Meditation. It’s not a marathon.

I wrote a really good post about meditation yesterday but the Internet ate it. 

Something I talk about often with my clients is about meditation and how to fit it into your life. You don’t have to sit for hours on a mountaintop seeking enlightenment on the first try.

If you have 20 minutes, do 20 minutes. If you have 10 minutes, do 10 minutes. If you have five minutes, do five minutes. If you don’t have five minutes, take a few mindful breaths throughout your day.

The beauty of meditation is that you can fit it anywhere into your life and you’re going to notice the benefits right away. You’re going to feel your stress and anxiety levels drop, you’re going to feel like you’re more grounded and connected, and generally feel a sense of well-being.

For example, last night I only had about 20 minutes to meditate, because I was late going to bed. I did 20 minutes. 

I started by running through all of my chakras from the root to the crown, spending about two minutes on each one. At the end I pictured the energy from the earth coming up through my root chakra and energy from the universe coming down through my crown chakra and the two energies mingling in my heart chakra. After that, I used some essential oil and did a quick aura sweep, and that was the end. 

For me, I make meditation a priority. I know how it enhances my abilities as a medium, and how it calms me down. Before I started the mediumship work and the meditation, I would’ve rated myself an eight out of 10 for my anxiety level pretty much every day of the week. Now if I were to rate myself, I’d probably rate myself around it to on a daily basis.

Find a way to fit meditation into your life and make it work for you. You’ll be glad you did! 

Fear: Food for Thought

Besides the commercialism of the LOA, the other thing I wanted to talk about tonight was the meditation from Holy Shift: 365 Meditations from A Course in Miracles. I really like this book and I think I will use it a lot through my life, because you really can just keep going through it year after year after year.

Today’s meditation is:

If you knew Who walks beside you
On the way that you have chosen,
fear would be
impossible.

Text – 18 III. 3:2

It’s a simple one tonight.

Fear can hold us back from so many wonderful things and so much of the fear that we experience is just projection of our past onto our future. Maybe it’s a survival mechanism from the days of being chased by saber tooth tigers. We tend to remember the bad things that happen to us and go out of our way to make sure the experience is not repeated. I think that we can take it a little too far, and limit ourselves from new and positive experiences, simply by virtue of fear.

I read a quote I liked somewhere and I can’t find it online so I don’t know who said it, but it was:

I have spent a lifetime worrying about the worst things that never happened to me.

Live today. Enjoy your life without fear. We have so much wonderful divine support helping and guiding us. We may go wrong, or make a decision that isn’t right for us, but we certainly can’t fear the possibility. What if the one thing you fear the most is the thing that skyrockets you into the next evolution of yourself?

Shoot for the moon. The worst that can happen is that you’ll land among the stars.

Practicing what I preach

Here I am, surfacing!

Things are going well with me and I hope they are for you too. It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks with starting at the new job, and my son came down with croup last Wednesday which was absolutely awful. I’m glad to report that he is on the mend now. I expect that by Saturday, he should be pretty much back to normal.

I guess with the sick child, and the lack of sleep, I lost a bit of a grip on my spiritual self and the good old auto pilot, Ego stepped in. Last week I would probably have rated my anxiety level around an 8 out of 10. Now since I started this journey, I really haven’t rated it more than a 2 in quite some time, which is a testament to my ability and willingness to practice what I am learning.

I was in quite a state last weekend wondering if I would pass the probation period on this job. I think by the time I went to bed on Friday I’d convinced myself it was all just going to fall apart. I sat down with my journal and I wrote the question, “what is my emergency?”

You know what? There wasn’t one.

Then I wrote, “what is the problem right at this moment?”

I thought and thought. Hmm. I am sitting in my warm bed, in my house, my child is sleeping at the moment so I can also get some rest, I have eaten dinner, I’m not hungry or thirsty. Nothing is wrong in this moment. You know what? I actually feel pretty good!

It’s amazing how much just stopping and pulling yourself out of that worry loop helps. Who is driving this thing, anyway? Spirit, or Ego? Ego. Crap. Who do I want driving it? Get back in the driver’s seat, Spirit!

This week I have been concentrating on not coming from the fear based ego and staying more firmly rooted in the now.

Next time you get stuck in the worry loop, stop and re-evaluate. A journal or a pad and pen works for me, but you can use any medium you like.

Greeting, rather than repressing emotions

I just finished Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh.

I never shut up about his other book, Peace Is Every Step, which I LOVE! Seriously. Go read it. Right now!

Fear had a lot of the same lessons and themes as PIES, but there were a few new things.

I found Fear really helpful right now, since I am transitioning into a new job, which means finding daycare for my son, and a change in the routine. Really, just a heck of a lot of change. A lot of us don’t like change. We’re happy to stay in the routines we are used to and tend to get our backs up when something is different.

I have been doing a lot of practicing the techniques I have learned for decision making, managing stress and listening to my intuition.

Just today, I thought I was going to have a panic attack at my desk. After talking to a friend, and taking a few deep breaths, I pulled myself out of the trap that I was falling into. I asked myself why I was reacting this way, and what my emergency is right in this moment. You know what? There wasn’t one.

Like Deepak Chopra says, there is nothing to fear in the present.

Ego me was saying things like:

“What if I suck at this new job?”
“What if they don’t like me?”
“What if I don’t like them?”
“What if my son doesn’t take to the daycare lady?”

