Calling and Purpose

Posted in New Age, Personal Growth, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
Chapman Dr, Corte Madera

Chapman Dr, Corte Madera

A little side note:  In a recent post I described a joyous day when I hit a particular stretch of my usual walk in Corte Madera but I didn’t think I had a good photo to include.  Going through some shots a few days ago I came across the above photo…  yup, that’s it, the spot where I jumped and danced around in circles…  And I kind of think the road is calling us 🙂

As you know, for many years I’ve been going through a collection of health issues that have kept me isolated and, often, not able to do too much.  One of the interesting aspects of sitting outside mainstream life has been watching how much people talk about life’s purpose and their calling.

Here in the U.S. living a purpose and/or following a calling is a big preoccupation.  And, as I’ve noted before, it always seems to be a calling to external activities/accomplishments.  So I periodically wind up trying to decide if I have a purpose or a calling.  And wondering if they’re the same thing?

I mean I feel called to do some things, like follow a certain route or make a donation or take a class, and I don’t feel it’s my life’s purpose to follow that call.  I know some people use “calling” in a bigger sense and they mean something like life purpose.

A while back my reflections on having a purpose led to seeing this long healing road has been my purpose.  Even though it’s not a purpose the mainstream would recognize as such…  When I started pondering my “calling”, it seemed far easier to get how “called” to this path of healing I’ve been.

Most of the way along I didn’t get how raveled and complex it was nor did I come close to comprehending how huge the impact of this journey would be, but I absolutely felt called to follow the path to healing, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually.

And at many points along the way I’ve felt called to learn or return to a particular practice or to start a certain alternative therapy or to visit a healer.  Every branch of the path I’ve followed has been one that drew me, compelling me along.

For a long time I’ve felt a little lost as the end of this particular healing journey regarding my muscles has drawn near.  There’s been no sense of what comes after and my life has been so focused on healing it’s been hard to imagine what to do without that focus.

While I was reading Elizabeth Lesser’s wonderful new book, Marrow, I had an epiphany about one next step.  It’s just a beginning, but the great ideas that magically arise from the ethers are always the ones I know to follow.  They spark and sizzle and light me up inside.They often take their time unfolding, but once I’ve seen that glimpse,  it will come together in its own time.

Yes, I feel called toward this project and yes, it feels like part of my purpose.  Or one of my purposes… or callings.  It also feels like it comes after the physical healing.  I’ve worked long and hard to restore my body…  I can wait for the conclusion of this phase.  It’s nice to feel the next “call” beckoning me, but there’s other work to do first.

Do you know what your purpose is?  Do you feel purpose and calling are the same thing?  Do you think each of us has one or more than one purpose?  Does purpose change with time?  Do you feel there is any such thing as life’s purpose?

J2P Monday: Peace and politics

Posted in Being Peace, Journey2Peace, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
English: Peace, Love and Increase

English: Peace, Love and Increase (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I posted a challenge for this U.S. political season a while back–with practice possibilities for people everywhere.  As we grow closer to the election and the vitriol grows ever worse, I find myself struggling to hold a space of love and compassion and I see the angst rising everywhere.  Even though it’s a bit late to call this a Monday post (hey, I’m still up… 🙂 ), I wanted to copy that post in, edit a bit and challenge everyone to find the peace within:

Every political season (does it ever end now?) for some years has felt a little ornerier and more contentious than the last.  This time around I’m struggling to hold my space of peace in the face of the vitriol I run into every time I look at Facebook or turn on the TV.

Whatever your political persuasion, you do not contribute to peace by ridiculing, vilifying or angrily condemning the folks on the other side.  And I get it.  I struggle to keep hatred at bay when I contemplate Donald Trump.  But as I look at the countless ugly remarks, snotty commentaries and general malevolence toward him I wonder if anyone stops to think about how hatred and malevolence destroy peace.  Same thing in the other direction.  If you’re lobbing hate bombs at Hilary how can you possibly be holding a space of peace?

Every time I think those angry thoughts or see one of those snotty posts, if I direct those kinds of barbs and jokes at him, I have to ask myself how am I then any different than him?  When I behave as badly as he does, I am basically being him.  More crucially, when I aim those arrows, I am not staying conscious of the one true thing:  I AM HIM AND HE IS ME.

I really like Deepak Chopra’s analysis of Donald Trump as being the representative of the Shadow.  And his reminder that failure to face the shadow within us is always present when the Hitlers, Idi Amins, Joseph McCarthys and Trumps of the world step up and carry us into darkness.  For me the key point of this reminder is the knowledge to which I always return:  the only heart I can change is mine.

Anyone or anything I see outside of me and feel is bad or wrong or disturbing reflects something in me.  So if I’m not happy with Trump (or substitute whatever candidate you abhor), then what aspects of him are in me?  What am I not facing?

  • What do I fear so greatly in the world?  If I see him as coming from fear and working on creating fear, where is the fear in me that I’m not seeing?
  • How poor is my self-esteem if I see him as lacking it?
  • In what ways am I as hateful as I perceive him being?
  • How am I “dumb” to the realities of life going on around me?
  • How and when do I share fear instead of love?

Anything I can see in me I can heal.  As I’ve noted many times, I love using the Ho’opono pono prayer for healing.

