Author: Aerin Alexander

Categories
Community

Beth Hartley in the Spotlight

Dear Being Energy Community:

My name is Beth Hartley and I am currently an Alaska Statewide Mentor, a position funded by the State of Alaska and run by the University of Alaska to support beginning teachers that have moved to teach in rural Alaska.

The vision of the Alaska Statewide Mentor Project (ASMP) is that every student in Alaska has the benefit of a great teacher. The mission is to give new teachers the support they need to succeed. Not only are these young adults new to teaching, they are new to village culture and the unusual exigencies of living in rural Alaska, often partly off the grid (inclusive of “honey buckets” i.e., indoor, rustic, non-flush toilets).

The resiliency the teachers demonstrate as they rise to the, often, unexpected demands of teaching in the bush is truly inspiring, even as I help wipe away tears, shoulder burdens that can’t be shared otherwise, and still praise and push their practice on behalf of the village students that depend on them for academic success.

I have lived 25 years in Alaska – an adventure from the start! I came up as a Bilingual/ESL (English as a second language) specialist and trainer serving villages around the state then settled into the larger community of Anchorage to serve as a bilingual/ESL teacher and specialist, and finally to “retire” to take this new position with the State.

Aside from my primary work, I love to work as a Special Olympics Alpine Ski Coach, and as a driver for the Horse Drawn Carriage Company; both great ways to stay active in the blustery winter months.  James, my partner, and I love to travel the world and experience new places, people and cultures in our “free” time. World travels – along with moving to Alaska – have been dreams manifested.

Which brings me to the practice of Being Energy and the legacy that engendered it. As I have reflected and dreamed in our Path with Heart classes, I have come to realize that my work as a mentor is serving as a recapitulation of my career; that I have accessed intent and intent has accessed me to move me in this direction, cleaning up my path and dusting my link with intent along the way to make me most suitable for service to this unique constellation of students and teachers. Participating in the various classes provided by Being Energy has also provided a network of friends and resources all over the world – one of the best gifts a “warrior traveler adventurer” could ask for!

Categories
Tools and Tips

How do You Love?

Dear Being Energy Community: 

How do you Love? Where in your body do you find the feeling of Love?

We asked these questions and more in our first class of the new Path with Heart Series: “The Art of Moving the Assemblage Point: Jumping Grooves” as part of our exploration to assemble new perceptions and awareness.

Seers of ancient Mexico recognized that our ability to perceive the physical and the abstract occurs through a center of cohesion, which they called “the assemblage point.” They understood that we interpret the world through thought-feeling patterns that govern our behaviors and color our perceptions.

When the assemblage point shifts, we are able to transcend our usual states of consciousness to experience new levels of awareness. “Jumping grooves” is the shifting to new positions of the assemblage point. How we shift, by assembling our perception of ourselves and the world is an art that can be learned.

Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda one day, while hiking in the Sonoran desert that, “…we (human beings) are an awareness encased in our hearts”. LOVE or AFFECTION, as Carlos Castaneda preferred to call it, is a powerful unifying force that acts to bind our awareness, and it influences our physical, emotional and cognitive development. It is a guiding force that causes us to act intelligently, from confidence and it is one of the most powerful tools for moving the assemblage point.

The feeling of love, belonging, compassion, understanding, affection, fondness, warmth, care, friendship, tenderness, all of the above, can shift the assemblage point, can help us transcend fears, resentment, and pain.

Take action:
We continue in the upcoming classes to individually explore and to look in depth at the question, “HOW DO I LOVE?” It becomes a way that we can track how this force manifests in ourselves, in our day-to-day actions.

Specifically:

  • Find three actions that you will do daily, this week that will become an expression, a manifestation of LOVE
  • Notice how the consistent practice of these three actions will not only move your assemblage point, but also sustain that position of unconditional LOVE.

We invite you to share the results of your experiences in the Comments Section below

Have a loving week!

Categories
Community Events Stories of Power

A Crack Between Worlds – Returning Home

We just arrived in Los Angeles after a week in Chichén Itzá, the most enigmatic City legacy of the Mayas where we taught our workshop and training called “A Crack Between Worlds”. We are truly honored and thankful. We are filled with colorful images and sounds from the jungle around us, and we are experiencing “the crack between worlds”. As Javier, a professor and psychologist participant of the workshop said it last Monday: “I feel energetic and at the same time fluid, allowing daily events to show up and flowing with them. I am quiet and at the same time enjoying all”

We mentioned in our announcement that “the crack between the worlds” is an opening in our consciousness that makes way for new experiences of being and states of heightened awareness. And that is what we all experienced there and still vibrating right now.

Chichén Itzá welcomed our offerings and received us with love and respect. From the hotel staff to personal at the archeological site, all greeted us with delight. Our venue, a “palapa” (dwelling without walls), was surrounded by tress and vegetation, brimming with crickets and birds. The food, the large rooms, the carved wood furniture, details in the windows, vivid paintings, musicians playing rancheras, everything seemed orchestrated by the universe to come to enhance our experience of spiritual growth and heart opening. We even enjoyed swimming in the fresh water pools!

We meditated on the Observatory, also called “el Caracol” , where a large black bird sat at the very top expanding its wings. This temple, aligned with the movements of the planet Venus, inspired us to see our lives as cycles. We identified and wrote about cycles from before we were born all the way after death. It helped us to see the trajectory of our lives, our path with heart, and our legacy.

On Sunday evening, we sat at the pyramid of Kukulcan, the feathered serpent, astonished by an indescribable sunset in silence and awe.

