While life is pretty busy with all the sorting & clearing, trying to get ready for my big move to FL, with the many caretaking duties I’d been undertaking for Mom the last few years lifted, I’ve also been a bit more able to carve out time for meditation. I’d not been keeping up as well as usual with Steve Nobel’s meditation offerings though I often listen to his affirmations.
He has a few nice ones up lately and I found this one really soothing and healing:
Since the pandemic started so many meetings, services, etc. are being shown or held on Facebook, YouTube, Zoom, etc. I totally appreciate the opportunity to participate safely in gatherings I love. “Chat” columns are often open to the side or just below these videos and I began to notice they offer an interesting visual of monkey mind.
Monkey mind, aka wild mind, refers to the way our thoughts tend to run wild, to chatter like monkeys. All day. Every day, masses of thoughts jumbling through our minds. I first noticed the chat phenomenon during an Ahava Center for Spiritual Living service. We had a special guest speaker, Reverend Sunshine Daye and her talk was SO good. A talk to fall into, to exercise every power of right listening on, to drink in every word. And through the whole thing, out of the corner of my eye, I could see chat messages flying by.
Once I’d noticed it there, I began seeing it all the time. During any Ahava service. During Deva Premal’s and Miten’s weekly Gayatri meditations. While Jack Kornfield gives a talk, etc. My guess would be that at in person services at any given moment many people’s minds would be composing grocery lists, choosing paint colors, remembering childhood ills, fretting over an unhappy conversation, etc. While everyone might be sitting quietly through the event, monkey mind would be busily in action around the room. But we manage to seem present because no one can see the thoughts chasing around in everyone’s minds.
With chat visually present on the screen, we can see how busily people’s minds are racing the whole time they’re supposedly chanting or participating in a meditation or listening to a deep spiritual talk. Granted, in these situations the “chatter” is generally more on topic, love emojis, repetitions of lines of the chant, comments on specifics of a talk, etc. But it still involves not really sitting with an empty mind and meditating or chanting or listening, etc.
No judgement, we all struggle to control those inner chattering monkeys, but really fascinating to watch it in action while attending church or meditation, etc. Has anyone else been noticing?
For the first seven days of January, Deva Premal and Miten offered seven days of doing the 108 round version of Gayatri. They’ve had a weekly Gayatri on FB and later via a paid app since last spring — reaching out in Covid lockdown — and I’d loved those so much I jumped at the chance.
When I did a regular chanting practice a shorter version of the Gayatri was one of the three I chanted daily but I’d not done the 108 round version more than sporadically and it’s just been occasional on their weekly practice. I always found it powerful but the energy of doing it every day was quite amazing. There are usually 2-2.5 thousand people participating and I’ve been amazed at how well I can tap into the larger energy of the group. Powerful.
Besides loving the chant for myself, I love the association with heart and peace. They were doing the 7 days as an uplift to energy as the year began and that felt incredibly important to me, especially with all that’s been going on both in the world and in the U.S. As I’ve teetered between rage and holding a calm space, I’ve kept feeling a need to lift my energy, try to hold a higher space, etc.
It was quite amazing to sing the chant daily. Especially for the first few days I could really feel the build of energy in me. Didn’t stop me from the moments of rage, but left me feeling generally more energized and uplifted, easier to tap back into the heart space. Also feeling like my nadis were not just all being energized but as if they were being rearranged or reconfigured as well.* By the final few days I think I’d adjusted a little bit more to that huge influx of energy.
The worldwide sangha they’re forming is lovely and I highly recommend participation. I’m about to sign on with the app so I can participate in the larger array of activities they’re hosting, including daily meditations, access to a library of mantras, participation in sangha, Q&A with Deva and Miten, etc. They still offer the Gayatri free via Facebook and YouTube once a month. Click through on picture above to page where events are noted.
We so need to lift the world’s vibration now. As I’ve mentioned many times, the higher vibration of few can raise the vibrations for many more and we need to lift the multitudes who are caught at the anger level on up to the next level, where self examination and greater openness begins. If Gayatri is not for you, please find the meditation or practice that suits you and commit to it and/or if you can find a practice group or sangha with which to join energies on line, please practice with such a group.
* When chanting is 108 rounds, it’s one for each of the 108 nadis, or energy channels, which aligns you with the universe or creation.
