Moving Mountains
The Holy Mother
Mountain ranges can fill us with awe. Flying over them or driving through them or even attempting to climb up one can be a defining moment in our life. The majestic snow-covered peaks and the sheer size and beauty can be baffling to us at any age.
I can remember as a little girl drawing mountains with my crayons with a very steep snow-capped triangle - an image so engrained that I felt queasy when we took a family ski trip to Whistler looking up to the peak so worried that my family would fall and slide right off the side. My memory is fuzzy, but somewhere along the winding, road on the way there I may have thrown up on both my Holly Hobbie doll and my Uncle Walter’s carpeted back seat floor.
Today let’s dive a bit deeper into our true nature. Let’s notice that how we see our own insignificance in comparison to the stars, the mountains, and the cosmos can keep us from manifesting all we truly want and desire. Our fears, like my own of sliding right off the side, are not based on truth, but illusion.
Our inability to see our own perfection and completeness just as we are at base camp never even having attempted to climb or having reached a peak is our work. To learn and grow and to become Self-Actualized is the only place true self-love comes from. Not from great accomplishments, repeating affirmations and finally capturing dangling carrots. Not that there is anything wrong with dangling carrots if that helps you, but when we become Self-Actualized we even stop caring about the carrot in the same way we did.
'I wish everybody could get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they could see that it's not the answer.'
Jim Carrey
Doing our own inner work and self-inquiry to dig up any resistance we feel in life around not feeling good enough, loveable, or strong enough is a bit like becoming crystallized. I’ve always been fascinated with the formation of rocks and crystals. A sodalite crystal is a beautiful mineral that bright blue is a shocking find and everyone is drawn to it because of their unseen qualities as well, they contain healing properties and they channel energy. Their inner atomic structure contains no resistance.
The Law of Attraction helps us become crystallized and aligned like that.
Few of us even know that is what the L.O.A. (Law of Attraction) is actually made for. It sure was news to me. Not just to get everything we want, just as there are physical laws like gravity that govern the physical universe there are spiritual ones that govern our consciousness. The LOA is a spiritual law to help us become more authentic and aligned so we can Self-Actualize.
In a nutshell, it’s always working (not just when we do Jedi mind tricks, ritualistically affirm, cut out pictures, and put post-its all over our homes) but rather 100% of the time.
We simply draw to us what we put out.
It should probably have been called the Law of Reflection because it’s not that we are really attracting things to us, but it’s more like our lives are quite literally showing us an exact reflection of what is happening inside of us.
Our emotions are like the sherpas on the mountainside always serving us and guiding us to safety. When things feel good we’re on track, when they feel bad then we may need to course correct. It’s not difficult, it’s just different and it’s misleading to interpret that we need to be happy all of the time. Impossible. Of course not, this is always about authentically allowing ourselves to feel what we feel.
I think so many of us feel disconnected from the source because we’ve been taught to identify solely as an ego (a body) instead of connected to the eternal energy or intelligence that guides and controls the entire universe and our body is just a temporarily part of that eternal part of us.
We live in this intelligence, we are a part of it and the whole of it. When Jesus said “I want you to have life in its fullness” he was referring to an inner state of being. He taught that when we ask or pray for something we are to believe that we already have it now….not in some distant point in the future.
In this present moment from a fulfilled place connected to the whole, we command it and assume it is done because we are not doing it by ourselves but we are connected to the whole that can guide it to us. Until we do it can feel overwhelming like we need to make things happen in our lives ourselves and our anxiety and worries can prevent us from ever leaving our homes.
But we ARE nature and all of nature is provided for. Like my example of the birds and squirrels last week. They are not worried that there will be a lack of worms and nuts. I think the problem is that when you google the meaning of nature in the dictionary here is what you’ll find:
Definitions from Oxford Languages ·
na·ture
noun
1.
the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
Woah Nelly. As OPPOSED to humans or human creations?
