A Spontaneous Moment of Glory
​by Anna

I am a musician. It is my greatest passion. Unfortunately, my chronic health situation has led me to relinquish the way I used to express this passion through performance. My body just can’t handle the stress. But I still play and sing daily (when energy permits), and record and post on-line now and then. 
I love to go to live concerts when I can and recently I had the opportunity to hear a  wonderful pianist/composer by the name of Alexandra Streliski. Her style is introspective, emotional, soothing, and fits well with me. I was a bit anxious about going as I never know how my body is going to be on any given day and particularly in the winter when going out at night is an effort. But every time I had an anxious thought, I would repeat the mantra I fortuitously picked out of Matt Kahn’s card deck that morning: “Only the best opportunities come to be whether I envision them or not.”
 
Luckily, it turned out to be one of my better days and I enjoyed the show very much. At the very end of her performance Alexandra came back out for an encore and instead of sitting down at the piano, she asked the audience if someone would like to come up and play one of her tunes or anything else. For many long minutes, no one got up. She tried to entice us to be brave; a brief applause started when a woman got up but, false alarm, she was heading to the exit rather than to the stage. Suddenly, my heart started beating very fast. It felt like my body knew before my conscious mind did that I was going to go up there. I told my heart “no, no, we’re not doing this, no way” and it slowed again. A few more moments go by and still no one is getting up and my heart starts up again. So finally I jump up and head down to the stage to thunderous applause (there was palpable relief in the audience that finally the tension of waiting was released by a willing participant).
 
Alexandra greets me, asks my name and introduces me to the audience. I sit down (my heart beating normally by then) and do what I do every day at home; I take a deep breath, put my fingers on the keyboard and let them loose to improvise and let the music come through. The atmosphere in the concert hall was already amazing from the entire performance we had witnessed so I rode that wave and the sounds were gorgeous (and the amplified concert grand as well!). It ended soon enough, I got up and took a bow as I had done many times as a performer back then and in a daze turned to our host who congratulated me and led me to go back off the stage. The entire audience of 1,500 people were on their feet applauding, this time not my courage, but my music. I got a standing ovation!
 
I had previously never played for such a huge audience. As I reached the stairs to get off the stage, I stopped for a moment and looked up at the people and took it in. The feeling was unlike anything I had ever experienced; I felt fully received, appreciated, valued, and love was just pouring into my heart. I took another bow, this time, a true heartfelt one of authentic gratitude. Afterwards, Alexandra did play an encore and the concert ended. People were coming up to me to congratulate me. I felt like a star! I felt inside me the light that I am and the bliss of allowing it to shine.
 
It occurred to me later that all those years ago as a performer, I had to struggle to gain the joy and success that a performance brings; hours of work every day to learn the pieces (I played classical music then), the anxiety before the concert (I usually wanted to die and would promise myself that I would never do it again), the mind focus it took to stay centred enough to play all the notes correctly and the pressure of getting them “right” and all that for a brief moment of joyful bliss afterwards. It would take months and months to prepare for an hour long concert. So much effort and work. And here, I received the same sense of accomplishment and success with such ease! No anxiety beforehand (only a brief bout of fear), no difficulty concentrating (presence was with me), no wrong notes as it was all improvised, and no planning other than to get there. What a gift from the universe. To me, that was what I consider a fifth dimensional way of shining my light…. easy, effortless, spontaneous. 
 
As I lay awake that night (pretty much all night after that kind of excitement), I contemplated whether this was a sign from the universe showing me my path, perhaps back to sharing my music live. And yet, when I envisioned doing that, the familiar sense of pressure and anxiety came over me and it didn’t feel right. So I came back to the here and now and I take this event as purely a gift of the moment. I don’t need to re-live it by performing again elsewhere. I have that feeling of satiated bliss which I can come back to anytime I need to revisit my worthiness. All I have to “do” is be present for Life to show me the next step and to leap when that is what is called for. 
 
I could never have predicted such an amazing opportunity (yet I allowed it by repeating  that only the best opportunities come to be) and I am so glad that I overcame the fear and took the leap… right up onto the stage! A moment I will cherish forever more!
 
