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?
Posted in Meditation | Toning the Om
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?
Posted in Vulnerability | Toning the Om
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?”
Posted in Wholehearted | Toning the Om
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.
Posted in Vulnerability | Toning the Om
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
Tags: Being, Mantra, Meditation, Mindfulness, Practice, Visualization
Posted in Meditation | Toning the Om
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?
Tags: Being, Holy Witness, Joan Didion, Journey, Metta, Spiritual Story, Tara Brach, True Refuge, Warrior, Wholeness
Posted in Vulnerability | Toning the Om
December 31st, 2013
Back in January, I declared 2013 to be the year of “Daring Deeply.” In my post back in January 2013, I wrote:
My focus in 2013 will be about taking chances on outrageous (and unknown) invitations for new workshops and retreats and daring myself to put my heart-centered work out into the world in greater ways. My purpose is to dig deeper inside my heart so that I can take peaceful actions and dare greatly into vulnerability.
As I reflect back on 2013, I realize how much I have dared greatly. My year started with going through many medical tests and receiving a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. That certainly taught me how to dare deeply physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Daring deeply required me to slow down and create more meditative practices. It taught me to advocate for myself. It invited me to live with vulnerability and wholeheartedness. It taught me to ask for help and receive. I am grateful for every lesson, every journey of my heart, every tear, every smile, every friendship, every laughter, and every moment that brought me closer to my wild cosmic heart.
2013 was a year to go inside more and live from my heart space. I stepped away from a long-time successful shamanic teaching practice. When I gave myself the space to let go, I discovered profound practices of the heart.
The biggest gift of 2013 was allowing serendipity to replace certainty.
I dared greatly and returned to Hawaii to facilitate an annual wild cosmic heart retreat. I met a group of amazing, courageous, and loving women who opened their hearts and trusted the sacred space we created. The group dared greatly too. And I was deeply honored to share the week with my sister, Mary Ann.
Thank you to everyone who shared themselves with me on my journey – whether you know it or not, you made a difference in my life. Everything became my teacher this year from my month long sabbatical, to birding, to the Pacific Ocean, to a new health condition, to new friendships and spiritual teachers, to Kadampa Meditation Center.
My willingness to put my heart-centered work out into the world opened up possibilities to teach in 2014 and beyond, including Hawaii, Colorado, the Virgin Islands, Canada, and even Cambodia.
It certainly was a year of Daring Deeply! Thank you for sharing it with me. I look forward to sharing more heart centered journeys together in 2014.
Tags: 2013, Daring Deeply, Serendipity, Vulnerability, Wholehearted
Posted in Happiness | Toning the Om
December 19th, 2013
What you have never noticed about the toad, probably,
is that his tongue is attached not to the back of his mouth but
the front-how far it extends
when the fly hesitates on a near-enough leaf! Or that
his front feet, which are sometimes padded, hold three nimble
digits — had anyone
a piano small enough I think the toad could learn
to play something, a little Mozart maybe, inside
the cool cellar of the sandy hill — and if
the eyes bulge they have gold rims,
and if the smile is wide it never fails,
and the warts, the delicate uplifts of dust-colored skin, are
neither random nor suggestive of dolor, but rather are little streams of jewelry, in patterns of espousal and pleasure,
running up and down their crooked backs, sweet and alive in the sun.
─Mary Oliver
Posted in Life | Toning the Om
December 16th, 2013
East wind blowing snow
Hints of winter fill the sky
Stillness in my eyes
Posted in Fun | Toning the Om
December 12th, 2013
Join Hands
Join Hearts
Listen to one another
Stand up and speak up
Be peace in words + deeds
Forgive the past
Create a world of harmony
Open the prison of your mind
Expect to work hard
And laugh (at yourself)
Make something happen
Change your world ─ for the better
Walk your journey with an open heart.
Posted in Forgiveness | Toning the Om
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?