Let’s stop in the shade here for a moment.
The Oxford Dictionary is certain that we are NOT a part of nature but separate.
Oh and that our creations are separate as well.
How can that be?
Our human body is approximately 99% comprised of just six elements: Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. Another five elements make up about 0.85% of the remaining mass: sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium.
Nearly all the elements in your body were made in a star and many have come through several supernovas. We are basically walking stardust.
Oh with a side of ocean. Even the composition of our blood is similar to that of seawater. Let's look at this a bit closer. Both have salts – sodium, chlorine, magnesium, sulfide, calcium, and potassium.
Coincidence? In math, 2 angles that coincide are said to fit perfectly together. No, but that can’t be right because the Oxford Dictionary says that a coincidence is “the fact of two things happening at the same time by chance, in a surprising way”.
Hmmmm… chance? surprising? really.
I don’t think so.
In fact, could one of you please call King Charles and Queen Camilla because Oxford needs some updating…fact is, my desk is also made from a tree. And the nails holding it together are probably made of steel but can also be made of stainless steel, iron, copper, aluminum, or bronze.
And the phone you’re reading this on is made of nickel, cobalt, zinc, cadmium, copper, lithium, metallic oxide and other carbon-based materials.
So let’s recap:
You and me= nature
Tree= nature
nails= nature
iPhone = nature
We all return to the earth and compost back into whatever comes next.
We ARE a connected part of the whole cycle and ecosystem of life both physically AND energetically.
A new definition in the Field of “nature”:
the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, including humans and human creations.
That’s better. Don’t you feel a bit bitter already?
You’re not here solo you’re a part of a whole ecosystem under the sun supporting each other. It’s no wonder that we feel fear. If we believe that we’re separate we will conclude that we need to control, to conquer, tame, protect, and colonize. We’ve tried that and it has not gone well for any of us.
When we live in fear our dreams and aspirations, the things we desire, and all we think we need come from that separate place born in fear.
When we discover that we are not just a body (we have one) and as Uell S. Andersen put it: “We come from a source that is greater than the far reaches of space, greater than the power that holds the planets in their courses. We can tap into this intelligence as we see fit. It is God-given, a divine birthright, and is denied to no person except by themselves”.
We’re so powerfully divine with our free will that we have the power to create anything, even our own powerlessness and depression. We are like a mountain with moving plates beneath the surface and in a constant state of creation with our emotions, thoughts, and focused energy feeding whatever we want to see more of at the earth’s crust on above the surface of things all the time.
This summer series is about this unlimited power that is yours.
Learning how to work with our true nature and how to align with this Divine power to have it work for you, here on earth, to make a more beautiful life is the greatest gift.
Best of all, you don’t need to wait. You do it from where you are, with what you have.
Now.
Not “when” you have a nice house next to the ocean in Hawaii. Not when you get in shape or meet the person of your dreams. We can feel the “fullness” now sight unseen.
The thing is, you’ll STILL be YOU in Hawaii. If you’re bored and dissatisfied with your life here, you will still be bored and dissatisfied with your life in Hawaii too. You’ll notice the mosquitoes. Oh, and it’s so hot there. The ego’s mandate is to seek and never find.
If you can’t feel the fullness of your life on your bike, you won’t feel it driving a Tesla either. As long as you believe they will make you happy you will be unhappy. This Saturday Night Live skit with Adam Sandler You'll still be You made me laugh out loud because in less than 5 minutes it illustrates this point better than I ever could.
And yet, to me, it’s such a miracle to see that WE are the ones projecting all of it.
We’re not a victim of our circumstances.
When I started to become aware of the power of our minds my husband and I had just traveled to Mont Tremblant, a great little mountainside community in Quebec. We had a nice time with his team from work but on the drive home, I asked him if he thought we’d ever go to some faraway exotic location again. He didn’t think so because insurance companies were being pressured to reduce expenditures on sales incentives and rewards trips so that was probably the end of it.