(An added note: a few days before this epic expansion, I was in a heavy contraction where I felt extremely discouraged and negative about myself and my life and yet facing these emotions allowed me to surrender control of my small self to an extent I hadn’t experienced before. I believe this surrender allowed my energy to flow and expand like it did that night).

By Anna Brzeski

​I learned from spiritual teacher Matt Kahn the importance of asking questions in a way that is more aligned with our soul than with ego. For instance, if the ego wants to know, “what is my life purpose,” or “how do I heal my body,” or “how do I resolve this conflict” these questions are coming from a place of lack where I don’t believe I have what I need and do not know the answer. Whereas in fact, the answer is always readily available from a higher perspective (asking Spirit Guides or Source).

All answers and solutions are actually available in the here and now because time, from the soul’s perspective, is not linear. The past, present, and future all exist in this moment. This concept is not one easily understood by the conceptual mind but an analogy that is helpful is that when we are watching a movie, at the beginning, we do not know the ending, however, the ending has already been filmed and therefore, has already happened. In this moment at the beginning, the middle and end of the movie are present but simply unknown to us. Similarly, the present moment contains in it the past and the future. This is why The Council (from saralandon.com) are always telling us that “you are everything you wish to be, you already are.”
Given that we are already everything we wish to be, then I am already healed and whole and in a state of total well-being. So in order for me to find out how I got there, I ask this question, from my soul’s perspective: “Thank you for reminding me what choices I made, what I did differently, to resolve this matter.”
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It is also important to ask questions without looking for the answer. The power in the question isn’t in the answer but in the question itself. The mind will roam around looking for an answer if we let it but if we release the need to know right away, Life presents us either with direct knowledge that will come spontaneously, or with the energy and/or resolution which will happen on its own at the least expected moment and move us forward perfectly on our evolutionary path.
In the words of Mary O”Malley (from her book “What’s in the Way Is the Way”), “In some deep and profound way, the answer isn’t important. What is important is to simply ask the question, then bring your attention back to this immediate moment, allowing the question to work its magic from underneath your everyday awareness. Why is this so powerful? When you ask a question without looking for the answer, you are circumventing your mind and creating a space inside of you where the Intelligence of Life can be heard. It is guaranteed that Life will fill that space with the answer at the right time, for the energy of Life always fills a void.”
Here are some more examples of questions one can ask as suggested by Matt Kahn:
Thank you (my Spirit Guides, Source, etc) for reminding me of the life purpose I have already fulfilled.
Thank you Life, for reminding me of the healing that has already taken place.
Thank you Source, for reminding me of the Ascension that has already occurred.
Thank you Spirit, for reminding me of how aligned and grounded I already am.
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By Anna Brzeski 
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​As I wrote in my Intention for this blog, my desire is to create heaven on earth. I have always yearned for harmony and peace, a world free from aggression and violence. I had an “aha!” moment while listening to spiritual teacher Matt Kahn, realizing that we already have heaven here on earth; whether we experience it or not is a matter of perception. My head felt as if it turned around 360 degrees. I released my erroneous belief that everything I experience is either good or bad and for just one split second, I saw it all as being exactly what it was….. neither good nor bad, neither heaven nor hell…..  just….. there. In relative terms, this concept is difficult to understand, let alone to explain. But somehow, inside my body, I felt a letting go of this need to “create heaven on earth,” because it has already been created. Now all I have to do is to allow myself to experience it, open my eyes to a new world where all is exactly as it should be, empty of my judgement.
My living question is: I wonder how I can experience heaven on earth?
I am exploring my world with a new vision, as if it were already the heaven I have yearned for all my life. I practice by taking my glasses off and allowing everything to be out of focus, vague, unclear, new. I also ask myself every day what I could do that I’ve never done before, and throughout the day I wait for guidance. Sometimes ideas come to me to try a new food for instance, and other days, I spontaneously do something like take a detour and I realize later that it was my “new thing.” It doesn’t take much to experience life in a new way, and it makes living interesting and fresh. I am the kind of person who loves routine because it feels safe, but adventure is also very important to me and in the limited world of chronic illness, easy little adventures are the way to go.
Happiness means feeling you are on the right path every moment. You don’t need to arrive at the end of the path in order to be happy.
—Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Heart of the Matter“