How Good CAN You Actually Feel? - by Tom Wells

Ever wonder just how good you can actually feel?  Is your normal daily consciousness filled with ease and deliciously good feelings for most of your day and night?  If not, would you like to feel that way most of your days?  I know I would.

Today I was realizing for a few moments just what might be possible.  I was feeling so still inside, just sitting in my living room chair, gazing at the light highlighting each slat of the closed wooden blinds, the morning sun penetrating in precise lateral beams surrounding the outline of each slat.  And in that moment I knew such deep fulfillment and happiness, such gratitude to our Grandfather Sun, illuminating my open heart and mind with that old “peace that surpasses all understanding”.

And in those moments I knew that this love, this kindness, this ease is with me, with us, all the time.  It’s so reassuring to know that; so hopeful, so encouraging, so simple, so joyful.  It’s all just up to me, so it seems; my letting go, my relaxation, my stopping all my busyness, my choosing to be still inside, to be home, to not be going anywhere at all, though I suppose the journey is always moving inexorably on, happily on, easily on, like that gentle river of light, flowing there before my eyes, so beautiful, so endless, so full.

Appreciating This Life! - by Tom Wells

Just being a human being, what is it to have a good time? 

Why did I come into this human body anyway? What am I doing here everyday? If I'm not having a good time, then I certainly want to be headed toward having a good time! I certainly want to be reconciling anything that's keeping me from having a good time, and letting go of any resistance or fear or anger or suffering of any sort that might be keeping me from having the life I really want to have… living full out… living life OUT LOUD!

I love the idea of living life OUT LOUD!  Being able to proclaim how awesome it is to be here! I guess in a way that's what my whole life has been about… slowly, over the decades, removing all the obstacles I have erected that may have blocked my appreciation of how cool it is to be in this body, to be alive.

I’ve tried to do that, no matter what age, and it seems to be a bit more challenging as I’ve gotten older. On second thought I guess it's been challenging on and off through my life to admit just how good things really are. Except when I was a kid… it was pretty easy then. I've got to say I had a really good time, not so great when school was in, but boy, when school was out, I was having fun pretty much 99 percent of the time!

Appreciation seems to lie at the heart of not only giving value to my time alone, but in valuing my relationship to others as well.  When I truly find things to appreciate in other people, and be in a sort of awe and open wondering about who they are, and what they're up to, and how they're shaping their unique reality.

I remember when I learned that if you want to have a truly successful relationship with your life partner, pay attention to how they mind map their reality. How do they put together their whole life experience? What's their map of reality? And if you can understand that a little bit better as time goes on, you learn to get along with that person a lot better because you begin to understand why they make the choices they make, why they say the things they say and do the things they do.

Of course I would like it to be easy and simple to understand myself and other people. I think that the more that I have deep appreciation of who I am, the more I can appreciate others. The root of so much that makes life worth living, is self-love. It's actually something that kind of alluded me for a long time. I always assumed I had a lot of self-love but when I really look at how I've acted towards myself for a lot of my life, I can see how I demonstrated a lack of self-respect for who I really am, sort of a lack of enthusiasm for my own awesomeness. I can remember sometimes thinking of myself as kind of a loser, not quite adding up to the high expectation I had of myself.

I love the fact that all of that's changing. I'm realizing that at the heart of everything I experience in my life lies my own self-worth. I can't be with other people, I can’t even be in the middle of the woods camping alone by myself, without a strong sense of self-worth, if I expect to have a really good time. After all, all my experiences are coming through me, and if at the core of my being, I'm not looking out through eyes of ease, and love, and pleasure, and kindness, and happiness, happiness to be who I am, pleasure to be who I am, ease and relaxation about who I am… if I'm not coming from that place, it's hard to appreciate the beauty of the forest, the beauty of the clouds, the rock formations, the rivers and streams.

I love that I'm learning to appreciate more and more every day who I am, who you are, the beauty of this natural world, what this life is, what an amazing gift it is.  A lot of that comes from just constantly noticing what I'm thankful for. As much as I can, just noticing how good things really are.

Can you imagine how this world might be if most of us were spending our time just noticing how good things really are? I think a lot of things might get better, because we would bring that vibration of appreciation to everything! 

I'm reminded of a friend of mine who so impresses me, because she has this uncanny ability to find good in everything. That's all she’ll talk about! She loves to talk about how GREAT things are! Oh, she might occasionally mention about a bit of a struggle she's going through, but she doesn't linger there, she gets right on to what's good about the situation, and how GREAT things are, always finding things to appreciate no matter what!

