just as easily be a curse, as we tend to get lost in never-ending thought chains. When this happens, we are no longer using thought as a tool; it is more like our thoughts are running us, and life goes by without us being really present. This is why the body can be our fiercest spiritual teacher; our connection to the body and senses is the perfect anchor to this moment.

Whether or not we are aware of it, the body is always right here. So here is where we start – in  the body.
Your body breathes and sleeps, it moves through pleasure and pain for a few precious years, and then it will die. Each cell in your body is a whole world in itself, passing on genetic memories to the next generation of cells. Yet in it’s deepest essence, at the crossroads where the scientist and the mystic gaze at each other in absolute surprise, we find nothing but emptiness. If only you took the time to really listen to your body, you would find that it has a lot to tell you about the mystery of life. In fact, you don’t have to travel any farther than into your body to collide with the divine.~awakeningwomen.com

the tighter we hold on to our ideas of who we are, the less we really connect to ourselves and the world…..may we alleviate deep tension through a more rich curiosity of the unknown world, our tribe, and our place within it all……

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary, emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind- and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.~Sogal Rinpoche

loosening our tight grip

The felt sense is the whole-body sense of something that is not yet clear to the conscious mind. The capacity for felt sensing is inherent in you. The more that you slow down, breathe, clear the mind, and begin to sense into the core of your body, the more available the felt sense will be to your conscious awareness. Your devotion to this kind of listening, will tune the instrument of your deep sensitivity. Unless you are a natural at felt sensing, it usually takes some patience and heartfelt practice to develop it. You will get quiet and tune i without thinking about it. As your ability for felt sensing expands, a wide range of subtle perception flowers. This may or may not include sensing your energy centers and energy flows. Your perceptions may take the form of images, songs, or just a direct knowing. What is important is to be in touch with your inner knowing, to have a sense of what is in or out of accord with yourself.~John Prendegast