Polaris speaks regularly to groups and during individual sessions.  Because we are all so intimately connected, we are helping each other learn.  Questions are part of the whole; they are just as empowering as the answers themselves.  Polaris is incredibly grateful for questions that open the door to shifts in perceptions, especially those that are applicable to a wide number of people:

Question: I want my life to be about making change and making the world a better place. Suffering captures my attention: war, hunger and social wrongs. Abraham says that the greatest good that I can do in this world is to live in peace and joy and give no attention to those issues. My nature is to wave a flag and confront those issues and change them. I don't know how to approach this. The greatest good that you can do on a community level is to be at peace with who you are. But first you must find out who you are. If the true manifestation of who you are is to create intervention with things that cause you emotional pain, then you need to be that!  If the true manifestation of who you are is simply to be at peace in your world, then that is what you need to be doing.

We encourage you at all times to maintain as strong a connection as you can with who you are, and what you manifest, what of yourself that you can present to the world and be that.  Every interaction that you have where you are as much of you as you can be is an interaction that will forever change that other person, or that group, or that community, or that idea.

You see, you simply just need to be who you are.

Question:  I'd like to ask about the ego, especially about how the word is used in our culture—it's often made out to be an enemy, something to be extinguished.  Obviously there is such a thing, and it is related to barriers and limitations to awareness.  I'm wondering how to bridge the gap; I have a negative reaction to the term.  Could you expand it?  And many people wish to extinguish the ego to obtain enlightenment.  Is there any benefit to that?

Let us explain the ego as we see it.  As you may have noticed, we seldom use the term "ego".  It has its roots in the English language in the psychological studies that were done about 100 years ago in western psychology and philosophy.  There is quite an emotional attachment to the word, and there is also an attachment to the entire didactic system of philosophy/psychology that was developed at that time.  In other words, use of the term "ego" tends to evoke the intellectual, theoretical, and the teacher/student dynamic; the teacher has all the power and the knowledge, and the student is the one who being "fixed", manipulated, or is learning from the "teacher".

This is a term we prefer not to use. However, in the work of Eckhart Tolle we see that this term has a much broader meaning, and that is fine!  It can be difficult for the individual, however, to apply that broader meaning and to maintain the sense of it within the more narrow scope of connotation that the word evokes.

In terms of extinguishing what we feel is meant by the ego in order to attain enlightenment, what we feel is meant by this term ego, this broader sense, is simply conscious awareness of Self.   This is also what has been termed in the Michael Teachings as "personality"; you can think of those two terms along the same lines. Ego is the conscious awareness of Self.

To attain enlightenment by extinguishing the ego would connote that enlightenment is attained only by awareness of All That Is, rather than by the perceived limitations of Self, however far the Self extends.  In many ways this is consistent with our view of "enlightenment": it is a momentary conscious awareness of the interconnection and oneness of everything, of All That Is, including Self.  In other words, enlightenment is about turning the notion of Self inside out.

However, we do not see this as a state that people are necessarily capable of maintaining for more than a fragmentary flash.  Having done so at one time, however, allows you to make your way back to that moment energetically and to bring a sense of that awareness into your everyday life.  There is some validity and truth to the notion that "extinguishing ego leads to enlightenment."   However, using those words has a negative connotation.  They imply that conscious awareness of Self is somehow a negative thing and therefore must be erased.

In our view, even though it can be useful to have those momentary, fragmentary awarenesses of the oneness of everything, it is more useful to simply give as much attention as you can possibly muster into whatever is happening to you at any given moment.  In other words, being fully present in your body—in the space around you, in the world around you, in the situation you are in, in the emotion you are feeling—is more easily obtainable and more likely to bring vast changes in you and how you experience life joyfully.

In other words, being immersed in the moment, as much as you can be, is an easy way to bring joy to your life.

Question: What is mindfulness?

