SOVEREIGNTY -- NOTES ON AN EXPLORATION INTO........

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Why am I afraid

To let go of what is keeping me rooted to the spot,

To jump into space

And own my sovereign power?

SOVEREIGNTY SPEAKS ---

You are attracted to me,
But you are distracted by the route you must take to find me.
You look to me as a source of Power and Control,
But they are not what I am.
Somewhere deep inside, you know me,

Yet you are afraid that I am dangerous.

You think that if you come too close to me, "you" may disappear!
You are right.
But by losing who you think you are
You will discover what you truly are.
But your ego trembles --
From where you stand at this moment

I seem like a bottomless abyss
And you are afraid that , if you come too close, you will be gone -- forever.

So, to be afraid of me is natural. 
I am a Possibility for Being -- a no-thing,
And who, in ego, is not afraid of a no-thing?


It is a habit for you to fear me,
But you cannot escape me either.
Wherever you may run to, I will haunt you,
I will perturb you, even in your safest moments,
Just to remind you that your destiny still awaits 
Beyond. where you are at this moment.


I look at you now and I see
A sovereign being..... creating......
Creating your Now experience.
If you now feel you are the victim of some circumstance or condition,

Remember that every sovereign is allowed to create whatever he/she wants, 
Including bogeymen to frighten and enemies to challenge and chase him.


You are already Sovereign
But you do not realise it yet.
That is as it should be......
As a fish cannot "know" water until it is out of it --

Consider............. possibly ............
You are using your sovereignty to create an illusion of Not-Sovereignty,
So that you can come to know what you are -- Sovereignty

When you are ready,
Come close
And see What-Is.
You will find as you gaze into me
That you are looking deep into your self.
The "You" that you've always thought you are
Will disappear, 
And your True Self will be there.


Let go.
Flow
Like a river that flows eventually into the ocean from which it once evaporated.
Yes, the river disappears and becomes the greater ocean.
In its essence, it is still the same watery stuff,
But its form is now different,
Greater,
And it has contributed to that "greater-ness".


Let go of your "smaller-ness"
And allow yourself to flow into the "greater-ness". 
You will not be diminished. Far from it.
In truth, there is no going back; 
How can a river go back upstream?
Does a river seek to return to its source?
How far back would it have to go?
What is the Source?
Is it the brook in the mountains that feeds it? Or is it the melting snow that feeds the brook? Or is it the winter snow and rain? Or the clouds that foster the rain?
Where does it begin?
There is no "source"
And every stage in the cycle is Source.


To return to the ocean is the river's destiny.
To be the ocean is its nature.
The river is the ocean becoming.


Let any fear and resistance be there
And go with the flow anyway.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Every one of us is a sovereign being. 

The only question is whether we real-ise it, or not?
Why would we not?
Because we'd rather manipulate and control
Than be Sovereign.
A sovereign being has no more excuses
For withholding his sovereignty.

A realised Sovereign Being --

• Is empowered by nature
• Is empowering - nature-ally
• Gives authority to ....
• Authorises ...
• Gives ability to ...
• Enables ...
• Permits and allows ...
• Is authorised by the author of his/her being, to be effective in this world .

A sovereign being has a deep sense of all the levels of Self, and of how the self creates and adds to the quality Life -- his/her own, and all other life around. A sovereign being knows there is no separation between him/her self and other selves and the environment which supports and nourishes them all.

 A sovereign being knows how the condition of being human puts certain rules and limits on his/her  divinity, and chooses to enjoy that game rather than get bent out of shape by it. He also knows that, whatever the prevailing weather conditions, the game goes on. He knows, too, that sometimes the game conspires to eradicate temporarily the memory of his Sovereignty. He is induced to think the game is "real", just to heighten the level of entertainment.

What are some of the Characteristics of our Sovereignty?

1. Sovereignty is not physical. It cannot be found in any particular place; and it can be felt in many places simultaneously.
2. Sovereignty is not bound in the confines of Time. It remains changeless in the face of constant, relentless change.
3. Sovereignty is not understandable; it can only be known by declaring it, and becoming it. Sovereignty is not capable of being proven, no matter how insistently our minds may demand it. Like a lot of things, Sovereignty just IS. We cannot see it or prove it, but we can see the evidence of its presence.
4. Sovereignty is not judgmental. It allows. To be sovereign is to be wholly open to all that is. It judges no-one and no-thing, not even the harshest critic. Nor does Sovereignty experience Itself as being judged by any one or any thing. It is above all that petty stuff.
5. Sovereignty assumes the perfection in every situation. For a sovereign person, nothing needs to be eliminated for any reason; and nothing can be eliminated without destroying the integrity of the whole. 
6. Sovereignty is larger than mere mind. Life for a sovereign being isn't a riddle to be understood or  solved, but a mystery to be lived, and the perfect answer to every question that has ever been asked.
7. Sovereignty is the power to limitlessly and unconditionally let-go (forgive). It knows that any resentments destroy its freedom.
8. Sovereignty is the power to create and dis-create on its own authority.
9. Sovereignty is willing to fully play the game of life by going along with the pretense that it's not a game. While the game is on -- it plays "as if" it's real, but when Mum calls us home for tea, game over.
10. Sovereignty is willing to create intrigue by pretending not to know, thus making exploring and learning a willing entertainment.
11. Sovereignty is willing to allow comedy, intrigue and drama by pretending not to love every one and every thing absolutely and unconditionally at all times.
12. Sovereignty is the One-ness of many facets.
13. Sovereignty is the source of all natural knowing.

In a state of Sovereignty, life has magic. Results happen at the wave of a thought. We are loved, admired and respected (and maybe also suspected, misunderstood and feared), without any effort on our part. That's right, life doesn't change more than usually, but it does become magical -- simply miraculous. Each new moment is experienced as fresh and unique. We stop using faulted memories about experiences of the past to determine how we're going to feel and act now.

As children, we were originally Sovereign but we sold out on it in favour of getting some immediate needs met. We vaguely noticed at the time that something had gone, but we didn't realise what that was.
We had handed our personal sovereignty over to authority figures -- firstly our parents, and later -- people like teachers, priests, God, the school bully, parking police and bosses. We began to revere and fear the power we had given them, and even managed in some instances to feel threatened by it and guilty in its presence..

By pushing away our sovereignty, we put our selves at the mercy of capricious overlords with their own issues and axes to grind that have little or nothing to do with our welfare. We felt vulnerable to seemingly meaningless and destructive winds and currents of outrageous fortune.
That indeed was a fall from a state of grace

Looking at the state of Sovereignty from the bottom of the pit we've fallen into,
It's impossible to remember
And difficult to imagine what life might be like for a sovereign being.
We cannot visualise ourself in that place.
We're bound to feel threatened, or powerless, or resentful, or jealous, or guilty
In the presence of anyone who is sovereign in their power.
It never occurs to us --
a) that we once had what we now feel victimised by; and
b) that we can get it back.

BE WHAT YOU ARE

Sovereignty is not just for an elite few.
Sovereignty is everyone's birthright.
Reclaim your inheritance.


SOVEREIGNTY #101

1. There are no rules for attaining or maintaining Sovereignty. All that you need is the Willingness to let go of Victimhood and be sovereign once again,  Awareness, a creative relationship with all of life, and a growing love for the truth of yourself, including all of your contradictions and uncertainties. Without these basics, however, forget it.
2. The return to Sovereignty does not necessarily mean your circumstances will change; it calls for a change in your view of, and attitude to them. If you take on a quest for Sovereignty to "better yourself", you're in for a rough time and possible disappointment
3. Sovereignty is a no-thing. I cannot point it out to you on the street. We cannot pick it up and handle it. But we can certainly recognise someone who lives in it. It is a state of Be-ing.
4. Sovereignty begins with choosing whatever is to be exactly as it is - for now. When you feel light, be light. When you feel dark, be dark. Whether it is day- or night-time outside is irrelevant.
5. To be sovereign, you cannot be passive, but you must be surrendered -- ie. engaging creatively with what-is. You can surrender to a Purpose, a Stand, a Context, a Vision, and/or a deeper level of self Commitment, all of your choosing. You choose them for no reason other than they appeal to you as a new way to live your life. You are re-learning how to learn -- from your self -- in the very areas where no-one may ever  have taught you how to learn.
6. A sovereign person stands, relatively happily, in Uncertainty and Discomfort, knowing that they are signs from the ego that new ground is being broken (something egos don't like), and that he/she is creative enough to surf on through the turmoil. A sovereign person knows deeply that the discomfort arises from the fact that our ego's inability to embrace the largeness of what is going on, and its unwillingness to learn growth lessons, are being stretched beyond previous limits, bringing us more and more into an unobstructed and more creative relationship with ALL that IS.
7. As a surprising and paradoxical consequence, Sovereignty will not help us feel either secure or invincible. It may instead bring us often to the door of Frustration and the apparent impedance of our desires. We may hit The Wall, and there's a creative reason for that -- Frustration and Impedance present an invitation and a challenge to review our predetermined expectations of the way we thought this would work out, and to re-evaluate our relationships to life and to what and who we think we are.
8. Uncertainty is a good sign. A sovereign person stands in Not-Knowing and Discomfort, calmly confident that he/she is available to infinite creativity. 
9. Not surprisingly, Sovereignty is therefore the road less traveled. Human minds will do anything to avoid Uncertainty and Not-Knowing. While almost universally present in pandemic proportions, inner confusion and anxiety are not popular topics for cafe conversation in polite society. They remind others of their denied discomfort. "Friends" are defined unconsciously as "someone who'll go along with my lies,as long as I go along with theirs." In fact, most of us would rather DIE than tell the truth to anyone (including ourselves) about just how unsure we are. But this road is one of transformation, where one is challenged to surrender all ideas and projected images of self, and yield ones life up to unknown and unprovable possibility, without any reassurance of outcome. Here we face the biblical Eye-of-the-Needle, the Gate of Aloneness, where we have to leave all our baggage behind, and where the motivation to pass through comes less and less from outside sources, and more from some inner light.
10. Sovereignty in relationships is a balancing act. While not being anybody's doormat, a Sovereign being commits to a relationship with life and others that says........... I will not withdraw from an open-minded, honest and vulnerable relationship with this (person). I will be available and attentive. I will seek to see and stand upon the other point of view, and allow that it is also mine. To the best of my ability at the time, I will accommodate this "other", even as I consider my self. 

When I started down this road, the way seemed to lead towards increased physical and heightened psychic powers and wisdom.
So I thought anyway
The value of taking this way seemed obvious and, at the outset at least, I had many companions on the journey.
But along the way, the topography has changed.
The way now leads me more into an open, immediate relationship
With all that I am and all that is -- weaknesses, warts and all.
On top of that, I have to greet each day with a growing emptiness of not-knowing.
All that I thought I knew is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
In this place, despair occasionally lies nearby, just out of sight:
I turn to face it.
We nod an acknowledgment of familiar friends
And continue on our way.

As I venture through the Gate of Loneliness.
I find myself resisting loneliness,
Looking around to see if anyone else is taking the same steps
Looking for confirmation from others,
Looking for Approval, Reassurance and Recognition,
So as to assure myself that I'm on the "right" track,
And that I'm not alone.
Eventually this, too, has to be surrendered:
The journey is no longer being made for anyone or for any purpose
Other than the journey itself.
I do not know,
Cannot know,
Nor need I know if this is the right way.

I'm still supported by a few true friends and relatives.
They cannot know what I'm going through
But they love me enough to hover nearby anyway,
Knowing that their company is important to me.
Alone in company I walk on,
Yielding to the fullness of my Unknowing.

To be Sovereign
We have no choice but to stand
Naked and defenceless in our own light,
Yet in rapport with all that is.
There is nowhere left to turn aside
For we are enveloped by Is-ness.

Sovereignty is a state of integrity so demanding
That when anxiety and despair occasionally come to sup with us, we ask in anguish and radiance --
"Why this? Why me? How did I get here? Is this where I'm supposed to be?"
There is no answer to that.
Just the awesome silence of What-Is.

At this point the  roller-coaster has broached the crest;
Gravity has taken over;
We have passed beyond the place of choosing either for or against.
Living solely from the immediacy of this experience here/now,
Without any props of past ex --perience or future assurances to sustain us,
We are no longer able to act from any conviction of being "right".
Even the old crutches of hopes, visions and fantasies
Crumble to dust.
Even they are a rejection of the omnipotent, omnipresent Is-ness.

In Mastery we engage with life, meeting it on its own terms;
In Control, we disengage from life and separate ourself from it and the source of all being.
A sovereign being truly sees
That he/she has never been in control.
In Surrender he finds Integrity.

CHOICE AND CHOOSING

A lifetime of choosing is leading to Choice-less-ness.
Having committed to live a life of awareful integrity,
It came as a bit of a surprise to discover
That my only other creative choice
Is whether or not to choose that I have no choice.

We are invited to surrender to a fundamentally wiser process
That is organising the flow and direction of all life.
This wiser intelligence cannot be demonstrated nor proven,
But becomes miraculously real to us when we surrender
To choicelessness.
Without that surrender, ego keeps dancing distractedly around on the spot,
Blocking the view.

To choose Sovereignty acknowledges an inner realisation
That there will come a time when we can no longer continue life on our terms;
The intelligent person surrenders willingly as soon as possible and gets on with living -
The stubborn person waits until he's forced by catastrophe or failing health and strength,
And resists dying, all the way to the grave.

There's more on offer in Life than not-dying.

The instant we surrender our ego to the flow of life,
Questions of Choice and Free Will fall away,
Subsumed by a feeling of one-ness with Life and Purpose in its deepest sense.
Sovereignty awaits us inside.
Hidden behind Choice awaits the infinte possibility of Choosing;
Hidden behind Free Will awaits the Freedom of All Will.
(The notion of "Free Will" is loaded with "Won't"s -- hadn't you noticed? The Freedom of All Will is that it says "Yes" to every possibility.")

Once surrendered, I found that life on MY terms had been severely limited
To what I could think of,
And what I could imagine.
No wonder then that life resembled a cracked record/cracked record/cracked record...........
The best that I could think about at the time
Brought me back time and time again
To struggle against crises and suffering.
Every time.
How about you?

When I finally gave up the struggle
And surrendered "my's" insistence that life turn out as I thought it should,
I began to discover how surprising and wonderful life can be.
When we stop pestering, interfering, controlling,
When we get out of the way and let life happen --
Life opens up to us.

Our choice is always
To choose the road that empowers, or the road that disempowers.
How do we tell the difference?
Discerning one from the other isn't as hard as it may seem.
One road looks safer; the other feels scarier:
One road looks "right"; the other sports a sign that says "Wrong Way -- Go Back".
Operating on the principle that "If I do what I've always done, I'll keep getting what I've always got",
I now usually choose the road less travelled --
The one that looks like the "wrong" way, the scarier of the two.
Ultimately, of course, it doesn't matter which branch you take --
You'll get to where you're going to whichever way you go.
But the fork less travelled is always far more interesting, revealing, and possibly quicker.

The Will we have to access to plunge deeper into Be-ing
Is not the same "will" we need to push life around for attainment.
The Divine Will packs possibilities
That become activated when we give over our "self"
To the process of living and to each other,
In such a way that there are no considerations of  "winning" or"losing".
The Will of Ego and the Divine Will are polar opposites.
One difference between them is that the Will of Ego cannot contain Divine Will,
(Ego thinks it IS God!)
Whereas Divine Will allows individualistic Will to be.

LOVE THY GODNESS; LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR

Something got lost in tranlsation.
I have a hunch that, when these famous words were first uttered,
They were less of an admonition to "Obey this, or else..."
Than a statement of What-is......
"This is a fundamental fact of being human --
We love our divine nature,
We love each other;
And the way we love others is exactly how we love ourselves, and vice versa."
This is What-Is.
There's no choice about it.
There's nothing noble or esoteric about it;
It comes with the condition of being human.
At the cost of your own alienation from yourself and others,
You can deny or ignore it until the cows come home;
But the fact remains that you, me, god, the person in your face, and all the space in between
Are all of the same stuff and indivisibly interconnected.
How well our lives are working has a lot to do with
The level at which we acknowledge and co-operate with this state of affairs.
It's a reflection of the level of our attunement
To the highest, finest energy of Existence.

GETTING BACK INTO BALANCE

A truly sovereign person is sufficiently poised, relaxed and empowered
To stand alone in an unobstructed, free-flowing relationship with all people.
When you lose your equilibrium
Take some time and space out for yourself,
Re-consecrating yourself...

"To all that is, and to the watcher within."

As our power returns, so does our consciousness of our place and purpose in the scheme of things.
We know we  make a difference in the world
And we set about joyfully doing just that,
Empowering and enabling others along the way.

• Being Sovereign is a result of choosing -- choosing to engage creatively with whatever is happening, while it is happening.
• Being Sovereign is a result of a personal commitment to live as much as possible in the Now
• Being Sovereign is a result of celebrating that you are what you are, and you aren't what you aren't, and seeing in gratitude the perfection of that.
• Being Sovereign is the result of saying "Yes" to what happens, and "Yes" to what doesn't happen. That includes saying "Yes" to your Yeses, and "Yes" to your No's. Resistance is not only futile, it's the kiss of death to creative and permanent change. "Revolution" and "Evolution" are different  words for a very good reason.
• Sovereignty begins with first giving an unqualified "Yes"  of acceptance to what is so in your world, and an equally unqualified "Yes" to what is not. If something needs changing, a Sovereign works first on him/her self, seeking to change in himself whatever is being reflected out there. Having dropped all resistance to the situation he is then free to deal creatively with it. A Sovereign knows how radically our world transforms when we do.
• Whatever a sovereign being fears or resents (or any other feeling reaction for that matter), he says "Yes" to the feeling, and chooses it to be so. He fully and gratefully embraces the experience of it as a message from his emotions, telling him where some housekeeping remains to be done on his addictive programming. That which a sovereign being fears/resents/ is jealous of..... may disappear; it may not. If it disappears, he says "Yes" to its disappearing, and doesn't trawl back looking for it. If it does not disappear, he says "Yes" to its non-disappearance, and drops any expectation or addiction that it should be some other way than just as it is. He does all this without any rationalising or efforts to explain "why". For a sovereign, What-Is .. is; and What-Isn't .. isn't. Period.
• Being Sovereign is the result of choosing to creatively surf the events of your life.

Contrary to popular folklore, the circumstances of our life do not need to be changed in order for us to be Sovereign and Happy. We have tried that many times over -- tell me, how is it working for you? Being Sovereign is very much about how we choose to experience and deal with the circumstances of our life. It's a matter of transforming our relationship with the circumstances and events of our life, It means doing whatever we have to in such a way that we're no longer the victim of what happens. No matter how many people take it up as a lifetime occupation, Victimness does not work..

There's a paradox to get comfortable with here --

• You are the source and creator of all your experiences; and
• You don't have the least control over what happens..

Choose what is happening. Decide to get creative with it, and use it as a learning tool.

When you want what you've got, you'll always get what you want.

Once you can embrace the paradox, you'll find that your life circumstances DO change, without any pushing and pulling from you.

It may not be easy at times. But it is simple....................

Create with what you get, when you get it;

Don't sweat what you don't get, when you don't get it.

Got it?