  • For every way in which I allow fear to displace love and peace, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For every hateful thought I harbor for anyone, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For seeing anyone ever as “other”, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For any way in which I lack enough faith to know in all ways every day all is well, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • If there is anything within me that blocks me from “being peace”, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you

CHALLENGE:

Yep, I haven’t issued a challenge for a long time, but here’s one I challenge you to do throughout this political season in the U.S. or, if you live in a place where no election is looming until you feel at peace with it:

  1. No matter who you favor and who you don’t among the candidates [if you’re not in an election cycle make it a politician you dislike], every time you catch yourself thinking with fear, animosity, or hatred about any candidate, stop and create a list of things that upset or disturb you about that candidate.
  2. Go deep within and ask yourself where within you does each thing on the list exist?  What are the fears that create the anger?  What’s going on with your faith?
  3. Do whatever healing practice you wish, whether it’s saying the ho’onopono pono prayer or doing Reiki or following a guided meditation for healing or???, about everything you discover within you.  And keep doing it until you can look at all the candidates and only feel peace.

THE BeZINE, October 2016, Vol. 3, Issue 1, Rituals for Peace, Healing, Unity

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Terri Stewart’s opening thoughts for this issue of BeZine reflect my thoughts on peace so beautifully and she puts it so well, I can’t resist passing it along.

The Bardo Group Beguines's avatarThe BeZine

October 15, 2016

I am honored to take the lead for this issue of Rituals for Peace, Healing and Unity. Lately, I have not felt very peaceful. In large part, it is due to the election cycle in the United States. It fills me with incredible anxiety. At the same time, I am actively part of a movement called Peacemaking Circles. Peacemaking Circles came to me via Saroeum Phoung who was taught by the Tagish Tlingit First Nation Peoples. Peacemaking is an ancient process that has been traditionally used in all forms of communal and family decision-making. The first principle of Peacemaking Circles is: The only change you can make is within yourself.

As painful as that reality is, it is true. If you change yourself to become peaceful, to be healed, to be one with the greater cosmic community, that will be enough. Because as you are settled and grounded in peace…

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Elizabeth Lesser on getting to the Marrow

Posted in New Age, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

Last week I caught up on a few recently-recorded Super Soul Sundays.  Loved all of them but the interview with Elizabeth Lesser particularly grabbed me.  So much so that I quickly checked the library catalog and put a hold on her latest book, Marrow.  [As has become the norm with OWN, I can’t seem to embed the video and if you’re interested you should follow this link to it soon because the program aired a couple of weeks ago and they yank them off quickly]

http://www.oprah.com/video_embed.html?article_id=65414

The book is a profound recounting of the  journey she took when her sister needed a bone marrow transplant and Elizabeth was the perfect match.  They embarked on healing their relationship in order to ensure the sharing of marrow would be as harmonious as possible; getting to the marrow on many levels.  I’m still reading and blown away by the constant stream of deep insights.

Listening to her and reading her I keep feeling like I’ve “met” a soul sister.  Her journey has led her to so many of the same conclusions and thoughts I’ve reached…

I felt a little connection from the get-go because she’s one of the founders of Omega Institute and my friend and teacher, Gay Luce, used to teach workshops there at least once a year.  I knew she was friends with at least one of the founders although I don’t think I knew the name.   While I was living at the little apartment she used to have at the side of her house, I’d flip through the Omega catalogs and see the amazing array of teachers who presented there.

Tenuous connection, but it was there for me.  And it’s been kind of fun reading the book because there’ve  been a number of places where I felt like she could have been talking about something Gay teaches.  Then I realized I think at some point they were both in the Bay Area, making their way through various teachers and a lot of the teachers at Omega have been people Gay knows.  So I suspect they’ve both drawn a lot of material from the same pool.  Gay studied a bit more with Buddhists and Ms. Lesser –based on her acknowledgements — at some point chose a Sufi path, but I catch some similar ideas.

It’s so cool to see how that works.  Through Gay I experienced a few teachers from the Bay Area and read books by or heard about others, all of whom I eventually realized had been in overlapping groups led by Claudio Naranjo in the 70’s.  I have a general impression there have been several periods in the New Age/New Thought movement when lots of teachers arose out of groups who studied with some of the same teachers.

I love the sense of deep spiritual thinking spinning out through a web of teachers who are inspired to create their own take on spiritual growth and who then inspire another round and then there’s another…

The Dream of the Modern World

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anelegantmystery's avatarAn Elegant Mystery

(Image by Pash Galbavy and Larry Pollock)

The following is an excerpt from an article by Martin Winiecki

In the 1990s an unusual encounter took place in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In plant rituals, shamans of the Achuar, a tribe living in pristine forest that had never been in touch with Western civilization, received the warning that the “white man” would try to invade their lands, cut down the forest and exploit the resources. Deeply shaken, they called out to the Spirits for help. Soon after white people did approach them, coming to them however with supportive intentions – a group of activists from the United States, searching for ways to protect Indigenous Peoples from the oil industry. The Westerners found a deeply interconnected tribal society living in profound symbiosis with the Earth. Seeing the bulldozers coming closer and closer, they asked the Elders of the tribe how they could survive…

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Joy… hmmm… what is it?

Posted in Healing Journey, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
Another action shot from Christmas Day up Moel...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about joy and fun.  And whether I feel them much… or ever…  I realize sometimes I’m not even sure what joy is or how to have fun any more.  Or maybe I’ve changed so much my definitions have just changed.

I do have this one precious memory of a joy-filled moment I relive when I want to move into a joyful place.  And that’s one of the nice things about any emotion:  you can choose to go there or move out of there or to change to a different one any time you want.

This particular moment was in Marin.  My friends had asked me to house sit through two sessions of their workshops and the couple of weeks in between — seven whole weeks in my favorite place, taking care of the kitties I’d helped raise, in the place where I’d had my little apartment.

Early in the trip I went for my favorite walk on a glorious day.  After crossing through the county park that abuts the house, I came out on a little country road that curves around the hill; for a while shortly after you exit the park you’re walking under trees on a section with no houses.

