I have been walking in the local park about weekly with a friend. The air is clear, the scent of decaying leaves strangely refreshing! The park is some 2500 acres of woods and fields, with a lake at its center. Walking through the woods feels ancient and rich, putting my feet to the timeless soil, under the white and blue sky-scape.
For me, the woods invariably connects me to the "still center," the place where doubt falls away and beauty and inner wisdom is found. This still point is the quiet interior, the essence of our nature, and the place of all intuitive knowledge. When I guide others to find this interior, I often ask people to visualize a staircase to the interior. The staircase is a method for moving the attention away from the head and into the belly.
The head -- the place of logical thinking -- will want to doubt the very existence of this interior. When we tap into intuitive knowledge, it is the knowledge that challenges us to grow and change, while the logical mind will want everything to remain as is. Why? Because it feels safer to have things stay the same. Doubt is the mind's way of staying in control.
But experience tells us that we are not really in control of our lives. We can make choices, and direct our lives along a certain course, but we are never fully in control!
Self-mastery is the ability to hold onto our still center, allowing doubt to be sidelined by the practice of listening to what that center is asking of us. Eventually, with practice, doubt arises, but it no longer can disguise itself as truth.
Awakening the interior voice takes listening and acting on what is found so that you can learn to trust its wisdom. Einstein said that our society has it upside down. That truly, intuitive knowledge is a sacred gift, and logic the servant of this gift. Our culture and our planet desperately need people to follow arising interior guidance. For what knowledge is there is designed to guide the unfolding of the individual, for the highest purposes for the individual and the planet.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Earth Meditations
Today was quiet, and with my family off doing their own things, I had a free couple of afternoon hours with nothing planned. For starters, I pulled out my guitar and played the old John Denver song, "Sunshine on My Shoulders." There's nothing like a song like that to kick you outside. The rest of my time, I spent emptying pots of plants that froze the other night and sweeping leaves off my front porch.
For a moment, carrying a pot to the front yard so that I could re-pot geraniums to move them indoors, I could feel the timelessness of this one little act. I was just one little pair of feet and hands among centuries upon centuries of women and men walking through the seasons with the crops -- planting, harvesting, emptying flower beds and fields for the winter, then planting once again in the right season.
There are so many ways to let the mind relax into the greater secret of life. Being with the dirt and the pots and the dead plants, I feel a belonging to the earth. I feel like a real inhabitant, a participant, a sister to the soil. What better meditation than to sweep off the front stoop and stop to breathe in the cooling autumn air.
The point of meditation is to focus the mind so that the normal soundtrack of the mind can fade into a greater composition. Meditation does not have to be cushion-sitting. In my twenties, I lived next to my grandparents on a rural hill in Bally, Pennsylvania. They had a profoundly meditative life without ever having sat in lotus position.
Their love for the land and people were their meditation. For my grandmother, that meant sewing quilts for charity sales, cooking for family who lived nearby, and tending her flower garden. For my grandfather, it was taking walks, helping my grandmother string green beans or peel apples, and tinkering with electrical components in his shop. Granted, they were retired. But they understood quietude not because they practiced it but because they offered their lives in love and gentle service to those around them. Their religion dictated that they serve as the the hands and feet of Christ. They were humble servants.
When I was cleaning the pots today, I was reminded of how meditating is a state of mind. It is the state of mind in which one is in love with the earth and the beings in it. In that love, we are the hands and feet of the greater Consciousness being expressed through us. If we understand the profundity of that, we can relax. Who wants to be a small, whiny human being when you can be the hands and feet of Divine Consciousness?
...
Do: Ask yourself: who do I love? Who am I serving in this life? When I die, what will I be remembered by? Create an intention for your days. How would you like them to be filled? Write this somewhere so that you can be reminded of it.
It is the love that we remember -- the moments when love takes hold of our hearts and reminds us of who we are.
For a moment, carrying a pot to the front yard so that I could re-pot geraniums to move them indoors, I could feel the timelessness of this one little act. I was just one little pair of feet and hands among centuries upon centuries of women and men walking through the seasons with the crops -- planting, harvesting, emptying flower beds and fields for the winter, then planting once again in the right season.
There are so many ways to let the mind relax into the greater secret of life. Being with the dirt and the pots and the dead plants, I feel a belonging to the earth. I feel like a real inhabitant, a participant, a sister to the soil. What better meditation than to sweep off the front stoop and stop to breathe in the cooling autumn air.
The point of meditation is to focus the mind so that the normal soundtrack of the mind can fade into a greater composition. Meditation does not have to be cushion-sitting. In my twenties, I lived next to my grandparents on a rural hill in Bally, Pennsylvania. They had a profoundly meditative life without ever having sat in lotus position.
Their love for the land and people were their meditation. For my grandmother, that meant sewing quilts for charity sales, cooking for family who lived nearby, and tending her flower garden. For my grandfather, it was taking walks, helping my grandmother string green beans or peel apples, and tinkering with electrical components in his shop. Granted, they were retired. But they understood quietude not because they practiced it but because they offered their lives in love and gentle service to those around them. Their religion dictated that they serve as the the hands and feet of Christ. They were humble servants.
