Each of us evolve and change; this is a delightful truth in our world. Thus, we are always offered new opportunities. Will this constant tide of evolution eventually bring us to the Age of Enlightenment? Will humanity discover a state of mind, where we no longer bomb our neighbors, or is the Age of Enlightenment reserved only for individuals to experience?

Belief, when experienced as a teacher without a name, enables us to enliven a kinship between the living part and the living Whole. Such sustained care begins to heal us. With humility, it is not our place to denounce what others believe in, but to use the sincerity of their example as an encouragement to find our own particular inlets into the Mystery of Life.

Every spiritual tradition, East or West, speaks about waking up as an essential part of progress on the path. Whether the goal is God, enlightenment, or the experience of bliss, it is blocked because almost everyone is asleep. But the injunction to wake up is vague and clearly not meant literally—we think we are awake unless we are asleep in bed. It’s very important, then, to clarify what it exactly means to wake up.

On the day of my first radiation treatment for breast cancer, I had a sudden thought during my morning meditation: “This is the fire that will burn away the imprints of all that came before.” Meaning, what we each carry around with us from our past, whether pain, suffering, loss, or uncried tears. Every human being faces challenges in life that because of their intensity imprint us deep inside and thus affect how we live day to day, with hesitancy or fear perhaps. When the imprints come to the surface and are released, freedom and peace arise. Mostly my life has been filled with love and happiness, but I have also had difficult experiences, including breast cancer and a lifelong fear of death/eternity. Ironically, this current cancer path has opened up a deeply soothing and expansive soul connection. Now I am at the last fiery gate. The phoenix stands before me.

Since life does not go backward, we wake up and get in touch with the possibilities of how we can begin to honor who we really are right now. We pull out the list in our shielded and protected heart and allow the memories to resurface of the individuals we longed to be when we used to play on the playground.

Human beings in general have been convinced that they are not capable in one area or more than one area. That programming and conditioning began when you were born. You were born into a family, a religion, a spirituality, a way of living, a community where the messaging, you are incapable, was continually reinforced.

In surprising ways, the notion of enlightenment is important in everyday life. In the West, the word “enlightenment” remains fuzzy, and most people would consider it exotic, foreign, difficult to reach, and reserved only for people with strong spiritual motivation and tremendous self-discipline.

If all of these assumptions are wrong, everything surrounding enlightenment would have to shift. In fact, each of these assumptions occupies a spectrum. There are yogic teachings that require strong motivation and enormous discipline, but there are also paths to enlightenment that are much easier, and these fit everyday lifestyles quite well.

Did you know that you’re already equipped with one of the most fundamental pieces of equipment to provide you with an endless supply of psychic information and guidance?

It’s your body! You need look no further than your own physical body for answers.

I got my first real lesson in listening to my body when I was involved in a near-fatal automobile accident. You probably remember me talking about this in my first book Born Knowing. The shock to my system from the accident resulted in my energy centers or chakras being forced open. I soon realized that my abilities, which I’d so often pushed away, were back with a strength and intensity that I’d never experienced before.

There are at least 7.8 billion ways of seeing a rainbow, each one perfect and true. A scientist sees refraction of light. A poet sees transcendent beauty. A child sees magic. A spiritual seeker sees the gateway to heaven. Someone who has suffered great loss—a loved one, a home, a job—may see a sign of hope in the midst of their pain. What if our individual experiences of the world, of Nature, are how we discover meaning in life, how we connect with our souls and find God, or Spirit? What if spiritual connection is not about struggling to understand mysteries but instead just opening our eyes to the extraordinary beauty before us? Step inside the rainbow itself, and a world of vibrant color and divine light opens up all around you.

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A lady was driving down main street, rushing because she was having a very busy day. She was coming upon a traffic light which was turning yellow and when the guy in front of her slammed on his brakes, she was furious. She blew her horn a few times, did some obscene sign language out the window, and acted extremely rageful. By this time a police officer saw what was going on, pulled up behind her, and ultimately pulled her over and took her to jail. In a couple of hours, he came to her jail cell and told her she was free to leave. She said, “I appreciate it, sir, however I still don’t know what I did wrong.” He said “Well, you have to see the experience from my point of view. On the back of your car, you have all these bumper stickers like ‘Let there be peace of earth’, ‘Global oneness’, ‘Love the world’, ‘Mom’s club against anger’ and I assumed whoever was driving could not be the cars’ owner but a thief who was driving a stolen car.”

Even though presence is becoming an experience and reality for so many people, there are still many points of resistance or rejection.

Another entry point into the truth is that the absolute nature of reality, meaning the total truth about life, is that you are an infinite presence. You are infinite energy.  Even though this is the truth, the never ending truth or foundation of who you are, many of you are resisting it. 

Here is the main point of resistance you may be experiencing:

The body sometimes assists the soul’s journey with quite dramatic insistence. After I completed a third chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer, my body let my doctors know very clearly that it had reached its limit. I had allergic reactions in the form of an inflamed rash/bumps all over my body, edema (fluid retention), and breakthrough bleeding beneath the skin (to name just a few). Treatment 4 was cancelled. This particular segment of my spiritual “firewalk” was complete.  My body is now being given time to reestablish equilibrium and prepare for radiation in a few weeks.

Community is one of the most valuable aspects of a full, spiritual life. The people we surround ourselves with can support us in our growth and transformation and can help us live as our highest selves. 

