Opening

There are days when it is easy for us to shut down. Perhaps it's even justifiable. We're tired, we're busy...sometimes, it's all we can do just to take care of us, never mind everyone else.

But what happens if we push just a little bit to make room for something--anything--that isn't just "us." A smile for a stranger--or a friend. A thank you, or congratulations--with meaning!--when it's tempting to wait until tomorrow.

Or bigger--ten minutes (or thirty seconds, I'm not picky) of concentrated effort, visualizing all that is good in our lives, when all we really want to do is collapse into how much it sucks.

'Cause sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it's just easier to lie in bed and not bother. Or to open a bottle, or a box of chocolates. To shut down and numb whatever is going on in your feelings, because sometimes, you're just beat. Sometimes, you just need a break, and that's okay. But sometimes, the break you need is hidden in being willing to open up instead of shutting down.

A-ha moments and where to find them

Anybody who ever made a difference in this world went through a struggle to find their real purpose. Don't dump all over yourself if you are feeling lost and worthless. It's a sign you're looking for your path.


That's from today's Daily Kabbalah e-mail. Those daily "tune-ups" (their word) are nearly always a source of something to think on, and sometimes, like today, they provoke an "a-ha." This one did, coming hard on the heels of a couple of conversations (I hesitate to call them random, all things considered) in which the topic of finding one's purpose came up. Two conversations, yesterday evening, then this quote this morning.
 
Remember that synchronicity/awareness thing? Yeah.
 
But what does it mean? my logical mind interrupts. You aren't feeling lost and worthless.
 
No, I'm not. Both my logical mind and spiritual mind more or less agree. Or at least on the worthless part. I feel lost more often than I like--there's just so damn much to do and heal and complete. And then I realize how often the word "heal" comes up in my internal conversations. A-ha.
 
Or how I feel when having a conversation with someone (anyone) on particular subjects and they get it. A-ha.
 
Or when I wake up with a song in my head, and it's the first thing I hear on the radio. A-ha.
 
Or an experience--meditation last night, for example--that yanks me out of my expectations and drops me into something that is so perfect, it had to come from somewhere beyond me and my physical reality. A-ha.
 

To do today

Today's to-do list contains the usual mundane items: some things I need to do for work, cleaning, working out, steps to do on various writing projects and for a couple of professional associations I belong to.

I like to-do lists. I look at mine frequently, throughout the day. So I've started adding reminders to mine, more amorphous "to-do" items that aren't going to really get crossed off the list. Yesterday, I added "be aware of synchronicity" to mine. It's on there again today, so every time I look at that list, I'm reminded to bring synchronicity to the forefront of my attention. I've added "be aware of beauty," and one I snagged off Danielle LaPorte's blog several months ago--"French kiss life."

What's on your to-do list?

Be aware of synchronicity

I've set myself this task this week: watch for synchronicity. I'm feeling a strong pull toward something magickal, so I'm keeping my eyes open for the right things to happen at the right moments, for the right messages to strike with absolute clarity. For god to jump out from behind a tree with a pot of roses in her hand, telling me to scatter them on the ground as I walk to see where the path leads.

Inspiration

Living an inspired life means realizing someone (or something) bigger than you has a say in how things turn out.

Master plan

Digression: why is it always a 'master' plan, and never a 'mistress' plan?

This week's horoscope from Rob Brezsny tells me this is an excellent time--astrologically speaking--to initiate my "five year master plan." Which seems to be great advice, especially considering that I wrote in my journal (my sporadic journal) a couple of weeks ago a whole host of thoughts on that very topic.

Serendipitous.

I'm not only a fan of Rob Brezny's, I'm a big fan of synchronicity and serendipity.

This blog is part of that whole urge to create a new level of commitment and passion in my life. More synchronicity and serendipity.

I can sum up my 5-year plan in a few words: live better, love better, create better. Live more, love more, create more. Stop drifting. Commit to what feels good. Live consciously. Live sanely.

The beauty of that is, as long as I keep those in my sights, I can't help but meet the goals.

Action words

Love is a verb.

Look for the beauty

See only beauty; feel only love. - James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

There's a prayer that goes something like this: beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty to either side of me, beauty above and beauty below; I walk in beauty.

I think that is less a prayer for the blessing of beauty surrounding us, than it is a recognition of truth. The tricky part is recognizing it.

