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<Drums Rattle Djembe Doumbek>

Archive for April, 2010

April OM Meditations

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

I started the month of April by asking folks to “play the fool” and to bring forth their most outrageous, wild, playful self. In keeping with tradition, I am ending the month by sharing monthly meditations and contemplative questions as a way to open up to more joy and let love in.

As an invitation, feel free to close your eyes, sit with your spine straight and take a few soft breaths. Then inhale a little deeper through your nose, and on the exhale, repeat the mantra OM (AUM).  Do this three times. Allow yourself to really feel everything and become the observer of your thoughts. Feel free to focus on one question or statement below and just allow your experience to unfold.

How can we allow empty spaces to teach us, to fill us, to empty us?

Love is reciprocity. Love doesn’t worry about being liked & having approval.  Love exists within our inabilities, imperfections, & faults—and our value never decreases.

How do you come out in the world? How do you want to come out fully and shine your light for the entire world to see?

Living authentically means embracing who we are and allowing our full light to shine.

How often do we close our own hearts & need a locksmith to open it and let love in? How do you let love in?

Beloved
Be Love
You are loved. Stay there.

Letting love in, I am healed;
Letting love in, I am whole;
Letting love in, I remember;
Letting love in, I am Free.

Each person will have their own experience so the invitation is to be open for whatever thoughts flow through you. Allow your mind and body to expand into the experience (without judgment).  Feel free to start with whatever mantra calls to you.

May you experience letting love in and allowing your heart to expand.

Make at least 10 people smile today.
Mary Anne




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“Turning to One Another”

Monday, April 26th, 2010

I just finished facilitating a weekend about energy healing, community building, and sacred ceremonies. Every six months, folks from all over the North East (and beyond) gather for a weekend to share in shamanic practices, mystical teachings, and fire ceremonies. As participants arrive on Friday, their anxiety is high and so too is their curiosity. By the end of the weekend, folks step into scared love and power in ways that are so full of liberation – singing songs and chants for all to share, playing drums, flutes, and rattles, sharing heart-centered struggles and insights, sitting on the grass and allowing the earth to teach them.

Throughout the weekend, the group turned to one another for support, for laughter, and for love. As I thought about how we turn to one another each day, I was reminded of the words of Margaret Wheatley.

Ask, “What’s Possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.

Notice what you care about.
Assume that many others share your dreams.

Be intrigued by the differences you hear.
Expect to be surprised.
Treasure curiosity more than certainty.

Invite everyone who cares to work on what’s possible.
Acknowledge that everyone is expert on something.
Know that creative solutions come from new connections.

Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know.
Real listening always brings us closer together.

Trust that meaningful conversations can change the world.

Rely on human goodness. Stay together.
(Turning to One Another, Margaret Wheatley)

Let’s keep turning to one another.
Mary Anne


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Venia – Grace & Forgiveness

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

I came across the Latin word for forgiveness — “venia.” The direct translation means grace. I experience the gift of grace every week in my work with children who have an incarcerated parent. They write letters of forgiveness to their parents and are able to acknowledge their pain. In his work with prisoners Buddhist teacher Noah Levine writes, “Some actions may not be forgivable, but all actors are.” He goes on to say, “For this actor, the person whose own suffering has spilled onto other people, there is always the possibility of compassion.”

How does my pain spill onto others? My experience of looking at my past or current pain has led me to deepen my meditation practice — to go within and ask how my current actions are showing up based on past suffering. By sitting in stillness, I have become present to my own thoughts and can separate people from their past actions and this has made space for greater understanding and love.

Eckhart Tolle says, “You can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.” By paying attention to the present moment, we allow ourselves the opportunity to release guilt, regret, grievances, and anger. As Tolle says, “Forgiveness happens naturally as soon as you realize that the past cannot prevail against the power of Presence.”

All forgiveness starts inside — by becoming still, by noticing your breath, by expressing gratitude — we expand deeper into our own hearts. By experiencing the present moment, we can release the past and step into the future with greater joy.

How has the pain of others spilled into your heart? What pain in your life is playing out with actions you are taking? If you would like to experience making space for more understanding and peace, please join me starting May 12 for Resting in Radical Forgiveness 4-Week Telecourse. All you need is your phone, pen & paper, and an open heart.

