How To Open To ALL Of Life?

Author and Eco-philosopher Bill Ploktin, one of the World’s great movers and shakers, suggests in his newest book, Nature and Psyche, that most adults in the western world do not get past stage 3 of an 8 stage life cycle.

Almost half way to full maturity.

Ken Wilber, whom many call the greatest living philosopher, says research suggests that only a very small number make it to the upper levels of development, and that most people spend their lives wandering the lower realms of their own developmental possibilities.

Potential oaks, dying as saplings.

Roses left in the bud.

How could this be, you ask?

Well, for starters, most of us live our lives in a haze, on the surface of experience, automatically like a robot, reactivity like a child, reflexively like a knee-jerk, impulsively like a spasm, habitually like an addict, or as I use the term in all of my talks, asleep.

No, it isn’t pretty. But reality doesn’t need to be pretty. It only needs to be reality. Reality is how it is.

Reality is, we’re a society of attention deficient, information overloaded, multi-tasking, comfort seeking, stimuli-junkies, lost in belief systems that were formulated in adolescence.

Here’s how it all starts:

We are born vulnerable yet open to our environment.

What we often get from our environment is less than optimal.

Many of us have lived countless moments of rejection, criticism, disregard, neglect, devaluation, and various other forms of heart wrenching, heart closing and heart harming experiences.

So we naturally develop strategies of protection from potential emotional pain, fear, and confusion. One of the easiest and most effective is to close down to feeling, close down to experience, and close down to life.

We become numb, turn away, shut down, avoid feeling and most of all … stay …. safe?

Now, as adults we have developed a variety of self protective strategies that not only keep pain out, but also keep ALL of Life out.

How to stay in touch with our basic kindness?
How can we source our lives from what really matters?
How to resist the habit of zoning out and shutting down?

How to stay open to seeing the natural beauty and wonder of life, while also staying open to life’s ugliness and horrors?

Because make no mistake about it, you cannot pick and choose. To be closed means you are closed to the whole shebang. ALL of Life.

Your capacity for experiencing joy will be matched by your capacity to experience sorrow, and your tolerance for love with be matched by your capacity to endure rejection.

How to stay in touch with all of Life?

How to stay…. open?

How to wake up to the heart of care, in our depths, in our relationships, in our work and play and love and life?

This is one way to open to ALL of Life:
http://www.wakinguptolife.com/events.htm