It's easy to lose sight of the beauty in our daily rush, but even easier to find it when we pause for a moment and look for it. Not just the beauty of natural spaces, although I think that is the first thing that comes to mind for most of us (the color of flowers, a flower growing in an unexpected place, the flight of a hawk, the pair of sandhill cranes feeding next to the road), but we can also find it in the human-created world around us: the art of a pencil, pen or paintbrush; the lines of a well-designed building. We, especially, can find it in the faces around us. In the lines that speak to experience, in the open joy of a child.

Beauty all around.

On the subject of meditation...

"We don't sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we'll be more awake in our lives." Pema Chodron-When Things Fall Apart

One of my absolute favorite weekly activities is the 45 minutes or so that I spend in group meditation, with music to help relax and open my mind, with crystal bowls opening my chakras, with candles and group energy/intention. It helps center and ground me in a huge way.

Daily meditation is different--here is where I'm confronted with "monkey mind," jumping from one thought to another, chattering away until I realize it's no wonder we--almost all of us--have difficulty detaching from the everyday. But to me, this is the heart of meditation practice. Facing my own thoughts, whether peaceful and loving, insightful and wise; or fearful, angry, worried, coping (did I remember to....?). Here is where I take the measure of where I am on my path. Some days better than others, says my ego. All days the same--part of the experience, says my wiser self.

There are no 'bad' meditations--it's impossible to fail, whether you're following your breath or following a dirth path into a forest on your way to a multi-world journey.

Shake up the calendar

It's not that a routine is necessarily bad. I can think of several that are downright comforting--say, the daily routine of monks in a monastery.

It's the stagnant energy that needs shaking (or stirring, if you like your energy mixed that way) up--rather like finding a new way to get the waters of a pool moving. Going back to the metaphor I used in my first post--if the spring is clogged, and no energy is getting through, things in the pond begin to die off. Not pretty.

Sometimes shaking up the energy is as simple as changing your daily/weekly routine. The point is that everything you do creates energy, and so if you do it differently--different energy. If you always shop on your way home, go to the gym first, and then shop. You'll interact with different people, have a different set of traffic to deal with.

Not exciting enough? How about this: I usually meditate with a particular group on Saturday evenings at 6. There's a second meditation at 8. The two meditations are different in structure, and they often attract different people (lots of people actually go to both). If I want to shake up the energy in my life in a particularly beautiful way, I'd switch meditation times.

Or instead of reading the paper at home on Sunday, take it with me to the park (it won't be raining yet). Take a walk, then take a break. Go to the gym at a different time (again, different people); shop for groceries in a different store. All mundane activities, all serve to change the flow of energy in your life.

Shake up the energy

That's what I call it: shaking up the energy. When I'm feeling stuck, that things aren't changing, I try to change the point from which I'm viewing my life. No, I don't mean looking for optimism (although if I'm thinking negatively, I try to avoid the subjects I view with negativity and just concentrate on the things I can think positively about until I'm out of the funk).

I mean physically changing my perspective. I started attending a weekly meditation circle a couple of months ago to expand the circle of people I was spending time with and to change the way I was meditating. Added a writers meetup monthly to ensure I was spending more time with writers, but also with writers not writing in my genre. Spend more time with friends.

In a way, I view it as the same as changing an exercise routine--sometimes you need to change what you're doing in order to move forward faster.

Accept responsibility for your life

This is one of the first steps to success, according to Jack Canfield in his book The Success Principles (okay, others have said it, too).

Accept your part in whatever happens--as Canfield points out, if you blame others for what went wrong, you're as much as saying you have no control...and therefore can't change anything.

But...you also need to accept responsibility for greatness. Accept responsibility for fulfilling expectations you create when you write that bestselling novel. Accept responsibility for the care and feeding of other souls besides your own in relationships. Accept responsibility and your own wisdom in making good choices with money, time, food, energy, etc.

A consciously sane life requires that you pull out the depths and heights of your spirit and put it on display--at least to yourself, and probably to others. Don't let it scare you away.

Accept responsibility for being great.

All there is

Imagine that your life now contains everything it is ever going to contain. Now imagine that that's okay.