Venia,
Mary Anne

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Relax! The Importance of Down Time

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

As someone who works full time and also runs a healing arts business, I fully understand the importance of down time. I work full time overseeing a city-wide mentoring program. My evenings and weekends include seeing clients for life coaching  or shamanic healing sessions and I am also taking classes at NYU. I actually schedule down time!

I made the decision this past weekend not to work, make plans, or go anywhere – my goal was “to relax.” After enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the New York Times on Saturday, I found myself doing things around the house – cleaning shelves, changing curtains, organizing clothes, throwing away papers, and going to the dry cleaners. I then sat down and wrote a newsletter and some meditations for an upcoming course. I couldn’t sit still or slow my mind down. I couldn’t relax. I even text my close friend to tell her to text me back and tell me to stop working and to rest.

Every time I sat down to be quiet, read an article, or take a slow walk, I was convinced I was being lazy. Yet, it is this down time that is so important for self care (part of my Happiness Project). Slowing down allows the body, mind, and spirit to regenerate. It allows for harmony of energy and stimulates creative flow. Without down time, it is so easy to burn out.

Give yourself a break and take some down time. Some ideas:
Do Nothing – clear your schedule for a whole day. Ignore your to-do list and live the day from a to-be place.

Rest – take a nap. I am not sure why we had to stop napping after kindergarten, but napping, laying in the grass or in a hammock just feels good.

Play – what amuses you? Schedule time to go and do something playful – something that makes you laugh.

Indulge – surrender to a mindless activity. Give yourself permission to read a magazine, go to the movies, or treat yourself to something. Treat yourself as if you are the most important person in the world – because you are.

Schedule down time – block off time in your calendar as “you” time and choose how you want to relax and pause. This is all about self-care. Don’t wait until your body forces you to rest because you are burnt out or sick. By taking down time, you will be refreshed and energized.

Here is to slowing down ~
Mary Anne

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Letting Love In

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

In the Toning the OM™ newsletter this week, I shared about my experience of giving a sound-healing workshop focused on joyful hearts and rhythm. Following the workshop, I have had a profound experience of letting love in. While I have always been able to give love and intellectually know I am loved, I am now feeling love and it is dropping in deeper and deeper with each passing day. Love is dropping into my heart.

I feel like the tulips that are budding. They wait through the cold season and come up through the ground all closed up. They wait for light and for warmth and then they let “love in” and burst open. We are like those tulips. If we can trust the light and warmth and let “love in”, we too, will bloom fully.

After meditating on letting love in, I wrote:
Letting love in, I am healed;
Letting love in, I am whole;
Letting love in, I remember;
Letting love in, I am Free.

How do you let love in?

 

With profound love,
Mary Anne

 

 

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The NYC Subway Is My Teacher

Monday, April 19th, 2010

After more than 18 years of taking the NYC subway, I still am learning lessons of patience and opportunity. I take the subway into Manhattan daily to go to work. It’s pretty tedious and most days I drive on autopilot to park my car near the subway. I hop on an “express train”, which takes about an hour to get into lower Manhattan from the Bronx. I have become accustomed to delays due to “train traffic”, “sick passengers”, “signal malfunction”, and “police activity” (and other delays that are not announced, but am sure are for good reasons). Just recently, the MTA announced that due to necessary track work, my express train is going to run local in both directions until August 2011. This translates into an additional 15-20 minutes on the train (despite the MTA saying it would mean an additional 5 minutes). For the next year and half, my train will run on the local track.

I started this local commute a few weeks ago and realized I was standing a long time. By the time I got to my office, I noticed I was more tired and cranky. The first thought was to blame the MTA and their track work. Then I blamed the train for being too crowded. I was getting ready to go onto a new rant, when I stopped myself and asked what this slower ride could teach me. I realized that this slower commute was an opportunity. I had more time to read, to draft ideas, to scan a blog, to nap, and to meditate. With the train moving slower, I was able to notice the sunrises and sunsets that I normally just blinked through.

Then I began to list other ways I could commute into the city. I could take the express bus or try a different train route. The NYC Subway became my teacher. It taught me that I could slow down and that I have options. How many times have I thought I must do something one way and that’s the only way it could be done? And why am I in such a rush to get into the city? Is slowing down such a bad thing?

