now there comes a time (audio poetry 3:06)

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rachel's avatarwords divinely wrought

For the last couple of months I have been bringing through
images of angels. This one is “Grounding Angel.”

Grounding Angel Drawing

There comes a time when you will meet your self in a new way
You will not be who you were, and who you are right now
may also be but a temporary situation
What you once believed
you can no longer embrace,
Company you once enjoyed,
may now feel scratchy and out of tune
Without warning, you may find yourself aghast
at your surroundings and your daily routines
Your body will ask for food not in your cupboard –
more greens, more yellow, more orange
Your skin will yearn for a new environment –
more sun, more rain, more trees, more canyons
Whose life am I living now? you may wonder

Cracking and crumbling, outworn ideas and patterns
will evaporate and leave you feeling untethered for a time
How you…

View original post 188 more words

Working on a new normal

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

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A few months ago I wrote about trying to do both (1) some different things and (2) more in general.  I’ve been in quite a rut over the last few years of struggling with my unwinding muscles and their serious disruption of sleep.

It’s been an up and down process.  With every spell of sleep deprivation, I lose the will to do more or try new activities.  But the first steps in getting moving created so much more energy and overall sense of well-being, I keep pushing myself to get out more, create new grooves, etc. whenever I’m feeling well enough.

So it was interesting when I took Linda’s suggestion (litebeing post here) to watch Matt Kahn’s video, Energy Upgrade.  One of the main things he emphasized was how change, even in a small thing, creates energy upgrades.  The best way to create a new life/new you is to keep saying yes to new things.

I got a kick out of realizing that my little forays out of the house or into trying new things felt so good because I was upgrading my energy.  Here I thought it just felt good to get out of my rut.  I guess it’s both.  So now I’m making more of a point of changing it up.  I’ve had a couple of days lately when I didn’t feel great and didn’t much want to get ready and go out but made myself run an errand and felt so much better for being out and about.

I’ve been talking for a while about getting back to writing longhand.  And feeling drawn to spend more time hanging out on our sun porch.  Then, the other day, when Mimi over at Manger posted a Spotify playlist that looked pretty good, I first thought I’d probably not get around to listening to it.  Just because I usually never do.  Which led me to think about how many playlists I’ve passed up mainly because I’m in this rut that doesn’t have a space in it for checking out playlists.

Putting the three together, I’ve started taking my Transformer tablet (for Spotify), a writing pad and a pen out to the sun porch for 15 minutes of timed writing while listening to a playlist (it already turned into a longer stretch, but my commitment is just 15, making it easy to carve a space for it) .  Really liked the jazzy 50’s mood of the first–Manger– playlist.  The next one I tried was full of songs and artists I’d never heard of and much of it was country stuff I didn’t much like, but even though I kept jumping forward to the next song and the next to get past tunes I didn’t care for, I heard a few new things I did like.  Whether I liked them or not, I could feel the opening from just being willing to hear some new material.

I’ve also made a promise to myself that this doesn’t have to be a daily practice.  In general I’ve been in the mood to keep changing things.  I’ve been back to exercising more, but instead of settling on one or two things to do regularly I’ve been switching around amongst many favorites from hatha yoga to kundalini yoga to the Eight Key Breaths, to my exercise bike, etc. (which, btw, I started some time before I saw the video).

And that’s what I’m drawn to in general right now–do the meditation or exercise or new thing that springs to consciousness each day without worrying about consistency or frequency.  The ups and downs of muscles and sleep occasionally still interfere with keeping a schedule; I find it less defeating to avoid making myself promises about regularly scheduled activities.  But for right now, I like my little writing practice/playlist, sun porch time so I plan to continue.  At least until I have some other new direction to try…

My big take away on this is that each small decision to do one tiny thing that’s new or different can carve a path out of a stuck place.  I find, when particularly stuck, that if I think too big (which doesn’t have to be really all that big) I become paralyzed, which roots me more deeply in the stuck place.  But I can decide to go sit on the porch.  Or to listen to a playlist.  Or to go run an errand to make myself get out of the house.  And those little things give me such a boost.  The more little steps, the more I feel I can move forward.  And the more I feel my energy upgrading 🙂

J2P Monday: semi-break

Posted in Journey2Peace, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by

Bright sun

Since I started the series of ruminations on health and environment, I’ve struggled a bit.  This is one of a growing number of arenas in which I have a very strong “knowing” and a lot of feeling tones about connections but I don’t have words for the feelings.  It’s been hard to write these posts and when I started trying to write one for today, it just wouldn’t come together.