This post is for Linda’s Litebeing Chronicles Change Challenge on the litebeing chronicles blog: How have you changed internally? Can you share some new thoughts, ideas, projects, attitudes that have sprung up as a result of your evolution? This challenge is about describing how you have integrated the lessons from this “unprecedented time” and how you have seen your unique transformation unfold.
This is kind of an odd challenge for me to participate in because for me the pandemic has mostly been like a pesky fly in the background, buzzing around and annoying, but not actually impacting my life all that much. Some external habits have changed but otherwise my life has been so much more impacted by personal events that Covid just doesn’t seem like a big factor. Any inner realizations have arisen more because of the earth-shaking issues among loved ones than anything to do with the pandemic.
In January my then-94-year-old mother fell and broke her hip. The ensuing couple of months were an exhausting round of visits to hospital, skilled nursing home, then hospital again, and back to snh while trying to keep the house up and having to re-organize several rooms in order to create pathways for a walker to get through. Sitting in a poorly designed chair at one of the hospitals threw a pattern already in my hip out massively which left me doing all this in agonizing pain.
Toward the end of her skilled nursing stay news of Covid began to break. I was so busy getting the house ready I barely paid attention. About a week after she came home we were in lockdown. The next several months involved a massive learning curve about grocery shopping when supplies were low, how to stock a pantry for a couple months’ worth of food, and making easier meals than my normal complicated menus. That was a change but I can’t say I feel it transformed me internally.
For many people staying home and being isolated has been a huge change. As a somewhat introverted only child, my life has always involved a certain amount of isolation and being self-sufficient with alone time. But I’ve been coping with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue for 30 years and that added a whole new layer of staying home and leading a very solitary life. So for me Covid didn’t change a lot on that score — in fact the rise of meetings and activities via Zoom Skype etc. has allowed me to participate more than I have in years.
I miss eating in restaurants, but my mother has long been my main restaurant companion and she still isn’t really in shape to make an outing like that, so I’d be doing carry out anyway; for me the pandemic doesn’t loom as a reason I can’t do it.
During the spring I realized my Dad, who turned 95 in May and lived almost 900 miles away, was not in good shape and started trying to figure out how I could get my mother taken care of and pay for that plus a plane ticket. Before I could work it out, I received a call that Dad had fallen and been taken to the hospital. He wasn’t hurt in the fall, but it turned out he was in such bad shape he couldn’t walk any more, then they found cancer. In three days he was moved to hospice care and five days later he died.
Covid impacted all this in that even if I’d been able to arrange for Mom’s care and get down there fast enough (which it turned out wouldn’t have been possible), neither the hospital nor the nursing home would let me in to see him. So we had phone calls every day and a couple of Zoom contacts, then I talked to him and sang via phone after he could no longer speak…. But my Dad died alone.
Had to have a Zoom service and the Marines wound up doing the flag presentation portion in my front yard with masks on. The format was born of Covid, but the service was lovely and a bunch of family and friends who live in other states and would not have been able to get here under any circumstances were able to “attend”.
Since I first left for college my Dad called me every week and for many years it has been every Saturday at 2 p.m I’m still struggling some Saturdays to keep myself from grabbing the phone a little before 2 and getting ready to hear from him. In recent years I called him other times to check up but the only sacrosanct time was Saturday and it’s going to be a while before I get used to the silence at 2.
Many things about the pandemic have slowed down and interfered with the process of settling my Dad’s estate but really the biggest hurdle has been the high level of incompetence of so many people I’ve had to deal with. For instance, the VA misfiled the paperwork on his life insurance not once but twice, causing a month delay and another insurance company wrote the address down wrong and sent forms to the wrong address, causing a month lost on that one too. Multiply that by pretty much every bank (why transfer some money on the first call when you could make 12 before someone does it??), insurance company or service provider and you have an idea of how long and slow every process has been.
