I’m a very assertive person, and sometimes that doesn’t fit into peoples little box (opinions) of how I should behave.

Well, I’m not a people-pleaser.

I don’t speak with a soft angelic voice and greet people saying things like “hello blessed light-child of God” with flapping eyelashes and I don’t have flowers in the hair while dancing around with a silly smile on my face singing Kumbaya.

That’s an exaggerated image I know, but not far from how many thinks a spiritual person should be.

And oops, I forgot the robe and orange colored Indian outfits.

Guess I should have a few of those too in my wardrobe so that I can be as you would like me to be.

Ridiculous!

I have my own set of standards and I have no problems using my voice.

That doesn’t mean I’m right and you’re wrong. Opinions are just opinions, they are not true in any way.

I know that my opinions change all the time, so I don’t take them that seriously; I do however believe in being honest and sincere, and that means I don’t the boot-licking-thing; I’m not here to stroke your ego by trying to please you.

To me it’s more important to be who I am and say what I want than try to fit in.

And you’re very welcome to be who you are around me as well. Actually, I want you to be who you are at all times, I respect honesty and integrity very much.

I don’t walk on egg-shells for others, so if I’m too much for you, then bye bye to you.

Sincerity and honesty is also much more appreciated when it’s the other way around.

When I compliment someone or say something nice about someone, people know I mean it, that I don’t say it just to look good or to be liked.

I don’t intent to ever dumb myself down for others either so that they can feel good about themselves.

I’m very confident and I don’t shy down for anyone.

But I guess I should be ‘humble’ and always be bowing for others in order to fit the stereotype of a spiritual person..

But you see, I have a different opinion about that.

People who make themselves small so that others can feel better about themselves are nothing but insecure about themselves, and how “spiritually mature” is that..? Not much.

That’s as egoic it gets in my book.

I don’t mind rattling the cages of society and it’s programmed notions of how things should be and will continue shattering people beliefs to the core, no matter what others think.

Actually, I get fiercely inspired and passionate when inspiration strikes like it sometimes does in a more assertive way than the mellow and soft spiritual way that I can express just as easily.

I just don’t exclude anything from my self and my personality to please others.

I like being me, and none of us can’t really be free until we have the courage to be who we really are, and when we dare to step outside of the norm that others may have labeled as being appropriate behaviors depending on what we do.

What we do is not who we are.

What we do is what we do. Who we are is who we are, embrace the whole of you I say. End of story.

A gaze-eyed Namaste to all of you with hands clapped in a spiritual pose.

Nah, I’ll skip that

PS: If you are a person who sings Kumbaya and acts in a stereotypical way, good for you.

I don’t see anything wrong in that, as long as it comes from the heart and it’s not an act. I have seen plenty of those kind of people too, while I also know that there’s the real deal as well.

This post is about the average persons opinions of the stereotypical spiritual person, that’s all.

When we have experienced an opening or even spiritual awakening, and we know – in the deepest meaning – the false self to be a product of the conditioned mind and nothing more, we’re still reverting back to it time and time again.

Oftentimes when we think we have figured it all out and we feel a sigh of relief, believing we have arrived to a safe and firm plateau in our evolution; then swooosh, we’re dragged back again!

After some awareness has occurred and we have had some glimpse of Reality as it really is, the reverting back happens with us kicking and screaming, resisting it with all our might, spiritually speaking.

And to be drawn back, or revert to the old, time and time again can be a very difficult process to go through, but so much easier when we have some awareness around what’s going on.

This is something I know many people are experiencing and the ego can be very deceiving and manipulative in it’s ways of projecting doubt and even blame onto ourselves.

Many think they are doing something wrong, or that they are not doing it right (whatever spiritual practice they do), so I wanted to shed some light into what’s going on.

The ego is a fiction created in the mind, and by the mind.

Thoughts and beliefs about who see ourselves to be are far from the Truth, they are merely ideas of who we think we are, conceptualized versions of who and what we imagine ourselves to be, and most people believe their minds, or the image that they have of themselves.

That’s why being on the spiritual path includes times of such fierce purging of the old that it almost becomes unbearable.

The ego will not give up easily!! It knows it’s the death of it, and who wouldn’t resisting their own death, right?

It will keep re-creating itself (the mind is re-creating and building the images up again and again) and Life itself (or “God”) will tear it down, purge and purify you from the false, and this is when we feel tossed back and forth between the old and the new, between ego and spirit.

This process can be fierce at times, and create huge mental, emotional agony and turmoil.

In this process we will keep going from one belief system to another until one day we realize that all beliefs and thoughts are false.

Nothing of the mind is true, beliefs are nothing but ideas and opinions and they are fleeting, they change all the time, but the problem is that we (as humans) take them to be true, and that creates a conflict with What Is.

There’s always a conflict; the belief that life shouldn’t be as it is, or should have been different or should look better tomorrow, and it’s all mind-made lies!