A couple of questions that kept drifting through my mind:

For those who would never think of littering the ground or dumping toxins into a river, are you just as careful about what you put in your body?

For those who fight to preserve wilderness, save streams, clean the air, etc., do you fight as hard for yourself?  for your body?  for your eternal spirit?

Do you want to save yourself as much as you want to save the world?

J2P Monday: Judging and the environment

Posted in Journey2Peace, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
English: Heart and Earth

English: Heart and Earth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve noticed over the years (I started recycling, etc. 45 years ago, so lots of years) that environmentalism seems to produce more and more self-righteous folks who decide what you should do and how you should live if you’re a “good environmental citizen” and then look around and judge others on whether they’re “doing it right” or not.

Beyond just pointing fingers at other people, there’s even more finger-pointing about whether governments or corporations are being responsibly green.  There’s something about this issue that lends itself to feeling righteous about the right and wrong of it.  So even among people who say they’re living by principles of not judging, being compassionate and loving, etc., there’s still a lot of righteous judging when it comes to this issue.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this in the context of how our behavior affects the earth (see earlier post).  A couple of threads keep showing up for me.  One is about how it affects the world when people by the millions are constantly borderline hysterically repeating over and over “we’re destroying the world”, “the world is dying”, “the air is poisoned”, etc.  Does it help to keep affirming those things or does it create more of what is being affirmed?  I’ll revisit that one in some future post.

The other thread involves people judging one another (including me eyeing them for doing it…) and the underlying reasons behind such strong feelings of fright and/or outrage.  And how all those issues impact the health of Earth.

  • Is it only fear of “the end of the world” that drives feelings about this issue?  What lies beneath?
  • Why the fear that “others” will cause destruction by the doing or not doing of certain things?  Do we feel a lack of control in the world?  Over our own lives?  That others have power over us and what happens to us?  What’s the source of feeling powerless?
  • Do you offer your own body and health the same intensity of feeling that you feel toward the dis-ease of the earth?  If not why not?
  • Do you feel the same lack of power or control over your own body that you feel regarding the health of the world?
  • Do you feel the same love for yourself that you feel for the earth?  Do you feel worthy of being loved that much… by yourself?  by others?

So many possible ways to heal with ho’oponopono or whatever method of healing you prefer.

  • For all the ways in which I judge others about anything, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.
  • For loving what’s “out there” more than I love myself, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.
  • For the fears within that I haven’t addressed, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For not loving myself as much as I give love to people and things outside me, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.
  • For all the ways in which I do not feel the love around me and for me, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For all that I have not healed within me, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.
  • For all the ways in which I fail to offer love instead of judging, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you

Enjoying Sunday Peace

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

For some reason praying for peace has been at the forefront of my day since waking up and mentally repeating the lovingkindness chant for a while before getting up.  Lovely way to begin the day.

After several days of things shut down (snow) around here, the post office was out making deliveries so the essential oils suggested by Hanna (see post) finally arrived so I guessed at a ratio, mixed them with carrier oil, tossed in some rose oil and put some on.  I’ve felt a bunch of energy moving ever since.

Late in the afternoon I wanted to meditate.  Notwithstanding the morning chanting, I’ve not been in the mood for the lovingkindness chant for some time now (though I repeat the chant to myself often).  I HAVE been drawn back lately to the Ego Eradicator, which I did for the suggested 40 days a couple of years ago and wrote about here, here, and here.  So I began with that.

