February 28th, 2017

February 28th, 2017


Affirmation: The only limitations I have are the ones I place upon myself.


Word of the Day: nictitate (v):

1. to close and open quickly : to shut one eye briefly : wink

2. to close and open the eyelids

Body Intelligence (2)

There are guides
who can show you the way,
Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing,
Keep wanting the connection with presence
with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.

Muhammed said, Do not theorize
about essence. All speculations
are just more layers of covering.
Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains
are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Do not claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent.

Dervishes (For February 29th!)

You have heard of the ocean of nonexistence.
Try continually to give yourself to that ocean.

Every workshop has its foundations
set on that emptiness.

The master of all master works with nothing.
The more such nothing comes into your work,
the more the presence will be there.

Dervishes gamble everything.
They lose and win the other,
the emptiness which animates this.

We have talked so much.
Remember what we have not said.

And keep working. Laziness and disdain
are not devotions. Your effort
will bring a result.

As dawn lightens, blow out the candle.
Dawn is in your eyes now.

____


Recommitting to the Practice

In writing about internal alarm systems in yesterday's post, I was reminded of one of my own most vital internal regulation systems: my meditation practice. I have been meditating daily for about a year and a half and the transformations I've noticed in my life since that time have been miraculous to say the least.

But this post is not about extolling the virtues of a meditation practice or preaching its science-backed benefits. There are plenty of articles that I can direct you towards if you are interested and I am also happy to share my personal experience, if you are interested. I also truly believe that people come to meditation if and when they are ready to.

Instead, this post is about recommitting to a practice or habit or discipline. In my case, my daily meditation practice hadn't completely fallen by the wayside, but I had started becoming very "lazy" about it. I had started treating it carelessly and haphazardly, like something to be crossed off my to do list or "gotten over with" as quickly as possible. I had allowed myself to get sucked into the trap of being busy all the time and feeling overwhelmed and stressed, thereby deciding that my meditation practice could afford to be sloppy. (Paradoxically, it is times like these in my life that I need my meditation practice all the more!). I wasn't treating it with the sanctity and reverence that it deserves, given its importance in my life. And I was certainly compromising it both in terms of quantity and quality.

And I was feeling the effects of my negligence. In terms of my stress levels, overwhelm, anxiety, restlessness, relationships, self-care, physical health, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and more.

So this morning, I went back to the drawing board so to speak, and brainstormed ways to breathe fresh air and reverence and creativity and Self into this practice that is so important to me and my life. I decided that I want to keep in line with the theme of connecting with my intuition and self-awareness/ regulation. So starting today and for the next two weeks (since I am always open to reassessing and being flexible in response to what shows up), I plan to check in with myself, ground, center, and meditate 3 times a day as follows:

a) Breath awareness before breakfast

b) Body scan/ "dropping into my being" before lunch

c) Guided meditation before dinner

I was listening to a podcast this morning that further reignited my desire for this reset and helped connect me back to my "why." On the podcast, the psychologist yogi being interviewed shared research that shows that within just 2 weeks of practicing breath awareness for just 5 minutes twice a day, people's brains actually get rewired... and my brain could really use some rewiring/ circuitry upgrade right now!

In closing, I would like to share a quote that describes one of the many things my meditation practice has come to mean to me. Then, I invite to to reflect upon and journal your thoughts on some questions along with me.

"Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing in my anchor." - Thich Nhat Hanh

- What practices, routines, or disciplines in your life have you let fall by the wayside or have you been careless about?

- Are these practices truly important or meaningful to you or did you choose to engage in them because someone told you to or because you think you ought to?

- What do these practices bring you closer towards? What do they take you away from?

- What feelings come up for you when you think about recommitting to the practice? What might these feelings indicate to you about the nature of the practice?

- What is your hope in engaging with the practice? Are you looking for an end result? Or are you in it for the long-run without any definite stop or end point?

- How do you feel when you are engaging in the practice? How do you feel beforehand? How do you feel afterwards?

- What beliefs (whether true or false) do you hold about your practice?

- What hopes do you have for your practice?

February 27th, 2017

February 27th, 2017


Affirmation: Choosing positive thoughts and making positive choices fill me with new strength, confidence, and excitement.


Word of the Day: shunpike (n):

1. a side road used to avoid the toll on or the speed and traffic of a superhighway.

Body Intelligence (1)

Your intelligence is always with you,
overseeing your body, even though
you may not be aware of its work.

If you start doing something
against your health, your intelligence
will eventually scold you.

If it had not been so lovingly close by,
and so constantly monitoring,
how could it rebuke?

You and your body's intelligence
are like the beauty and precision
of an astrolabe.

Together, you calculate how near
existence is to the sun.