Life is as it is, and it doesn’t matter what opinions or wishes we have, it will never bend itself to meet our expectations.

Spiritual surrender happens when we have come to the point where we’re on our knees, totally accepting that we don’t really know anything – when we finally understand that Truth is way beyond our thoughts and beliefs and that there is no way we can figure out any of it.

Everything we thought about life and ourselves will need to be stripped off and everything that we are not will be going through a demolition process called the ego death.The false will die.

When this is happening we will be flowing in and out of alignment for a number of reasons, but the main reason is that the ego doesn’t like to not know, and that is required to continue on the path to liberation; the willingness to enter the not-knowingness wholeheartedly.

That’s where the conflict occurs, between the egos need to control, and the need to let go of control altogether.

We have to realize that we don’t know anything about anything, and surrender to life that really is in control, and always have been.

The only thing in the way of the flow has been ourselves, or the person we have been taught to believe we are.

The ego will panic, it will do all it can to take the control back, it will deceive us into thinking that if we just re-arrange our thought-system we will feel better, if we just change our beliefs into something else we will feel better, but that is all a deceptive play of the mind.

No matter how much we try to control or mind, focus our thoughts and all that, all it does is that it keeps the mind busy, thus keeping us away from the present moment.

The mind will always be in opposition to ‘what is’.

All these attempts to control will eventually end up in some kind of failure (not that there are any real failures in life, but you know what I mean), and the seeking of solutions continue until true surrender occurs and that oftentimes happens when we feel utter defeat and we can’t take it anymore.

When we’re spiritually on our knees waiving the white flag of surrender, absolutely exhausted by our own attempts to make life into what we want it to be. 

What happens when true surrender occurs is not what most people expect or think.

For me, when my authentic surrender happened, I expected deep, indescribable sadness and all kinds of negative things; I literally thought I would just have to crawl back to mediocrity and that I would never be able to enjoy life.

But what happened was nothing like that at all.

I felt liberation, such relief and love and.. I can’t even describe it.

Liberation from the mind, from illusion. 

All spiritual paths are pointing to the same truth and that is surrender, but no matter how much we conceptually know that – we will still keep taking the control back, time and time again.

Until we stop. One day the letting go of control and taking it back just have to stop.

I have done this myself numerous times in my own life, until the day came when I declared DEFEAT.

That’s when life really begins to take form, and it can take a whole other direction than we could ever had imagined.

But before that happens, we will be drawn back to duality, even if we know that we are One with Life itself.

We know, because we have tasted it. We know, because we have experienced it, we have seen it, we have lived it.

But still, back to duality at times. (Reverting back living from the “I” that is separated from the whole, from Oneness).

And I can’t think of anything more annoying (and painful) than to really know truth, but still the mind takes back control at times, especially at times when we’re standing and being in the brightest light of our own being-ness.

That’s when the resistance from the ego will really kick in.

The ego will make you think there’s problems. It will make you worry, become fearful, feel resentment because your hopes and dreams have not come true yet and so on.

There will be depression, utter sadness, hopelessness.

When we’re not pouting like children (spiritually speaking), feeling victimized and unfairly treated by life, there’s some serious tears to be cried of the worst sort of ugly-cry we can imagine. Believe; I have done it all myself.

It’s not for the faint-hearted to ever embark on the spiritual path, let me tell you that!

If you’re not willing to die for Truth (go through ego death that is) then turn around and run the other direction.

The ego knows exactly where to hook you emotionally, and it knows your deepest fears and worries, and WILL trigger them – believe me.

When temptation doesn’t work, it will go for your fears and make them bigger an scarier than ever before.

When we work with ourselves and when we build our awareness around what’s going on, the path will get easier to maneuver. 

We begin to become more and more aware of how it plays it’s games.

We begin to notice how the problems disappears the instant we enter peace, and peace become our number one goal.

All other goals will naturally fall away. They will mean nothing to you. Only Peace and Truth will matter.

We come to realize that only the mind create problems, while in fact there aren’t any problems at all.

There’s an “I” that is not affected by any of the drama that’s going on, and the more we realize that, the more we fall into it – the more we fall into our own true nature.

When the relief comes with the letting go, or surrendering to what is happens, then the distorted thoughts about being held captive by some invisible force also disappears. There was no force there to begin that held you captive, it was all mental. A story.

 Awareness comes from questioning and investigating our thoughts and beliefs, but not to replace them with new ones.

Relinquish them altogether, free yourself from the mind.

Ask yourself when the fear kicks in:

• Who is it that is thinking these worrisome thoughts?
• And who is threatening whom…?

Until we honestly and with sincere desire only want to know what is True, we will feel as we’re trapped between our fears and cravings, our desires for life to be different.

We will keep flowing back and forth between ego and spirit until we finally surrender.

We need to empty our cup completely.

Know that what you think is not real at all, and the way to do that is to uncover all you think is real.

Fierce undoing of the ego is required, and our willingness to it is enough. Life itself will do the purging, you just have to go with it, if liberation is what you truly want.