Then did a short guided (by me) meditation to look into the Roman past life that’s hanging on in my head and work on releasing it.  Made progress though the sense is I need to meditate on it some more. My guidance is to write a spell about it and create a circle in which to meditate.

Then I moved on to singing Gayatri Mantra, followed by Om Shanti Om. I love Deva Premal’s versions of those and I like to sing along with her instead of singing alone (and having to count along with my prayer beads 🙂 –let her do the counting…).  Going out of order, I remembered after I finished meditating/chanting that I’d meant to smudge the room (burn sage and cedar) as I’ve not done it in AGES and forgot, so I smudged anyway.

My final step was to leave Om Shanti Om playing on a loop in the room.  I’ve found that a piece of music with a particular energy to it can impact or shift the energy in a room just playing on repeat.  I used to do it sometimes in my classes when I felt a need to shift — just put a particular chant or chakra balancer on repeat and let it move the energy in the room through the whole class.

All day I’ve just followed my instincts about what practice or chant to do and I feel SO good!  Hope you found 10 minutes or more to pray or chant or meditate for peace, thereby creating peace in you.

J2P Monday: Resistance to Health

Posted in Healing Journey, Journey2Peace, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by

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Last week I raised the issue of personal health relating to the health of the earth.  Continuing that exploration, this week I want to look at the many ways in which so very many of us know what would be good for us or what to do to be healthier but we choose not to do it.

On a constant basis I encounter:

  • people who’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure but eat fatty, high cholesterol foods and hope the medication will take care of it.
  • Diabetics who eat everything they’ve been told not to eat.
  • People who’ve been told they need to exercise but don’t do it.  By the dozens I’ve had people referred to me by body work professionals because my movement work would help them heal faster but they never show up.
  • People with arthritis who are given a list of foods to avoid and continue to eat all of them and movements to practice that they never do.
  • People who exercise to hard bodies and then are told they need to stretch to heal their issues but they won’t.
  • People who are sleep deprived but continually fail to sleep eight hours
  • People who pump themselves up with unhealthy energy boosts to make up for the lack of sleep.

I’m sure you could name examples from your life or the lives of people you know.

I believe there are many interesting questions behind those decisions.  At the core every time I choose not to do the thing that heals I’m literally deciding I don’t want to be healthy.  That’s the choice being made every time someone ignores the self-care possibilities that would lead to healing or feeling better.

Some of the questions I’ve learned to ask:

  • What do I (you) have to gain from holding on to the illness or pain?
  • Why do I (you) believe I (you) don’t deserve to be well?
  • What do I (you) fear will happen if I’m healed?
  • Why do I (you) not want to have power over my (your) own health?
  • Why do I need the Universe or a doctor or a practitioner to have more responsibility for my health than I do?
  • Do I (you) need the excuses that illness allows?
  • Why does my inner self believe I need this illness?
  • When and why did the pattern of this illness start?
  • What happened that caused my inner self to believe I’d be better off ill than healthy?
  • What does the nature or type of illness express about something in me?
  • If you are living a busy life in which many things that are less important than your health have priority over taking time to be healthy, why?  What do you believe about yourself and your right to feel good that causes you to give low priority to being healthy?  [This used to be a good question for me but since I decided a few years back to make getting healthy my only priority, it’s thankfully one I don’t ask any more]
  • Do I (you) feel you’re somehow more interesting or special if you have a food issue or illness or pain?  If so, why do you feel you aren’t interesting enough in yourself?

Many of those questions may require a therapist or some extensive sorting through your past, your ancestors, your issues, etc.  But you can also work on healing these questions with ho’oponopono.

Sometimes it’s easier to think of the questions and the topics for healing if you explore someone else’s life and make a list of the issues you see.  They’ll be yours anyway, so what the heck?  Then say the ho’oponopono prayer to heal them in you.

