A Meditative Experience

Through both my mothers love of yoga and Erich Schiffmann, I was invited to, in exchange for helping set up for the yoga retreat, attend two of the gatherings and lectures of Erich Schiffmann.
Erich was a large, nearly towering man, with long, curly, blondish-gray hair, broad shoulders, and a soft, open face. His voice was also sort of soft, and he spoke gently. He moved with the grace and energy unmatched by most male yoga teachers I have experienced. One could say, without hesitation, he was in touch with his divine masculinity.
Erich spoke to us about intuitive yoga practice and led us into a guided meditation. (Note: I currently adore guided meditations, maybe because I need more self confidence, maybe because I never really know exactly what to do or think once in meditation in order to actually get somewhere.)
What I experienced sitting there on my yoga mat was quite the experience. My mind became quiet, and for a split second, a small crack or window in the physical dimension opened up. Love, eternity, joy, and ecstasy all came flooding into me. It was a glimpse of the inner workings of the universe I will never forget.

What is a Free Spirit?

A free spirit dances in the moonlight, sings in the sunlight and doesn’t care whose watching. Playing past dusk and awake past dawn, a free spirit doesn’t abide by anything but their own spontaneity residing inside their sun-kissed shell. A free spirit doesn’t regret the past – relationships, arguments, or losses. A free spirit doesn’t worry about the future – trials and tribulations that may or may not lie ahead. A free spirit lives in the present moment: Now. They find light in the dark world that lies around them and sometimes within them. They accept the shadows in their human experience – identify, discover and grow from them. An internal focus of control gives them the ability to live, love and learn for themselves. Not self-centered but always self-respecting. A free spirit realizes he or she has a house within nature but not always a place to call home. Never lost, because they are never going anywhere in specific, they wander the lonely roads with a smile ear to ear because they are what everyone else wishes they could be: Free.

Freeing the Spirit by Trinity Bourne

14th October 2012
By Trinity Bourne

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
When the soul speaks, we often feel an upwelling that compels us to do something out of the ordinary. Moments of vision take us into a realm of awe and wonder. Limitations dissolve. We melt into infinite possibility. Immortality of the soul dawns. We are boundless. We are free.
And just as we get going – something snaps us back in to the ‘real world’! The dream is obliterated. It seems like a far fetched fantasy. The mountain is insurmountable; so we carry on as before…
In my experience, contrary to conventional belief, the ‘real world’ is actually the first scenario. The likelihood is that the extraordinary vision was an upwelling from the soul. It is the opportunity to free the soul from the walls we needlessly build to protect it.
So, what is it that snaps us back from following the Soul?

Talking ourselves out of it
More often than not it is self doubt, fear of the unknown or self imposed obligation to something or someone. These are all anchors preventing liberation of our soul.
One of the biggest reasons I discovered for ‘talking myself out of flowing with the Soul’, was that I was afraid of becoming ‘me’! I mean, even as a confident evolving being, I still found a part of me holding onto some kind of anchor.
It may sound most odd, yet becoming who we truly are is possibly the most daunting thing that we can experience as a human being. It involves letting go of everything!
Contained in a bubble
Imagine that your spirit is contained within a bubble,
the walls of which nothing can permeate.
Imagine that bubble floating like a balloon.
Now see that there are lots and lots of ropes that
firmly anchor this balloon to something.
That something is your human experience.
So life goes on merrily (or un-merrily)
as we go about our daily business with our spirit
restrained and bound in a bubble.

Most of us reading this have reached a stage in our evolution where we are touching our soul. After awakening and connecting with the soul, we begin to look at our ‘stuff’ in varying detail. Every time we overcome part of our baggage, we untie one of these anchoring ropes. Our ‘balloon-bound’ spirit begins to experience more and more freedom as the ropes loosen. We’ll feel more and more freedom – at times we even momentarily transcend limitations altogether, feeling unrestrained and universal. As long as there are still ropes anchoring the balloon though, we will always snap out of the experience and have something else to unravel.
Why don’t we just sever the ties?
In theory, we could just wield the universal sword and severe all the ties in one fell swoop. But we don’t. Of course we don’t. Once all of the the ropes have been cut, the balloon will be released, the impermeable wall falls away and we are unleashed into absolute freedom. Whilst is sounds extraordinarily awesome – and we might think – “right lets do it now”, there is a part of us that still holds on. There is good reason for this. Such freedom of spirit is like nothing we would have known before; so a gradual assimilation is often the best way. It’s not until we have relinquished every attachment that we undo the last of the anchors.
Absolute trust
To be so free and unrestrained involves 100% trust in the universe. This is one of the last remaining doubts to go.
Even as evolved beings who have resolved most ‘stuff’, the reason we ‘snap’ back from experiences of sublime beauty is because of lack of trust. In order to trust we have to let go of every expectation, desire, hope, dream, belief, in fact every everything. It’s a pretty tall order!
Life will never be the same again. Yet we will be awesomely fine with that. We won’t know what is coming in each moment, yet we are ready for whatever that is.
Becoming who we truly are takes a cataclysmic leap of faith into the unknown; unrestrained surrender into the divine flow of the universe in every moment, unleashing miraculous happenings that we never imagined possible. To feel the whole, completeness of our absolute authenticity, is the liberation, yearning in our deepest depths. Yet to experience this, we have to close our eyes to the world and start seeing with the eyes of the Soul. We begin to feel the space between the spaces and communicate in alignment with the flow of the universal life energy.

Profound self honesty
The best way to begin is to allow the upwelling to arise and follow the pull of your soul. Feel the truth in your heart. Listen with profound self honesty. What does it really say?
By doing this, the ‘anchoring ropes’ will begin to fall away one by one.
Keep listening.
Keep trusting.
Keep unfolding until all of the ropes have undone.
Then you will soar like a bird released!

with Love,
Trinity

Awakening and School don’t Mix

I dont think people truely realize how school is so insanely stressful. I hate living in that thin top layer of reality where everyone’s always gossiping about each other or cursing about something they hate. They starve their bodies and backstab each other constantly. Personally, I want to go deeper then that.
Sometimes I can’t help but wonder why people never seem to talk about the things they love about other people, or the fun times they had, or the enlightening experiences they witnessed.
I want to be able to discuss spirit with other people. I want to have amazing conversations about life and the ways of the world. I want people to be able to just be themselves without fear of judgement. I want people to be honest. I also want to help them see a bigger picture, or view things from other peoples perspectives. How their words and choices affect others. It makes me so sad that people talk behind each others backs so often and with such ease. It pains me because I love everyone with an unconditional love I didn’t know I could experience and putting someone down is not only degrading for them, but for your own vibration, as well. It hurts even the people you talk to, and no one realizes it. All this negativity is sickening. It pains me and I want to stop it.
Be warned, people out their who seek truth and enlightenment, being awake is like getting up early to watch the sunrise. The sun, this huge mass of pure light is so incredibly beautiful. It comes bursting over the horizon with bright, warm colors streaked across the entire face of the sky and water and you want to show every single person on the planet, share the joy of this wondrous and incredible experience but instead of getting up with you, they get all grumpy and choose to keep sleeping, choose illusion over reality. The world is so beautiful and extraordinary once you wake up but so few people truly understand or even want to hear you. They don’t even know how once you start to pay attention to the little things, the small details of the world, it’s so much easier to be happy because these beautiful little things are all around you. All you need to do is pause for just a moment and observe your surroundings. The earth will speak to you and show you her beauty if you just look for it.