Meditations, experiments, books and guided meditations to assist with nourishing spirituality, healing childhood wounds, and living more consciously.
Meditations, experiments, books and guided meditations to assist with nourishing spirituality, healing childhood wounds, and living more consciously.
This month’s meditation focuses on radiating love to your home environment and everything in it including, if it’s comfortable to you, the Spirit of Home. Notice your experience as you radiate love to everything around you–your computer, your furniture, all the elements of what makes your home your home.
Below the recorded meditation is the YouTube version, with images from nature…
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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Walking in Central Park this morning, I came across a Springer spaniel who was having the time of her life. I watched her run full tilt here and there, sometimes chasing a squirrel, sometimes a bird, but mostly just running full out. Every so often, she would orient to her human companions and then take off again. It was clear that she was experiencing complete delight and I noticed that my body resonated with her and also filled up with a sense of freedom and delight. I wish I had a video of her to share, as it was one of the most exuberant expressions of pure enjoyment I’ve seen in a long time.
Noticing how energized, enlivened, and filled up my body and psyche felt as I watched this sweet earth-kin enjoy herself, the experience got me to thinking about how important this kind of nourishment is for the well-being of our entire body-mind being. I often feel delight when watching the three felines who live with me, as they engage in their own forms of play and discovery. I also touch into this experience at times when watching animal videos on Facebook.
Read More “914th Week: Discovering Moments of Delight”
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a practice for this section of my website, and I do so now because of the quality of our collective human experience and expression at this time. Speaking from a perspective of frequencies, the collective frequency of our human family is expressing a quality of emotional experience that would be considered quite “dense.” Frequencies of fear, anger, hatred, suspicion are all quite intense and “thick” in the air.
Because I focus on frequencies quite a bit these days (see my video #5 in my Videos on Multidimensional Living on my website), I find myself deeply concerned about the current quality of our collective emotional well-being. Following is a variation on the Buddhist practice of Tonglen, a heart-based practice of breathing in distressing or negative frequencies, allowing the fiery Love in the heart to neutralize those frequencies, and then breathing out something more constructive or positive, be that love, peace, ease, harmlessness, etc. I think of this kind of practice, altered significantly from the actual Buddhist practice, as akin to what oysters do. We’re filtering out toxins in order to allow our collective consciousness to resonate with more positive frequencies.
As I’ve written about before, we are all affected by our human collective consciousness in every moment, even as we automatically contribute to that collective also in every moment. Quantum research has now demonstrated that we are inextricably entangled, interconnected, with everything else and that goes for our human collective presence, as well. So, the quality of the energies with which we are entangled truly and deeply matters. What we contribute to those energies through the quality of our own being and also our way of moving through the world truly and deeply matters, too.
Here’s the practice and I’ll offer some additional suggestions that you can explore if you’re not comfortable with the way the practice is set up:
If you are uncomfortable breathing in negative energy, you can begin this practice by imagining that you are surrounded by white light and that the white light begins to neutralize the negative quality right away, well before it reaches your heartspace.
If the whole practice makes you uncomfortable, here’s another one you might explore:
These practices are forms of subtle activism, which we can all do even when we can’t go out into the world and actively work to help create a positive shift in our collective human experience. There are countless other practices in subtle activism that you can explore by simply googling “subtle activism practices.”
As with all these practices in conscious living, please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion and to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to move on through without your having to do anything with or about them.
Here’s the audio version of this practice if you’d rather listen to it. Also, please remember never to listen to guided audio meditations while driving or using dangerous machinery. You may find that you need to pause the recording when you are doing the practices, as I didn’t leave a lot of time between the various steps.
Even though I’ve given up my office and am now practicing psychotherapy at home on zoom, I still get into Central Park just about every day. On weekends, I go to a bench that’s under a gathering of trees and read and do writing such as this. This particular morning, as I think about our troubled world, I am also aware of the steadiness, presence, and seeming serenity of the large, towering trees around me. When I’m able to clear my mind and simply be with the trees, I find that my bodymind begins to fill with their essence of steady presence. These earth-kin, because of their size and stature, convey to me—whether this is my projection or something actually coming from the trees—a deep settling.
I also notice the boulders and large rock formations that are so much part of the park and can sense into their grounded stability, as well. Somehow, these earth-kin, along with the trees, speak to me this morning about qualities of patience and presence. In addition, the vivid greens of the trees speak to me of healing, health, well-being, and I soak those qualities in, as well.
When I’m not in the park, I can have the same kind of experience with the “trees” that live in my apartment and with all the stone people who also share my home. The three felines who are my animal companions also convey a powerful ability to totally relax and then immediately be available for play or alertness, as the situation may invite or demand.
Read More “807th Week: Nurturing Well-Being with Nature”
I posted this quotation to the Devadana Sanctuary website and Facebook page, as one of the daily inspirational posts that go up each morning:
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
~ John O’Donohue
One of the things I seem to always experience with the poetry of John O’Donohue is how alive his words become as I live into them and allow them to touch me. This poem feels deeply relevant to our current experience of the Covid pandemic and reminded me of the importance of taking time to nourish ourselves in gentle ways.
Read More “801st Week: Nurturing Gentle Moments”