Some examples of using ho’oponopono on these issues:

  • For not taking care of the precious temple that is my body, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • Because I don’t value myself enough to do what I need to to be healthy, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For anything from the past that now dictates how I deal with my health, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For eating foods I shouldn’t eat, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For failing to exercise as much or as often as my body needs, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you I love you
  • For not loving myself enough to make my health a priority, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you
  • For whatever this illness is manifesting from within me, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you

I think the deep emotional issues and patterns that underlie this tendency to ignore health or to take only some aspects of needed healing and sidestep others has a lot to do with the way we treat the earth.  Heal your body, heal the world.

Note:  As a companion to these pieces about healing our bodies to heal the world, I’ve started some pieces over on my Scribblings blog about my personal journey through finding the health modalities that work for me.  The first one explores greens and raw foods in the diet.  From this point on I’ll try to get links going back and forth.

When the only change is energy…

Posted in CollPraySun, Healing Journey, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
from: http://www.vishvarupa.com/aum-om-omkara-pranava.html

Om

Julianne from Through a Peacock’s Eyes left a comment a couple of days ago in which she used her awesome ability to read energy and told me my energy has transformed a lot in the last couple of years.  I really appreciated getting the confirmation since shifted energy is all I can feel.  It set off swirls of thinking about trying to count progress when inner growth and changing energy are the only indicators.

Some years ago one of my teachers mentioned that one of her favorite things about hanging around with me was watching me constantly transforming.  It was a nice recognition of the fact that I have never stopped working on myself, doing practices, looking inward, releasing, etc.  Those confirmations help me because I get a little lost when all the change is energetic and/or inside.  Sometimes I start wondering if I’m just imagining I’m different or if anything has moved in my life.

When I started this path I was deeply unhappy.  Drawn to a therapist who used meditation and other metaphysically-based techniques, I loved the new world to which she introduced me but I was there to figure out how to be happy, how to find work I loved and wanted to do, to cope better in the world.  I DO cope better, but I’m financially far worse off than when I started and my outward life/world has changed very little.

Somewhere along the way the practices led me to value the spiritual side of the journey but I still have the desire to live a different and more fulfilling life.  Right now it’s pretty different because all the troubles with my health that have had to be dealt with as part of this journey have left me barely doing anything.  I have to dig deep quite often to find any faith that all of this work and changing and shifting energy actually leads somewhere; and that it leads somewhere I want to go…

Hmm…  Set out to have a better life and the two main outward indicators of progress are I’m poorer and I don’t do much.  Hmm…  But I’m calmer and kinder and healthier and I have found a hard won equanimity in which the world no longer buffets me easily from one emotional crisis to another.  I’m far healthier.  And my energy keeps changing.

Some days it’s hard to keep going along the path down which my intuition is leading me because I just want for life to change in measurable ways.  I’ve seen people wander away from this journey because their frustration at the seeming lack of progress became too great.  It has me wondering how many people give up when the journey outwardly seems to take them nowhere?

I feel my journey has moved so slowly because I am sort of a culminating point of ancestral issues and past life issues creating blocks throughout my being.  It’s taken years to clear away all the debris that’s had me stuck.  And it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of conversation out there about this kind of journey.  I know I’m not by any means alone at starting off with lots of movement and excitement and then running into a tangled web of issues that take forever to unwind.

How many people lose their way because there’s so little support or information about a long, slow slog through the dark night?  So much New Age style literature implies that you should be able to just change your “mind” in an instant and start living a different life.  I’ve seen very few people for whom it’s happened that fast; and of those it’s generally been people who have a dream not that far off from the life they already lead who achieve change so quickly.

Makes me happy again about all that tenacity and determination I got from my ancestors because this version of the journey is slow and frustrating.   I don’t know that I’d have stuck with it but for their legacy. I’m curious to hear stories from other bloggers of experiences — whether their own or friends’–with a slower, longer journey, keeping faith, etc.

Don’t forget it’s time to set time aside for Collective Prayer Sunday!

 

Another healing highpoint

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

selenitegypsumusgov

You may recall last spring I had a series of CranioSacral appointments that led Robyn to refer me to an amazing, transformative healing session with Osunnike.  So much shifted, I’ve felt like the healing has been unfolding ever since.  Those appointments drained a small fund I’d put aside for some body work and it’s taken a while to collect some more.