I stepped into that private space, so happy to be walking there and with nearly seven weeks left to revel in being there and I started jumping around in circles with my hands in the air.  That I can identify as joy.

The thing is, the way I used to run to clubs to hear music, go to parties, hang out with crowds and noise, etc.  now seems more like a pantomime of fun.  I love music, so there was some joy in hearing great bands.  But the rest was fodder for a restless and unhappy spirit and I’m quite sure a lot of the time I mistook over-excitement and over-stimulation for joy.  Also defined fun by some perception of what was “cool” among my peers.

When I look around these days, I see huge numbers of people who are pursuing the same — to me — illusory forms of joy and fun.  In fact these forms seem really amped up now.  Restaurants are bigger and noisier than any I remember, crowds at music events are bigger and louder.  Sporting venues hold more people, turn the sound up louder.  I have to use sound reducing earplugs to halfway tolerate a movie theater.  And I find all of it energy depleting, enervating, and somewhat depressing.

Thirty years plus in on meditating, yoga, practices, releasing, soul searching, etc. many of my moments of deepest satisfaction are very quiet.  Gazing at a sunset, a deep conversation over dinner with a couple of close friends, feeding people something I’ve cooked and watching their faces light up…  None of that puts me in quite the same space I held on the day I danced around in the middle of a Corte Madera mountain road.  So are such moments joy?

I was very interested to read Louise’s recent post at Dare Boldly and note her thoughts about sunsets and walks in the park and being with friends as joy-bringing activities.  It’s bringing me a whole new perspective on what joy maybe really is.

Those activities for me bring serenity, a sense of balance, a warm feeling in my heart.  I love to be in that kind of space but I can’t decide whether it’s joy I’m feeling or something softer yet deeply satisfying.

I find myself wondering if I’m still being seduced by some culturally implanted idea that joy should equate with something exciting.  Does it have to be as big as the moment of happiness so intense it had me jumping around in the street?   [btw, hard to express how unlike me that was and how much it says for the absolute joy I felt in the moment]

I’m just contemplating, not in a place where I have any sense of an answer.  And maybe joy and it’s bigness or smallness is in the eye of the beholder.  Or maybe it has big moments and small moments…  I imagine I’ll be revisiting this question for some time to come.

For me one of the joys 🙂 and drawbacks of the spiritual journey is becoming someone new.  Of looking at an emotional tone differently and trying to decide where the current version of me stands…  seeing how much my view/feeling has changed compared to various points in the past. Most of the time being new is great and sometimes not so easy…

Do I need that haircut?…Deciding what really has to happen

Posted in New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
English: Durant-Dort Carriage Co Factory, Flint MI

English: Durant-Dort Carriage Co Factory, Flint MI (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We’re getting ready to head out on our annual trip to my home town in Michigan.  After a history of loading the week before vacation with all kinds of miscellaneous tasks I decided MUST happen before leaving, I’ve been slowly learning to evaluate what really relates to the trip.

This time the decision to go was kind of last minute.  We started to make this trip last June and a series of health issues for my mother have kept us postponing until, instead of going at a new time as we’d hoped, we’re going just a couple of weeks later than our usual time.  At the end of last week she finally had resolved the main issues and I realized if we don’t go this week we really can’t.

Getting a long-overdue haircut was one of the things on my fairly short list of trip prep stuff for the week.  But sleepless nights and headaches and various small things going awry added up to having trouble fitting it in.  And the thing is I’ve been wearing my hair pulled into a clip for some years now, so having my hair cut to a certain length or style doesn’t make the difference it made when I had a more precisely cut “do”.  So, as the days went on I shrugged and quietly lobbed “must get haircut” off the list.

The whole process of consciously addressing my habit of overdoing during the week before travel followed years of health issues causing me to stop and evaluate what really had to be done and what was dispensable in general.  Took a while to realize it was also a big issue before taking a trip.  Working on the travel aspect  has me thinking about busy-ness in general and how I see people handling their long lists.  It often feels to me as if it’s become fashionable to have an overloaded schedule and many people seem to feel there’s something wrong with them if their schedule isn’t totally loaded.

In the midst of the frantically filled schedules I see lots of the same issues I’ve had about deciding what really has to be done.  I remember a friend in a state of high anxiety giving me a list of Christmas must-dos — most with made-up deadlines — and explaining how frantic she felt.

The next item up for her was some outdoor decorating scheme.  I understood that all of this felt like “have-tos” for her but I didn’t understand why they HAD to be done.  I finally asked whether anyone would die or be maimed if she just didn’t decorate the yard.  She looked shocked and admitted no one would.  But I could tell that, even though my question caused her to think about it, she didn’t want to let go of being frantic.

I see people all the time being frantic about lists, driving themselves crazy over stuff that, to me, shouldn’t be considered big stuff.  To me, if nobody’s going to die or be maimed or permanently emotionally traumatized from the doing or not doing of it, it’s small stuff.

I also see a lot of folks who add to their sense of having no time by exaggerating their thoughts about how long things will take.  Sometimes its purely a mental exaggeration and sometimes they add a list of steps to it that don’t really need to be part of it (like thinking up things to do before I leave on vacation).  I remember sitting with two friends, trying to arrange a time in the next two weeks to meet for planning an event.

One of them went on about how she didn’t know how she could meet for an hour because she had some furniture arriving which would mean needing to move some other furniture.  My other friend and I looked at one another, puzzled, and later we wondered how many times she planned on moving every piece if it was going to fill an entire two weeks…  The sad thing was she was really wound up about it

Before life led me in a new direction, I stayed too busy and lived with great anxiety about trivial tasks.  I didn’t know how to set priorities by importance and tended to treat little things as if they carried life and death import.  Over the years I’ve been cutting back, most people have been speeding up and making their lists longer.