I love being around someone like that… pointing out how beautiful the flowers are, how lovely the yard is…” Come and see my amazing zucchini plant!”…” Isn't our new puppy just so,soooo adorable?!”…” Oh my god, we had soooo much fun today!”  That kind of an attitude is so refreshing for me. 

Sometimes I've noticed in my life how I had this way of sort of downplaying things, kind of turning things to some shade of gray. You may remember the Rolling Stones song, “Paint It Black”.  The gist of the song was that no matter what the guy would see, he would always paint it black, cover it in darkness, take the light out of it. So unnecessary!

Maybe a lot of us have had periods of our lives where are we have done that. I certainly have.  Maybe from our depression, our sadness, our despair, our cynicism.  But I can see how I'm learning not to do that. As I learn to appreciate and notice all that I'm grateful for, and to expand my capacity to love my self more and more, I literally notice colors coming alive all around me, and it's so beautiful, and so exhilarating, that the last thing I would want to do is ever “Paint It Black”.
 

The Hens Of Aging - By Tom Wells

It was sometime in my late 20’s, (actually on my 29th birthday), when I started to realize I was aging.  It seems almost comical now to think that I would even bother to call it “aging” at that young age.  But I guess it was some kind of existential realization that I was no longer going to be “endlessly young”.  Finally, I was an “adult”, whatever that was. I remember taking on some sort of added weight, or responsibility, and it was a bit sobering, but no big deal.

Since then, my milestones of aging have been many and frequent, always weighing how I was feeling against the number of years I had reached.  These days, in my late 60’s, I feel it’s as if the many chickens of aging have come home to roost. Feeling “old” is still present in my awareness, but it has calmed down quite a bit, and there’s a lot of new, fresh eggs gently dropping. The once clucking chickens sit quietly now, on their eggs of possibilities, content to allow the process of ongoing life to silently and slowly incubate and hatch into eternal life.  

I’m letting aging be an afterthought.  Oh well, aging happens.  But Life, with a capital “L”, now that’s where the juice lies!  My frontiers of exploration lie in the fertile valley’s of what may now be revealed, imagined, chosen, embraced.  I hold myself with careful tenderness, relying increasingly on my relationship with what IS eternal to guide and inform me.  I’m not interested in putting any obstacles in my path, but rather in clearing as many supposed obstacles as possible, all the while being as gentle with myself as I can.  After all, I have eternity to enjoy this incubation and the raising of my newly hatched small chicks of realization and enjoyment.

Just knowing that what I have always called “Me” is never going to die, never going to cease to exist in beauty and passion and fun and happiness, gives me ample faith and trust to take on the raising of so many young, fragile ones, all my hopes and dreams and ideas and beginnings of learnings, of apprenticing, of spreading my little almost non-existent wings to take on my fresh career aspirations, my excitement to learn to play other musical instruments, to learn to be an accomplished partner dancer, to commit to speaking Spanish or Portuguese or both, to begin a new relationship to a delicious new lover and friend, even if I’m still a novice at it all at  twenty years from now.

Knowing that I will never really get it all done, and that I can never really get it wrong, is so reassuring, and still something I am learning to embrace.  There is a lot of freedom in being an Infinite Being, and in accepting that the Universe is fully benevolent and fully benign, though at times it may be hard to see it all as so very beautiful.  But it is.  I know that, I trust that, I believe that, I love that, and I’m learning to LIVE that a little more every day.

In fact, that may well be the most stimulating and exciting part of my whole journey these days.  Accepting that I am just now really beginning to wake up to how profoundly beautifully all of this is orchestrated by Source.  I feel now that all my exciting learning is on this very creative leading-edge of peering into the realm of the Divine.  Beginning to glimpse the magnificent halls and palaces and “Shangri-La” valleys of a perfectly functioning universe, where trillions of cells comprising the bodies of humans, plants, animals, and all Beings of every sort, from stars and planets, to black holes and bacteria, atoms, waves and quarks, caterpillars and sparrows, all function with such precision and amazing synchronicity that we could never grasp it all. 

Or could we? Consider how we conscious beings peering into it all, engaging with it all, have the opportunity, the chance, the privilege, to witness it all from a seat of ever deepening appreciation, gratitude, love and excitement, as we gently let go of fear and worry and mistrust, and begin to see through the eyes of our Source Self. 

 It’s too much fun, isn’t it!