He asked me: “Where would you want to go if you could go anywhere?”. It didn’t take me long to say jokingly: “Ta-freaking-hiti”! I had recently seen pictures of thatched huts with glass bottom floors in the ocean, you know the ones… THAT is where I want to go! He teased me: “Why don’t you do your Secret-Oprah-manifesting-thingie…who knows?” We both laughed but I remember saying saucily: “Maybe I will”!
Little did I know what would happen next.
To make a long story short, I visited a travel agency for fun the next day and picked up some glossy photos with beautiful scenery from Tahiti and Bora, Bora -I’m sorry I didn’t keep the exact one now, but there was one in particular that I loved to look at it was of a similar scene of someone holding a coconut drink with a drink umbrella with a stunning background. Not this exact picture but something like it to give you an idea…
What happened next was otherworldly. I put the photos on the bulletin board in my office above my desk and early in the morning I’d look up and imagine gratefully that we were there. The smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves, the taste of the drink and I’d imagine being there.
About three months later, Scott called me from work:
Scott: “You’re never going to believe where we’re going!”
Me: “NOOOOOO way!!!”
Apparently, there was a trip to Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Moorea that had been planned and the company had space for 3 more people and so they were taking the top 3 producers in Canada on this epic adventure and he said: “Guess who’s number 3!?”. haha
WHAT???
It gets better, when we arrived it was a dream. We were on a gorgeous yacht sailing to a private island for the day and after walking on the beach we saw a Tiki hut and some of his coworkers so for fun Scott bought us 2 coconut drinks and as he handed it to me and I turned to face the group guess what I saw? THE SAME VIEW FROM THE PICTURE ON MY BULLETIN BOARD!!!!! I kid you not.
When I manifest things I usually cry. I can’t help myself, it’s like WHAT on earth is happening here? The coincidence is too great. How did this happen?
Our rational minds can’t accept it because it’s not in the acceptable zeitgeist.
But I don’t care. Because what I know for sure is that the greater vistas in life, greater hope, and greater promise available to us are more than most of us dream.
There is a power greater than we are, which we are A PART OF, which we can use to make our life all we dream it can be and I will keep finding creative ways to share this because for whatever reason the powers that be have failed to include this gem in our school curriculums.
This summer let’s dive deeper into the metaphysics behind the Law Of Attraction, what it’s meant for, and how we can master our minds and shift our perceptions and perspectives to have a new more peaceful experience of life.
There is so much more to it than what millions of us learned from Ronda Byrnes's groundbreaking 2006 documentary film that swept the world “The Secret”. I know it gets made fun of it, but I’m sorry, I confess all cheesiness aside …I loved it - it opened up a part of me I never knew existed and that trip to Tahiti was a result of that movie. It was the perfect starting point or springboard that led me to metaphysical understandings that I never imagined I’d ever learn in this lifetime. I’m so grateful for it.
And I also think the critics made some valid points, they were right, it was presented as a bit of a cliché and a prosperity hack, true, but it doesn’t negate the spiritual law and the average bear just wants to learn how to succeed in life. We all feel compelled to, so to learn that you can manifest just about anything that can resonate with you is no wonder that Ronda’s book sold more than 30 million copies. I eventually came to realize that it’s not something we need to manipulate consciously, we’re already using it at this very moment, most of us are just not aware of it or how it works.
In our ignorance, we suffer.
We experience lack and never trace it back that the calls are all coming from inside the house (from our own consciousness). I also have come to realize that me getting everything I desire while it is admittedly fun, Jim Carrey is right, it’s not the spiritual mountaintop for any of us or the point of our lives. It won’t truly make you happy, free, feel peace, and satisfied on your deathbed.