Tuning out

It is my humble opinion that a contributing factor to the explosion of ADD and autism in this country may very well be the amount of stimuli we (and especially children) are subjected to. We are constantly receiving loud, colorful signals for our brains to process. (I have zero qualifications for making that suggestion--it's just an observation.) We spend most of our waking hours tuning in, and very little time tuning out. From 24/7 television to smart devices, from jumbotrons to DVD players in the car, from hi-def everything to Twitter, we are encouraged and enticed to be continuously on alert and ready to react. Add in 32 ounce colas and supersized coffees, and it's a wonder we don't collapse from the weight of it all.

Meditation, walks in nature (without the MP3 player), yoga, even sitting down with a book are ways of hitting the pause button and letting our minds and spirits shuffle through the clutter and find some order, some peace--maybe that's really tuning in.

Intention: Step back from the drama

It's very easy to get caught up in drama--we commit to other people's crap all the time. We take sides, we form opinions (emotionally) about the news, we respond to freaking commercials...

I'm in awe of people who are cause-driven. The warrior goddess hiding deep inside me pokes her head out quite frequently and encourages me to do things that I really don't need to be doing. (That doesn't mean no one should be doing it, just that I shouldn't.) But large scale or small, we need to--at the least--recognize that drama is a choice. If someone I love is going through crap, I am not REQUIRED to jump into it with him/her.

Manifesting what we want

Be careful what you ask for--you just might get it. (old saying)

Be careful what you ask for--because you are going to get what you ask for. (my version--and the corollary is: the tricky part-because there's always a tricky part-is recognizing it when it shows up).

We ask for things to manifest in our lives, and then complain it doesn't happen. This, I think, is the source of the famous "God answers prayers, and sometimes the answer is no." Because if I remember correctly from Sunday school, the bible verse didn't say "ask and it will be given to you if I think you've asked for the right thing." I'm pretty sure the instruction was "ask and it will be given to you, knock and the door will open."

So why don't we always get what we ask for? Timing, perhaps. Competing desires. Obstacles that we put in the way. Obstacles other people put up for us (that we allow to remain).

A favorite quote (again, can't remember the author, and somewhat butchered here) that I choose to remind myself of today is "the deepest desires of our heart have meaning, or they would not have arisen in the first place."

I will create the life I want, by also creating a way around the obstacles I find.

Intention: Play big

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia. (author unknown)

If you aren't playing a big enough game, you'll screw up just to give yourself something to do. (author forgotten)

The Devil makes work for idle hands. (old saying)

Find your voice

No, I'm not advocating getting loud, unless that's what you want. A writer's 'voice' is a way of looking at her/his style. It's the tone the writer brings to everything, what makes her/him stand out.

It's authenticity at its most elegant.

Yesterday, an interview with Dyana Valentine on White Hot Truth closed with this: "Knowing what I know about myself, my values and goals: how dare I hold back?"

Yeah. The key word there is...well, everything. This is expressing your voice: knowing what you know about yourself, your values, and your goals and committing to them. How dare I stand in my own way?

Intention: Breathe

There's a yoga saying I heard someplace: In the beginning, the breath. In the end, the breath. In between, the breath.

Breath is a good place to focus when we're trying to center ourselves, or when we're trying to remind ourselves to be present, to be awake.

Several years ago I discovered that when I'm tense, I hold my breath or I breathe very shallowly. Deep breathing relaxes us, and the act of breathing consciously brings us away from the drama of the day and centers us back in the present focus of our lives.

Breathe.

Intention: Focus

Yesterday at one of the conference sessions, we were listening to a leader from a large local company talk about corporate responsibility, and something he said really resonated with me on a personal level. He laid out the areas his company keeps at the forefront of their mission, and spoke of one of them as being truly central. Everything they do comes back to, is evaluated in the light of, this particular part of their mission. Everything.

I've done personal mission statements before, although it's not one of my favorite activities. How do you boil every part of your life down to one core mission? Perhaps it requires a big enough mission: save the planet, serve Spirit, entertain, heal, share knowledge, inspire creative people. Something like that. Substitute the word "intention" if you like.

And then, no matter what your mission is, bring everything you do back to that. Intention: live a life that is consciously sane. If you know what constitutes 'sanity' for you (or me, since this is my intention)--physical, mental, and emotional well-being, connection to inspiration (connected to Spirit), healing, creative and independent--then you do your best to consciously bring it all back to those points, those core values, asking yourself: am I awake in the world? am I connected? does this serve to make me healthy, happy, feeling the love? does this further one of my mundane goals?

