October 2008 Audio Meditation

Sitting in Central Park, in the presence of the majestic and beautiful trees that surround me, my awareness again drifts to our current world condition, to the immense suffering in Afghanistan and in so many other places around the world, including all those who are suffering here in the United States. One of my primary practices is to check in with myself many times a day to notice what qualities/frequencies I’m emanating and radiating not only into myself but also into the world around me. And, importantly, whatever radiates from me—from any and all of us—immediately becomes part of the human collective consciousness that we all share.

For most of us, we don’t pay much conscious attention to the quality of collective consciousness that affects us in every moment and we may not fully realize how powerfully we are affected by it. It’s this lack of recognition that prompts me often to say something about it because whatever we may be feeling personally, the frequencies with which we resonate in any given moment is amplified, magnified by that same feeling and the frequencies it represents that exist in our collective.

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you, as I have so many times, to pay particular attention to where you resonate during this time of so much suffering. And, below is a practice to play with to support your offering to the collective qualities of consciousness that offer support rather than feed activation.

Read More “845th Week: Choosing the Frequencies We Radiate”

As I write this week’s practice, we’re about a month into “sheltering in place” here in New York City. For all of us, the whole world of human beings, this is a time of challenge beyond what many of us would have imagined possible. The fact that we are able to be connected around the globe is a previously unimagined gift of being able to move through this experience as a connected human family.

I had an experience this week that touched me deeply and I want to share it as the theme of this week’s practice that I’d like to invite you to explore. I got an email through my website and it was from someone who had noticed that I hadn’t posted a practice last week. She hoped that I was okay and wanted to make contact to be sure everything was all right with me. 

As I read this unexpected email, my heart filled with gratitude and warmth that this person cared enough to be in touch and to check in with me. It got me to thinking about how powerful it is when we care about and for one another, what a balm it is to the heart, and how such an act can fill someone with a sense of connection, warmth, and gratitude.

Read More “783rd Week: The Gift of Caring”

Walking through Central Park on my way to work one morning, I had been pondering the gift of blessings.  As I was just about to enter my favorite path amongst a long line of cherry trees, I noticed a cardinal sitting on a branch in a large bush to my right.  I stopped and enjoyed taking some time looking at, and talking to, the cardinal.  As I wished him a good morning—he was a wonderful bright red—he jumped onto different branches just above me and we basically hung out together for a few minutes.  (And, for sure, his hanging out on those branches was no doubt what he intended to do with or without my being there!)

When it was time for me to walk on, I noticed that my heart was full with the few moments of interaction I had with the cardinal, and I wondered about the synchronicity of thinking about the gift of blessings and then running into this beautiful bird.  Read More “707th Week: Moments of Inspiration”

I’m sure I’ve written about this many times, but here I go again. Where we focus our attention, what we think about, how we engage our imagination has a powerful impact on the quality of our inner life and on how we behave and act in our world. What we attend to matters. What we imagine matters.

This week I want to share some thoughts about engaging what’s called the “imaginal realm”. When we enter the imaginal realm, we aren’t engaging something “imaginary”. Instead, we touch into a kind of language or communication that uses visual and other sensory impressions rather than strings of words. Our culture tends not to privilege awareness that operates in the imaginal realm and yet it’s one of the most powerful creative forces we have available to us.

For example, spend a moment right now bringing into awareness either an image of some beautiful place you’ve been—a place that touched you deeply, or recall a sound, fragrance, or sensation that moves you in a way that is meaningful to you. Since images are my main language in this realm, I often “see” trees that have touched me, such as the giant Sequoia I’m imagining right now. This image generates a powerful felt-sense of awe and heart-filling expansion, with my whole body-mind responding to the memory of the presence of this magnificent tree. Or, I might bring into awareness an image of one of the cats who live with me doing something amusing, something that fills me with delight and touches my heart, as well as generating a smile and a chuckle.

We know from science that our brains register imaginal experience in much the same way as actual lived experience, creating a full experience in the body (sensations) and psyche (emotional and mental states). The only difference is that these experiences and awareness arise and unfold in the imaginal realm.

Read More “829th Week: The Imaginal Realm”

895th Week: Noticing the “New You”

In a recent class I took through Lorian.org, we were presented with the thought that each time we bring something into our lives, be it a job, a development, an object, an accomplishment, a relationship, an activity, what comes to us brings with it a “new you”. The underlying idea is that we are changed by the things that enter our life, whatever those “things” may be.

I’ve been very taken with this idea, as it invited me to pay more attention to changes I might notice as I move through experiences and situations. For example, for a number of years, I’ve read about quantum physics and have had a commitment to move beyond my conditioned linear thinking. Starting in 1982, I began to experience and work with the optimal future self and optimal futures, and I offered this process to people as an inner journey to meet their optimal future self. As a result of diving even deeper into quantum dynamics, I found myself thinking one day about the way in which the optimal future arrives and arises in our lives without our necessarily being aware of the process.

This shift in my thinking orients more, now, to being open to receive my optimal future, based on the fact that quantum physics appears to demonstrate that there is an infinite array of possibilities moving in and out of manifest reality all the time. (As I write this, I can imagine the groans of quantum physicists…) 

Anyhow, for me this is an example of the “new you” dynamic of allowing something to deepen into my life, to affect my awareness and perceptions of the world around me. There can be much more subtle shifts pointing to a “new you”, as when you have a thought you’ve never had before, experience an understanding that hasn’t been accessible until now, find yourself orienting to an activity that didn’t interest you before…that kind of thing.

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