One of our mentors, Sidney Banks, would often suggest for people to live in a beautiful feeling. To hear that, it could sound like a form of positive thinking. But as we've come to understand more about his teachings, we see he wasn't pointing to a feeling that we would call an emotion. He was pointing to something deeper.
Join us to hear more.
We've talked before about our true nature. How, who we are isn't our body or our thoughts or the roles we play. These things are always changing, and there's something about us that has not changed through all the years and different roles and responsibilities, achievements and difficulties we've experienced. We've always been there at the centre of it all, the steady awareness of what was occurring.
Look for yourself and see. Relax your focus of attention. Don't focus on any one thing, so hat youa re not attending to anything in particular, like thoughts, sensations, or anything in your visual environment. Just for a moment, relax the focus of attention and allow attention to be open and free. What is there?
Can you see that underneath all the activity of your thinking and your life is a calm ease aware of what is occurring? Something that is always there and doesn't change as everything it's aware of is constantly changing.
This may seem abstract, but think about this. Consider any war-torn area, or any area of conflict, and remove all the people. What remains? When all the people are gone, there is only what is there as its nature, which is peace. Do you see that?
Isn't that interesting, that underneath all the fighting and conflict in a region is the peace that is inherent to that region, even though we aren't aware of it because our attention is on the conflict.
Like this, underneath all of our joys and sorrows, all of our thinking and doing, is the peace and the love that is inherent to our true nature... even when we're not aware of it because our attention is on what's happening.
That peace and love is not an emotion that comes and goes. It is a beautiful feeling that is always there and always accessible when we allow our minds to settle and rest in our true nature, in the peace and the love that is underneath all of our activities and concerns in this life.
It isn't something that we create or bring into our lives through positive thinking or something we do. Emotions, feelings and the fruits of our actions come and go. But underneath all the comings and goings, there is this inherent peace and love that has a feeling associated with it. It isn't an emotion. Those come and go. But it is a beautiful feeling, and we think that's what Syd Banks was pointing people to.
This has been the source of great change in our lives, particularly in our relationships. When conflict comes up now, having discovered there is peace and calm beneath it when we let our minds settle, results in a very different experience and response to the situation. Much more peace, calm and love is experienced and expressed.
Explore this for yourself and let us know what you find.
The recipe this week is Mexican Corn Bites. We had a block party in our neighborhood recently and wanted to contribute a finger food type appetizer that tasted great even to non SOS-free (no added salt, oil or sugar) people, and this turned out to be a hit. A simple combination of corn, jalapeño, and red pepper in a gluten-free oat batter, baked in mini-muffin tins, is not only quick and easy, but very flavorful as well.
To your Amazing Health,
Connie and Bill
Mexican Corn Bites makes 24 “bites” (mini-muffins)
- ½ cup almonds
- 1 cup oat flour or corn meal
- 1½ cups rolled oats
- ¾ cup nutritional yeast
- 2 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- 2½ cups corn
- 1 cup blended with wet ingredients
- 1½ cups pulsed in with jalapeño and red pepper at end
- 1 cup salsa
- 1 tsp taco sauce or sriracha
- ¼ cup water
- 2 tsp vinegar
- 2 jalapeños, small dice
- 1 red pepper, small dice
Add almonds to food processor and process to medium chunk.
Add flour, oats (or corn meal), nutritional yeast, baking powder, cumin and coriander and blend well.
Add 1 cup of the corn, salsa, taco sauce or sriracha, water and vinegar and blend in well.
Add the other 1½ cups of corn, jalapeño and red pepper and pulse to fold into the batter.
Spoon into mini-muffin pans and bake at 375º for 30 minutes. I use silicone muffin pans so I can pop them out easily.
Let cool for 20 minutes before removing from pan.