Intention: Let go

In a discussion about personal power recently, a friend used this analogy: you're letting someone else drive the bus. Another friend added: yes, but I want the driver to go where I want to, with my a/c setting, my radio station, a stock of my favorite snacks, and....

Not everything in life is in our control. In fact, I once saw this comment (I think on whitehottruth.com): living an inspired life means giving up control to a power larger than ourselves. It's not only not all within our control, it shouldn't be.

So where do we draw the line? In letting someone/something make decisions for us, where is the line between giving up power and giving up control? Or drifting? It's easy to say it's giving up power when there is another person involved (who's driving your bus?), but don't we sometimes give up power when we claim to be following our inner guidance? (That might be a power grab, actually, but I think that's a topic for another day on the journey.)

There's an old saying: let go and let God. But "God's will" has also served as an excuse.

So how do you distinguish between giving up and letting go?

Intention: Connect

I'm on a borrowed laptop this morning--for whatever reason, my computer won't connect to the network (even though it says it is) here at the conference I'm attending.

Lesson: sometimes we think we're connected, or think we ought to be, and we aren't. On the other hand, sometimes connecting is as easy as changing where we're sitting, or where we're looking, or the channel we're doing it through.

And sometimes we connect effortlessly, despite what we think is standing in our way.

When we connect, when we slow down, focus on something other than our issues/perceived connection challenges, suddenly things start moving. We start communicating in a new way, start seeing the world a little differently.

Connect.

Intention: Allow imperfection

Pot, meet kettle.

Judgment is a blade we wield against ourselves as often as we do other people. We do it instinctively. Who am I to (fill in the blank)? Who are you to (fill in the blank)? You're eating what??????????? (I've been known to apply this one while catching random travel/food shows.)

But you know what? Judgment slows us down. Keeps us from loving, keeps us from living. What was I thinking? I could never (climb a mountain, write a novel, post an inspirational thought)...I need to lose forty pounds, I have nothing to say, I'm not PERFECT.

As though perfect gets anyone anywhere. It's the journey that's interesting, never mind the destination. As much learning and growing and fun to be had in the practicing, in the work, in the loving and living as in the thought of lying on my/your/our deathbed saying "well, I finished my bucket list."

When we allow imperfection, we allow ourselves to take chances, to risk the person we used to be on the person we want to be.

Intention: Feel the love

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. - Rumi

However you love, it's perfect. Just...love. Love is big, and it makes us bigger, makes what we do stronger. It doesn't mean it makes everything easier--true love might be the hardest thing of all to live with, because it demands so much of us. It makes us bigger and stronger, and then demands that we do something with all that strength. When you love, you realize there's a difference between a zen state of allowing, and copping out. Love and zen take focus.

Intention: Joy

Danielle LaPorte, blogger and thinker extraordinaire (whitehottruth.com) is a big part of the inspiration behind this blog. Yesterday, she posted on the subject of happiness, titled "Unfetter your happiness."

Today's consciously sane intention: allow happiness, allow joy.

To me, 'joy' and 'happiness' are changing depths in the same pool. Happiness claims the surface, reflecting back, sometimes rippling with the movement of whatever else is going on. And like currents (hey, my pool is connected to a spring and a river and stuff; work with me), happiness doesn't just stay at the surface, it dips down, it swirls, it picks up the interesting bits as well.

Joy stakes the depths. Joy nurtures happiness from deep under, giving happiness something to feed off of, something to spin out of so that happiness doesn't rest on having a "good" day. Makes it deeper, more lasting, keeping it going through the dry spells.

Last thought: if we let ourselves be happy, what's the worst that can happen?

Intention: Conscious Sanity

What is conscious sanity?

Living with intention, doing my/your/our best to step out of the conga line instead of following the guy in front of us (who may be us on an earlier path). Digging out what's important, not what's easy, although important = easy more often than you'd think. Emulating people who inspire us, not simply admiring from afar and then continuing our circus act.

Conscious wholeness: conscious mind, conscious body, conscious spirit.

I've been flipping the idea of a new blog back and forth--do I have time, do I have anything to say (!), isn't there enough out there already. Perhaps...but someone (my mother, I think) suggested I do a repeat of my affirmation project from a few years back, and this is easier -- and more flexible -- than email.

So send me your thoughts, your comments, your moments of grace. I intend to post--at a minimum--one affirmation/conscious intention each day. If the post sparks an answering thought in you, let it fly.

Blessings,

Lorena