It’s not always easy, but the more we surrender and live moment to moment, we are opening ourselves up to discover what’s already present.

One thing to remember is that the flowing back and forth between the old and new comes from flowing back and forth in time (in reality time doesn’t exist); either we think of the past or the future, by worrying or desiring, holding on, resenting, not accepting.

Remember that only the ego does that; while the spirit lives in the Now, so by bring ourselves back to this moment, we will find peace, because it’s already here.

A few examples to clarify what I mean; one is to be keenly aware of what’s going on right now:

Many years ago when I was in rehab I was also heavily medicated and I had decided to get clean from all medicines as well as my addictions, and looking back I realize that it was then when I learned to surrender to the present moment by letting go moment to moment.

Whenever I felt the need to take the medicines, I said to myself: “Can I wait ten minutes to see if I still feel the need for them?”, and then after ten minutes I asked myself the same question again, and again and again, until the day came when I was completely off all kinds of pills and medications.

This process of surrendering to the moment helped me to take less and less medications everyday until I one day was totally free from all of them. Some days I had to take it minute to minute, and it helped me to become very aware of the shifts in my emotions and the cravings of the mind.

Ultimately I wanted the real Peace, not the fabricated one that was made by chemicals.

Something that can be encouraging to know is that the doctors said that I would never be able to live medicine-free because of the damage I had caused my brain by my drug addiction.

That’s what they said, that I was doomed to be on medications for the rest of my life in order to be able to function normally and be happy in life and they were literally throwing pills after me, but I refused to continue, I was determined to heal and free myself COMPLETELY. 

There was the temptation of the ego (to continue taking my meds when things got tough) as well as the fear/anxiety that comes from withdrawal of any kinds of substances; my only choice in the moment was my attitude, and that’s how it is for all of us.

We can fall for the temptations and fall back to the known and familiar in any life situation, or fall back to frenetically try to prevent our biggest fears from happening; but it’s all a play of the ego.

The only control we have in life is our attitude to it.

I was determined to become free, and I made it through; I could not be healthier than I am today, I have been free from drugs and all kinds of meds for about ten years now:-)

It wasn’t easy, but I made it through by surrendering to life on a moment to moment basis.

Another thing you can do when you feel you’re being pulled back to the old you (ego consciousness) is to be very aware of what you’re doing Right Now, and tell that to yourself, preferably out loud, but without any further explanations.

The ego will try to get you to get into arguments, explanations and justifications and so on, but you just state with a matter-of-fact attitude what you’re doing at the moment and with the inner knowing that you have no clue about what’s to come, so there’s no use in trying to figure any drama out until it comes up (which they seldom do, most of the drama we create in our minds never happens in real life).

We really don’t ever know what’s around the corner, so just let those beliefs go.

“Right now I’m walking here”, “right now I’m watching this”, “right now I’m doing the dishes”, “right now I’m reading this book”,and so on. No explanations, just a clear statement that this is what you’re doing in this particular moment, which is your whole life.

When we do this, it’s amazing how the ego’s voice just crumbles by itself, it just falls away, because the less attention we give it, the less noise it makes.

Remember, the mind creates itself, for itself, but you are not it. You are the observer of it all.

We can all learn to be the witness of thoughts come and go without getting hooked in believing them.

Feel how awareness itself feels, not to just how it feels to be aware, but how awareness itself is experienced.

This will eventually lead us to stand in Truth alone, and the wavering back and forth will have ceased.

The experience of going back to duality and then back to oneness will eventually cease and the best thing to do before that becomes the new ‘norm’ is to bring our attention back to the Now.

Moment to moment, surrendering to Life and not-knowing-ness is what leads us to liberation from that which is not real.

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… Wouldn’t you be satisfied with life by now?

If you think you’re the magical creator of the future, then what made you ‘think’ yourself to this moment?

… Why are you still suffering?

If you made this moment, if you think you can chose how life is “created”, wouldn’t you then be at the pinnacle of your life?

… Why still struggling to improve it?

Isn’t it interesting how the mind always keeps us (us=humanity at large) busy thinking how the next moment can bet better than this one?

And how it makes us believe that the reason why we are still waiting for the abundance and awesomeness (or whatever we want from life) is because our ‘faith is not strong enough’, or because we have blockages that keeps us from living the best life?

Let go of silly thoughts like that; there is nothing wrong with the Real You!

No need to spend a lot of money “unblocking yourself”, “cleaning up your vibration”, or buying into even more programs that promises to teach you how to accelerate your manifesting powers or anything like that, that’s just all mind-made nonsense.

The mind will always keep us distracted from the present moment – the future never comes, have you noticed? It’s always Now. It has always been Now.

Why are you never satisfied, if you are the manifestor and creator of this?

Because the creation came from/through the wrong source. That’s why.

The vast majority of humanity is stuck in the egoic state of consciousness and this manifests in the world as we see it both on our personal level and the global.