In the fall my dear friend, Pat, who beat stage 4 throat cancer a year or so ago, started having health issues and found she needed to have a clip put on a valve in her heart. The procedure went okay and when I spoke to her after she was upbeat and looking forward to getting back to her healing work. Then she started falling and feeling badly and was taken to the hospital where it turned out the clip they put on her heart had sepsis on it and she’d had sepsis for weeks. She died the day after Thanksgiving. My Mom loved her too and pretty much every day one of us says, “I can’t believe Pat’s gone…”
So my life has been so hard hit by dramas and traumas related to people near and dear to me, the pandemic is just a pesky problem in the background. Yes, I get tired of the hassle grocery shopping has become. Yes, I spend small amounts of time considering where I will go and when in order to avoid being in crowds. Other than a few carefully chosen groceries at certain times, I just don’t go out. I started curbside grocery pickups long before Covid hit — other than doing it more, it isn’t a change. Yes, occasionally I miss my rare coffee or lunch meetings with friends but they didn’t happen often enough before Covid for it to make a big hole in my present. And frankly, handling all the Mom care, plus the extra time it takes to grocery shop, and the endless paperwork to do with Dad’s estate have kept me so busy I don’t have the energy to wish for more activities.
The main internal noticing for me involves deepening insights I’ve already had. Formerly neurotic and overdramatic, I’ve stopped here and there to note with surprise how calmly I’ve handled this year. Having started meditating in 1984 and practicing yoga in 1986, followed by many years of metaphysical/spiritual workshops, doing all sorts of inner/shadow work, etc. I’ve been much more calm for a long time. But I don’t think any year since I started has challenged my equanimity as much as this year, so I’m pleased to see how well all the years of practice serve even in traumatic times.
Through all the ups and downs I’ve managed to keep yoga practice regular. Meditation has been a little more hit or miss but I manage pretty often and I’m in love with Steve Nobel’s meditations on YouTube, so I’m drawn to do one pretty often. I also manage to slip a yoga nidra in here and there. And thanks to Covid, Deva Premal and Miten for quite a while had a free Gayatri meditation every Saturday on FB which became an oasis of big, loving energy. Practice always helps maintain the calm.
Through years and years of transformative work I constantly had my finger on the pulse of inner change and change happened all the time. But in this big year of political and medical upheaval in the wide world and personal upheaval in mine, I can’t say I see a big inner shift. I see the benefits of all the shifting that came before and I am so grateful for all the years of inner work and all the hours of practice.
Several days ago I tried a new Steve Nobel meditation which both led to a couple of deep insights and left me feeling the meditation was incomplete. When I saw the meditation I felt right away this would be a good place to try addressing yet again an issue that has dogged me for all the years I’ve been on this journey: The Grace Transmission: Surrendering a Seemingly Irresolvable Issue to Spirit.
Prior to starting the spiritual journey I was pretty good at getting jobs with adequate pay — as long as I hated them. Once I gave up on ideas like “work is hard and always a struggle” and “you can only make a living at jobs that are unpleasant:, etc. I started teetering between starting ventures doing things I loved that at best made no money and often wound up costing me and taking low-paying part-time jobs to get me through. My financial status began a downward spiral that has never stopped.
Having addressed many many issues and seen things move, this one has been frustrating as I have thrown more at it than any other, from affirmations to visions to emotional clearing, to examining ancestral patterns, etc. and nothing has ended the spiral. Every time I think I’ve broken through and things will change, they do. For the worse.
Nobel has several meditations addressing abundance, etc. and I’ve done those too and definitely felt I moved some energy but something has still seemed stuck. So I entered this new meditation with the intent to turn over this issue and see how his mind-blowing transformational talents impacted this.
The basic construct, after his usual opening of clearing and bringing in archangels, etc., is to look through three windows, the first of the unconscious, the second of the conscious and the third, the Higher Self view. Not bad as a construct though I have a few critiques.
I guess he was trying to avoid making suggestions that influenced what we “saw” but from the first window on, I felt I could have used a little more guidance about what we were aiming for as we looked through the window. Nonetheless, as soon as I looked through the first one I saw myself alone in a hot and desolate desert.
Moments later I realized I was revisiting a past life experience I’ve encountered before. Usually it’s come up (or been”seen” by a psychic) in the context of me having had multiple lifetimes as a healer/seer and, more often, as one of many healer lifetimes in which I was tortured and/or put to death for my abilities — thus the shutdown this time around.
My late teacher Ellen Margron taught us about “daisy chains” of beliefs and how beliefs intertwine with one another and are deduced from one another, etc. I’ve often found since that memories, whether childhood or past life, often have their own daisy chain of beliefs that arose from one powerful incident. I forget that sometimes so this was a good reminder.
In this instance instead of feeling the terror of being punished for what I knew or saw, I experienced the end portion of being tied down and left in the middle of a desert to die a horrible death alone. I felt utterly abandoned by every human, by the Universe and by God.
