This is your message. This is your way.
January 30, 2009 at 2:43 pm | In General Thoughts, meditation, wise self | Leave a CommentTags: energy, journey, meditation, path, space, stillness, way, wise self
I haven’t posted in a few days – but the meditation is still going strong. Shifting and morphing, but more powerful than ever.
I did an exercise with my Creative Healing class last night. I led them through a brief relaxation: grounding through their root chakra, opening through their crown chakra, and feeling light/love/peace flowing straight down through their core.
Then I asked them to envision the person they hope to be, the Wise Self that they’re aiming for. I had them ask this Self to write a letter to their current Being, explaining how to become the Wise Self. Here’s what my Wise Self had to say:
The more time you spend here, the more you get to know me, to know this space…this is not just where you hope to be; it is also your path to get there.
I know I keep saying this to you – and it’s because you keep asking. You keep asking for guidance, for expansion, for signs.
All of it – all the beauty and magic and wonder – it’s all here. Right here, in this very space you’re in right now.
This space is not the end; it is the path. It is itself. This is what they mean that it’s not the destination, but the journey.
In a very real way, the time you spend in this space is the precise joy that you are seeking. It does not just lead you to the joy; it is the joy.
That’s why I keep telling you to “stay with this,” – to keep coming to this space – because this is your key. It is your answer.
It is all you need to know, and all you need to do.
This is your message.
This is your way.
Ode to meditation – Day 21
January 28, 2009 at 4:40 pm | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, meditation | Leave a CommentTags: 21 Days to 21 Minutes, joy, meditation
It seems as though I skipped a day of blogging.
But rather than worrying about it, or making up an extra day, or applying any other left-brained thoughts to it, I’m simply going to let it go. The 28th of January was meant to be my 21st Day, and so it shall be.
It feels like I should be writing a farewell speech, a thank-you speech, a eulogy…something, anything, to signify the passing of these 21 Days. But while it has indeed been a special and note-worthy time – I’m just not feeling that it’s over. So to say goodbye to it, or act like it’s wrapping up, is a bit silly.
No, this meditation thing isn’t going away any time soon. It’s been good to me, and I plan to keep it around.
While I may not continue counting days (than again, I might), I will keep carving 21 minutes each day for inner stillness. And I will keep blogging (as often as it feels right) because that too has been good for me.
But as much as anything, I simply know that this time in stillness has shifted things for me – things that I’m already feeling and things that are yet to manifest.
And I am deeply grateful for all of it.
So I will keep it going. And will keep a joyful eye out for where it all leads me.
A Matter of Time – Day 19
January 27, 2009 at 4:00 pm | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, General Thoughts, meditation, soul | Leave a CommentTags: 21 Days to 21 Minutes, creating your world, energy, habit, meditation, soul, stillness
I’ve come to realize that I have indeed formed a new habit.
This 21 Day thing worked.
I’m not really interested anymore in writing about the 21 Minutes themselves. That’s not the point.
And that comment, right there, is the biggest signal that a change has occurred. When I began the 21 Days it was all about what happened during the 21 Minutes. Now, it’s about a stillness that happens many times throughout the day.
That there is another signal – the fact that I’m remembering to connect at random points in the day – to center my energy with a greater stillness, a deeper understanding, a broader trust.
I have wanted, for so many years, to have the gift of remembering to center frequently. It’s one thing to center when I’m reading a spiritual book, or writing, or having a deep conversation, but to remember to do it when I’m driving down the street or doing dishes – well, that’s a new, and very welcomed, change for me.
So yes, the stillness I sought from the meditation practice…it has become a habit. I won’t pretend that it’s an ever-present stillness. But it’s certainly a place I visit far more often than I ever have before.
And while nothing strikingly obvious has changed in my outer world, I can feel that things have shifted within.
The outer stuff -which, after all, is merely a reflection of what’s going on internally – is only a matter of time.
The Sensation of Joy – Day 18
January 25, 2009 at 8:35 pm | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, General Thoughts, choosing happiness, meditation | Leave a CommentTags: 21 Days to 21 Minutes, choice, choosing happiness, joy, meditation, soul
The idea of Joy keeps coming to me – first through my meditations, then through books, and then just in my everyday consciousness.
I’m beginning to fully understand that the real task is not so much the pursuit of Joy as it is the sensation of Joy.
What’s the difference, you ask?
The first – the Joy we pursue – by definition resides outside of ourselves. It is found in things, activities, people, conversations.
The sensation of Joy, on the other hand, resides within us. It is found in the simplest of fashions: by feeling the feeling of Joy.
One is about bringing Joy to us, the other is about enlivening Joy inside of us.
I go back to this thing that I call the Falling Asleep game (named as such because it’s easy to remember to do when you’re lying down to sleep). It involves nothing other than filling yourself with the sensation of Joy. Just feel it, from your toes to your head.
(If you want to give it a try, and find that you have trouble eliciting the sensation of Joy, try this: imagine you have a giant watering can filled with liquid Joy, and your body is an empty vessel. Start filling, and as you do, visualize this liquid Joy filling you up from your feet to your legs, and so on.
And please, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.
The other piece of Joy that’s been coming to me lately is the understanding that it is really nothing more than a choice we make countless times each day. Doing my daily activities, do I choose to hold a sense of Drudgery or Joy? At work, do I choose to view each interaction as a Power-play or an Open Opportunity to relate to another human being? Making dinner…I’m typically exhausted by that point in the day, but it doesn’t mean I can’t summon an internal sense of Joy – for no reason at all other than that it feels good.
I’ll be the first to admit that it takes vigilance. We have some re-patterning to do before it gets easy. This moment and the next – today, tomorrow, and onward – we must choose Joy as often as we can remember to do so. Each moment, we must move through our lives holding Joy in the forefront of our experience.