When I was cleaning the pots today, I was reminded of how meditating is a state of mind. It is the state of mind in which one is in love with the earth and the beings in it. In that love, we are the hands and feet of the greater Consciousness being expressed through us. If we understand the profundity of that, we can relax. Who wants to be a small, whiny human being when you can be the hands and feet of Divine Consciousness?
...
Do: Ask yourself: who do I love? Who am I serving in this life? When I die, what will I be remembered by? Create an intention for your days. How would you like them to be filled? Write this somewhere so that you can be reminded of it.
It is the love that we remember -- the moments when love takes hold of our hearts and reminds us of who we are.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Monday, November 02, 2009
Simplify the Challenges
Some of the flowers of summer are remarkably still blooming. I have pink petunias and red geraniums that don't want to fade away. I honor their fighting spirit, their blooming against all seasonal reason. It helps that they are close to the house, in window boxes, so they get that nice heat radiating out from our ancient, breezy structure.
What is it that helps us press forward, against all odds? The more I sit with people in coaching, and listen to family and friends and their various struggles, and watch my own process, too, I wonder what it is that gives us motivation to press onward. If you look around you, you will find individuals from all walks of life, slugging through some of life's most difficult trials, and finding their way -- in the way that they are able-- to light and new growth.
In the yogic lineage I have studied, life is seen as a place of purification, where all of our tendencies are burned, bit by bit, so that we can radiate out more of the love that is our true nature. In the Christian lineage, it is taught that we are also being changed into the likeness of God. Seen by these two lineages, life is a kind of refining fire, where what we can hope for is that as we are refined by life, we become more and more like the Pure Love that makes up our nature.
It takes spunk, I think, to take life's challenges as purification. It's easier, in some ways, to complain and rail against what comes our way. Or we want to run and hide, hoping this will trick fate to deal up something different for us.
But like the flowers in my window boxes, life can be simple, when you nestle up against a warm house, accepting the wind and the rain as part of it. These flowers have taken a beating this summer, with all of the rain. Yet look at them. They keep coming back. To them, life is simple. The rain comes, it damages many of the petals; the petals regrow. There is no question about re-growth. It happens, because it is the flower's nature to regrow.
To be like a flower. This is the state of No Mind. To understand problems and challenges as a state of grace, given for our own growth, would be to truly eliminate mental suffering. Growth follows because it is a natural outcome of hardship.
Question for you: What are your challenges? How are your challenges taking old patterns, old ways of being, old beliefs, and asking for something new? What is the new impulse that wants to emerge? Take just one challenge you might be facing, whether its a relationship, a financial situation, a work issue. What is being asked of you? How is your God Nature being called forward?
When framed in this way, challenges are a blessing in disguise. Not that the challenges aren't hard and sometimes very difficult, but that when framed correctly, we can accept the simplicity of what is being asked. Take some time to look for the blessing. Make it a treasure hunt. And if you can't find it, ask a friend or a mentor to help you on the hunt. The treasure is always there.
What is it that helps us press forward, against all odds? The more I sit with people in coaching, and listen to family and friends and their various struggles, and watch my own process, too, I wonder what it is that gives us motivation to press onward. If you look around you, you will find individuals from all walks of life, slugging through some of life's most difficult trials, and finding their way -- in the way that they are able-- to light and new growth.
In the yogic lineage I have studied, life is seen as a place of purification, where all of our tendencies are burned, bit by bit, so that we can radiate out more of the love that is our true nature. In the Christian lineage, it is taught that we are also being changed into the likeness of God. Seen by these two lineages, life is a kind of refining fire, where what we can hope for is that as we are refined by life, we become more and more like the Pure Love that makes up our nature.
It takes spunk, I think, to take life's challenges as purification. It's easier, in some ways, to complain and rail against what comes our way. Or we want to run and hide, hoping this will trick fate to deal up something different for us.
But like the flowers in my window boxes, life can be simple, when you nestle up against a warm house, accepting the wind and the rain as part of it. These flowers have taken a beating this summer, with all of the rain. Yet look at them. They keep coming back. To them, life is simple. The rain comes, it damages many of the petals; the petals regrow. There is no question about re-growth. It happens, because it is the flower's nature to regrow.
To be like a flower. This is the state of No Mind. To understand problems and challenges as a state of grace, given for our own growth, would be to truly eliminate mental suffering. Growth follows because it is a natural outcome of hardship.
Question for you: What are your challenges? How are your challenges taking old patterns, old ways of being, old beliefs, and asking for something new? What is the new impulse that wants to emerge? Take just one challenge you might be facing, whether its a relationship, a financial situation, a work issue. What is being asked of you? How is your God Nature being called forward?
When framed in this way, challenges are a blessing in disguise. Not that the challenges aren't hard and sometimes very difficult, but that when framed correctly, we can accept the simplicity of what is being asked. Take some time to look for the blessing. Make it a treasure hunt. And if you can't find it, ask a friend or a mentor to help you on the hunt. The treasure is always there.
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