In other inner journeying, I’d realized long ago that as a very young child my reaction to some tough stuff going on was to feel abandoned by God. Many times I’ve realized I live in an odd space in which I consciously believe in spirit and interconnection, etc. while on some deep level having no faith that a higher power cares anything about me.
I’ve worked on it quite a bit but looking through this window I could feel a tight hold from this past life experience and the resulting loss of faith has been at the core most of my life. The surprising thing to me in the meditation was there was no guidance into something to shift or re-create the view through the window. He also left a REALLY long time for seeing this picture and I’d completed it early on, then felt like I was miserably held in this unpleasant space.
So I came to window two still feeling yucky from window one. Window two was seeing into the conscious mind about the issue. It was another scene of isolation, but this time based on fears of winding up homeless and living in my car. I could feel the direct connection between the past life scene in window one and the feelings still being held in consciousness.
Again, there was no turn around moment and the hold in this unpleasant place was exceedingly long. Then on to window three, the view of the Higher Self. This time I could instantly see myself as an interconnected part of the web of all life and sense the flow of energy always available. I was also still experiencing the unpleasant feelings from the first two windows, so it didn’t feel as comfortable and freeing as it might have. I could also see the flow being blocked; I knew it was me blocking it and I could understand that me letting go of those feelings of being abandoned and lost would open the flow.
I gather the idea was the “higher” view would automatically heal the other two views, but since I’ve understood and addressed this issue before and clearly still have it, I felt like I could really have used a final piece in which all the guides and angels brought in assisted in shifting the first two views to align with the third. I understand this stuff well enough to get that he figured the final view would do that on its own. Maybe it did…
I do feel the series of views has had an impact and now that I’m hyper-conscious about it I’ve been regularly envisioning myself in that interconnected space and affirming my connection to the web. I open to receive as much energy, love, abundance, etc. as the universe can offer. I can feel energy moving.
So mixed reviews. On the one hand, clearly there was power in this meditation and it guided me into an important revelation. On the other, I didn’t find it as transformative as I feel it could have been.
I have posts buzzing around in my head, from my spiritual journey lately to more People Power to mulling over Mueller, but life has been getting in the way. My 93-year-old mother relies on me to get to all appointments and to do all shopping and she’s been having lots of appointments. Between busy-ness and periodic sleep deprivation I’m winding up writing in my head but getting nothing down.
In the meantime, I continue to periodically explore Steve Nobel’s expansive offerings and I’ve found his meditation, “Releasing Anxiety/Fear” to be powerful:
A another blogger — also a friend — asked me recently to post something about being peace. I’ve been re-reading old posts and giving it some thought ever since, without quite landing on what I’d like to write.
In the meantime I felt drawn to yet another Steve Nobel meditation and I think it will make a nice opener to what I’m thinking may be a series of posts reflecting on peace.
This one, “The Sun Goddess Amaterasu Transmission. Embracing A Higher Flow of Pure Grace” is almost entirely about filling with grace and love and light from the Divine Feminine and I found it amazing. If enough of us start resonating with this level of grace and love most or all of the time the world will shift…
A couple of weeks ago a big storm took out electricity for a couple of day (previous post) and then our phone/tv/internet service went down for a week. When the electricity came back but the other stuff was still out I pulled out some DVDs to have something to watch.
I’d been drawn for a while to re-watch some “positive” stuff, like Louise Hay’s “You Can Heal Your Life” or “What the Bleep”. But you know, have to remember how to get in DVD mode and find the stuff to watch, so it kept getting put off… But with DVD the only possibility, the draw became compelling. So I started with the Louise Hay. As I watched for what was probably the sixth or eigth time since i bought it, I suddenly felt like a switch flipped.
Having been aware of her mirror work for years, I finally actually went through all the exercises in one of her more recent books about it a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it and felt like it did some good, though years of work on similar things meant it didn’t feel like a big change happened. But I’ve long been aware of a gap for me between my intellectual understanding about positive thinking and my ability to hold on to positive thoughts.
Many people I’ve known over the years have seemed to just flip a switch upon encountering Ms. Hay or Eckhart Tolle or whichever “you create your reality” guru they found. It’s always amazed me that someone could turn it around so fast. Sometimes I realized they became very good at saying only positive things but it didn’t necessarily mean they’d really cleared the negative thoughts or explored their origins…
On my journey I realized in increments over many years that lots of old personal and ancestral issues created endlessly looping negative tapes in my thought patterns and that I didn’t know how to turn them off. It’s taken years of release work, self-examination and creating positive thought loops to progress slowly into a more positive mindset.