After concentrating solely on getting work for my head and the issues in those muscles last time, I felt that this time I could use a more overall approach.  I got back in touch with Hanna, the excellent massage/body patterning therapist I used to trade with (my movement classes for her body work) and had my first appointment in ages on Monday.

The Session

Several things I love about Hanna’s work:  (1) she’s incredibly intuitive and always has the Akashic Records open while she’s working so she picks up on amazing information; (2) she’s highly trained in more than one modality and and uses that great intuition to feel which ones you need on a given day; (3) her technique is excellent so when she carries out the intuitively-divined plan, the results are great.

She started just working on some of the stuff that’s stiffened up in my body in the absence of body work and given my reduced yoga/exercise habit in the last couple of years.  As she got ready to work on my head, I suddenly got a whiff of something like an essential oil.  As the muscles around my third eye have been loosening, I’ve been experiencing moments of smelling things that aren’t there so I checked in about whether she’d just gotten out some oils.  No.

She tuned in and found a guide present who was someone close to me in a life in Roman times and with whom there’d been some connection about healing and using oils and herbs, etc.  The guide was sending a scent to help remind me of something from that time that is still holding on in my head and preventing the final opening.  I’ve run into glimpses of a life as a healer at that time in past life regressions, so it felt spot on.

At the end she got the information that I should mix frankincense and rose essential oils and use the mixture while meditating on the Roman lifetime in order to release it.  Also that I should start wearing a selenite pendant to help keep clear of some ancestral stuff that keeps cropping up because of living with my mother; it also clears energy blocks, so it seems like a powerful resource at this time.

I’ve ordered the pendant and oils and am excited.  Years ago another CranioSacral therapist put an aromatherapy mixture on me that had rose in it and I felt my entire energy flow change direction in an instant so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens!

The Aftermath… so far…

Initially I was exhausted.  Then on Tuesday, those few remaining, intertwined muscles in my eyes and jaw began unwinding, pulling against one another, jerking my face around, etc.  I could tell it was opening some spots that have been stubbornly resistant.  After a lovely week of sleeping regularly, the yanking muscles kept going most of the night, so back to sleep deprivation.

I can feel something big shifting in my energy.  Without the oils and pendant to use, I’ve been using my favorite, slightly longer, version of ho’oponopono*–one that’s good for breaking aka (energy) cords) — to detach from the Roman life.  I feel like it’s having an impact and am hopeful and excited about using the oils and the pendant.  Sometimes I find a new practice or exercise opens a door my tried and true practices aren’t breaching.

Synchronistically, as I’m back working a bit on ancestral stuff, Finding Your Roots this week focused on people from Ireland, one of whom had a Scottish connection.  I long thought my mother’s family came from Ireland but recently discovered that though they emigrated here from Ireland, they were actually Scottish; my ancestors were among the Scots who accepted land in Ireland from England in an attempt to squelch the Irish Catholics.  As far as I can tell my clan were staunch fundamentalist Presbyterians.  The type who break off and form a new church every time they don’t like the way some rule is being followed… (Funny how one of my greatest intolerances is for people like that 🙂 ).  Unlikely they were hanging out much with the Irish…

Anyway, that left my mind meandering on those Scots and then on their odd method of passing land:  the youngest son stayed home and took care of the parents while the land was parceled off to each of the other sons as they married.  Then the youngest got the parents’ place.  This, of course, eventually divides the land into pieces so small they’re not much value, which leads to offspring heading off in search of more land.  I’ve seen on an extended family tree how various members of the family moved in waves across the country after they’d divided all the land in eastern Tennessee and there was no more to acquire.

Since I’ve been dealing so much the last couple of years with the ancestral element to all my health issues, I’ve tended to be a little mad at them.  So my first thought about the waves of distant cousins fanning across the country was: they’re the ones who ruined the land and destroyed Native culture, etc.  Grrr….

