Stories
The Practice of Be-coming
By Chris 'Yellow Owl' Albaugh
What's your practice of being you in relation to everything beyond it?
https://enhancingyourworld.com/articles/the-practice-of-be-coming
As a practitioner of the healing arts, I have witnessed healing arise through many different environments, circumstances, techniques, rituals, ceremonies, lineages, and teachings.
Each has offered experiences and information that have continued to shift my perception of what healing, growth, and conscious living can be.
And perhaps one of the greatest realizations has been this:
We can only shift our consciousness or perception of it in the moment. What that realization leads us to become is revealed through our intentional practice.
An awakening may happen in a moment.
A healing may happen through an experience.
A ceremony, relationship, loss, success, mistake, teacher, or challenge may reveal something we couldn't see before.
But then comes the practice.
Many years ago, a friend apologized to me.
I asked him why, and he said, “I always felt like you were trying to sell us something.”
I laughed and told him, “I appreciate your apology, but back then I probably was.”
Because in those first years, I wasn't only trying to sell others on a new way of living.
I was selling it to myself.
Constantly reminding myself that gratitude opens us to receiving the blessings of being human, while remaining curious about what may exist beyond the physical identities we have learned to see things through.
That awareness is the ultimate freedom and response-ability that creates the opportunity to choose who, how, and why we are being, relating one way or another in this moment, or as a consistent conscious or subconscious practice.
That unity reminds us our choices do not exist in isolation. How we participate affects ourselves, one another, our communities, our systems, and our planet.
That growth comes through experience not just reading about it, but walking through the consequences and rewards of our choices, receiving new information, shifting our perceptions, and becoming willing to choose to participate or not again.
And that energy is something we are continually learning to relate with and direct mentally, emotionally, linguistically, physically, financially, spiritually, sensually, sexually, and throughout every relationship in which we participate.
Over the years, I became less interested in convincing or shifting what anyone tended to believe and more interested in practicing what I was experiencing through that relation.
Learning not to allow fear to become the authority determining my participation.
Fear of the unknowns, darkness and shadows.
Fear of demons, parasites, moths, or whatever names and meanings we give to what we don't yet understand within us.
But also fear of success, judgment, rejection, failure, scarcity, laws, taxes, institutions, authoritarianism, or anything else we might use as a reason not to explore a higher way of being in relationship with ourselves, each other, our systems, and our planet.
This doesn't mean ignoring responsibilities, agreements, laws, or consequences.
It means developing enough awareness to consciously ask:
Who am I being?
How am I participating?
Why am I choosing this?
Is this what this particular moment calls for?
Or is this a way of being I intend to practice consistently?
We learn.
We choose.
We participate.
We experience the consequences and rewards.
We receive new information.
We discern.
Our perception shifts.
And we choose again.
Perhaps mastery isn't possessing, controlling or protecting everything within or around us.
Perhaps it is becoming conscious enough of our relationship with energy that fear no longer has to determine our direction.
This breath.
This step.
This choice.
This relationship.
This moment.
Because the techniques aren't the destination.
The ceremonies aren't the destination.
The teachings aren't the destination.
Even the healing experiences aren't the destination.
They can become opportunities for awareness through direct experience.
The experience may awaken the realization of where you've been, are and the desires to go experience.
Awareness gives us the opportunity to choose.
Our intentional practice reveals what we are becoming as a human be-ing and not just believing we are.
I'm not trying to sell a happier, healthier and more harmonious way of life anymore. In fact why should we have to?
I'm just going to continue practicing walking this one.
And inviting others to explore what becomes possible when we practice together.
#unitymindset #gaugeyourlife #EnhancingYourWorld #enhancingourworld #presence #gratitude #awareness #unity #Growth #Energy #COMPASSion #ConsciousEvolution #WeAreOne #holisticrecovery
https://enhancingyourworld.com/articles/the-practice-of-be-coming
As a practitioner of the healing arts, I have witnessed healing arise through many different environments, circumstances, techniques, rituals, ceremonies, lineages, and teachings.
Each has offered experiences and information that have continued to shift my perception of what healing, growth, and conscious living can be.
And perhaps one of the greatest realizations has been this:
We can only shift our consciousness or perception of it in the moment. What that realization leads us to become is revealed through our intentional practice.
An awakening may happen in a moment.
A healing may happen through an experience.
A ceremony, relationship, loss, success, mistake, teacher, or challenge may reveal something we couldn't see before.
But then comes the practice.
Many years ago, a friend apologized to me.
I asked him why, and he said, “I always felt like you were trying to sell us something.”
I laughed and told him, “I appreciate your apology, but back then I probably was.”
Because in those first years, I wasn't only trying to sell others on a new way of living.
I was selling it to myself.
Constantly reminding myself that gratitude opens us to receiving the blessings of being human, while remaining curious about what may exist beyond the physical identities we have learned to see things through.
That awareness is the ultimate freedom and response-ability that creates the opportunity to choose who, how, and why we are being, relating one way or another in this moment, or as a consistent conscious or subconscious practice.
That unity reminds us our choices do not exist in isolation. How we participate affects ourselves, one another, our communities, our systems, and our planet.
That growth comes through experience not just reading about it, but walking through the consequences and rewards of our choices, receiving new information, shifting our perceptions, and becoming willing to choose to participate or not again.
And that energy is something we are continually learning to relate with and direct mentally, emotionally, linguistically, physically, financially, spiritually, sensually, sexually, and throughout every relationship in which we participate.
Over the years, I became less interested in convincing or shifting what anyone tended to believe and more interested in practicing what I was experiencing through that relation.
Learning not to allow fear to become the authority determining my participation.
Fear of the unknowns, darkness and shadows.
Fear of demons, parasites, moths, or whatever names and meanings we give to what we don't yet understand within us.
But also fear of success, judgment, rejection, failure, scarcity, laws, taxes, institutions, authoritarianism, or anything else we might use as a reason not to explore a higher way of being in relationship with ourselves, each other, our systems, and our planet.
This doesn't mean ignoring responsibilities, agreements, laws, or consequences.
It means developing enough awareness to consciously ask:
Who am I being?
How am I participating?
Why am I choosing this?
Is this what this particular moment calls for?
Or is this a way of being I intend to practice consistently?
We learn.
We choose.
We participate.
We experience the consequences and rewards.
We receive new information.
We discern.
Our perception shifts.
And we choose again.
Perhaps mastery isn't possessing, controlling or protecting everything within or around us.
Perhaps it is becoming conscious enough of our relationship with energy that fear no longer has to determine our direction.
This breath.
This step.
This choice.
This relationship.
This moment.
Because the techniques aren't the destination.
The ceremonies aren't the destination.
The teachings aren't the destination.
Even the healing experiences aren't the destination.
They can become opportunities for awareness through direct experience.
The experience may awaken the realization of where you've been, are and the desires to go experience.
Awareness gives us the opportunity to choose.
Our intentional practice reveals what we are becoming as a human be-ing and not just believing we are.
I'm not trying to sell a happier, healthier and more harmonious way of life anymore. In fact why should we have to?
I'm just going to continue practicing walking this one.
And inviting others to explore what becomes possible when we practice together.
#unitymindset #gaugeyourlife #EnhancingYourWorld #enhancingourworld #presence #gratitude #awareness #unity #Growth #Energy #COMPASSion #ConsciousEvolution #WeAreOne #holisticrecovery