There is SO much more to the metaphysics of it and I have spent decades learning from the original master of the law of attraction… Jesus! Yes, I’m always astounded when Christians don’t see that his non-dual teachings were teaching this spiritual law all along. More on this later, but first, let’s go back to the mountain for a few minutes…
Because it seems like climbing mountains is the preferred metaphor. It has it all, doesn’t it? Overcoming our fears, doing the impossible, having a clear destination in mind, putting one foot in front of the other, and taking it one step at a time.
I think it’s beautiful that the Tibetan name for Mount Everest is Qomolangma which translates as "Holy Mother" and many local words used to describe it translate to “Holy Mountain”.
Millions of people have dreamed of climbing to her peak and approximately 6,000 people have done it just over 11,000 times.
Hundreds have died trying.
The photos of Tenzing and Edmund feel authentic. Is it just me or do you see what I do? They both exude a radiance like they have fulfilled a life purpose and have experienced something so ultimate and bonding that their joy seems to travel through time.
Reaching the peak, the work of the sherpas, and the mountain itself are seen as sacred. The locals and mountaineers all have a deep respect and reverence for the mountain and its elements. Have you ever wondered about the significance of the prayer flags strung and scattered around base camp? I think they are beautiful too.
Legend traces them back to the Buddha. The sutras were written on cloth and hung. Traditionally, prayer flags come in sets of five representing the five elements. Different elements are associated with different colors for specific traditions. Blue symbolizes the sky and space, white symbolizes the air and wind, red symbolizes fire, green symbolizes water, and yellow symbolizes earth. According to Tibetan medicine, health and harmony are produced through the balance of the five elements.
Traditionally, prayer flags are used to promote peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom. Tibetans believe the prayers and mantras will be blown by the wind to spread goodwill and compassion and ahimsa (non-harming) into all pervading spaces for everyone. As wind passes over the surface of the flags, which are sensitive to the slightest movement of the wind, the air is purified and sanctified by the mantras.
The prayers of a flag become a permanent part of the universe as the images fade from exposure to the elements. Just as life moves on and is replaced by new life, Tibetans renew their hopes for the world by continually mounting new flags alongside the old. This act symbolizes a welcoming of life's changes and an acknowledgment that all beings are part of a greater ongoing cycle.
The mountain is treated like a Holy Mother and climbing her is not taken lightly. Great expense, a lifetime of sharpening climbing skills, studying possible routes, and learning about crevasses, weather, avalanches, wind, and oxygen deprivation leading up to and following their great accomplishment.
Passion seems to be a key ingredient. Doing something for the love of it.
This brings me to one of the key ingredients of manifesting and the reason we don’t really need vision boards and Post-it notes all over our homes. Because when we love something we just don’t need them. Our minds are FILLED with images of what we love and if it’s authentic love we can hardly think of anything else.
That’s how we know when something is worthy of our focus and passion. It’s how we know if it’s coming from our ego and head or fear, or our heart and love.
The other important thing to consider is that choosing to climb our own Holy Mountains can only happen if we intend it to.
We decide. Meaning we cut off all other ideas and choose something.
One thing.
Our egos make a big deal about climbing the right mountains which can keep us stuck in the planning stages, but maybe living an inspired life means just climbing the mountain right in front of us until we have a different view of life and can see something else.
I think the biggest hurdle or block most of us face is one of modernity, but there is good news even with that, so let’s ease up on ourselves if we watch a bit of reality television or do things imperfectly and trust our true nature. So much is made of the life-killing comfort zone these days and yes we all need to learn how to have a healthy relationship with our screens. If we choose not to engage in life and choose with our free will to escape whatever temporary comfort realm we can with distractions, entertainment, or addiction we may prolong our feelings of emptiness, but even that won’t be permanent. Things naturally have a way of coming to an end or a head because even hedonistic pleasures eventually lead us to a restlessness that will seize even the most indolent among us when there is a world that begs our service.
Sitting on a couch for 6 hours doesn’t feel good.
It’s time to move and maybe the time seems to have come.