But suddenly as Louise and friends discussed loving yourself and mirror work, something in me went, “yes, of course, I love myself.” I’ve been smiling and looking in the mirror to repeat variations of loving myself affirmations daily ever since and spontaneously looping positive thoughts through my mind at intervals each day.
I’ve waited a while to write about this, wondering how well it would stick. Must admit the constancy of it has faded a bit over the course of a couple of weeks (probably time to watch the video again?), but by and large I’m still finding myself running affirmations through my mind and smiling into the mirror daily.
It feels like a big shift. One that was fed by all the work on shifting, sorting, examining and changing that went before, but a shift nonetheless. Quite a blessing to receive from an outage!
The week+ with no Internet or t.v. has also changed my viewing and on line habits a bit, as I actually watch instead of half watching more things, take more time away from computer and t.v. to read, cook, weed, etc. I have to say, frustrating as it was, the blessings were greater than the inconvenience.
For many years now I’ve lived in two worlds when it comes to faith. On the one hand, I’ve moved more and more into a space in which I feel the energy of all that is and how we’re all connected to one another and the big energy of the Universe. And I believe the Universe operates on love and wants the best for us.
On the other, when it comes to certain aspects of my personal life, i have no faith at all in a benevolent God or universal Energy that specifically looks out for or assists me. I realized quite a few years ago I lost faith as a small child when my family was working hard at shutting down the essence of me and I felt God abandoned me.
I’ve been working ever since I noticed its absence on finding that faith while pretty much unsure how you do that. Doing my practices and lots of affirmations have helped move me in the direction of finding faith. And to be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve given it a lot of thought.
Then late last week I had two posts about Jesus in my feed on the same day. Jamie at Sophia’s Children reblogged Defiance, Introducing Mark’s Jesus (which I then reblogged here). Cynthia Sue Larson posted an interview she did with Gardner Sylvester on his book, The First Great Commandment, concerning his research on the secret code of the Bible through Jesus’ words.
These lovely pieces arrived at a time when I’ve been feeling increasingly put out by the folks who call themselves Christians but quote only the Old Testament (and often mistakenly think Jesus said those things) and seem unfamiliar with the New Testament. Which is kind of odd since I wasn’t that into it when I grew up Presbyterian…
But my spiritual path has included Unity and the notion of Christ Consciousness as well as explorations of the Gnostic Gospels and other similar teachings, all of which has led to a strong feeling about the presence of an energy in the Universe associated with Christ and love. And somewhere in there I keep thinking being Christian should be based on love.
It felt so heavenly to read those two posts with their beautiful takes on the love and kindness of Jesus and what it means. Hours later I reflected on the synchronicity of having them both show up a short time apart and how something fresh breathed through me.
As I contemplated the great loving presence of Christ Consciousness and then the Christ grid Steve Nobel brings down from the sun so often in his meditations, I felt that light fill and surround me as a palpable presence and in that presence I felt safe and protected and understood how it feels to be “in faith”.
I can’t say it is now a permanent state. But I keep being able to tap into that presence of light and remind myself I am safe and protected. There are issues of self worth still to heal and I’d say a vestige of the “God abandoned me” issue. But I’m working.
Today I found another, fairly new, Steve Nobel meditation for clearing fear. One of the most powerful meditations I’ve done. I particularly like that he goes through a number of different clearings several times each. Felt like I shifted a lot of energy, moving even closer to the place of faith where fear can’t dwell…
Screaming it out
I was hunting around today for a post I apparently never wrote, trolling through the first couple of years of blogging. Looking back always seems to be a big reminder of how incredibly long the muscle problems and the crazy unwinding face/head muscles thing has been going on. I feel a bit ridiculous because I see myself always expressing the hope that the healing is just about complete. And incredulous I could have spent this many years, so much money, so many hours of my time on healing my muscles — and it still isn’t over. So, spoiler alert, I’m whiny…
I’ve mainly only “talked” about the unwinding head portion here. To those who’ve followed for years even that story probably seems long … and the unwinding actually started about 7 years before the blog. The head piece was just the final puzzle to solve in a much longer quest for healthy muscles that started in the mid-80s. The tightness and pain, etc. that led to the quest had been present for years before I started realizing I had to do something. By the time someone noticed the muscles in my face and head were blocking the final stage of healing the muscles in my body, most of the major muscles in my body were actually in pretty good shape; you know, except the ones being held in twisted patterns by my head.