The human world is a manifestation based on egoic structure, and it’s an illusion.

This is the root of all suffering and most people don’t examine their beliefs, they are totally unconscious of our true nature.

Beliefs are crutches. Beliefs are bogus. You re-arranging your mind – changing one belief system for another – is not going to free you.

The ego is a fiction created in the mind, by the mind.

Thoughts and beliefs are merely ideas of who we are, conceptualized versions of who we think and imagine ourselves to be.

It s all created in the mind!!

And most people believe their minds, in the image that they have of themselves; “I am this, I am that”.

And the ego always tries to find happiness, always looking and seeking for it, and the happiness it finds is usually short-lived. It has it’s highs and lows. And the search goes on…

Only what’s not real changes. Truth never changes, it’s just is.

The Real You doesn’t need to be re-created, there is no need for us to become a different version of who we think we are. Just BE who you are.

Changing one belief-system to another will only make the ego happy for a while, but it will never reveal our true nature, because to do that we need to strip off everything that we are not, and that is the ego death, which can be very painful.

Most people rather be happy for a moment in a shallow way by believing that they can manifest and create by how they think and believe, and most of them are unsatisfied, still waiting for that peak moment of life to occur.

Life is Now.

The ego will keep you rearranging your thoughts and beliefs and it will always keeps you busy battling with your mind.

The thinking itself is not the problem (it’s the attachment to the thoughts), but the more you try to better your mind or control it, the more you will suffer.

Truth cannot be found in the mind. Only in stillness.

Stop and listen – not ‘stop and try to figure out’.

“The ego always presents a distant “promised land” to us; it’s either in an imagined future, in heaven, or even in the next life-time. It’s never content with the present moment; which in fact is our whole life! It’s never satisfied with what is, never – it always looks outside this moment for fulfillment, but will never, ever find it”. ~Maria Erving

Being Judgmental Is What Causes Us To Suffer:

http://mariaerving.com/judgment-causes-suffering/

]]> http://mariaerving.com/still-looking-for-happiness/feed/ 3 http://mariaerving.com/life-can-take-a-whole-new-direction-if-you-just-let-it/ http://mariaerving.com/life-can-take-a-whole-new-direction-if-you-just-let-it/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 10:41:45 +0000 Maria Erving http://mariaerving.com/?p=6626 Can you imagine how the world would look if we all acted from a space of inspiration and love rather than from motivation, which is often based on some kind of fear?

Fear of loosing something or not getting something “if we don’t do this and that”.

What a difference it would do to how we interact with each other!

What if we all asked ourselves “why am I doing this?” and “would I do it if I didn’t gain something from it?” (money, recognition etc).

To live life from inspiration mean to be open to the direction where life is moving you now, in this moment.

To be attentive to the direction life itself is moving you, and move with it.

What feels like the next obvious thing to do, or not do, in the present moment.

Too much future-thinking creates fear and worry, while inquiring creates awareness and openness; who is afraid and who threatening whom..? It’s the ego! The mind is creating itself and humanity at large identifies with it.

It’s a never-ending viscous circle that each and everyone of us must take responsibility to break the pattern of.

Slowly and deeply ask yourself “who is this ‘I’ that is frightened, and who is it that creates the fear?”

Where is the fear coming from? Go back and investigate within yourself, see if it has a source, where did the thought start, and is it really true?

To sincerely ask these kinds of questions opens up an awareness about that there is another “I” there that is not affected by any of this.

It’s not enough to just think, you must be sincerely interested in knowing the truth, you must really want to know the truth of who you really are.

Life is continuously, always, asking us to show up, to step to the plate, and the inner self is silently, always, saying; “Here I am”. …Can you hear it?

Motivation is often about avoidance or trying to get away from ‘what is’, but to really show up for life, we need to be still and let life move us, then our actions will come from a deeper place of inspiration.

When acting from inspiration we don’t always know where our actions leads, and many people have a fearful response to that, to the not-knowingness.

We just know it’s right, we know it’s contributing in positive ways, we know it’s for the greater good, we know it’s pure and that there’s no need for manipulation or control. Truth is Truth, there can be no more or less of what is whole.

Life naturally sustains itself if we just trust it and follow our hunches.

It’s our mind and wrong thinking that keeps us off track. Action that comes from inspiration is an action that is not second guessed, we just naturally know what to do, and sometimes that means to do nothing.

(Which is scary for the ego who is all about doing-ness, while spirit is about being-ness).

Inspired action is infinitely more powerful than action coming from the (often times unconscious) notion of ‘what’s in it for me’.

When we let life live us, when we let life express itself through us as us, life can take a whole different direction; we don’t know what’s around the corner, and that’s what scares us. (Humanity at large).

YOU ARE LIFE SEEKING TO EXPRESS ITSELF.

It’s the letting go of control that scares us, the not knowing that scares us, the stillness that is required from us, that feels uncomfortable.

But life doesn’t need our help, it only needs our co-operation.

