I remember when Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now came out in 1997. It was a huge sensation. I read it. All my friends read it. And before you could say "Jack Robinson," the new catch phrase in the spirituality community was "I'm being in the now."
"I'm being in the now" was my reason for not showing up for a meeting I didn't want to attend. "I'm being in the now" was the reason to blow off lunch at the last minute if I didn't feel like getting in the shower. "I'm being in the now" meant XYZ task would get done whenever the spirit moved me.
Or not.
And if it pissed people off and made me look like a flake ... if people thought I was being irresponsible, oh well. "Being in the now" was about me being spiritual and "following my bliss." If somebody had an issue with that, then they obviously weren't advanced enough in consciousness for me to worry about.
Yes ... arroganceandignorance apparently do gohandinhand.
Awake and aware
Heaven only knows how many years it took me to realize that "being in the now" actually means being present and aware of the many messages and informational nuances life is presenting at any given moment—mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. That this vast awareness is available to me no matter what I’m doing—making dinner or giving a talk, sitting in a meeting, making love or paying the bills.
It didn’t matter what I was doing. The important question was:
How aware am I about what's going on within me at any given moment in time? Outside me? About what's moving through me? Affecting me? Expressing as me?
How present can I be to what is present?
Am I aware my stomach is tense? That I'm rushing as if I have a deadline even while I'm doing something as mundane as washing the dishes? That my breathing gets shallow during transitions—even transitions as simple as leaving the house? Am I aware that my Virgo perfectionism is trauma masquerading as high performance?
Am I aware that the energy field at work is suppressive? That the sales manager angrily dressing down an associate at a meeting is actually acting out of fear and not anger? That the catty remark I make about her flows from envy and suppressed ambition?
Am I aware that the untested drug I'm supposed to take and give to my children is neither "safe” nor “effective?” That the flea and tick collar I'm placing around my puppy's neck is actually poison? That the lunch I rush through is filled with artificial ingredients guaranteed to produce indigestion?
How aligned is my identity with my actual lived expression? Do I firmly believe I am a positive and unbiased person and yet unconsciously act and make choices that reflect negativity and judgment?
Do I really align with what I'm saying about this issue and that? Or am I simply parroting my political programming?
Each and every one of us searches for individual expression and meaning. And yet who am I if I’m relentlessly indoctrinated from cradle to grave about what to think, do and say?
How can I safely and authentically navigate this maze called life?
Grounding
I've finally realized that the key to "being in the now" and optimally moving through life is about being fully in my body. It's a total duh, but when I’m truly grounded in my body, I hear more, feel more, see more, sense and intuit more.
But unless I've been well trained in an esoteric physical art like Qi Gong, the chances that I'm acutely aware of my body and its myriad subtle energetic messages at any given time are pretty slim.
Even being a professional athlete doesn't guarantee body awareness. Often being a pro jock simply means I'm better able to push and override the body as needed. I'm trained in a certain way, and can ask the body to do certain things and perform certain feats. But that's not sensitivity, awareness, and presence.
Runner's high can carry me off on a wave of euphoria even as my knee is about to give out as I'm running down the highway, oblivious to the car going too fast onto the verge into the bike lane behind me.
And if I've ever been slapped? Punched? Screamed at? Threatened? Generally abused? If I've been trained to combat. If I’ve been to war. If I've spent a lot of time playing violent, bloody video games. Watched a lot of violent, gory TV shows and movies?
The message is VERY clear indeed: The body is NOT a safe nor welcome place to be.
And if I've done a lot of drugs? If I’ve been spiritually trained to place my focus on leaving my body?
The higher the better?
Drugs are a temporary gateway to what can sometimes seem like almost omnipotent awareness … but they’re called drugs for a reason. They alter perception and then leave us feeling even more dull and perceptually crippled afterwards than ever. Which means we keep going back to the drug over and over again rather than developing more acute and expanded awareness on our own.
Eventually they can dull our daily awareness even further than normal. Plus, drugs are superb for opening holes in our energy field, leaving us vulnerable to interdimensional attack and penetration by negative entities.
Been there. Done that. No thank you.
If you're "spiritual," and you've been told to focus on your Higher Self, or your Christ Self, or your Spirit Body; if you've been encouraged to astral travel or meditate and get "out there" where the angels and God reside ... if you've been told over and over again how dense and gross the body is ... how spirit is finer and purer and better ... how heaven is so much more special than Earth because it's more spiritual ...
You've been programmed to be more “up and out” than “down and in.”
I remember attending a manifestation class taught by a master of sacred architecture. At one point, each participant got to sit in the "hot seat" and express what their dreams were to the group. When it was my turn, I recall sitting there, eyes closed and rolled up to gaze at my pineal gland, dreamily talking about my vision of life.
And the workshop leader kept snapping her fingers, saying "Hey! Wake up! Open your eyes and get present with me and the group! Stop floating off into space. How do you think you're ever going to generate enough juice to manifest your dreams if you're disembodied most the time?"
I was SO annoyed! How crass of this woman to keep interrupting me! Didn’t she realize I’d spent thousands of hours meditating, accessing bliss states? And yet ...
As I struggled to keep my eyes open and not drift off into La La Land, something about what she was saying clicked.
Hmmmm ... how can I generate enough power to manifest my dreams if I’m disembodied?