It’s strange to me that it’s become such a fashion to be anxious and frantic and over-scheduled.  I don’t think people look all that good when anxious or racing frantically around, so I find it an odd trend.  But I do get that if you never sit down you never have a quiet moment to feel the stuff you don’t want to look at.

I feel like so many people would be more relaxed if they learned how to lob the seriously unimportant stuff, to de-prioritize less important stuff, and/or get a realistic sense of what needs doing and how long it will take to do it.  Personally I highly advise working on a more relaxing lifestyle before you run yourself down so much a health issue forces you to do it.

And the health and relaxation that come from facing the shadows after you sit still for a minute …  WOW!   I’m just sayin’…

Meanwhile, I’m almost packed, the house sitter’s room is ready and off we go…

An exercise to get into the view from the heart

Posted in New Age, Personal Growth, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
English: Motivational speaker Tony Robbins at ...

Tony Robbins at a Twitter conference in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve had a few Super Soul Sunday episodes stacking up on my DVR, waiting for moments when I felt I could really sit and pay attention.  [I sort of watch a lot of TV but usually with laptop in lap while catching up on e-mails, reading and writing blog posts, etc….  so not really seeing much of it]

Today’s viewing was the last one I had, an interview with Tony Robbins from a few weeks back.  Though I’ve been aware of him for many years and vaguely familiar with his work, I’ve not read any of his books nor previously watched any of his videos so this was my first real encounter.

At about 21 minutes in on my recording he did a very short little meditation exercise centered around focusing on an issue in your life, moving into a heart space and then reexamining the issue with the energy of heart.  I thought it had some powerful possibilities.  The whole interview was really good and the “short” at the end was wonderful, so you might want to see the whole thing if you can find it.*

An excerpt with this exercise is available at the moment on the OWN site:

http://www.oprah.com/video_embed.html?article_id=64700

The exercise here was an abbreviated version of his technique so it may not reflect the impact of doing the full version.  I was definitely taken by it.  But I found the questions he asked us to consider about gratitude –supposedly to move me into heart– moved me into my head as I reached for memories that seemed to fit.

In spite of that I felt a shift in attitude.  The problem I used is fairly big so I’d like to do it again and for a longer time.  And I came up with a couple of other ways I’d like to try it.

The first piece, putting your hands over your heart, is a good use of “energy flows where attention goes”, so at first I moved naturally into heart energy because the placement of my hands took me there.  I think I might have done better on the next step with just breathing in and out of my heart with my hands held there, bringing extra attention and energy to that level.

In another meditation I regularly do there’s a moment where you’re asked to recall a moment of great happiness.  I always recall a visit back to Marin during which, while out on a walk, I hit a beautiful stretch I love and felt so delighted to be there that I danced around with my arms in the air.  Recalling the moment puts me in a magical place.  I’m also going to try doing the exercise using the happy memory and see how it goes.

So, the three possible variations:

  1.  His method:
  • place your hands over your heart and leave them there throughout
  • think of an issue or problem
  • list three things for which you’re grateful
  • come back to the issue and see how it feels or what answers you have from the heart space

2.  Using energy:

  • place your hands over your heart and leave them there throughout
  • think of an issue or problem
  • inhale and exhale from your heart at least six breaths (or until you feel you’ve moved into the energy of heart)
  • review the issue again and see if your feelings or ideas about it have changed

3.  Happy memory

  • place your hands over your heart and leave them there
  • think of an issue or problem
  • inhale and exhale from your heart two or three times
  • focus on the happiest moment you can think of and really let yourself feel it
  • come back to the issue and see how it feels or whether you have a different view

I think there’s some potential here for powerfully moving through stuck places in a pretty simple exercise, so I’ll be working with this one!

*OWN has gotten to be pretty cagey about making full episodes available after airing.  This one is not on the OWN youtube page although there are excerpts.  As of today (Sept. 20, 2016) it’s available through On Demand.  It is NOT available on the OWN app.

Me and the Sun Porch

Posted in Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

Okay, I’ve been all serious, deep thinking and heavily pontificating lately so I figured it was time for something a little lighter.  I’ve also been realizing a place where my blog always feels lacking to me is on the kind of personal stuff some of my favorite bloggers regularly post.

Not that I don’t reveal some deeply personal things here, but when I think of some of my faves such as Ra over at Rarasaur, Louise at Dare Boldly, or Liz at be love live I see these unfolding stories of lives being lived, events chronicled, etc. as well as their own lovely brands of deep spiritual thinking about all of it.

The thing is, in the years I’ve been blogging I’ve also not really been having a life in that sense.  A lot has happened but it’s all about healing on various levels and the toll it has all taken on my body has kept me mostly at home.

So a lot of my contemplation lately as I move through what I’m devoutly hoping is the final stretch of this portion of my healing journey (I’ve come to believe the journey of healing, growing, expanding never ends), is wondering what the next phase will be.  Right now I still don’t know and, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t want to plot and plan before I’m able to do it from the vantage point of the healed version of me.  Transformation is constantly in process and my sense of self and what I want changes with it…

In the meantime, a lot of this contemplating is happening on my sun porch (remember,, the lighter note of the post 🙂 ) and I took a few shots one day to show my view when I’m hanging out there.  And since I keep mentioning my new hang out, thought I’d share:

And through the blinds
Looking toward the patio
Another view from my spot
Skylight above my spot
Sitting comfy
Contemplating a ride on the bike

Breaking patterns, changing tapes…

Posted in Healing Journey, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

A friend of mine recently asked me to suggest some practices or therapies that help to break patterns.  As soon as I gave it some serious thought I realized my answer is complex and I’ve been letting it percolate ever since.  Ultimately it seemed like some good info to organize into a post…

There have been a few distinct phases to my long spiritual and healing  journey.  The one most relevant to this question began in the early “aughts”.  I’d been “on the path” since 1985, when I began with some quite New Age material, including a lot of stuff about affirmations.  I soon thought of myself as having become a positive person.