Life knows its own ways, it really doesn’t need our opinions or ideas about it.

Let go, let yourself be scooped up by life itself by your sincere devotion to truth, the inner still voice of intuition that knows every little bit of your human existence and beyond.

Life may surprise you big time, and your life may take a whole different direction if you just let it.

Don’t go to your mind for a second opinion; trust your intuition! 

“From what space are you coming in your daily actions; feel the difference between being ‘inspired’ versus ‘motivated’ – between being ‘committed’ to something versus being ‘devoted’. Feel it? That subtle emotional reaction is the difference between love/fear, Spirit/ego” ~Maria Erving

]]> http://mariaerving.com/life-can-take-a-whole-new-direction-if-you-just-let-it/feed/ 1 http://mariaerving.com/life-is-a-happening/ http://mariaerving.com/life-is-a-happening/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 10:46:43 +0000 Maria Erving http://mariaerving.com/?p=6609 How different my perception on life and myself is today.

I just re-read one of my posts from last year when I experienced the shift in consciousness: http://mariaerving.com/spiritual-awakening/ and realized how so much more aware and integrated I am in the present moment now than I used to be, and how I have grown comfortable with not knowing anything.

It hasn’t always been like that; in fact after that particular awakening, maybe a couple of months later, I went through yet another hellish process of purging and relinquishment, but that’s another story.

The only thing I know is this moment.

I can’t even think of visualizing or anything like that anymore, it’s so far from who I am today, it doesn’t resonate with me at all anymore.

There’s no longer any praying going on in my life, no talking with God, no Angels, no scriptures that I feel is true as I used to (no Bible, no a Course in Miracles, no nothing) and no desire whatsoever to make this moment other than it is.

It doesn’t mean I always like it in a yey-what-a-jolly-good-time-this-is-kind of way.

It just means I accept everything as it is, and life includes all, and with that acceptance comes peace.

It’s only our interpretations of what is that can cause us to suffer, and knowing that there is no way we can ever trace the cause to anything (and no, the cause is not your thoughts, it goes way beyond that) makes it obvious that just because of the fact that we can’t ever see the whole picture of why events happen as they do, there is no meaning in trying to understand them or interpret them to somehow make them make sense to us.

That was not always so before for me.

It’s so very clear to me now how all the Mind Power and Law of Attraction stuff that I used to be so passionate about is essentially all about not accepting life as it is, it’s always about improvement, changing something (“change your life”, “attract this or that” etc), making or creating something better, dreaming bigger, expecting something great to be just around the corner, and so on.

I’m not into personal development anymore; I don’t see any point in “developing” anything (evolution happens without my striving for “improvement”), little alone myself, or my persona. I know that that’s not who or what I am, so it doesn’t interest me anymore.

I’m only interested in the Truth of who and what I already am.

I only need to tend to that, and it comes naturally as I follow my intuitive knowing, it’s like the doing is done and there’s no effort in remembering that.

I simply (and with the uttermost sincerity and devotion ) have my undivided attention on Truth.

I don’t make any demands anymore, I honestly don’t expect anything anymore, I don’t have any ambitions, I don’t have any goals, dreams, nothing. (This just happened by itself, I didn’t chose to loose interest in my many goals, plans and dreams).

And I feel free. I feel liberated.

I can’t believe I once believed with all my heart that I could control life, or that I even wanted to do that!

Now I let Life live me. There is no “me” that is living a life. I am Life. Life is living me.

I respond to this moment only.

With curiosity I’m attentive to the next moment, but there is no expectation that it’s going to be a moment of total bliss, happiness and awesomeness.

That’s the egos demand and goal, and it will never be content because such a life is a fairytale.

Everything is exactly as it’s suppose to. Life is perfect.

The only one that objects to it is the ego, even if it’s on a unconscious level; there’s always somewhere for the ego to move from or towards, while the truth of life is that IT moves us. We only need to respond to it and act on our intuitive knowing.

That doesn’t mean we only do what makes us happy (as the ego always wants) but it means we always do what feels right in our hearts.

There is all sorts of emotions. The difference with me now is that I’m not attached to them.

I can watch them come and go, and occasionally I get drawn back into them; for a few moments I can feel fear or worry for example, but my awareness of it them not being real (it’s just a thought) brings me back to this moment which I know is my whole life.

This doesn’t mean I expect it to always be like this, I may very well get caught in some drama of the mind tomorrow once again. (I’m not permanently awakened yet and may not even be in this life-time).

But I don’t feel myself caring about that as it seems unimportant.

(I do however know for absolute 100% sure that I will never have any spiritual rantings with God again; I don’t have a subject-object relationship with any God anymore; it’s like arguing with myself or talking to myself and that would be a hilarious thing to do now:-)

It was very interesting when I started to experience this; it kind of just happened that I was witnessing emotions happen to the body, or ‘Maria’, and especially once when it happened when I woke up in the middle of the night when I was worrying about something, and I got kind of annoyed that ‘I’ had to be woken up for something emotional that was happening to ‘Maria’.