We all feel it.
The world is on its knees now so it’s time for us to rise up to choose and find a way up our own mountains when we’re ready. To begin to train mentally and physically to find and connect to our own true power source.
Any way you slice it, the Universe is constantly and intelligently helping to guide us to free ourselves in any way it can. It will lovingly pull us with visions and dreams and if we don’t heed the call we will be pushed with pain. Either can work it’s up to us how we learn.
It’s a bit of a joke in spiritual circles that we have “Free Will”. We think we do, and in some ways it is true, but in effect if we don’t bow down to our true nature or God’s will we suffer. So in effect, there is only truly one will. We bow down to a greater power or we struggle on our own.
Over the years, many people have asked me about finding their purpose in this world and how this connects to spiritual awakening. I think it’s a pivotal moment for us when we begin to ask that question. We don’t want to have the regrets that we know so many of us do on our deathbeds. Bronnie Ware’s book “The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying” affected me. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It may not happen until the last few weeks of our lives, but as a palliative care nurse Bronnie shares that people grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. She learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth:
Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial, and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
On the one hand, we have our day-to-day lives and the life goals we engage in on what I like to call the “horizontal dimension” - or the dimension of doing. Many manifestation teachings like “The Secret” or most of the books or teachers we find online on Manifesting focus exclusively on this dimension, suggesting that if you get what you want you will be happy.
It’s simply not true. I’m happy to help others to do this if they are convinced otherwise as I was, and even to keep achieving goals on my own. Yes, they DO bring fleeting elation and some happiness to get that job, that partner, to be healthy, cross the finish line, or find the man but none of them ULTIMATELY satisfy us. Sometimes I think as a first step we need to do our own due diligence with this and be allowed to come to our own conclusions. Once we embody the truth that our imagination is a preview of coming attractions, then we can really begin to work with life instead of fighting against it. So in that sense, I’m happy to help you brush up on your manifesting skills first if that’s where you are now. Let’s DO it!
Having said that I like to be clear up front, I teach this a bit differently.
My personal passion is to really help you connect to what I like to refer to as “the vertical dimension” or the dimension of Being. It’s equally if not more important in manifestation because it’s where all material things manifest from.
The mastery I teach is to have a foot and to be grounded in both worlds. The dance between Being and Doing - not as separate things, but acting together - BEING & DOING as one.
The purpose of this summer series is to help you realize the connection between your outer doing and spiritual realization of yourself as consciousness and to help you bring the two together.
If you miss the vertical dimension no matter what altitude your reach or what mountains you have climbed, how successful your new business becomes, how beautiful your new home is, or who you’re dating it won’t make you happy for long without being firmly grounded in the vertical dimension.
I love that we can see this play out in nature and that we even call it creation!! The Universe has been creating for millions of years.
This universal mind, or “God” intelligence is not in man alone, but in every living thing. When we consider the process of evolution in nature we can see desire being projected into the Universal Mind and returning to physical reality over millennia. I love going to natural History museums and seeing it all play out. The fish experiences land and starts to walk and becomes a reptile. The reptile experiences air and desires to fly and becomes a bird. The reptile desires strength and size and becomes a horse. Bears, wolves, tigers, lions, snakes everything that creeps and crawls and lives and swims and burrows and builds and desires. All are results of conscious thought or desire projected into the Universal Creative mind of God.
The fish has fins, the polar bear’s fur is white, and the chameleon changes colors to blend with the foliage - every reaching desire of conscious life is answered from a great inexhaustible source, to simply answer conception, intention, and series.
Desire is life, and life is change.
I suppose if the temperature of the earth does increase or drop significantly, life would survive and adapt and evolve in different forms. We’ve had 5 mass extinctions on Earth and one where 85% of life was lost but what we know from history whether we acknowledge it is that even if Earth and planets fade away life would survive. It all happens with one immutable law from conception, desire, thought, and emotion into creation and actuality.