I moved on to go through Nine Gates Mystery School, study Huna, add various practices to my regular yoga routine and complete the Fisher Hoffman Process.  Still thinking I’d become all positive …

Somewhere in the realm of 2006 a friend gently recommended The Secret after listening to me bitch for a couple of hours about substitute teaching.  For the first time I totally got how much negative thinking ran in my brain all the time.  It finally sank in that half an hour a day of affirming and visualizing can’t possibly overcome 23-1/2 hours of negative tapes running.

Later What the Bleep helped me understand how those tapes create neural nets and begin to deprive your peptide receptors of the ability to accept anything positive or good for you.   Once I began seeing these things I started working away at how to bust through it, change neural nets, heal peptide receptors, and, most importantly, CHANGE MY MIND.

Tending to throw multiple possible solutions at these kinds of issues, I pursued several paths.  In hindsight I can see I addressed it on several levels, physical, mental, and energetic.  Over the years I’ve found it helps to heal more than one level.  Some think healing one automatically spills over into healing them all but I have not found that to be true for me.  I find it works better to heal on various levels and they start working together.

PHYSICAL

The physical healing path for me has been ongoing now for thirty+ years and sometimes I have to look back to realize aspects of it tied in to more than just sorting out my muscles.  During this time I began getting Bodypatterning* treatments and also played around with Robert Masters’ Psychophysical Method combined with yoga until I created the work I’m now calling Flowing Body, Flowing Life.

The Bodypatterning and the Flowing Body work both help to bust up patterns held in muscles — which often means they both help you to release emotional issues held in those same patterns.  Some of the changes created by this intense period of releasing muscle patterns had a profound impact on changing what was happening with my thoughts.  Everyone I worked with who combined getting Bodypattening with doing my movement work created big releases and shifts.

CranioSacral work also created big pattern shifts and was responsible for setting off the unwinding process in my head.  I’ve gone back occasionally for more of that work.  Synchronistically, I met Kreig, the Bodypatterning fellow, through the school/massage center founded by the CranioSacral therapist–Judy– I saw so when Judy moved away I was able to move into the new modality which finally busted up many long-held patterns .

Yoga, if practiced mindfully and with attention to how it’s feeling, can also be a vehicle for release.  People tend to pull out of postures as soon as they start to tap into a pattern with attached emotions.  If you consciously note the desire to pull out but keep holding the posture, you will often come to a release.

These are just the techniques that worked best for me.  If you have a therapy or a movement practice that breaks up patterns for you, I’d say choose the one that already works for you.

MENTAL

For me, getting old tapes to stop playing has been a long process and one I wouldn’t call easy.  A variety of things can bring change.  Some big changes arrived during and upon completion of the Fisher Hoffman Process work, which involved a lengthy examination of parents’ beliefs and admonitions, seeing how you’ve incorporated all of them and a LOT of release work.  Really helped change some habits of thinking.

I’ve found affirmations quite helpful, but only when I changed the way I worked with them.  Once I saw the ongoing negative patterns in my thinking I set up a “watcher” to try to stay mindful of when I ran the tapes and which ones showed up most often.

I then developed affirmations which were basically positive turnarounds of the negative tapes.  Every time I caught myself re-running a negative tape, I would stop and repeat the turnaround statement several times.

It helped a lot in two major ways: (1) staying conscious of the patterns seemed to decrease their frequency and (2) the regular repetition of the turnarounds helped to create new, more positive, patterns.  And I think new neural nets…

I’ve long believed subliminal recordings can reach the unconscious and influence change.  I bought a selection of Dick Sutphen’s affirmation recordings and began playing them often; sometimes on a repeating loop all night long.  Then I put together a long list of them on Spotify and have been playing it very softly all day most days.  It’s slow and subtle but over time it has led to far more positive thought patterns.

ENERGETIC

Having learned a lot of practices like Flying Crane Chi Gung and the Eight Key Breaths, I knew how much can shift when energy is stronger and/or more balanced and/or flowing more freely.  Considering the benefits of various practices, I chose the Flying Crane, Key Breaths and the Five Tibetan Rites and began to practice 1-3 of them daily.  I wrote about it long ago here, with more explanations of the practices.

As noted in a recent post, I find changing energy lets you bypass the mind and create a shift without mental interference.  I just chose three practices I particularly love because they seemed to fit some specific goals I had at the time — many other practices that work with energy could give you similar benefits.

These practices, done while also receiving Bodypatterning, clearly enhanced the therapy as well as helping to move my energy into new and healthier patterns.

****

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I’ve also done a lot of work on ancestral patterns and visited a couple of healers who also helped in that arena.  Some of those posts:

I do NOT consider any of the information in this post to be any kind of definitive list.  I don’t believe in definitive lists.  I believe that whatever you believe will work, will work.  The specifics here are just to give you an idea of the kinds of practices I used.  Can’t say I’ve finished the process but enormous transformation has taken place since I began this pattern breaking process.  Anyone can do it.

* Developed by a fellow here in Lexington, it’s the most amazing body work I’ve had — and I’ve experienced at least a dozen varieties.  He now has a school, called Full Circle Massage School, so I’m in hopes practitioners will be fanning across the country and the globe, making it possible to get treatments wherever you are.