I can’t explain it better than that, it’s was just very peculiar when it started to happen like that.

It reminded me of when I started to evolve as a healer and when I began giving Reiki healing to people about ten years ago and I could feel my clients emotions but be totally detached to them because I knew they weren’t issues, or “my stuff” so to speak.

I even cried tears and felt physical pain in my body ‘for’ my clients without getting caught up in them, because I knew they didn’t belong to me.

I could even feel when people that I was in rehab with had relapsed because I felt when they got high.

It was very weird, but I could sit in the sofa watching TV, minding my own business, when suddenly I felt someone else’s ‘high’ and I had to kind of wait it out, not able to move my body.

After I came to myself again I contacted the staff in the rahab I was in and sure enough, someone was missing and it later came to light that they had indeed relapsed.

Anyways, back to the topic of this post.

I just simply experience myself not demanding anything anymore, and believe me; I have had some serious battles with God and ego in the past about this – I have had some pretty severe spiritual temper tantrums that I can’t even begin to put into writing if you know what I mean..

I  just know that all I know is this moment, and nothing more.

Life is a happening. Everything happens according to the plan (divine plan), and nothing is wrong.

Sure I can still feel intuitively that something might come up in the “future”, I can feel the direction of where life is going, but I don’t start to create any visions or expectations around them.

I just know what I know, and I let it be like that.

(And there are some things I know about my life/future that I have always known, since I was a child I have known I’m here for a specific purpose that is larger than myself for example. It’s an intuitive knowing).

I don’t know anything except my own experiences, I don’t know anything concrete about the future, because there isn’t any. It’s always in the Now. The so called future will always happen in the now. We can’t ever know what’s around the corner. Ever.

This moment is all I know, and I love it more than I can express in words.

“Life is the unfolding of this moment, we don’t have to understand it, or interpret it. The interpretation is what creates suffering, because whatever is happening happens, depending on how you interpret it. So when we just drop the thoughts that arises that wants to judge it either being good or bad, that’s when we enter true reality. In those moments of no-thought” ~Maria Erving

Enjoy your read!

“Spirit lives in the present moment. Only ego flows back and forth to an imaginary future and regretful past. Whenever you encounter some sort of challenge in life, the best way to handle it is to do anything you can to bring yourself back to the Now. The present moment is all we have, and when we get worried or fearful we become lost-and it’s all happening in the movement of thought”. ~Maria Erving

Feel free to share this booklet with anyone who you think can benefit from it.

Here is a short URL that goes directly to the PDF and which you can share (besides from this post of course):

http://www.tinyurl.com/acceptance-and-forgiveness

“The ego always presents a distant “promised land” to us; it’s either in an imagined future, in heaven, or even in the next life-time. It’s never content with the present moment; which in fact is our whole life! It’s never satisfied with what is, never – it always looks outside this moment for fulfillment, but will never, ever find it.” ~Maria Erving

The Soul is not broken because of your past. There’s no mending necessary to make your soul whole again.

Sometimes I hear people say that they think the soul needs to evolve and that the soul is what awakens, but the soul – that already is everything – doesn’t evolve at all.

And it’s already (and have always been) wide awake!

It may appear that way to the mind (ego) but what’s really going on is that the more we as humans (on the level of body-mind consciousness) evolves, we are in fact only realizing the core of our being.

There’s a lot of realizing going on, but that which is realized is not created in any way. It already IS.

The core of our true nature is already there, it’s not something that can be developed.

Human consciousness is evolving yes, but the true self is on a completely different level of consciousness, and the shift in consciousness to Truth is inevitable when we want it more than anything else.

How could God, that is everything already, possibly “evolve” in any way?

That would be like implying that God is not whole, that there’s something missing in God that needs to be attained, achieved, or created. Not so.

The ego likes to make us believe that we are broken somehow, and often it points to a broken soul, and to mend that is an almost impossible task to the conscious mind when living from an everyday state of awareness only; the shallow level of life.

So people who live most of their lives from the ego level rarely tend to go there (to look deeply within), as they feel doomed because their “soul is broken because of this or that” (often times because something that has happened in the past).

The ego makes them feel as if the are damaged and that the task to be healed is too big.

Or because the darkness they will have to transcend weighs too heavy on their being and it doesn’t fit into their schedule.  (“I don’t have time to ‘find myself’ at the moment, I have too much work to do, or I’ll wait until the kids have moved out”).

The darkness is not the Soul. The darkness is the veil between you and who you really are, but the ego makes you think that the soul is the darkness and that it’s way to big and difficult for you to “fix”, so you don’t.

The soul is not dark in any way.

The soul is not affected by our shortcomings, problems, unworthiness issues, not even the lack of self-love can diminish the light of what and who we really are.