But then I thought about what a huge deal it was to cross the ocean and come here in the mid-eighteenth century.  How they  went from poor peasants to land owners.  How they fearlessly  kept heading off into the unknown and starting new lives.  How strong and courageous they must have been.  Then I realized tearfully that I can thank them for the tenacity that’s kept me going through this long process of healing.  Because their legacy to me is not only the poverty consciousness and tension and negativity, but also courage and  strength and fierceness.  Something felt healed and I can imagine being able to feel honor for my ancestors for the first time.

During the appointment I mentioned how tough this journey has been and how 10 years (the unwinding muscle portion) seems like a long time.  She laughed and said it wasn’t very long when you consider I’m healing a couple thousand years worth of issues.  Good thing I have that tenacious gene!

Way back last spring Osunnike thought we’d cleared all but a few pieces of the ancestral and past life stuff affecting my head.  I’ve felt like some more cleared in the intervening time.  So I’m holding the thought that this Roman connection is the final piece to clear. And yes, I know it won’t be a final piece that means no more clearing.  But the final piece in this particular healing journey, restoring the muscles in my face and head to healthy balance.

* “Divine creator, father, mother, son as one, I, (your name), wish to do ho’oponopono between myself and ______ (name of person, issue or thing you wish to disconnect from). Cleanse, sever, cut, release and transmute to the path of pure light. [Say this next part loudly and forcefully] HA MAHIKI. We are set free and it is done.”

J2P Monday: My Body, My World

Posted in Healing Journey, Journey2Peace, New Age, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
The Earth seen from Apollo 17.

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In this interconnected web of all life, our bodies are deeply connected to Earth.  The care and health of one has an impact on the other.  When we harm the land, the sea, and the air, we create health issues for our bodies.  And when we don’t care for our own bodies, we don’t take care of the earth.

For me, it’s very clear that the cavalier way many of us treat our bodies (particularly here in the U.S.; if your culture does it differently, chime in in the comments) directly connects to the cavalier way we treat the earth. And that the diseases of the earth relate to our poor treatment of our bodies.  From poor eating habits to poor exercise habits to regular sleep deprivation to abuse of medicines, the ways we fail our bodies are myriad.  How can we expect to heal the earth if we can’t take care of our own physical well-being?

Everything is energy.  Our bodies are energy.  The planets are energy.  The totality of energy creates the great web of oneness or All That Is.  The food we eat has energy.  Our thoughts have energy. The content of our thoughts and actions and eating influences the vibration of our bodies.  As part of the web, our bodies influence all life and thus life on Earth.

Your spiritual journey is affected by this as well.  The mind/body/spirit connection is profoundly deep.  Pursuit of mental balance and higher spiritual consciousness can never be successful if you’re ignoring your physical well-being.

Poor habits are so ingrained in U.S. culture, I’ve found it a big challenge to stick to a healthier plan.  I’m surrounded by choices that tempt me away from good eating and regular exercise and I have to stay mindful to stick to a path.  I’ve also found it hard that everyone who has a theory seems to find it necessary to tout that theory as being true for all of mankind.  They almost never are.

Our bodies have so many differences from ancestral cellular memory to blood type to allergies to biorhythms, each of us has to figure out which foods, which exercises, which sleep times, etc. work for us.  And then follow the program that works.

There are a lot of theories about healthy eating out there that absolutely don’t work for me.  A vegan diet, for instance, sends me into a downward spiral that sucks the energy out of me at a frightening pace.  Too much raw food has the same effect.  I have issues with iron and anemia that mean the only way I keep from regular bouts of iron deficiency anemia is to make sure I eat red meat a couple of times a week.

I also have a few habits like a daily cup of coffee and once a day eating a sweet something that leave my pristine eating friends rolling their eyes over my bad habits — even though in general I eat far more fruits and veggies and generally healthier meals than most.

I get a kick out of it because most of the health food fanatics who disapprove of my diet fail to do regular exercises for healthy muscles.  They’re so tied up about food issues, they give no attention to developing muscles that are both strong and flexible–a balance that is required for healthy muscles–and allow energy to flow freely through the body.