Peeling more layers

Posted in Healing Journey, New Age, Personal Growth, Uncategorized, Wellness by
Eyemuscles

Eyemuscles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The last couple of weeks have involved a lot of unwinding, not sleeping and headaches…  and a lot of reflection about this long long process.  [Pretty much every muscle you see up there has been wound up in knots and intertwined and/or glued to just about every other muscle in my face they could possibly touch]

Both body work practitioners and meditation “guides” have told me there were dangers (blindness or stroke) in opening the muscles too fast so I’ve tried to be grateful but really by and large I’ve been frustrated and impatient.  I’ve repeatedly asked the Universe and Ku to just finish the healing and let me be free.  I’ve said affirmations and done visualizations (and no, I’m not looking for suggestions for some other technique to try).  I’ve done practices and spent fortunes on body work and healers.  It all helps but the process is still maddeningly slow.

When I feel the degree of tugging on the left optic nerve and realize the depth to which it has been entwined in other muscles it IS nerve wracking and I can sense the danger if something pulled too hard or too suddenly.  It helps me understand the need for a slow unfolding but doesn’t stop me wishing it would hurry up.

I also keep feeling different stages of energy returning, with growing comprehension of how much energy tight muscles commandeer.  Long ago, when I finished the Fisher Hoffman process, most of the major muscles in my body (not head) finally started letting go.  The next year or two brought great progress in body work and I experienced a great boost of energy first from releasing the emotional material and then from opening muscles so energy could flow more freely.  It turned out the chronic fatigue arose from the muscle issues.

Now I’m experiencing an amazing process wherein the unfolding around my eyes is opening up energy pathways through my whole body.  It’s amazing to realize how much of my prana has been sidetracked into holding all these tight muscles in my face and how much tight muscles interfere with the flow of energy.

And the more I feel it the more I want to shout out to the many folks I see everywhere I go whose muscles are visibly tight:  heal your muscles and get your energy back!  Haven’t decided how to present this mission of healing but I can see it’s part of the reason for this long drawn-out process.

My impression, based both on my own experience and what I’ve observed, is that most people don’t realize how fatiguing it is to have tight muscles.  How detrimental to your health.  Until I finally got the right diagnosis, I had no idea tight muscles could squeeze organs and glands.  For me, it was every organ and every gland being squeezed until they could barely function.

For now all I can think of is to tell you to take care of your muscles.  If you have knots and painful places, do what you have to to heal them.  Your health and vitality depend on it.

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A kinder view of ego

Posted in New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
Microsoft clipart MP900399589

Microsoft clipart MP900399589

I’ve been reading Wayne Dyer’s companion book to “The Shift” movie in dribs and drabs and, while I’m enjoying it, I’ve also been noticing how much of the discussion is about ego. And he talks about ego as if it’s something to be eradicated.  His view is one I’ve seen in many places.  In Huna, I encountered a rather different idea about ego and I like it much better.

Huna considers us to have three levels of being.  Serge King calls them ku (unconscious), lono (conscious/mind) and kane (higher consciousness).*  Ku’s characteristics are very close to those of ego as described by many sources.  It adds a little more omniscience and is known for controlling the physical, but otherwise quite similar.

In this philosophy ku is considered to be the level that looks out for you and tries to make sense of the world and create a set of rules for life.  Ku always wants to move in the direction of what’s best for you or what will feel the best.  However, ku develops its basic view of the world based on your early life when your caretakers control life and death over you.

Whatever they do that threatens or frightens, whatever negative beliefs and admonitions they hold, ku takes all of that in, develops your belief system based on those experiences, and then runs your life by that system.  But ku’s main function is always to choose the path of greater happiness.

So if you talk to ku and work with him/her, you can change the original set of beliefs and get ku to work with you on creating a new reality.  Show ku your vision of happiness if you released an issue or got the job or … and ask ku to remember its mission to move you toward the greater happiness.

Explain to ku with kindness how grateful you are for the service she/he has always tried to offer and ask ku to take on new beliefs that will serve adult you better.  I love this way of acknowledging a level of myself that’s always going to be part of me and, instead of treating it like a demon needing an exorcism, to work with my unconscious to create a new belief system.

I mentioned recently that I’m seeing a lot of the thinking of Judeo-Christian institutions permeating New Age/New Thought thinking and this tendency to characterize ego as evil is an example. When I read these discussions in which ego is spoken of as if it’s some outside agent of the devil, I feel as if I’ve wandered into the church’s world of black and white and good and evil.

I think ego is just part of you, doing the best it can to keep you safe.  And more than willing to listen to you and work with you on changing course.  If you can save your infected toe or your weak heart you’d do it without a blink.  Why would you be willing to try to stomp out your ego?  It’s part of you.

*The typical words used in Huna are longer, but King likes to keep things short and simple and I like his easy-to-remember names.  The concepts are exactly the same as in any other discussion of the three levels.  (i.e. a rose by any other name…)

Part 4: Practices and Creating New Grooves

Posted in Meditation, New Age, Personal Growth, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

My final piece for this series (though not by a long shot the last thoughts I’ll post about doing practices 🙂 ) is a reflection on doing or not doing practices as a form of self-sabotage.

As I mentioned in the last post, I don’t feel you have to have a super strict formal practice but at the same time I’ve often noted in myself and others that sporadic practice or refusal to practice at all can be a way of sabotaging progress.  On the other side, sometimes when you’ve processed a lot of material or made some big changes, there’s a kind of plateau period during which you need time to integrate what you’ve already done.

I’m always seeing fine lines in this journey between one side and another and this is one of those places.  In Part 3 I discussed the importance of learning how you react when you’re resisting something that could help you versus recognizing something’s just not for you.  It’s equally important, I feel, to learn the difference between when you are sabotaging yourself by refusing to do practices and when it’s sabotage to make yourself do it when your inner voice is telling you “no” and to recognize how you sabotage.