We felt alive by the beauty we could see with our eyes and the presence of the temples buried under the ground. We breathed in knowledge described not only on its monuments and buildings by also on its mystery and unknown layers of existence.

We saw the butterfly resting on the Chacmol’s chest, and felt in our foreheads a band of stars. Thank you to our ancestors for allowing this event to happen. Thank you to all our teachers, students and friends walking on the Toltec paths with us.

With infinite love,

Aerin and Miles

Categories
Tools and Tips

A Magical Practice to Embrace the New Year

Dear Community,

A few days ago during the powerful Solstice time, you may have experienced the longest night or the longest day of the year depending on where you live. As we approach the end of 2013 and the beginning of a new journey around the Sun, we welcome light as well as darkness—the flow of contraction and expansion, to guide us to growth, wisdom, compassion and enlightenment.

To prepare for the transition towards a new cycle, Carlos Castaneda taught us to follow a specific practice that we have done for years.

First, you want to clear up space in your home, remove clutter, clothing that you are not using, clean cabinets and drawers. Vacuum your floors and water your plants. Clear your windows and exude a receptive feeling of openness and readiness. If you can, get this step done before December 31, or throughout that day.

We are aiming at cleaning our living space, physically and energetically. In summary, there are 4 ways to clean:

to throw things away that are not really relevant or needed
b. to give things away to let the energy continue with someone without your same personal history with it.
c. to dust off, wipe, wash your living quarters or at least a selected part of it like bedroom and desk area
d. to rearrange things; change the placement of things to renew the energy flow of the place

Secondly, on December 31 target your desk, organize bills and papers and clear space to sit to write a list of dreams and projects for the new year. Follow these steps:

Mentally review what dreams and projects you were able to accomplish in 2013. What new relationships you have established? what came to a closure? What new insights, information you have learned about:

Your health and nutrition
b. Your emotions
c. Your thoughts
d. Your family and community
e. About the larger community of our planet Earth

The basis of this part is to review and distill the energy from the year that ends. To recapitulate what stood out from our life this year so that we enter the New Year that starts carrying more consciously what we experienced.

Make a list and name that list 2013. Noticed if as you write new insights or ideas come.
3. Make a new list on a second piece of paper (or type it) and name it 2014.

In the area of family and friends, what would you like to accomplish in 2014? What do you want to intend in this area?
b. In the area of work?
c. In the area of health?
d. In the area of your personal development?

After cleaning and reviewing, we set up our dreams for the next year.

Once you have the lists, let them “rest” for a moment on your desk and continue whatever you need to get done or commitments you may have.
5. Around 11:30 pm your local time (yes, BE AWAKE) retreat to your desk and set yourself in silence to connect with your projects for the new year. You may like to start wiring an outline of what you would like to do, or draw a picture of yourself getting the job of your dreams, etc.
6. Stay as log as you want, just be sure that around 12:00 midnight you are connected with the universe and with your personal life path.

As the wave runs across into the Ney Year, we ride it engaged in doing a small action for the new dreams that we are intending.

Carlos Castaneda would tell us that at midnight the light of the Spirit or universe comes and “watches us”, a force descends upon us and it is a very powerful moment to be present and aware in order to feel it and become acquainted with it.

As we set our collective intentions and send best wishes to all, we join you in your joy and expansion, in creating new inspiring projects, from a pie recipe to a way of talking with kindness to those you don’t like, we welcome all.

Below you will find some of our upcoming events for 2014, to gather energy and nourish our body/mind and bring us to states of deeper calm and silence. These are essential to sustain your practice and set forth your projects for 2014.

We’d love for you to join us and we keep radiating light and love from our community to the whole world.

A special acknowledgment and thanks to all the leaders and teachers in our community!Aerin Alexander, Miles Reid and everyone at Being Energy

Categories
Community Events

“A Crispy Click”

GLISTENING-IN-DREAMING AT OUR RECENT WORKSHOP IN MOSCOW

We just came back from a very profound experience in Moscow. This was our third workshop and training in Moscow, in the same martial arts studio. Each participant came with different  personal intents, in search of wellbeing, silence, answers to questions, in search of uplifting, inner calm and confidence.

Two hours into the workshop and the room was filled with light exuding enthusiasm, openness and hope. We practiced three series of long sequences of movements that allows us to find our own pulsation, our core vibration.  We sat for long minutes to listen to ourselves and find our treasured golden light. Eyes were beaming as we kept calling and honing dreaming attention, finding focusing in our dreams, what do I want, what I am here for, what my priorities are.

And by Sunday the sun came, warming up not only the room but inside and outside our souls. Or hearts opened, we vibrated with each click of the sticks we used with the movements. We found out that each moment of our lives is a click. We can click heavily and opaque, or we can click a crispy sound, we have a choice. This is what our life can be, “a Crispy Click”.

Everyone took home sequences of movements to renew their body and soul and techniques to redirect their attention and align their daily life priorities.

We received so much love and awareness from this event. Thank you all of you that made it possible,.Love,
Being Energy

Categories
Uncategorized

Can Movement Define Emotion?

This fascinating study looked at how posture and movement can effect one’s emotional state. The study measured the effects of movement, motor imagery and observation of whole-body expression (body language) of emotions—happiness, fear, sadness—on the affective state. The findings show that the deliberate control of motor behavior can regulate feelings.

These findings highlight a key element of what Being Energy incorporates into every class and workshop. Read the full article here.