Our consciousness is expanding.
We’re evolving. Even our brains are evolving.
It’s the nature of human consciousness to know itself and it all happens with the law of Attraction as Jesus taught it.
All of the great metaphysical and religious works speak of the evolution of consciousness as the descent of spirit into matter.
The great allegory of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is a perfect illustration. The temptation of the serpent, the eating from the tree of knowledge, the final fall which culminated in awareness of self peak only of the beginning of self-consciousness. Our self as separate from nature with free choice was the beginning of our split from God and the beginning of our suffering.
We’ve simply forgotten our divine nature.
That deep desire in us to conquer, climb, win, and achieve is so deep and possibly just a tiny bit skewed. Do we really want to win or do we just want to be loved? We’ll get to the bottom of our desires next week but in any case, there is no judgment, there’s nothing really wrong with it, in fact, it’s so inspiring to witness when we act on our dreams and achieve.
I still cry watching the Olympics. In fact, just today we watched history being made. Today is Canada Day and there is something overseas that happens on July 1st that is big in our house…
The Tour de France! It has 21 stages and will be contested over 3,404 kilometers finishing on July 23rd. Twin brothers Adam and Simon Yates won first and second place today on stage 1. How COOL is that? I was so moved to watch the brothers make it over the line before the peloton. Okay, THAT and maybe watching my husband watch the tour with the dog…
In closing today, let’s consider that maybe, just maybe WE are the divine creators of our own lives. That our bodies are our paintbrushes and our lives are the canvas waiting to be painted and all we need is to allow ourselves to see this.
To have faith that we have all we need to find our way.
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Jesus of Nazareth (Gospel of Matthew)
I love that quote. I even wear a little mustard seed around my neck to remind myself when life feels hard.
Did Jesus mean we could literally MOVE an actual mountain?
Maybe. My guess would be as good as yours, although now that we understand the science behind what matter is and that even particles themselves are more energy and space than matter and our effects on it as intelligent observers determine what probability is seen, I will no longer waste any wonder arguing for our limitations against any quantum possibilities or the literal word of God.
We really don’t know what is possible for us. That’s the point of our having free will and getting to experience all of our individual and collective creations.
To expand our consciousness and to learn.
But if your mind rejects that probability then let’s consider that Jesus meant it metaphorically, although the older I get the more I’m starting to see how “literally” true his teachings have proven to be. He taught that it’s our perception, our FAITH that is doing the mountain moving, not us. We don’t need to chug a Red Bull and head out as Sisiphus did with his rock.
That WOULD be ridiculous.
So what on earth is Jesus referring to when he uses the word FAITH?
He’s trying his best to teach us in a non-dual way that we are one with God.
You and the father are one, Jesus said so of himself. He said time and again that we would do all he did and more. The word begotten means “to give rise to; to bring about”. To manifest. You don’t need to do the heavy lifting yourself, the resources will find you just like the bees find the flowers to pollinate. The Universe has our backs when we’re aligned to our depth dimension or the vertical axis.
I’d love to show you how if you’re not sure how to do that.
“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
Sir Edmond Hilary
It’s time for us to move beyond a narrow, limited interpretation of the self and into a place of true manifestation. To align our Being to the source of all Things. To align our potential and express ourselves beyond time and space, beyond fear, beyond the dictates of culture, or what has been assumed by us as a small self.
Let’s give our permission for the release of anything that will stand in our way.
To expect more than what we have known in the past.
The mountain you choose and the path before you will be lit as you walk it, and not a moment before.
And I’ll be here by your side the whole way up to help you carry any doubts and fears.
You’ve got this.
We’ve got this because it appears physically like you’re over there and I’m over here but energetically we’re all connected to the same source.
And that makes YOU powerful beyond measure.
Thank you, Father God and Holy Mother for teaching us how to love mountains, each other, and ourselves.
With love,
Nona