Your intelligence is marvelously intimate.
It is not in front of you or behind,
or to the left or the right.

Now, my friend, try to describe how near
is the creator of your intelligence.

____


Warning Signs

Marc posted a beautiful anecdote today that I wanted to share with you all along with a few of my thoughts. I love stories and metaphors because I believe that they often allow us to access and integrate meaning and learning at a much deeper level, much in the way poetry can. In any case, here is the short tale:

Once upon a time, many moons ago, there was a village of people who lived in handcrafted wood houses.  And like other villages in this era, fires were a very real and present danger at all times.  One small flame could burn the whole village into ashes within a few short hours.  So the villagers developed a clever fire fighting system.

A rotating group of volunteers kept watch over the village from a lookout tower at all times, day and night.  At the first sight of smoke, a volunteer would turn on a loud siren that was only ever sounded when warning the villagers about a fire.

The moment the siren sounded, all villagers would drop everything and run to a pre-assigned location for firefighting.

Young, strong men and women would pump water as fast as possible from the village wells, teenage boys and girls would fill big buckets with water as it was pumped up from the well, and all the rest of the villagers would occupy designated locations and ultimately form human chains leading from the wells to the fire.  The bravest men and women would stand next to the fire and heave buckets of water until the fire was extinguished.

One day a traveler from a distant village heard the siren and asked someone on the street about it.  

The woman – who was rushing toward her designated location – quickly explained, “Whenever there’s a fire, the siren is sounded and the fire is extinguished!”

The traveler was amazed, and decided to bring this remarkable siren technology back to his own village, which also had dreadful problems with fires.  Days later, he returned to his village with a siren that perfectly matched the one he witness in action on the lookout tower.  He gathered all his villagers together, and he said, “You don’t need to fear fire anymore, my friends.  I have found a new way to extinguish it.  Watch closely, and I shall demonstrate.”

The traveler lit a large bale of hay on fire that was sitting next to his own cottage.  The flames quickly began to spread closer and closer to his home.  Then he took out the siren he’d acquired and sounded it.  The fire only grew in its intensity, so he sounded it again.  The fire continued to grow rapidly.

“Just be patient, everyone!  It should happen any moment now…”

In a panic he sounded the siren again and again, but still the fire grew and blazed with even more intensity.  Within hours the entire village burned down to the ground… because, of course, the traveler had misunderstood the purpose of the siren.  It wasn’t used to put out fires.  It was simply a signal that directed the villagers to take positive action. 

____

There are many important messages I take away from this story, and here are just a few of my thoughts:

1. Pay attention to the sirens in your life. And when you "hear" them, remember that ignoring them won't make the fires go away. Ultimately, failing to take action only results in the fire(s) growing ever bigger until they are so powerful that they force us to listen. Ignoring our sirens leads to things like "stress, illness, confusion, broken relationships, fits of anger and bouts of deep, dark depression." Aren't you worth more than that?

2. Don't expect others to hear your sirens. Our sirens ring specific to our ears and the only person who can truly save ourselves is us. And the way to do this is not merely by being aware that something is awry, but but taking positive action and doing something about it. This is often neither easy nor comfortable, but it is necessary and far more preferable to the alternative. Taking care of the fires before they grow unmanageable also makes our task easier.

3. Our culture, lives, etc. often distract us and deafen us to our internal sirens. Blame modern life or stress or simply getting older, but the bottom line is that we need to be aware that our sense of connection to our internal alarms and intuition is often rusty from years of being ignored and repressed. We can reawaken and exercise our connect and sensitivity to our internal sirens and intuitions by regularly (as in multiple times a day at regular intervals!) checking in with ourselves to gauge how we a doing, thinking, feeling, sensing, etc. Body scans are one helpful tool that can assist the process.

We all love the idea of being listened to, but we so often forget that it is a gift that we can give ourselves!

4. Remember that you cannot be all things to all people. It is hard enough to be who you want to be for yourself. And at the end of the day, your relationship with yourself will always be your longest lasting relationship. So take care of yourself. Give yourself a break when you need one. And get to truly know yourself so that you are able to respect, explore, and nurture yourself in all of your uniqueness. Doing so will ultimately enable you to contribute so much more to the world and those you love.

5. Be honest with yourself. You cannot preach honesty or talk the talk without "walking the walk" of living in integrity - and that includes living in integrity with what your body, mind, and spirit need. Your intuition deserves to be heard and heeded and not clouded by others' views on what you should be doing, thinking, or feeling. Creating "a life that feels good on the inside" matters so much more that creating one that simply looks good on the outside and doing so will actually fill you up in a way that pretenses can never hope to.

In short, remember that people, things, and events come and go but your relationship with yourself and a life that nourishes and fulfills your soul will remain with you forever if you work at it.