And hmmmm … if I think Earth is basically chopped liver and a crap deal, why should anything manifest for me? For that matter, why should I even bother trying manifest anything in the first place?
Head case
Last but not least, there's the almighty mind to deal with.
We live in a culture in which the intellect reigns supreme. The body is simply the gross vehicle lumbering around holding up the brain that's doing all the work. The overwhelming deluge of information that bombards us 24/7 keeps us chronically in our heads.
We totally believe what the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes said:
"I think therefore I am."
And as I think, so grows my ego … and thus evolves my reality.
Let me tell you another story that demonstrates what I mean.
My adult ego started to solidify late in life. At age seventeen, I remember writing in my journal about the strange intangible film that seemed to be descending over everything, distancing me from ... me.
Separating me from life.
It was vague, but disturbing enough to write about and ponder. At the time I actually wondered if this “distancing” was what adulthood was all about. For example, when I saw a flower, I was no longer like a little child, simply seeing a flower. Increasingly there was a “veil” between me and the flower—a veil comprised of all the things I now knew about flowers: my awareness of pollen and hay fever ads on TV, all the work entailed in planting and tending flowers in the garden, and the time I expected a corsage but my date forgot to buy me one.
Seeing a flower was no longer an act of pure presence and perception. Now, instead of engaging the flower, I was engaging my past and all the mental associations called “knowledge” that were telling me about the flower.
I was no longer the direct experiencer of life.
I was a head case—living with an unstoppable stream of information in my mind associated with everything I saw around me—a stream of information that now kept me from feeling fully present in my own life.[1]
Power house
The human body is the assemblage point for an almost infinite spectrum of energy fields and intelligences. It's the energetic gathering place of multidimensional sources, from the subtle and etheric realms down to the physically measurable electromagnetic and magnetic fields generated by all living cells, tissues, and organs, the human body as a whole, and the Earth body we walk upon.
I know this flies in the face of many esoteric teachings, but when we get fully "down and in" and so grounded in our bodies that we become aware of the presence and flow of all this multidimensional information, we are at our most potent and powerful.
And thus we are actually the most safe.
Aligned with Earth and all life intelligences across the cosmos, we stand as the crossroad of life itself. The whole universe comes together as us—infinite beings of pure love expressing through what my friend, soul alchemist Robin Duda in Santa Fe, calls the Rainbow Earth Body.[2]
I've talked about the power of aligning with nature in previous installments in this series, most notably in "Surfing the Zuvuya." How overall, the intelligence of the life force itself determines what manifests and what does not. How, bottom line, "Nature decides," as Jacqueline Hobbs, aka Oracle Girl, puts it."[3]
But here's the thing:
Nature is our nature.
Life R US. We are divine life made manifest. The face of God as it were.
The globalist Powers That Be have done their damnedest over the last few thousand years to convince us that the body is not the place to be. They've trained us to think that nature is aberrant—violent and cruel. They've twisted religions into pronouncing the body "dirty" and body functions as shameful and "animalistic." (As if that were anything to be ashamed of! Animals are some of the finest people I know.)
They've divided body and mind, emotions and spirit.
They've polluted the Earth and the food supply, poisoned the air and our minds, relentlessly driving us through divisiveness and conflict, into confusion, fear, and despair.
And what’s being offered as the answer? AI and more factoids. Virtual reality and 3-D headsets blinding us to the world, piping in other programmed realities to get lost in.
Um … not!
I don’t know about you. But if the human body is the power spot of the universe—the love channel of the divine—that’s where I’m placing my bets.
“Down and in” anyone?
Love and much aloha ~
[1] Montana, Cate, Excerpt from Unearthing Venus: My Search for the Woman Within, Watkins 2013
[2] www.sustainablelove.com
[3] www.oraclegirl.org
Share
Check out my recent interview with Regina!
https://www.gaia.com/video/cracking-the-matrix
Check out the book:
Cracking the Matrix: 14 Keys to Individual & Global Freedom
For thousands of years, every culture on Earth has described a hostile, invisible Intelligence bedeviling humanity, dragging us down. The Archons, AshShaytān, wetiko, windingo, e'epa, antimimos,Satan ... the names are legion.
Cracking the Matrixexplores the astounding history and nature of what humanity has erroneously labeled "evil" on this planet, helping people finally see the very real, negative, interdimensional influence that exists behind historic and current global events and our social decline.
The book outlines how to break free of this Force's ancient controlling agenda and how people can stand up in the power of their true spiritual nature, ready to create the New Heaven and the New Earth that have so long been prophesied.
About Cate Montana
I’m a professional journalist specializing in alternative medicine and health, and the author of several books, includingUnearthing Venus: My Search for the Woman Within[Watkins 2013], andThe E Word,Ego Enlightenment & Other Essentials[Atria 2017], and a spiritual novel titledApollo & Me.I have a master’s degree in psychology. A lot of TV, radio and podcast show hosts as well as listeners around the world have told me I’m an interesting and informative—even compelling—speaker. To which I say “Thank you.” Talking is something I enjoy doing even more than writing! (It’s more immediate and connected.)
I am extremely blessed to have been called to Maui and grateful every day to awaken here.
For more information you can reach me at www.catemontana.com and info@catemontana.com
