Archive for January, 2014
Listen to Your Breath
Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
Take a moment to listen to your breath. What is your inhale and exhale revealing to you?
Listen for a word or sound. Listen for a whisper of love. Listen to the space between the breaths.
Receive a word or sound. Receive a whisper of love. Receive the space between the breaths.
Rest in the energy of a word or sound. Rest in a whisper of love. Rest in the space between the breaths.
Call to a word or sound. Call to the whisper of love. Call to the space between the breaths.
Be the word or sound. Be the whisper of love. Be the space between the breaths.
Mental Transformation
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014
Meditation is more than just relaxing into a quiet space. Meditation is about transformation — a change in our thinking. Some questions to explore in meditation are: Am I changing? Am I more kind? Am I more compassionate and less judgmental?
Meditation is more than just one morning, one sitting, or one weekend. It’s a practice. It’s a continuum of looking at your meditation practice and noticing what has changed for good in your life. As you sit in your meditation practice, ask yourself: Is what I am meditating on for the benefit of all? Am I being more loving, kind, generous, and joyful?
What are you willing to transform?
Where is your meditation practice taking you?
Coming Home to Ourself
Tuesday, January 21st, 2014
What brings you back to center?
What re-grounds you?
What brings you back to your Self?
What brings you back to trusting your heart?
What brings you back to following your path?
What Are You Creating?
Thursday, January 16th, 2014
The question that keeps surfacing in my meditation is, “What are you creating?”
I knew it was a big question because I kept returning to it all week. Just listening to the question felt like a deep meditation. And the deeper I went into the question, the more I was reminded of my own impermanence.
The question became a roadmap to how I want to design my life. I discovered through this question that I am creating a path with purpose and meaningful relationships.
When I took a deeper dive into what I am creating on a larger scale in my work, what came pouring through was:
I am creating a heart-centered community that connects with who they truly are and lives from that place.
How would you answer the question, “What are you creating?”
You Can’t Put the Toothpaste Back In
Tuesday, January 14th, 2014
Many of my conversations with my spiritual teacher have focused on feeling a deep sense of being aware and awake in the world. One of my teacher’s favorite quotes is, “Once you know, you can’t not know.”
My teacher spoke about being awake in the world by comparing it to squeezing toothpaste out of its tube. She said, “Once you squeeze the toothpaste out, you can’t put it back in. Being awake is the same. When you become awake, you can’t go back to being unconsciousness.”
She acknowledged that being awake in the world might mean being more attuned to both the joys and sufferings of other people. We can choose to be fully alive or stay in a slumbered state.
“You may sit at a dinner table and be the only one aware and awake. While you may not feel seen or heard, people will be able to feel the life inside you. Continue to be your brilliant, loving, vulnerable, and joyful self. We need more people who are aware and awake.”
I knew she was right. There really is no turning back now. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
Breathing Warmth: Meditations for the Soul
Monday, January 13th, 2014
Have you wanted to start a meditation practice? Or do you want to deepen your meditation practice? Start by drawing your breath inward as we prepare for a season of hibernation and going deeper inside ourselves.
In our busy lives, we rarely experience an extended period of quiet. For our meditation session(s), we will enter the quiet within ourselves as a way to deepen our connection to our soul’s journey. You are invited to enter the space of Being, rather than Doing.
The 60-minute meditations will open you to thinking differently about meditation. Meditation is about zoning in, not zoning out. Our session(s) may include looking at where our mind wanders, focusing our gaze, guided visualizations, making movement an integral part of our lives, resonating with a (personal) mantra, and stepping more fully into our thoughts. All levels of students are welcome. You may book as many sessions as you want from January 2 – March 31, 2014. Each session is 60-minutes and will take place on the phone or Skype (Monday – Friday only).
For more information, see Breathing Warmth: Meditations for the Soul
2014: The Year of…
Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
Happy 2014! As each New Year begins, I take time to sit quietly and set intentions for the coming year. I listen to silence. I listen to nature. I listen to my heart. One clear intention is to follow the map of my heart.
As I started to meditate, I gazed at my bookcase. Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, jumped out at me. I had read this book a few years after my mom passed away. (I highly recommend any Joan Didion book!) As I stared at that book, I felt like there was a message for me for 2014. I randomly opened to a page and read, “As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs…The way I write is who I am, or have become…” I returned the book and felt the rhythms of the words as it matched the rhythm of my breath.
I wrote the words: 2014 is the Year of Magical Being
This year will be about following the sacred path of the warrior and living from a place of being. It will BE a year of allowing serendipity to replace certainty. It will BE a year where I live from my heart. It will BE a year where feelings will be the map that guides me. 2014 will be a year of Magical BEING.
As a part of that beingness, I am also honing in a word for 2014: Metta.
The Pali word for lovingkindness, metta, means unconditional friendliness, warmth, love or care, and the Pali word for compassion, karuna, means to “feel with,” to bear suffering with an active sympathy. In his wisdom the Buddha realized that by purposefully awakening lovingkindness and compassion, we invite the alienated hurts and fears into consciousness, and free ourselves into a wholeness of being. (Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart)
My year of Magical Being will be tuning into loving-kindness towards myself and others. This loving-kindness will allow me to consciously stay awake in the world and turn shame, fear, and doubt into wholeness.
It’s a big journey and I know I don’t walk alone. I have many holy witnesses with me.
You are invited to take time and listen for your intention, your word, and your heart.
What does 2014 feel like for you?