It may seem that way to the ego-mind when the soul is expressed through us as the Spirit, but only because it’s filtered through our mind-made opinions, thought-patterns, beliefs (all beliefs are essentially limiting, so to re-arrange them by chanting affirmations is just a mind-game: Find out who you are by being still, and your true being will reveal itself) and concepts, it is received and perceived by other egos as being somehow ‘weak’, or broken.

When a person who already know themselves as they really are looks at you, they see right through your false self, they see through the veil that the ego has put up, and the connect with the core of your being. 

Nothing is broken or inadequate about who we really are.

The Source of our being (the soul) is to be realized, recognized, acknowledged, and discovered by us, and by listening within with curiosity of the light that’s ever lit within you, you will find out that you are already whole.

All this time, all we really needed to do was to relinquish and let go of all the things we thought we were, stripping away the layers of the false self to finally realize who we really are. (The realization is a shift in consciousness).

And beyond the thoughts and beliefs of who you thought you were, lies a beautiful expression of God that is the Spirit of the all encompassing Soul of Oneness.

The Truth is already whole and complete, and that is who you are.

It has nothing to do with the ego’s disappointments of concepts that didn’t bring them what they thought they desired.

This is something people write to me about at times so I wanted to address it.

It’s kind of common to think that we can somehow awaken ourselves and that all it takes is for us to ‘change our mind and beliefs’.

It’s absolutely positive to do that kind of work consciously as well (getting rid of limiting beliefs etc), that’s not what I’m saying, but this post is about True Spiritual Awakening.

Your awakening is not your doing, and it’s not you changing your mind about something by your free will.

It’s not about you thinking that something doesn’t work and now you’re moving on to the next best thing that will get you what you want. (Like for example: “This Law of Attraction thing is not working so I’m trying out the Silva Mind Method” or something like that)

The ego will always look for the blueprint to manifesting it’s desires, so to conceptualize spiritual awakening can be the next thing to ‘try out’ for the ego.

Like a new three step program for attaining enlightenment.

But that’s not what I speak about at all!

A shift of consciousness is something that happens to us, it’s not created by us nor our thinking.

When my shift happened (one of the “big ones” I have had), it happened at the worst thinkable time actually. (I have experienced a few life altering shifts the past few years especially, both sudden and more gradually evolving ones).

It did not fit into my own personal plans at all.

I had just been invited to Malaysia to be the key-speaker on two seminars and teach the audience about the power of mind and law of attraction, so when my spiritual awakening happened it kind of crushed all that.

I obviously couldn’t go through with it as it would have compromised my integrity.

It was a very difficult thing to let go of, but I had to.

When we awaken there’s no way back. It’s impossible to revert back to “the world” again, it’s not doable.

Nothing will ever be the same again. (In a very good way:-)

So, no one can think themselves enlightened or awakened, and it’s completely out of our power to steer the evolution or control with our minds how it’s going to happen.

It has nothing to do with our free will. We don’t decide when we wake up to reality.

No one can awaken us, there are no self development programs in the world that can make you wake up.

The whole thing is way beyond mind. In fact – the mind is nothing compared to Truth.

There are people who have been on the spiritual path for decades and meditated every day and so on that still haven’t had the slightest realization of who and what they really are yet, and then there are completely average people living average lives and who’s not even interested in spirituality that suddenly experiences a spiritual awakening!

So it’s not something we can ‘make happen’, no matter how many programs or books we study.

It’s not about the mind. At all.

I do believe however that an earnest and sincere pursuit or interest (devotion) to knowing the Truth is helpful.

It has been for me, and still are. I love learning and discovering about Life and my place in it, but my sincerity towards it is not a ticket to enlightenment.

There are no guarantees whatsoever that what we do will bring us any kind of spiritual experiences or awakenings.

I’m not ‘done’ yet myself, and my intention was never to ‘wake up’, I have just always been keenly interested in my own spiritual and personal development for as long as I can remember.

It’s natural for me to be passionate about spiritual evolution, but I don’t have any agendas behind my passion for consciousness and awareness.

No one can point out the “right way to spiritual awakening” as it is a very personal journey and everyone’s path is different.

The only spiritual practice I do nowadays is mediation. I no longer feel the need to pray or talk with God as I used to do.

And I loved those moments.

I just realized that I am one with God, so there’s no need to tell God anything. It would be like talking to myself in a way.

That too was a gift to me, I didn’t chose willingly to let go of my times of prayer.

Some years ago, before my shift of consciousness last spring (2011) I had a spiritual experience that I only now in retrospect understand the meaning of. (It has been some intense few years for me when it comes to my own transformation).

I was sitting in my caravan which at that time in my life was my home as I was homeless, and suddenly a voice said to me: “You have been given grace”, and I was so taken by it – it touched the deepest place in my heart, and I couldn’t stop crying, I felt this overwhelming gratitude for the message.

But I didn’t know what it meant.

I didn’t know the exact meaning of grace at the time, I just knew it was something wonderful.

I remember I Googled it and searched for the meaning and only now in retrospect when looking back at how my life evolved form that point can I see how firmly I was put ‘under the umbrella of God’.

