Staying Calm

How do we stay calm under duress? To feel empowered instead of afraid? Empowered. To be fully in our power. Power within brings an amazing strength. Power within is not power over. Makes me take a deep breath as I type. That's a clue.

True power has nothing to do with the ego, with things around us or what we have. It is a sense of being - an at home feeling with the perceiving - that we are our truth. Not that we are doing our truth. A subtle difference, and yet everything is in that distinction. We are not in truth the perceiver or the perceived. We are simply prior to all of that.

Dave and I took a walk along the waterfront today, and he reminded me that all of the psychic phenomena that I have experienced in my life, was simply the dream illustrating a path through the dream to something prior. I love that awareness, and agree.

I find it calming.

And how do we manage that awareness? It's a tall order that can happen instantly. All messages in meditation and psychic phenomena can lead us within the dream to understand that the dream is simply a phase. We can go beyond it. But it is the route we take, the personal myth that our dreams illustrate that takes us there.

I find that calming as well.

Beyond to prior - that is what some refer to as the source.

This is where breathing meditation helps tremendously. We can feel empowered by knowing that we cannot control the biography around us, we can witnes it and be the essence that is the witness simultaneously. Deep breath. It is all in the script really. We simply need to live it in awareness. Everything holds a lesson for us about our karma and our work in the world.

I find that to be very calming. And down right joyous.

I've been asked to teach 2 courses in Spring 2011 for the School of Visual Arts Continuing Education department, a course in visioning and one in fund raising. The core of both need to be on "staying calm." How do we create calm in our careers and in our art projects? How do we teach ourselves calm in our life planning and search for meaning? How does our sense of calm impact our art projects for the world and the communities benefit?

Staying calm. In a world that is collapsing around us, I think the best answer to "what do you do? is "I stay calm".