As the year comes to a close, it’s a great time to reflect on your relationship to community. Do you have a community you can lean into during this time, or is it a time for you to prioritize making and nurturing new connections?

Every time you inhale and exhale, you are breathing the spirit of life, which is God. That’s the secret: The breath is God. In many languages, the word for spirit is the same as for breath. We hold this wisdom within the depths of our souls because it is what we are made of. Yes, we are human, but our humanity is composed of divine spirit. Your physical form is a sacred temple within which God experiences life on Earth. When you breathe, God is breathing. When you look through your eyes, God is seeing. When you look in another’s eyes, you are both gazing into pools of divinity. The only problem is that we have forgotten. We think that breathing is merely a physical phenomenon that arrives and departs with birth and death.

Either we are at peace wherever we are -- because this peace goes with us -- or what we call our peace is a product of some pleasurable condition over which we have tem­porary command. In situations like the latter, though largely uncon­scious to us, we sense that our peace is conditional. We know that we must work to keep certain prevailing conditions in place in order to remain at peace. And this, of course, means that we will resist any movement that threatens our desired estate. Clearly such a ten­tative peace is not true peace at all, because it dwells side by side, in league with an unseen conflict that is a basic requirement of its very existence!

In 2007, I attended a weekend retreat at Omega Institute with six Nobel Peace Laureates.

During this retreat, the 800+ people in attendance were updated about various situations that were currently occurring in the world. I listened to Nobel Laureates’ stories and felt their experiences and pain, as some described how they had risked their lives for the greater good of humanity.

At first, I questioned if I, Temple Hayes, was even making any difference at all for humanity. As I listened and processed what was shared, I became angry about our cultural values that condone greed and need. However, when I reflected and allowed myself to look at these talks from an Enlightened Rebel perspective, I began to see a common thread. I realized the “missing” within our society today is we have become desensitized to Life Rights. We are forgetting to teach our children the value of life in all living things. We need to engage ourselves in teaching our children the value of nature and life. We have policies that dominate over principles. We are bombarded with similar and repeated events in the news media that can leave even the most Enlightened Rebel feeling powerless, overwhelmed, and apathetic.

Everything can truly be on earth as it is in heaven, when the time of separation is over and the time of unification is at hand. Unification with God, unification with all others, and with every living thing. This is what God has come to tell us once more through the messengers of today. You will know them as God’s messengers because they will all be bringing the same message: We Are All One. This is the only message that matters. The fact that you have so far failed to receive it (you have heard it often, but you have failed to receive it) is what has caused every misery, every sorrow, every conflict, every heartache in your experience. It has caused every murder, every war, every rape and robbery, every assault and attack, mental, verbal, and physical. It has caused every illness and dis-ease, and every encounter with what you call death. The idea that we are not One is an illusion.

The human race has been living with illusions for a long time. This is not because the human race is stupid, but because the human race is very smart. Humans have understood intuitively that illusions have a purpose, and a very important one. Most humans have simply forgotten that they know this. And they have forgotten that their forgetting is itself part of what they have forgotten – and therefore part of the illusion. Now it is time for humans to remember.

The Solstice is an especially opportune time for us to begin to recognize that we are the light. We are that which is revealing.

Life is not about seeking, it's about revealing. What is here for us to reveal is pocketed away in the darkness, which is the space where we come into contact with the rest of who we are.

We're here to bridge the languages of the light and the dark so that we bridge the worlds of the known and the unknown.

As we step into the wholeness of our being we no longer hold those worlds of light and dark as separate from each other. When we steward our creativity, an aspect of us beyond the logical, thinking mind, we allow the miraculous to occur with every breath, and step, that we take.

You recognize that you can't do it wrong, you can only take longer to consciously reveal the Essential Self. As you learn to trust the Self, you begin to step into your creative essence and live as you are intended to live – as Creator.

This is our time to shine. It is your moment to come forth as the light that you are and weave it into the canvas that is your life.

I wasn’t sure whether I needed to set my clock forward an hour or back an hour. After he so confidently gave me his answer, I questioned him, “Are you sure?” Being the subtle character that he was, my dad said to me, “Why did you call me if you did not plan to believe the answer I gave to you?” This experience has stayed with me most of my adult life, for I reflect about it
in a deeper way now. He was right, of course. Why would I call upon him if I did not have faith and trust in his answer? From various experiences with him in my youth, my father had rarely witnessed my total trust in him. I had seen him respond to so many events in such a reactive and insane way that I could never completely relax, let go, or be myself around him.

What if you were to allow your emotions to become devotion, instead of being suppressed?

When the thinking mind is overworking, we have a tendency to generate a life of rigidity and fixed emotions. Our actions in the world become mentally driven, and we lose touch with the essence of what matters most in life.

We are in the midst of the Holy Days, a time of year when light is more easily accessible and, no matter our specific circumstances, we are each gifted with this light. We get to choose to receive this delight, joy, love, and presence that is so available to us now. 

Joy is present as we embrace all emotions – even the ones we don’t typically like to feel – because they are an attempt to ground the Self. All emotions are expressions of love trying to organize into a system of flow. Each is equal and necessary for your wholeness to land here, in a body.

Through the power of free-will choice, forgiveness, and our creative capacity, we each have the ability to take any energy – maybe you're experiencing life circumstances that feel black and white, rigid, or dull – and open into a full-color life experience.