For the last several years I have felt more debilitated by all this than at any point before — even when far less healthy I was better able to function. Something about this head thing — and maybe the weariness of how very many years it has taken — has just been too much.
Today I postponed yet another outing I’d looked forward to because I was awake all night with my face being yanked. [See here for a little video displaying what you can see of the process from the outside.] Because I haven’t been able to contribute (compounded by stockmarket issues and bad management), my mother and I are facing some very tough decisions about our future. I don’t get how I landed here… And it just feels like too much.
Thanks for listening. I’m sure I’ll meditate and do yoga and restore balance yet again…
Ever since the troubling U.S. election results in November, I’ve been on a mission to find and hold the space of peace. I’d been heading toward a directional shift in my personal journey, a shift from searching out issues and beliefs to release to affirming the life I wish to live, including a lot of practice directed to holding a loving heart space and being peace. It’s taken me a while to realize how the external political events helped me to solidify my new direction. And how the new direction has changed my reaction to the external events…
The first several months after the election I kept to a regular metta (lovingkindness) practice along with singing the Gayatri Mantra and Om Shanti. Suddenly all kinds of materials about self love and finding peace began coming my way. Among several gifts I accepted was a free Louise Hay book which led me work through lessons involving her mirror work; I originally encountered it 30 years or more ago but didn’t do it.
I actually felt this was probably the first time I was ready for the work and in a position to really feel its impacts. Not a big fireworks kind of impact after 30+ years of seeking, releasing, transforming, etc., but a quiet shift into a more positive space and a warmer relationship with myself. I got another book on mirror work and plan to do those practices too.
A Patricia Cota-Robles video called to me and for something like 7 months I’ve played it as I go to sleep. The message feels powerful to me and expresses exactly the affirmations for our times that I want to live and propagate. Falling asleep to such a powerful message has been influencing my thinking and my reactions. I also was fortunate to have a chance to see Patricia at an appearance here in Kentucky; the power of a whole group gathered in the name of love and peace felt amazing.
A Steve Nobel meditation on YouTube tapped me on the shoulder a number of times this summer and I’ve been slotting it into my various practices at least once a week since. Energetically I always feel a huge impact; one of the many things for which I can’t name a “real world” effect with a direct link but it feels amazing and as if it’s shifting me on an energetic level.
I first ran into the Solfeggio frequencies a couple of years ago but only recently looked more deeply into the story of these ancient tones that were trimmed from the annals of organized religion. Lots of recordings are available on Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube (I’m sure elsewhere, but those are the three I use) and I’ve been playing the tones for several hours a day for a while now. It’s another place where I can feel an energetic impact and can’t tell you if or what the precise effect on everyday life may be.
Perhaps the most important piece for me came from Facebook and my distress at the barrage of negative and mean-spirited posts flooding my “wall” for the first few months after the election. Initially I passed along some informational pieces as well, but as I grew more calm I felt I wanted a different tone altogether.
I began searching among the daily posts and then searching elsewhere on the web for positive news every day and passing along evidence of the many great things that are happening in the world if only we choose to look at them instead of being mesmerized by the negative.
Slowly I’ve been realizing this collection of peaceful and peace-loving activities has been moving me into a space where I can look at something outrageous #45 has done or at a piece bemoaning the probable end of the world and feel… nothing. Not numb. Not in denial. Just no longer moved by it.
When a friend thanked me for the positive tone I’ve been keeping on FB, I suddenly realized how happy it has been making me to seek out and pass along the news that speaks of a world full of amazing people doing amazing things every day. The total impact of all the ways in which I’ve been holding my focus on lovingkindness, peace and positive news has been to shift me. I now live in a place where I believe we are moving to the good and you can’t sway me from it.
No way to tell which of the many things I’ve been up to has had an impact but I like to thing the whole collection of practices and focusing on good news have combined to move me into this new place of calm certainty.
I believe much of what is happening is just part of the shift into a new world of compassion and peace. I believe in the essential goodness of humanity and in holding a vibrational space that helps to lift everyone into love and compassion. Where are you choosing to look? What space are you choosing to hold?
Next J2P post will explore healing whatever parts of us are held in thrall by negativity.