The point I want to make is that I didn’t do it myself.

It was a gift from God.

Spiritual awakening is a gift, and it’s not up to us to ‘manifest it’ or ‘create’ anything that has to do with Truth.

Truth is already present, and it will reveals itself to us in it’s own time, on it’s own terms.

And when it happens it will probably take you by surprise just as it did with me.

Here’s a post that you might find interesting:

We Can’t “Find Ourselves” by Approaching Our Inner Self Intellectually:

http://mariaerving.com/dont-approach-your-inner-self-intellectually/

You have to see closely at what triggers you and where you are really hookable; where you get emotionally and mentally stirred.

You have to become aware of where your beliefs are challenged and go there.

“Serious spiritual practice is more than serene walks in the woods and lit candles and incense. You have to be committed. You have to be willing to enter into your own darkness and transcend it” ~Maria Erving

If you can’t see where your internally stirred up, you can’t access your darkness and transcend it.

You have to be provoked to see this.

Stuckness on your spiritual path and overall life comes from the refusal of looking with honesty and openness at what comes up to the surface, to the conscious mind, and work through it.

You have to be more than willing to see where you’re triggered and annoyed. (The ego is, not the real you).

Where you don’t want to go, that’s where you still have work to do!

If you’re ready for the next step in your own personal journey, book a spiritual counseling session with me today.

In sessions with me we look more closely at:

• Understanding the differences between coming from the ego versus Spirit
• Clarify your values and what is important to you, and to respect yourself by being true to your own set of standards.
• Identify and break destructive patterns of behavior and being-ness.
• Find your voice – and allow yourself to SHINE!

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SESSIONS WITH MARIA HERE

Not that those words come out often through my mouth but still; I can’t stand people pretending to be better that, holier than, more spiritual than etc someone else.

I don’t mean we should develop some kind of Tourettes or being consciously rude to people.

Just stop pretending!

Stop the ego stroking, boot-licking, people-pleasing behavior!

Stop being so damn “nice” all the time!

Those constant yes-sayers that don’t have a single opinion of their own, who always seem so understanding and .. well, ‘nice’.

I have met some fake people in my life but the worst (to me) are those who pretend to be so damn holy and pure.

Those who call themselves spiritual only after sitting in sermon (or some other kind of ‘spiritual’ meeting) with angel-like smiles on their faces, full of fake compassion, goes out to have a drink and gossip about others.

An woah the one in the crowd who doesn’t agree..!

(Be sure that if that’s you; they will speak behind your back as well. Trust people when they show you who they are).

There is no need to try to impress one another. We don’t have to do the boot-licking thing!

I don’t know about you, but for me it’s liberating to just be who I am.

It doesn’t mean that we have to be an open book to everyone but it does mean to have the integrity and courage to say, unapologetically, (if that’s a word) that ‘that’s non of your business’ if we don’t feel like sharing.

There’s still boundaries.

It’s not about becoming a doormat like the ego thinks. The ego is your mask. You – the Real You – is the being/awareness behind it.

I honestly don’t have any problems bursting other people bubbles regarding the boxes they might have put me in.

It occasionally happens that I say words like fuck and shit. (Although usually I use the Swedish words)

I’m not into being humble and meek for you; I’m an assertive person, you just don’t mess with me.

And I can be sweet and kind too.

If you’re fake or shallow I cut you out just like that. I trust my gut about you.

I don’t dwell, and I’m not sentimental, I just move on.

I don’t expect you to change for me.

And I’m spiritual.

But I’m not the least interested in becoming best friends with your ego.

What about you?

Are you driven by other peoples expectations of how they think you should be, or how you think they think you should be?

How complicated to live like that!

To me being spiritual is to letting go of the mask.

Do you diminish your glow and voice for others so that they will feel comfortable around you?

I don’t know about you but to me there’s nothing more attractive than authentic people, confident people, that have no need to impress me in any way.

I love being around people who are comfortable just being themselves.

Think of how much more effort it takes to hold a facade, to uphold an image, just to please others.

Good Lord! the ego thinks; what if someone figures me out, they might disapprove of me!

Only the ego have the need to be liked and looked up to.

How do you think people should be?

Not just so called spiritual people, but people.

What kind of boxes have you put people in? And yourself?

…And who taught you that?

Those are all preconceived opinions about how certain people should be and behave depending on what box we have put them into.

And most of the time those opinions have been given to us, and we just accepted them as truths.

Ask yourself; is it really true..?

Could you actually just be who you are and be perfectly alright and loveable anyway?

I believe so.

Below is a couple of old posts that you might find interesting.

Here’s a post about how many people think and believe that spiritual work should be free of charge: (so silly!)

http://mariaerving.com/money-and-spiritual-work/

And here’s a post that’s a couple of years old about God and you being you:

http://mariaerving.com/the-behavior-of-god/

UPCOMING TELECLASSES WITH ME: CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO!