What is a peaceful word that ends with “i”?
This is a koan that came to me in my dreams a few days ago. I offer this, what I call a Personal Koan, to sit with, to contemplate; to consider as an important inquiry to help you navigate these pivotal and confounding times, and your life in general. Reading further below, you’ll also discover what I call a Collective Koan, which is different from the former by only one letter.
Personal Koan
If you don’t know what a koan is, it’s a paradoxically complex yet simple question or riddle often given by Zen Masters to their disciples that can only be answered by going into the heart. Its confounding nature forces the seeker to abandon the dependancy on binary, literal logic for transcendent, non-dual soul wisdom; to bring the inquiry into the entirety of their body/being. The classic koan is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Another is, “What is your original face before you were born?”
When the dream came, I remember answering in my sleep state first with Illuminati. And then immediately I thought, no, that definitely cannot be it. Then the thought came, Octopi, because I work with that Spirit Animal in my Starlight Healing work. But that didn’t feel right either. And then I woke up — and the answer came immediately!
And so now I offer this Personal Koan to you. If you need a good hint (which may be a give-away) watch this very short video I created. I recommend, however, you first approach this koan through meditation and contemplation, through the traditional approach of surrendering your rational, grasping mind and becoming still. The answer can only come through the spaciousness of in-sight; by awakening to it and thus having the answer awaken you!
If you still need support, reading further will likely help.
Collective Koan
What if our chaotic, confounding world affairs are their own koan, a collective riddle, and an advanced one at that? With all the hard-to-grasp conflicting, changing, absurd information, I’d say it is. I invite you to see it that way.
What if these strange times cannot be solved with the figuring-out mind; and instead, in their exhausting, never-ending complexity, are meant to bring us to our knees and into our Soul Power; to a place where we, at long last, surrender our resistance and struggles, our moral, dualistic attachments to right and wrong, and awaken to this koan’s answer — to the disturbing, yet liberating Truth, and to have Truth awaken us?
What if that’s the point of these revolutionary times — not to fight them, but to surrender to what’s happening and needs to happen, painful and troublesome as it is? To surrender to uncertainty, and the feelings that come with that? To open to the wisdom and possibilities held in this collective riddle uniting us across the planet — those the collective egoic mind cannot conjure?!
Here is some context to consider that will lead you to my Collective Koan at the bottom of this article. Slightly different from the personal one — again, only one letter apart — you’ll see with just that slight change it has a global focus.
But first, some supportive context…
Freedom versus Being Taken Somewhere
There is a difference between being taken somewhere and choosing freedom. Everyone has free will, but how many confuse being taken somewhere for freedom?
If you have ever observed your thoughts you will know that throughout the day, perhaps every minute, your discursive egoic mind is trying take you somewhere. One after another, it conjures all sorts of problems that you “should” be concerned about, and even offers “solutions” to those problems. Fear is its prime motivator.
For example, that worrisome voice may convince you that you have offended someone, which causes distress in you. It then tells you, persistently, that you must call and apologize, which activates old patterns of people pleasing. Upon phoning your friend you realize that none of this was true.
Another example is that your soul beckons you to leave your dysfunctional relationship, but the egoic voice of fear gives all the “sound” reasons why this is a bad idea. You’ll be lonely, it says, financially in ruins, and will never fulfill your dream of being a mother. Fear arises in you, and you decide to act on its suggestions of not only staying, but of ways you can change him or yourself so you can return to the good old days (solution).
Without keen awareness, one can easily find themselves making a life of following the ego’s fear-based agenda by agreeing to its seeming solutions, by bowing to its authority. One can be taken somewhere, again and again, down long dark trails, far away from fields of freedom.
If discernment is lacking, being enslaved is confused for freedom, or at least acceptable “normal”. We become inured to a dysfunctional way of living most others are also lost in; a “normal” broadcasted in school, the entertainment industry, the media, etc, but that is only a minuscule drop of our soul potential.
The more people struggle to distinguish the voice of the dictatorship within from that of their soul power, the more a culture of following, rather than leading, is created; and the harder it is to know when one is being fooled by outer authorities. In other words, the more people give their power away to the voice of fear inside, bow to its authority, the more likely they will be drawn to and blindly submit to nefarious authorities outside.
With all this being said, one must consider — Whose life am I living? And how free am I?
Perhaps more than any special powers, discernment is a sign of spiritual maturity. Our many heroic lifetimes, through trial and error, give us the opportunity to learn this soul faculty — to discern love from fear — love of self and others; to discern what is right for me from what my ego or other people’s egos think is right for me; to bravely choose from my sovereign divinity and awaken to higher expressions of my power, versus being blindly taken somewhere, led astray by inner and outer fear-based forces.
If you’d like to learn more about discernment, please watch my video here.
And so here it is…
Feeling into and contemplating the Collective Koan below may help you answer the Personal Koan. Or vice versa.
A reminder ~ Personal Koan: What is a peaceful word that ends with “i”?
Add the letter “l” to “word” and you have “world”. A koan for these pivotal times, for the entire world, then becomes:
Collective Koan: What is a peaceful world that ends with i?
Remember to abandon logic, including the need for perfect grammar. You must transcend sequential, binary rationale for the ungraspable non-linear numinous.
Once again, enjoy!
And have faith in this unfolding drama, dark and dire as it is. There is a higher purpose to this, our individual and collective initiation, which serves to usher us out of this 5000 year old dark age and into the dawn of a golden era!
Remember — it’s darkest before the dawn!
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Healing & Activation: My invitation to you is to participate in my online healing and activation ceremonies. Drawing upon the power and mystery of Starlight and its many emanations, transformation takes place at the quantum or cellular level, creating radical changes in health and empowerment.
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Check out Vince’s book: Wild Empty Spaces ~ Poems for the Opening Heart
