Liberation On My Lunchbreak

Our body is the poetry of our lives. Within it is our story as it reacts to our choices and builds upon what is asked of it. It holds the rhythm of our history and moves with grace even when we are unaware. If you want to find the “now”, ask yourself, “What is the condition of my body? How am I standing? How am I breathing? Do I feel any warm sensations, or pain and where are they felt?”
If you feel as though you have lost touch with the condition of your body, I suggest taking a class with a good yoga teacher. If yoga is not your thing, then go for a walk or run out doors, or jog on a treadmill. Spend time feeling the body in motion, feeling it push and pull, feeling the lungs as they reach for breath. Feel your heart pump as it feeds the body prana (oxygen, vital life force). Bring your awareness into the fiber of your muscles as they work to fulfill your requests.
Get to know your body again! Cultivating the awareness of the inner self will be difficult if the connection with the vehicle that navigates you through life is lost. The Divine is hidden within our very cells. We do not need to look far to see our truth; it is right under our nose. In fact, it is our nose.

From Liberation On My Lunch Break
poems & insights by Jason Galbraith

I hear this too often, “you should be grateful that you have a job, you could be unemployed.” Yes I should be grateful to be employed, that’s for sure, and I am. But not to the point where I stop believing and dreaming that I can create my own stream of money, that I can build my own schedule, and live my life the way I choose. I’m not going to settle for spending 40 hours a week fulfilling the wants of someone else, putting pieces in place that I care little about for a guy making three times the amount of money I do. Should we let the weak economy convince us to accept second best? No way! I’m tired of hearing it!
   Why should I be grateful? Because life sucks? Because life is hopeless? Some employers love when their employees perceive the world this way. This means they can pay them as little as possible, yet demand from them more. When people are starving, some folks with full fridges string the hungry along with crumbs and tell them, “well shouldn’t you be grateful you are at least getting something?” Heck No! Everyone deserves abundance! I’m not talking about a house filled with “stuff”. I’m talking about being creative, thriving, productive, enthusiastically joyful members of the infinitely blessed world. We should be grateful for that. We should know we are that, ask for the best and quit settling for the least.
   Appreciate what is blessing you not for the sake of standing still, but for the realization that you still have your footing, and because of that you can expand and grow. Thrive, don’t survive! Picture a man hanging off the edge of a cliff by the tips of his fingers. The man could say, “Well at least I’m alive”, but he isn’t! If he just hangs there eventually he will become weak and fall. Is that how we want to live? If I’m that guy on the cliff, I’m grateful I’m still alive and well enough to climb up and off that ledge. I won’t accept a life of “hanging in there”. There is much more to it than preparing to fall.
   When we stop believing that we deserve the best we say, “well at least I have a job” and pretend to be grateful. But real gratitude is a gift we should not waste. It is the realization that life is exactly the way it needs to be for the purpose of our personal growth.

Ask yourself what you want in this life, what actions make you feel whole, what hobbies or talents give you thought seizing enthusiastic joy; those things are your God given talents and you have the right and responsibility to share them with the rest of us. If I had ignored the urge to write or teach yoga, I would not be honoring myself, or my readers and students. I would not be acting out of true love. We are given these things so that we can share them. Have you ever walked under a selfish tree that withheld its fruit from you? One that said, “I know I am an apple tree, but I don’t want to grow apples. Isn’t it enough that I have leaves?” The purpose of life is to share your apples.

Within everything that is wonderful is some element of struggle and suffering. Even a grand and beautiful tree is rooted in soil composed of fallen trees, and leaves, deceased animals and dead plants. Nothing that ever arose to become great in its expression of life has eluded pain and suffering. It’s how we see our suffering that defines how we allow it to shape our lives. Pain and struggle are simply another color on the canvas of life. That it is viewed as something to be avoided is where our mistakes come. In our effort to avoid our struggles, all we find is more struggles. We have not within us always the capacity to understand the turns and twists of God’s great plan for us. Only when we have the courage to surrender and trust that what is moving through our life is part of God’s Divine plan, do we then lesson our resistance to it and begin to align with it. The question should not be, “Why do I struggle”, but “Where am I being led”. And that question should be asked with an open curiousness and faith. Look within your heart, the answers are there beneath the worry, beneath the doubt. There is nothing that happens in life that is not born from an often incomprehensible love

The only true value in life is turning our attention to the Divine. It is not found in material things or in the alluring eyes of others. It is discovered within our own heart and, from its wisdom, is reflected in what we see. It shines with clarity and purity, but only shines as such when our eyes first look within. Wholeness only comes from that, never does it arrive in us through external pursuits. It is a hungry hole that can only be filled with awareness and love, and an understanding and knowing that what we have already is enough to support our quest for divinity.