I find most people lean toward healthy exercise or healthy eating but don’t manage both.  And among those who do both, I find most follow exercise regimens that emphasize strength and hard muscles but don’t balance with keeping their muscles also flexible.  As you grow older those hard muscles contribute to poor balance and falling; without the flexibility, the strength ultimately doesn’t serve.

The point is, few of us manage to follow a perfectly pristine regimen — and many follow paths to health that are popular rather than best for their own bodies.  I think if you’re doing the best you can at changing your diet, exercising, etc. you’re already on the right path.

Take small steps.  My diet has changed slowly over quite a few years as I’ve learned more about how (1)  different foods make me feel; (2) to modify recipes to substitute for foods to which I have sensitivities; and (3) to add nutrition to a variety of dishes.  Sometimes it helps to just cut out one or two things and discover a couple of healthier things to eat instead.  When you’ve rooted that into your habits, choose a couple more things to change.

It’s much easier on your psyche to take it slow.  I now have a long list of healthier foods I love and regularly eat, most of which I’d never have made or ordered years ago.  I learned to like some things I wasn’t inclined to and found I really liked other healthy things I didn’t expect to…

Fortunately for me, I fell in love with yoga from the get go so for most of the 29+ years I’ve practiced, it hasn’t been an issue to put in the time.  But these last few years of health issues have interfered with my decades-long exercise habit.  I’ve found it’s easy to at least do a small something rather than nothing and so in small increments I’ve managed not to lose all my progress and as I’ve felt better, in slightly growing increments, I’ve been restoring what I lost.  Small and steady can do it.

If you are serious about wanting to bring peace to the world and to heal the planet, think about how you treat your own body.  Do you give the same care and concern for your own heath that you feel for the world?  In the next J2P post or two I’m going to explore more about health and apply ho’oponopono to aspects of healing.

Whew… don’t have to have a passion…

Posted in CollPraySun, New Age, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Spirituality, Uncategorized by
Gilbert sharing some interesting view on creat...

Elizabeth Gilbert  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There’s a widespread assumption in the spiritual community that we’re all supposed to “find our passion” or “pursue our passion”.  It’s implied that without passion and its pursuit life is somehow lacking.  I always feel a bit flummoxed when I encounter this opinion as I don’t feel I have a passion.

The “Shame” of Not Having a Passion…

I’m not too inclined to toe the line with such opinions so I won’t say I’ve suffered because of it, but it certainly has caused me to think about my interests and whether I feel passion for them.  And sometimes to worry that I’ve lost my verve.  To wonder whether I should be trying harder to determine a passion.

It isn’t that I haven’t had one.  As a child I was pretty single-minded about pursuing music and, more quietly, I always wrote.  My passion for music fell by the wayside, particularly when I realized I don’t really have the right skill set/talent for the type of music I’d prefer to make.  But I remember what that felt like to have a burn to do something.  Which is how I know I don’t particularly have one now.

So I felt relieved and pleased when I finally played my recording of a Super Soul Session with Elizabeth Gilbert.  She told a story of speaking about passion and the need to have one and then receiving a letter from an attendee, describing how badly the talk made her feel since she didn’t have a passion.  Elizabeth examined the idea of pursuing passion and concluded that some of us have many interests and our path is to follow curiosity in whatever direction(s) it takes us.

That’s more or less what I’ve been doing for a long time. I’ve followed a variety of seemingly unrelated threads and over time I realized the threads have been slowly forming a picture; each thread I’ve been led to follow connects with one or more others.  Quietly something is unfolding and I’m content to follow each beckoning trail until the tapestry reveals itself.

I like that she was able to step back from a conviction about passion based on her own experience and to realize not everyone has the same path; not every one has a passion.  Some of us have some meandering to do.  Some of us are drawn to many things and no one of them calls more strongly to be pursued.