The subway ride is teaching me to slow down. I can look at other areas of my life and see I have options. And most importantly, I don’t have to always be on the express track.

Are you willing to get off the express track in life and head onto the local?

Mary Anne

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Beloved

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

The Beloved simply is. In fact, in it’s exploration—at the center of that indescribable feeling of simply being, of ishness—the Beloved is discovered spontaneously, self-effulgent, the presence within the presence.”
– Stephen & Ondrea Levine

A Meditation on the Beloved:

Beloved
Let that drop in
Beloved
Go deep inside
Who is your beloved?
Where in your body is the beloved?
Beloved
Is it falling into you yet?
Look back into yourself.
Beloved
Drop in a little more
Beloved
Listen with your eyes
Hear with your heart
Beloved
What are you experiencing now?
Beloved
Be Love

You are loved. Stay there.
Mary Anne

This is dedicated to all who have allowed me to experience the Beloved—Lorene, Val, Paulette, Meredith, Louis, Joe, Greg, and Myron.

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Joyful Rhythms

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

I woke up early Saturday morning and headed to Park Slope in Brooklyn to give a Joyful Rhythms workshop to a group of women from the Joyful Heart Foundation. The day was about experiencing our heart rhythms through drumming circles, movement, meditation, and reflection. After many attempts to get into the yoga center, we realized we didn’t have a key to one of the locks. We waited outside the door and shortly before the group arrived, a locksmith pulled up and changed the lock. I smiled and said, “Isn’t this the way of it. How often do we close our own hearts and need a locksmith to open it and let love in?” And so the workshop began with a locked door and finished with open hearts.

Some of the women had never played a drum before. One of the participants from the workshop wrote an amazing poem after her experience of the day that she read to the group and provided to me to post.

I am a descendant of the drum.
Loud, mighty and strong is where I come from.
It’s love is a language that courses through my veins
If you strip away all other noise my truth remains.
– Tomika Anderson

And so, we are all descendants of the drum moving with joy and opening our hearts.

Joy-filled rhythms, always,
Mary Anne

Much love and gratitude to Allison Talis and everyone at the Joyful Heart Foundation~



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Spring Gardens of Life

Monday, April 12th, 2010

With vibrant colors, stillness, beauty, & growth, may we water the garden of all life. Enjoy~

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Overwhelmed by Love

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Sometimes I hit the “enter” button on the keyboard and wonder how people will respond to one of my writings I post publicly on my blog. I was so excited to write a blog about “coming out” and how we all get a chance to do that every day when we live life as who we are openly and authentically. I spent years being ashamed of who I was, which brought me so much unhappiness. It has taken me some time, but now all parts of my life are integrated – loving relationships, friendships, hobbies, spirituality, work, and dreams.

Many people were moved by my “coming out” blog and have written some amazing responses. I am sharing some of the responses because they were full of so much wisdom. I have been overwhelmed by the love and acceptance that has flowed my way. May each day give us a chance to embrace who we are and allow our full light to shine.

“Here’s to being able to truly be authentic, to openly say ‘this is an important part of who I am’, without shame or fear. I look forward to embracing & welcoming others doing the same, whatever hidden part of themselves that may be.”

“I too blew off the (High School) reunion thinking no one would remember me or care if I was there, and it saddens me to think you felt alone during any part of your life.”

“I am happy to have found all the PC (High School) people here, as well. So many people (girls and guys) that I wish I had gotten to know then…because I’m coming to learn that we can each offer support and friendship to others.”

“In many ways, the most significant ‘coming outs’ for me have been politically and spiritually and those self-realizations might not have happened if it wasn’t for my needing to deal with my sexual orientation. As you said, I needed to live authentically before my light could shine, both in personal relationships and professionally.”

“But then I thought, what would I have done if you shared this with me? Would I have had the maturity and grace and compassion to accept you, to help you? Probably not, back then. It’s a cruel trick of nature that we start to realize who we are, just when our peers are least likely to accept us! But if there is one thing I’ve learned, and something I hope (God I hope) I can impart to my daughters, it’s this: EVERYONE feels alone and different and depressed and disconnected in high school, at some point. Nobody ever feels they are good enough. We need to live a lot of years before we realize, hey, we’re ok after all.”

With gratitude,
Mary Anne

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