Faith is the realization that you are already apart of life’s big adventure, that there is no future, there is only right now and that life’s rewards rest peacefully in our hands in this very moment.
Within hope is an element of non-control, As if things could go either way, good or bad. We control our ability to feel blessed, to feel good regardless of the adventure each day presents.
Faith is a deeper knowing that we are as abundant as the universe. There is no need for hope when you already understand that you are blessed. You can have hope that things will work in your favor, or you can have faith that everything is working in your favor.

There is value in understanding first our own suffering and our own humanness, and second, broadening that understanding to reveal a kind and caring consciousness that elevates our sense of humanity to a height that allows for expansive space and liberation amongst us all. Through this open space emerges the deeper realization that in fact what we are experiencing now is a heaven on earth and from this realization we begin to live with greater purpose and with greater love. The suffering of our past will be shed and all future suffering will be seen clearly for what it is; another color on the wheel of bliss. All experiences through this consciousness, in this body, behind these eyes are pointing to the Divine. Only when our ability to see this becomes a reality will we then reach within for its light so that we may become a beacon for it.

from Liberation on My Lunch Break, poems & insights by Jason Galbraith
The Sun intends to shine, but also creates the clouds that veil its light.
So it must be generous and gracious.
If the Sun is our greatest friend, and is the creator of life, and is in everything, than are not all things our friend. How can even darkness not be the Sun, how can even pain not have its grace? If we see it’s Rays in our dismays, can they be dismays after all, or are they more accurately the wisdom of the Sun un-shading itself?
If the Sun is the creator of the clouds that veil its light, can’t it also with its own warmth become unveiled?

Are your imperfections more righteous than mine?
Your impurities more pure?
I ask this as a mist of silence settles
three feet above an uncrossed field.
Who will cross first?
Should I?

 Perhaps I cannot forgive you for your pride,
and your unwillingness to meet me halfway.
With you, is there halfway or only your way?
Can the world be more than yours?
Can it be mine also and your neighbors?

 So that I may be clear, my words are not meant to offend.
Yet I know I can be offensive.
You see we are all in many ways human.
There is no person more person than another.

 If you can see your heart and hold it
like you once held me,
you’d know that it beats fast and slow,
that it is shaded yet shiny,
misshapen, yet in perfect form it patters like a drum
resounding rhythmic undertones of love.

There is nothing that is not love
and mistakes only bring light where ignorance hides understanding.
A broken fence is mended when light reveals its break.
Love is that light.
Forgiveness is the lumber and nails.

From the book “Liberation on My Lunch Break poems & insights by Jason Galbraith”
“Legs intend to walk.
Lips were made to talk.
The good that we can be, we already are.
There is no direction to take except to wear it,
to move with grace through space.
Realizations are reality if occupied by the heart;
once realized, it already is and from that knowing go.

Joys are the limbs of purpose putting the pieces of our humanness into place.
Without question,
the reward for our faith, for our trust and for our courage to act,
is a life of enthusiasm lived in our own way.
I will not hold the future hostage; the future is now.
I will not imprison potential; I am my potential.
Hope chokes what already is.
Faith embodies it!”

Faith vs Hope�
I speak and write about hope often, how it really has no use in the field of creating the life you desire. With hope, things can go two ways, either the way you want or the way you hope it will not go. To create the life you want, you must have faith that the life you already have is perfectly designed so that you may form and bring into the light the most beautiful you possible. With this faith comes surrender to the divinity that resides within. All of the answers to the questions we have do not dwell beyond the body or the atmosphere of consciousness we are navigating through in this very moment. It is from within that the shapes and forms of outward expression are born like a child that emerges from inside its mother. It is the root of insight and inspiration, of wisdom and intuition. Having faith in our heart’s ability to provide the answers for our life makes hope quite a useless thing. Begin to have faith in the “you” that you are right now. To be who you are right now wrapped around the same divine consciousness that connects us all is the most wonderful blossoming of humanness.