Sometimes the exhortations to find a passion and follow it feel a little like bullying to me since I don’t have one.  If you have a passion or ardor is important to you, you may find such advice is helpful.  But for many of us the assumption that everyone must have a fanatic devotion to some particular pursuit is hurtful because it makes us wrong for failing to single-mindedly pursue one course.

The Video

The “embed” feature on the video doesn’t seem to actually put the video in the post but this link immediately opens the video of Elizabeth’s talk here:

http://www.oprah.com/video_embed.html?article_id=59798

Choosing Words…

I’ve also sometimes felt like “passion” is too strong a word for me.  I used to live on a roller coaster of emotions and one of my favorite things about years of spiritual practice is the greater equanimity with which I live; melodramas used to be constantly playing in my head as I exaggerated emotions and turned everything into a drama and I DON’T miss that.

Passion always feels to me like a word that belongs on the roller coaster ride.  I kind of like “follow your bliss” better.  And I really like Gilbert’s quiet hummingbird, flitting along the paths of its curiosity.  Those words feel like they fit better with my hard won state of balance…

Don’t forget it’s time to set aside 10 or more minutes to pray or chant for peace!

Updates and musings…

Posted in Blog, Healing Journey, Personal Growth, Spiritual Journey, Uncategorized by
The Holistic Approach of Alternative Medicine ...

The Holistic Approach of Alternative Medicine symbolized by the aura of man. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Several weeks have now passed since I decided to take a blogging break while contemplating how to go forward.  I’ve wound up in another round of unwinding, not sleeping and being too dazed to accomplish much so I’ve reached no firm conclusions.

But I am really clear that I’m glad I eliminated a bunch of blog subscriptions and have been pretty cavalier about which blogs I do and don’t read.  It’s been a huge relief to spend so much less time on slogging through blogs.

As far as my faves, you’ve probably not noticed much difference because I still read and like and comment on your lovely blogs. There a lot of folks I follow who are rarely getting a look from me.  Generally means (1) they don’t ever interact with me in a way that lets me know they’re engaged and/or (2) they sometimes have great posts but aren’t consistently interesting to me and/or (3)  what I can see on the Reader hasn’t grabbed my attention enough to get me to read more.  Saving all that time has felt SO freeing!

I haven’t been writing as much, more because of the debilitating muscle/sleep issues than any intent to not be writing.  The good news on the muscle front is that I’ve hit another one of those new levels of open that feels wondrous — who knew a face could feel this good?  Not done yet though.  Based on what I feel so far, it must feel amazing to have a completely relaxed face.

I have been working a bit, on the Wizard game blog, at spacing out publishing when I work on several ideas at once and I’m liking the way that keeps things going over time.  It takes some pressure off of the no-ideas times if I’ve spread out the scheduling of posts in the moments when I’m full of topics and words.  So I am committed to playing with that.

I definitely plan to keep J2P Monday going. I’m teetering about Collective Prayer Sunday…  I also want to start an ongoing series of posts about my long healing journey, including observations about western medicine vs. alternative medicine, combined with a general look at the relationship between physical and spiritual healing.  Don’t much like having a particular day on which I’m committed to posting, so they’ll just appear sporadically.

So, at the end of the first week of the new year that’s my story.  And I’m sticking to it.  At least until another moment brings another story 🙂

Peace Time begins for 2016

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I managed to fade out and shut the computer down last night without putting up my usual reminder post.  If you’re already on Monday, hope you found time to pray or chant for peace.  If it’s still Sunday where you are, hope you can spend a little time on peace.

I started off today watching CBS Sunday Morning and was so pleased that it began with a lovely piece on meditation, which you can see here.

For more info on Collective Prayer Sunday see here.

And thus we begin . . .

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This just perfectly reflects so many things I’ve believed for a long time. Lovely view for the New Year.

Jamie Dedes's avatarJamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine


If you are viewing this post from email, it’s likely you will have to click through to watch the video. 

May this be the year we let go of certainty and embrace mystery.

May this be the year we know love as respect and peace as decision.

HAPPY 2016!

Love,
Jamie

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