For those of us who are looking to make a shift, to enter our beings into something warmer, wiser, and more fulfilling, it’s more than worth the effort. For it’s both the task and the path – both the challenge and the reward itself.
Thoughts – Day 16
January 23, 2009 at 2:53 pm | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, General Thoughts, Source, living your dream, meditation, soul | Leave a CommentTags: creating your world, dream, soul, meditation, 21 Days to 21 Minutes, Source, stillness
I have to admit that I have some pretty high aspirations. They have to do with saving the world – not single-handedly (I’m not quite that…um, I don’t have a word for it) – but certainly I plan to play a significant role in turning this ship around.
At least, that’s how it is when I’m feeling aligned with something greater than myself…when I’m feeling my connection to that thing that made the Amazon River, and Saturn, and endless forms of snowflakes and sunsets and waves, and…well, the list goes on to the most mind-boggling things imaginable. When I’m aligned with that, then I don’t have an iota of doubt that I can live my dreams.
In fact, those things make my dreams seem pretty humble.
“No one can deny you anything. Only you deny it through your vibrational contradiction.” From Abraham.
In other words, as long as my vibration – my internal energy and mental/emotional focus – is on what I can do, then the sky is the limit.
Not even – there is no limit.
I want to end with a teaching that my Coach, Stephanie Marisca Straight, received when she sat down for her 21 Minutes:
Stillness is the Source of your origin
Stillness is the place where you have been birthed
Stillness is your original nature
Stillness is the remembering of the self
Stillness is the grandness of all Beingness
Stillness is within you all that is complete and Divine.
Stillness is your source of all life.
There is no way really in your language or stream of understanding to explain this in it’s magnitude – it is vast, broad, exciting – filled with love and joy. It is the merging of oneness.
The merging of oneness. That’s what my 21 Minutes does – regardless of how the actual 21 Minutes go. Speaking of which, it’s early and I haven’t done them yet today. But I will – and I have no doubt it will be good.
Distracted – Day 15
January 22, 2009 at 8:41 pm | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, General Thoughts, Source, meditation | Leave a CommentTags: 21 Days to 21 Minutes, creative healing, energy, healing, meditation, Source
Distracted. That’s how I would describe today’s meditation. Once again I did not go into la-la-land. A few times I was able to focus my attention enough to wrap myself in the sensation of joy. But other than that, my mind was flittering from one topic to the next.
The good news is that I did my best to just watch it and recognize how distracted I was – rather than berate myself for it. I say, again, who knew it was going to be this hard?
I saw this quote, which spoke to both my scientific mind and my woo-woo heart. It’s from Albert Einstein:
“We may therefore regard matter as being constituted by the regions of space in which the field is extremely intense…There is no place in this new kind of physics both for the field and matter, for the field is the only reality.”
It struck me that in a parallel (and perhaps abstract) sense, when we meditate we are shifting our awareness from matter (our physical selves and situations) and into the field (Source). For that matter, every time we do energy healing of any sort, we are creating this shift.
And considering that it is in the field that all creating occurs – be it creating new skin to heal a wound, or creating a new human entity, or creating a thought/idea/painting/song – it’s a pretty cool place to visit on a regular basis!
Keep on keepin’ on – Day 14
January 22, 2009 at 1:44 am | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, General Thoughts, meditation | Leave a CommentTags: 21 Days to 21 Minutes, energy, meditation
I haven’t written yet, and I want to go to bed. In fact, I haven’t done my 21 minutes yet either.
Actually, that’s not true. I attempted them, but fell asleep somewhere along the way. And regardless, they weren’t super deep-and-meaningful before the sleep thing happened.
But you know what, I’m realizing more and more that it’s not about what I “achieve” during those 21 minutes – just that I have both the intention and the action toward them.
Every time that I sit (okay, in truth I lay down…which is likely why I found myself asleep this arvo), I enter into a space of calling my energy back to myself, or better yet, calling my energy back from me and returning it to that thing that is not me at all.
This is all that I need to do. There is no achievement to be had. Just connection.
Changes will come, yes. I may recognize them, I may not. But that is not the point. The point is simply to do the practice, to know the power of turning inward, and to just keep doing it.
Just keep on keepin’ on…
And the beat goes on – Day 12
January 19, 2009 at 9:09 pm | In 21 Days to 21 Minutes, General Thoughts, creative healing, faith, meditation | Leave a CommentTags: 21 Days to 21 Minutes, choice, creative healing, faith, meditation
Well, Day Twelve was no easier than Day One.
For some reason I was under the impression that by now I would feel some sort of progress…you know, see some return on my investment.
Alas, that does not seem to be the case. I’m still hopeful, though, and here’s why:
In my writing and teaching about Creative Healing, I’m always struck at how often the idea of non-linear-ness comes to me.
For a few years I’ve led groups through a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. There’s a daily exercise in the book called the Morning Pages, where you write free-form 3 pages first thing every morning – no thought goes into it, just total stream of consciousness.
People often think that after writing the pages for a week or two their lives will instantaneously turn around. And they get frustrated when it doesn’t happen that way.
In my infinite wisdom, I know the folly in such thinking.
These changes you’re seeking, I say, are non-linear.
Yes, change will come, I say – but it won’t be immediate, and it likely won’t be what you’re expecting.
The important thing, I say, is the act itself. It’s the commitment, the daily return to your internal self.
Ultimately, I say, it’s an act of faith. One must continue this practice without proof, without understanding, without cause and effect.
Oh, how easy it is to see outside of ourselves.
But I’ll take this reminder – this thing I can see so clearly for others – as a gift for myself today. I will continue my practice on faith alone, on knowing that this is a path toward a peace that I hold so dear.
And the beat goes on….
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