I’ve been a little silent lately. Partly because the unwinding is back with the usual discombobulation accompanying and also because I’ve been ruminating on current events and what I want to say…
It’s been an amazing time for me in general. As I mentioned recently, my daily chanting into heart-fullness has brought me face to face with some remaining issues about worthiness, self-love and my ongoing journey to transform my ancestral negative thinking habit into positive thinking; it’s been a far tougher transition over the years than I’d have imagined when I started out and blithely assumed a few months of affirmations would fix everything.
Since my last post, I’ve been guided to “The Cure Is…“, which I LOVED. I was given a link to see it free on Vimeo but I’ve found the DVD at Amazon and am thinking I want to buy it and add it to my growing collection of positive thought movies.
And then a friend sent me a link to this lovely — and fairly short — video of Martha Beck on YouTube, which I found to be the PERFECT message for these times and reflects how I see it working:
The piece that’s been bugging me lately has been the handful of friends on Facebook who can’t seem to stop fear-mongering even though they have spiritual knowledge and practices that should help them step out of that space. I’ll be posting more about those issues — theirs with the fear and mine with being bugged by it 🙂 later.
But this little film from Ms. Beck helped me to see the message I most want to spread, the one I most want to be my message: Be the Peace. Hold the space of lovingkindness. Let your heart be filled with love and compassion.
Being in fear only helps them. What we need right now is for as many people as possible to be clearing anything within them that stands in the way of peace and compassion and also meditating, chanting, praying their way into higher consciousness. The higher we take the consciousness, the more that pyramid she’s depicting melts into the sea of love.
BE THE LOVE!
P.S. A little extra. I have also found great comfort in this YouTube video from Patricia Cota Robles. I’ve been listening to it every night as I go to sleep. Some of it’s pretty woo woo if you’re not into some of the I AM stuff but the basic message about transforming the world into eternal peace is spot on:
Nearly Full Moon over my back yard
Being very mindful that energy flows where attention goes, I’ve been working at finding positive things on which to focus. And I’m happy to report I’m finding a lot of cause for hope. I was especially happy to see a report the other day that the Schumann Resonance has recorded the highest frequency ever as of January 31.
Considered to be “Earth’s Heartbeat” frequency, the Resonance has been linked to human brain activity/consciousness and a rise in this frequency has been correlated by some to a rise in human consciousness. I’m seeing this recent spike as arising from the worldwide movement sparked by current events and leading to multitudes standing together in support and/or mediating and reflecting on peace and heartfulness.
I’m seeing stories about people cleaning hate graffiti off a New York subway car and a Synagogue in Victoria, Texas gave keys to the Muslims whose Mosque burned down so they can continue having services. I’m seeing people supporting the protest at Standing Rock in numerous ways. More and more stories of people standing up in support of their brothers and sisters of every race, creed and religion are showing up every day and my heart fills with joy at every one I see.
In each of these stories there is a choice of focus. I could choose to dwell on the hate behind the anti-Semitic graffiti or the possibility the burning of the Mosque was arson or the corporate greed behind the pipeline. Or I can choose to dwell on the lovingkindness of those who cleaned the graffiti, gave the keys to the Synagogue and who stand with the Native Americans at Standing Rock. I choose the love.
Energy flows where attention goes. If your attention is on the hate, you send energy to it which creates more. If you focus on the love and compassion you send energy there and create more. It is entirely your choice where you will focus and to which end you will send energy.
If you choose to focus all your attention on the haters, you’re as much a part of the problem as they are. Choose the love. It doesn’t mean you don’t notice what’s happening it’s that you change your focus to celebrating those who are doing the right thing instead of those who are doing wrong.
I see a global consciousness of oneness and the need to stand up for one another rising. I see love growing bigger not only in the world, but as I continue to chant for lovingkindness and a heart filled with love (see post), I feel my being shifting into more and more into a space of love.
For the first time the Schumann Resonance reached 36. I plan to do all I can to be part of taking it higher by continuing to focus on being peace and love. Where are you going to put your attention? Which do you want to feed, the love or the hate?
Addendum: I love this video discussing Gandhi and his approach to changing the world by changing your self and the list of organizations bringing his spirit into the world:
Video from KarmaTube
For more on the Schumann Resonance:
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:
2. Using energy:
3. Happy memory
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.
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:
Not Just Sassy on the Inside 
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