Some years back I realized I’d long carried out a really subtle form of sabotage:  I’d meditate or do the Tibetan Rites regularly for a few weeks … and then .. I’d just …  drift … … away from it.  For a while it would cross my mind to do it and then every night I’d find myself in bed without having done it.  And then a couple of months would go by when it never even crossed my mind.  Eventually I’d come back and pick it up again and then go through the same process.

Once I could see it I worked at being mindful. I’ve been much more able to stick with things and when I do drift, the spaces of not doing have become more like days instead of weeks or months.  It was a tough one to get hold of because something in my unconscious was very good at just keeping my mind shuttered enough to forget to do the practice(s).

Another way I used to sabotage myself — and one I’ve seen MANY people use — was trying to make everything a question of controlling my mind.  A lot of New Age/New Thought teachings encourage this idea that you can change everything by just changing your mind.  Up to a point, you can, but between unconscious issues and the efforts of ego to maintain the status quo, I think it takes an approach that touches more levels of being — emotional, physical, ancestral, etc.

When people want to keep the whole journey on a mental plane, they tend to refuse to meditate or take up the Eight Key Breaths or to sing chants or any other exercise.  As you know, I deeply believe the practices designed by many ancient traditions are excellent at penetrating into the shadows and helping you to let go of the darkness and raise your consciousness.  They tend to operate on levels of energy and higher consciousness so they bypass the stranglehold ego tends to have on mental processes.

For me it was especially evident when it came to emotional release work.  I was convinced I didn’t need it and I resisted all suggestions about doing something on that order.  Eventually I watched a lot of friends transform while doing the Fisher Hoffman process–as my late friend Ellen facilitated it, which is not what you get from the Hoffman Institute–and realized I needed to sign up.  Once I’d completed the work with her I felt so fond of the sweet freedom it brings, for years I kept going through the process every time I uncovered another issue.

Absolute refusal to do a practice or exercise is a major way to sabotage yourself.  I think on some level we always know when a practice is likely to open channels into the shadow and/or create a big change.  Even if the change is positive, your unconscious/ego may object and create resistance.  I try to check in and see whether fear of change or fear of “seeing” is behind the feeling that I absolutely don’t want to do something.

If it’s fear, I do it anyway, but sometimes I set a boundary that compromises between the “just do it” and the “no, no, no”.  Maybe, “I’ll just do it three times a week for 10 minutes.”  Or, I”m just going to do this today and I don’t have to do it again.  And then repeat the next day.  I have never been sorry I stepped beyond the fear and into the place where freedom lives.  Not once.

The other major way I sabotaged myself for a long time was failing to stop sometimes and allow the letting go and changing to become integrated.  I’ve mentioned it before — I’ve been in a hurry through most of this journey and definitely inclined to push the river.  There were many times I should have paused for a while but I’d just study with a new teacher or take up another practice.

I think my higher self/the Universe led me into this final and life-disturbing phase with my muscle issues to get me to finally stop for a while.  It was HARD for me to accept but as I’ve learned to sit back and quit pushing so hard, I’ve been able to see how crucial it is to allow the slow down/integration cycle to have its place in the transformational journey.*

Sometimes resistance is your higher self telling you to stop for a while, sometimes it’s your intuition telling you this practice isn’t for you.  Sometimes resistance arises from fear of change or fear of a better life.  And it’s your challenge to figure it out…

Which is where we circle back to mindfulness.  In order to be aware of how you sabotage and when you’re doing it, and in order to stay on track with doing practices, you have to spend enough time with your consciousness in the present moment to be aware of these things.  And few people are capable of creating a new “mindfulness” groove without practicing.

As I mentioned back in the first post in this series, I find that any practice, from chanting to movement (tai chi, Tibetan Rites, walking meditation…) to guided or silent meditation, can be a lesson in mindfulness if you focus on the practice and your breath and let any intruding thoughts drift away.  The practices will impact other issues and levels at the same time you’re learning to stay in the moment, so it’s a positive all around.

If you want to play piano, you practice.  If you want to learn French, you practice.  If you want to let go of whatever binds you and expand into the Divine Being you really are….   PRACTICE.  And if you’re sabotaging yourself by not practicing — or practicing too much — figure how to gently move yourself through the fear.  And then practice 🙂

*And it isn’t that I quit doing any practices, I just stuck mainly with the ones that ease my muscles and keep me balanced

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Part 3: Practices and Creating New Grooves

Posted in Meditation, New Age, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
Today at Sarvodaya's Early Morning meditation

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Seemed like I was never going to get back to this series, I know, but Olympics mania is over and I’m ready to get back to posts.

One Chair or Many and Going Deep

When it comes to doing practices, there’s a big divide among teachers about whether you need to “sit in the one chair” (i.e. pick one spiritual path and follow only its teachings) and those who feel it’s best to choose the practices you like and create your own path.  A similar disagreement exists about frequency of practice, how much you practice, etc., which I’ll discuss in the next section.

Since I’ve never found “one chair” I wanted to sit in, I’ve been like Goldilocks, moving from chair to chair.  I’ve slowly put together a spiritual path that’s eclectic and ever evolving …  and just seems to suit me.

I have stopped sometimes in one chair for one or several years so I have some understanding of the benefits of moving deeply into one set of practices.  But generally I still had other practices or teachers in play so I don’t know what it’s like to literally follow only one tradition.

My observation over the years is that growth depends on willingness to dig deep and face the shadow.  And you can avoid doing it whether you’re on one path or following many.  I’ve known just as many people who spent years skimming along the surface of one tradition as I’ve known people who’ve used flitting from one chair to another as a way to avoid the depths.