Energetically, when you have focused your attention and presence in the present moment, you are connecting all of your energetic molecules to the rate of vibration that is occurring with all the other energetic molecules that surround you.  In other words, when you are present in a given moment—perfectly present—then the vibration of you and your being perfectly matches the vibration of what's around you.  There is a sense of flow.  There is a sense of peace.  And there is a sense of timelessness.

That is mindfulness.

Question: Is the state of mindfulness possible to maintain all the time? Is this something we should aspire to? It is theoretically possible to be perfectly mindful in absolutely every given moment.

However, we don't necessarily suggest this as something to aspire to.  For one thing, it is quite difficult to attain.   There are constant distractions and demands upon your attention and focus.  It is the rare person who has the luxury of time to not be drawn away from the present moment except under certain circumstances throughout the day.  If you were, for instance, a hermit living alone in the caves up in the mountains, constant mindfulness is something you could likely attain—provided you had the wherewithal to find enough to eat and to meet your other daily needs without a great deal of attention.  But most of you don't live like that!  And expecting yourself to attain some idealistic perfection only sets yourself up for failure and self-judgment.  That is not what we are trying to accomplish here.

We do, however, encourage you to make the space within your day on a reasonable level to find some sense of mindfulness.  Even just two minutes is something that you can likely find time for on a regular basis.  And just those two minutes will be of benefit to you.

Question: What are the benefits from living a life of constant mindfulness?  And since this is almost impossible to attain, what could I gain from practicing mindfulness for only a few minutes a day?

There is much less wear and tear on the physical being when you are in that state of flow and timelessness.  When you are vibrating in such a way that perfectly matches the vibration of all that is around you, it is as if everything within you is suspended for that moment. Indeed, you have created a space that is outside of the confines of time as you know it.  Therefore, during perfect mindfulness, the physical aging process does not take place.

For those two minutes your body will not be growing older. Now, is this of benefit to you?  Most people would likely say yes!  The benefits are multi-fold:  not only do you escape two minutes of wear and tear on your body energetically and physically, but you also gain a pathway to finding that sense of flow at other times during your day.  When you are used to performing this exercise of pure attention for two minutes a day, after a few weeks of doing this you will have found other ways to create that sense of timelessness in your life throughout your day.  So if you are having a high degree of demand upon your focus and attention, and you feel stressed by this (as most people do), your being will have already found a pathway to those two minutes of flow in your life. You will be able to apply that pathway to the more chaotic and stress-creating demands of your day.

At the very least, practicing mindfulness helps you reduce stress.  It helps you find new ways of becoming peaceful, and people who engage in such a practice are also able to look for other ways of finding the same flow within their day even when not faced with chaos and stress.  In other words, once you are used to feeling what it is like to be in that space of timelessness, perhaps when you do other things you will be thinking about mindfulness for just a moment.

When we use the word gratitude, we would like you to imagine the vastness of the ocean.  Imagine all of the water that exists on your planet, and recall how it is all connected and how it is teeming with life—from very large to microscopic.

All of this exists as one cohesive connected unit without which there would be no life on your planet.

Imagine then, the  vastness of this—and its fullness and completeness—and while you hold that image in your mind, lay over it the word “gratitude”.

In other words, when we use the word gratitude we mean to express an understanding of the vastness, the fullness, and the completeness of your life.

In every moment you can experience a sense of gratitude by simply being present in that moment. There is no “thanks” involved. There simply is complete acknowledgement of What Is. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Question: Why are you teaching us?  What do you get out of it?

We receive simply from our connection with you.  You have so much to give and you don't realize it!

You don't see your connection to All That Is in the same way that we see it—but that doesn't mean that there is less of you to give to the All That Is.

We benefit from an energetic connection with you, just as much as you do from us or from any other being that connects with you energetically.  You are used to thinking of us and other teachers like us as being "greater" than you.  We don't see it that way.

We truly are peers.  We are learning from you.  You give to us.

We're grateful for this experience, and that is something we would like for you to take with you: the ability to think of yourself as just as great as anything else you can imagine in the universe.

You are as important as a star, a planet, a beam of light or a grain of sand.

It's all the same. It's all one.