So I said to my ego, “Shut up, Ego. All of these sentences start with what if? – guess what? That’s not happening in this moment, so why am I worrying about it?

If what we put our energy into is what manifests, if I continue this pattern of thinking, everything is going to go wrong.”

Rather than reacting to my emotions, I decided to take a page out of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book and acknowledge the emotions I was feeling, rather than repressing them.

Thich Naht Hanh uses phrases that he says in his mind, while he is breathing consciously. I was trying it in the car on the way home.

“Breathing in, I know I am anxious.
Breathing out, I smile at my anxiety.”

“Breathing in, I know I am scared.
Breathing out, I smile at my fear.”

I found that this process really helped me to remember that I am in control of how I react to things, and what emotions I decide to use. By acknowledging, rather than just reacting, you remain more present in the moment, like with meditation. You acknowledge the thoughts and you let them go.

I thought I’d share that since it helped me today. I hope it can help you too!

Choices, Choices, Choices

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety. – Abraham Maslow

 

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life – Abraham Maslow

 

Life.

It’s all about choices.

They tell you that in high school, and elementary school. Make the right choices, about the right classes, get the right marks and go to the right school, get the right job and live the right life. The life that other people determine is best for you.

I’ve always thought of choices in the big, literal sense of the word.

Recently, reading a book about parenting (go figure) by Dr. Wayne Dyer, called What Do You Really Want for Your Children, I came across a ton of good quotes and ideas, not necessarily reflective of how I want to choose to parent my son, but things that resonated with who I am and how I was parented.  The book really is great, and I would recommend it. The premise of the book is how to raise no-limit, self-reliant, fully actualized children.

One of Dr. Dyer’s big influences in his life was Abraham Maslow. I find it so interesting that the books that I am being drawn to these days have connections to my past. Like I am supposed to find these books for a reason. The Universe never puts you in the wrong place and when it wants you to get a message, look out! Anyway, I already knew a bit about Abraham Maslow from my Family Management 11/12 class I took, where we discussed his Hierarchy of Needs about what is required to be a fully actualized person, and from my 100 and 200 level Psychology courses I took in college, as well as a Social Work course which I took last year.

Part of the book was about teaching your children how to be happy. I’m totally using my interpretation of things here, so it might be a little messy. This part was really intriguing to me as I am very empathic, and I tend to take on other people’s emotions quite readily without being conscious of it all the time. I’m also quite sensitive and I will spend a long time beating myself up about things which, quite frequently, are the thoughts of other people.

In the world we live in, where we spend more time with the people we work with than our own families, it’s hard sometimes to separate ourselves from the “world” us, to the “home” us. I have a commute where I am surrounded by people, so some days, I find I come home carrying someone else’s emotional baggage.

One of the things I have learned in the last couple of years is to actually ask myself whether the feelings I am carrying are mine. If they aren’t, I let them go.

I’ve kind of taken off on a tangent here!

Anyways, now that I’ve set that up with my big tangent, something Dr. Dyer says in his book about raising kids is to teach them that other’s emotions have no power over you. That you, in essence choose whether to let someone else’s emotions affect you.

WOW!

When I think of all the times I have taken emotions home, or I have had a great day until I bumped into someone who was in a bad mood, or had a negative conversation or interaction with someone that ruined my whole day, or just carried someone’s negativity or sadness home with me, and I could have just said to myself, “Wait a minute, Self! Am I going to let this person’s emotions affect me?” and I could have made the conscious choice to say no!

Choices have been a theme in my reading lately, and quotes about choices keep popping up in my world. I’m going to work harder to be more conscious of my thoughts and make the choice consciously not to let the emotions or feelings of others affect me as much. Even if I’m feeling sad, or angry, or whatever, it’s all under my control.

I’m a compulsive worrier. I worry whether the sky is blue, and the grass is green, whether the sun will rise tomorrow, or whether the world will end while I’m asleep. If I have nothing to worry about, I’ll waste energy thinking of something to worry about, or worry about the fact that I have nothing to worry about!

Since I have started my journey, I have really improved this by leaps and bounds. I’m proud of myself. It’s difficult and a work in progress to actually stop my whirring mind and sit down, take a deep breath and tell myself to stop. Is this thing that I am worrying about mine? Can I control it? Can I change it? No? Then let go!

Sounds a heck of a lot easier than it is. Sometimes I physically have to yell out “STOP!”

I never thought you could actively choose your emotions. I always grew up thinking that you just had them and felt them, and that was pretty much that, but the idea that I can say that I don’t want to be sad/angry/upset/scared etc. is super empowering to me.

You are in charge of your own happiness. You make the choices to be where you are. The life experiences that manifest do so because those are the things you choose to pay attention to. Sensing a theme?

I don’t pretend to be a guru. I don’t know anything more than anyone else in the world, but maybe next time you find yourself stuck in a rut, do what I do. Ask yourself if the cause of the emotion is yours, or whether it is someone else’s, whether you can do anything about it if it is yours, and make the choice that you don’t want to feel that way anymore. Then, commit to your choice and move on proudly with your head held high. You just accomplished something awesome. 

If the only challenges we face are those that life has thrown at us, then we are merely living life in reaction only – we are not pushing ourselves and directing our own destiny. Our greatest challenges should be those we give ourselves to reach our full potential. – Brendon Burchard

 

I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday. – Eleanor Roosevelt

 

I cannot change you, but I can change how I react to you. I choose to take charge of the rest of my life. – unknown