If you want to grow and transform on your spiritual path, my first piece of advice is:

Commit to exploring all the issues and emotions you’ve buried in the shadows.

Ancient practices are generally designed to open up those dark spaces as are some great modern body work and movement techniques.  It’s easy to tense up or change how you’re practicing so you close those avenues and stay on the surface.  If you stay aware, you can catch yourself resisting and choose to move through it, allowing the release to happen.

For instance, the movements I teach which trigger deep releases often release deep into places where people hold buried issues and memories.  When they start touching into something they don’t want to see, they often (1) make the movements smaller so they’re not going as deep into the muscles or (2) speed up, which automatically also makes the movement smaller and which makes the release less likely or (3) refuse to do the movement at all.  Every practice holds the possibility of surrendering to the opening it offers or finding a way to avoid the opening.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is how to recognize (1) when I’m resisting and (2) when I’m recognizing something either isn’t going to make a difference or that it’s not the practice for me.  I’ve been fortunate in choosing alternative therapies/therapists or practices, as I’ve had a reliable “yes” meter.  If I feel a big “yes” when I encounter a new therapist or practice, it’s going to be a good match.  If I feel indifferent or a big “no” but do it anyway, it usually isn’t helpful or is a bad experience.

There are, however, moments with a good therapist or practice when I know I’m just resisting.  For me it shows up as a big knot in my stomach and feeling anxious.  It tells me there’s something there my ego or inner child has been holding back from my consciousness.  Since I now appreciate the freedom involved in opening those places, I relax or breathe into the therapy or movement or chant or…  and let the buried issue rise to the surface where I can release it.

It’s worth learning how your resistance shows up — you may have a knot in your stomach or it may show up elsewhere in your body or as a mental shut down or a big emotional sensation…  Just learn what your “nudge” is and then choose to gently keep moving through it.

Specifics of Practice

My personal experience of practicing has been that well-designed practices have an impact if you believe they will.  And it doesn’t matter if you follow every step of a prescribed list of “must dos” or do it every single day.  If you’re reasonably committed to doing a practice regularly and you do it as best you can, it will have an effect.

I’ve run into a lot of teachers over the years who insist you have to do the practice they’re touting in a very specific way and often add you must do it every day.  And they tell you it won’t do any good if you fail to follow all the rules.  I often wonder if they understand how many people are convinced not to even try because of such statements.

More and more in recent years I’ve been noticing how much Judeo-Christian religious thinking permeates New Age/New Thought spirituality–at least the U.S. version of it.  For me that includes strong views about good and evil, right and wrong and following all the “right” rules the “right way” in order to be “saved” or, in this case, “enlightened”.

I see the teachers who need everybody to meditate or chant in only a very precise way and who teach you that the practice will be useless or worthless if you fail to follow every rule as being caught in that religious institution-style view of black and white rules and a vengeful God who rewards and punishes based on rule-following.

Some teachers are very fussy about sitting in a precise position for meditation.  Most of those positions are pretty uncomfortable for me so I’ve modified them by either using a Nada Chair or by lying down.  I have amazing meditations and doing them has been central to transforming my life so I just roll my eyes when somebody tries to tell me I can only meditate sitting cross-legged with my hands in a certain mudra and a shawl around my shoulders, etc.

There are fussy versions of many practices, with similar admonitions about no impact if not done precisely so.  I hope no one ever lets such nonsense prevent them from practicing but I’ve known people who felt they might as well not bother at all because they couldn’t do it every day or didn’t want to have to follow every rule, etc.  I say,

do what you can without worries about being perfect and the practices will help you

Daily practice will obviously have a greater impact than sporadic practice (or no practice 🙂 ), but I’ve found over the years that skipping a day or two a week doesn’t make much difference and I’ve made progress on every other day–just not as much.  I even think sometimes letting yourself miss a practice can be just what you need.

The bottom line for me is:  the benefits of practices like meditation, tai chi, chanting, etc. are so great, choose one or more practices that suit you, do the basics of it/them to the best of your ability, and figure out a schedule you can commit to–even if you do something three times a week for 15 minutes, it can start to create new grooves.

See also Part 1 and Part 2 for more on practices.

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Meditating with Wayne

Posted in Meditation, New Age, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

I recently took the companion book to Wayne Dyer’s film The Shift off the shelf and finally started reading it.  Which led me to remember I have his recording with two versions of his Getting in the Gap meditation (one around 15 minutes, one about 26).  I instantly felt drawn to do it again and enjoyed it so much I’ve been doing it every day for several days.

I’ve always liked the shorter version as a lead-in to other meditations.  His meditation does a nice job of getting my mind quiet and focused.  I can feel great if I stop with Getting in the Gap but I’ve been feeling like I want to start singing some of the Deva Primal chants again, so each day after I “get in the gap”, I’ve been choosing a chant to sing.

With the meditation completed first, I notice as I sing my focus on the chant is much stronger from the opening “Om” and less interrupted by my busy mind.  The combo leaves me feeling so at peace.

In several ways the guided practice causes you to be mindful, either focused on a word or focused on empty space or singing the sound “ah”, which in all traditions is part of the sound of the word for God, thus deepening your connection to the Universal Source.

I’ve long thought this little meditation is a great opener for anyone who wants a way in to meditating or who wants an easy way back after a hiatus.  Or it’s just a nice meditation practice to do regularly.

I’m not sure whether any of the versions on YouTube are exactly like mine but I’m sure the basic meditation is the same.  This one follows the script of the long one and adds the bonus of visuals if you want to do it open-eyed: