Meditation is fun - for 5 minutes

Take time to meditate

This was really fun…for the first day; then I just became bored. Listening to the contents of my mind is acutely dull – I mean, I’ve heard it all before. Worse I see my faults so clearly and I always seem to want to ‘get’ somewhere rather than be ‘here now’. Dull and pathetic it seems! No wonder I dislike it - but in truth my aversion stems back to my youth.

The ‘new age’ meditation of my past was usually characterised by visualisation which for me became another thing to be attached to, fail at and feel bad about. In many of these spiritual groups, the sharing of guided visual meditation experiences often deteriorated in to a contest of who had the most profound insight, who could best visualise their ideal life and who could reach the ‘highest’ insight and hang out with the guides. To me, even back then, it smacked of all manner of grasping and yearning that needed to be addressed in real life in the moment, rather than an hour a week in ‘group’. On top of that, for all of my visualisation effort, most desires remained unfulfilled and so meditation deepened the abyss I was trying to cover with ‘love and light’ rather than healed it – just like affirmation it seemed.

If you want to really sabotage your spiritual growth and polarise your own inner wisdom, just compare your inner unfolding to that of another, either in superiority or inferiority – both are equally damaging. If you are a beginner to meditation, you need to find a teacher who understands this and does not value or validate one experience over another. I prefer to do my guided meditations alone, with an IPod in nature so I can feel my body and environment as well. The guidance is focussed around energy work and never about the manifestation of a desired object or event. Why would I meditate to bring in further attachment? I meditate to get clear, to link in to the Global Grid, the OM vibration of my heart and try to make room for more light. There is no moment or nothing I could identify however, as proof of it actually working. This week I have come to understand that it is the practice that is the key, not the search for outcomes amid inconsistent effort. I have massive commitment issues so it is quite a realisation for me and more than a little intimidating.

So I have absolutely conceded that meditation is a critical aspect of spiritual practice and one that I definitely need to develop further, way beyond the weekly focus for this blog. Up until now, I have justified my reluctance to hold a daily meditation practice because I believe, in some ways, I that am always meditating since I am always mindful of seeking the highest awareness in my day to day life. This does not mean that I always embody it, far from it in fact, but I am nearly always looking for it, even when I’m wallowing in density and judgement. Yet, in the limited genuine practice I do manage each week in yoga, I am hopeless at staying on track as my mind runs wild and I entertain all sorts of tangents. It is clear that I need to go deeper and rework my relationship to meditation, transform it, heal it and make it an ally.

So I am going to learn to meditate all over again, starting fresh with a brand new practice. I want to genuinely still the mind, honour the silence, become empty and sit in allowance rather than grasping for what ‘should’ be or what I want. I’ve signed up for an 8 week “Calm abiding meditation” course, also known as Shamatha where I will learn single pointed meditation. I will do so under the guidance of a Buddhist Monk who, of course, embodies stillness and non-attachment as a way of life.  With such a teacher at least I know I won’t have to worry about feeling superior…I just hope I can stay clear of feeling inferior too!

I’m not divining an affirmation this week, instead I am going to write an account of the first meditation class that I will begin next Tuesday. Before then, I have a long weekend on the Gold Coast and time with my gorgeous kids for school holidays, so I should be primed after that and ready for some stillness.

Until then, have a great week.

Namaste

Sally

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au 

Take time to meditate

Let love be your guiding force

We are told repeatedly in spiritual circles that ‘love is what we are’ and I do believe this. However, we are all immersed in a reality that is, at best, inconsistently loving and more often than not painful or down right tragic.  Even if we miraculously managed to come together globally and love each other in our humanity as well as honour the planet as our Mother, we would still have serious challenges to contend with that stir up fear and shut down love.

The body, for instance, will deteriorate as we age and none of us will escape the truth of our physical mortality (well not in this life at any rate). The terror and beauty of the planet is another sobering reality, be it drought, flood, earthquake or other natural expressions - and no amount of denial, positive thinking or loving awareness will change those natural rhythms. So in a world of inevitable polarity, coloured by the hues of both love and fear, how does one transcend this polarity and open to love as our guide? It has been an interesting question to contemplate. 

We are indeed an expression of the God/Goddess and so are love in action, but we seem to have created an inordinately dense barrier to experiencing this love. The barrier is, of course, built from the raw material of our fears and is a deeply intimate construction – no two people make their prisons in quite the same way.  It makes sense therefore, that we ultimately have to walk alone through our own unique fears in order to dismantle our cages. Since no one can free us but ourselves, giving up ‘one size fits all’ spirituality and truly knowing your unique inner world (warts and all) is more important than ever. It seems that everything we desire is indeed on the other side of our fears, but their nature is rarely as straight forward as you suspect. Our course Your Beautiful Life www.yourbeautifullife.com.au facilitates opening to our real fears and so ignites inner knowing.

If we remain in the conceptual realm of spirituality rather than work on the embodiment of it, we merely tread water and even layer density. Similarly, if we wait for the world to be unfailingly safe and loving before we can hold it within ourselves, then we will be trapped in a reincarnation cycle until we understand that it is us that must change. In fact, I think that is the point of ascension; to be able to maintain our faith and love in mind and response, amid the chaos of the ego and natural world. No easy feat.

As I have been working with this affirmation, I have simultaneously been writing our latest workshop “moving beyond triggers”.  I shouldn’t have been surprised that this focus opened up deeper awareness in understanding triggers…for they are really all about clearing the way for our truth, that is love, to emerge. I have come to understand fear at a cellular level, or what others might refer to as ‘karmic patterning’. The first step to work with and clear fear at its karmic source is to be really, really present in your life in each moment – this is a difficult task for most of us. However, when you are present, you can sense, see or feel the fear ‘popping’ all over the body by way of tension, as well as infiltrating the mind, rising as judgement and our stories. I have learned that always seeking love as your guide is a little like trying to always tell the truth…it’s a genuine heartfelt intent, but in light of the challenging circumstances we manifest each day, is sometimes outside our ability to embody. 

So following on from being present as consistently as I can, I also have stopped resisting life as it is. This effectively means that I have noticed when loving awareness has not been my guide, which is often, and I accept the circumstances without resistance or justification. In doing so, I have noticed that some things have triggered me deeply at a feeling level even where my mental awareness rationalised the events as relatively benign. One incident, for example, was clearly an accident and no one was to blame and I clearly understood this, while simultaneously feeling a tsunami of feeling tension that I could only contain by a myriad of physical interventions. I sat in witness of the struggle between my rational mind and the feelings triggered and could not help but notice the feelings were far more persuasive. My mind was a forty something year old mother, while my feelings were of a six year old pouting child. It is mastering this struggle between our triggers and our response that will be the basis of our moving beyond triggers workshop and I hope some of you reading this will join us.

In the meantime, my next affirmation is:

Take time to meditate

Timely given the intense astrological period we are immersed in.

Until next time

Namaste

Sally

Let love be your guiding force

Forgive…let the past be the past

I’ve been away longer than I would like and am so glad to be reconnecting. I’m deeply immersed in other pressing writing projects which, when added to the usual demands of family, has meant finding the time to blog is challenging. Despite this, the affirmation has coloured my reality and in the contemplation of it, I have witnessed more of my resistance fall away, which has been beautiful.

Forgiveness, I believe, is far too meaningful and indeed powerful to be ensnared by the limits of the conceptual mind and its deep attachment to right and wrong. I have instead immersed myself in forgiveness in the context of the great teachers like Buddha and Christ, who challenged us to work with it as an essential experience or practice of spiritual awakening.  

Many people consider forgiveness to be conditional, determined according to how nefarious the harm that was done. Forgiveness for these people has a limit, a point beyond where it, and so their own soul’s loving awareness, cannot flow. Often, they see this restraint as an act of self-preservation, to cut the pain and avoid further discomfort. In truth though, they are restraining their own beautiful heart, which then creates additional struggle, and perhaps pain, to open it.  A cornerstone of spiritual life is obliterating limitation, so given a choice, I will follow the wisdom of the masters and work with forgiveness as an inside job – as challenging as that can be!

Have I experienced the giving and receiving of forgiveness? Yes I have. Are there still remnants in my mind where I hold a lack of forgiveness? I suppose so – but they are few. That is the point right there, that  lack of forgiveness resides in the judging mind fed by the story of the physical drama and the ego’s attachment to who did what to whom.  Oh how we love being right. When I am in my righteousness though, I can hardly breathe – it can’t be healthy! How long will I wait for the apology that may never come? Not one moment longer! 

I can understand how people who have had massive harm done to them or family can’t move out of their head to their heart – the pain is too acute – I get it, but I still believe the journey must be made; in this life or the next. If we begin to open in the smaller pain, at least we are moving.

We must let the stories go so that we can drop into our heart where the seeds of forgiveness are waiting to be watered – maybe with our own tears. When I breathe into my heart, the stories fall away and I just feel this great presence of where I am right now. To truly be present in the now, we must honour everything that brought us to this point – even that which was painful or, in our eyes, wrong and know that it is part of something much, much greater.

When meeting life from the heart, forgiveness as something you bestow upon another really has no meaning. To me, to forgive someone is a little pious, as though I’m claiming superior spiritual ground – no thanks! No, for me it is far more about a state of awareness that unifies the impermanent but often tragic human condition with the eternal sanctity of soul. In the face of fear, whenever we seek love and security outside of ourselves, we scramble and compete and harm and sever. In the common ground of our humanity, in all our glorious imperfection, how can I cast the judgement shadow on another? In the words of Ram Dass, “We are all just walking each other home”. Sometimes the road is really dark and pierces our heart, other times it is breathtaking in its beauty – but we’re all in it together and the road is lighter in forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that I want to open myself to more pain - in fact the opposite is true. Clinging to painful experiences, especially in angry righteousness, creates far more pain than taking it to your heart, then letting it go. It doesn’t mean I want to be in the company of people that have wronged me either, but not because I am holding a grudge, or am in fear, but simply because often they are still attached to the old so there can be know true new ‘now’ between us. I remain open to whoever enters my life, mindful of finding our common ground, not our differences.

When we are in pain, we all long for remedy, for sustenance and grounding, and often when we have been hurt by others, we are left with no choice but to find it within ourselves. For me, the poet Rumi sums it up best:

“Honour this longing. Those that make you return, for whatever reason, to the spirit, be grateful to them. Worry about the others, who give you delicious comfort that keeps you from prayer.”

The embodiment of those sentences has taken me years of practice, specifically in working with my book, Your Beautiful Life. www.yourbeautifullife.com.au But it has released so much struggle and pain that I can only love and cherish this now moment, which must influence my perception of the past that brought me here.

My new affirmation for the week is:

Let love be your guiding force

That follows on nicely from the last one, as true forgiveness is guided by true love.

Namaste

Sally

I'm not going to hell for you!

I focus on what I love and thus draw it to me.

Grrrrrr!!! Freakin’ hysterical… I can’t deny that the Universe has an inspiring sense of humour!

I have worked with this affirmation, as I do with all my spiritual exploration, from the awareness of essence over form. In other words, I did not focus on drawing physical outcomes to me, but instead began looking at where my focus actually was, since that is the foundation from which my physical life emerges. 

While we can exert our will in an attempt to focus in a ‘positive’ direction (when we remember to), the reality is that our true and consistent focus exists under our conscious awareness. You can know it however, if you become aware of your spontaneous responses to your life. Most of us accept that how we treat others is a reflection of ourselves. So with this affirmation I looked at those areas where I have closed my heart, have shut down, am avoiding and cannot forgive - myself and others. 

Forgiveness in spiritual life is necessary because without it, your heart is closed and separation is fortified which, in turn, creates restriction and suffering in your own life. Spiritually, it is never really a question of morality, or of who did what to whom, because our perspectives on the circumstances are too intimate and variable. Instead, forgiveness is about seeking our common ground which begins in the acknowledgment that in all Earthly pain, we are both victim and perpetrator. We are all carrying scars and weapons. 

I was raised in a dysfunctional family that has in no way transcended the labyrinth of compelling and deep wounding that is at the source of its problems. I am estranged from one family member, cautious with others, and still deeply connected to some. I searched my feelings around each relationship and contemplated whether I am adding to suffering or not – theirs and mine. 

I decided in some instances I was avoiding connection and so prepared myself and entered the ‘lion’s den’ so I could work with these concepts in the physical and so embody them. I stayed present during our reunion, pausing to check in on my power centre, my heart, and my thoughts. Much to my surprise, it was all clear! There was no judgement and no attachment, just a flow of energy that moved through us. I was surprised and was left scratching my head wondering where my work will come in. I didn't have to wait long.

There is an older lady that walks around our beautiful lake system here at home smoking and dropping cigarette butts along the way. There are now hundreds along the walkways and when I see them, it always gets my ire up. I don’t understand people who litter, or don’t pick up after their dog, especially as it damages our shared natural environment. Once, my husband told her to pick up after herself, but the butts just keep multiplying.

This morning, I heard my husband ranting. Apparently we have a stack of her white butts dropped on our nature strip! I’m speechless, my throat constricted by the tsunami of energy spiraling inside me. I observe my heart, my power centre and thoughts and cannot help but notice I have a raging war inside me. I’m wondering how I am going to deal with this. Perhaps I’ll drop my dog poo on her lawn, maybe I’ll go to council, or harass her if I pass her on our walks - as Dr. Seuss said…”Oh the places you’ll go”.

I’m trying to resist what is occurring within me, but the energy, the judgement is just so strong that I can feel it pulling me under. I know I have to just stop and drop the stories, the outrage and feel the energy in my body - but (there's that danger word) it feels utterly linked to her actions. My heart is heavy, completely blocked. My power centre is pulsing and consequently my thoughts are, well…feral! This swirling energy takes me away and I simply cannot stay in the moment as I run a cacophony of stories about this stupid woman.

So what makes me stop? I fold washing to distract myself and ask “Who am I and who do I want to be? Will I fuel this woman’s neurosis and then become her? Or will I let it go and seek my higher awareness and be that instead?” In other words - will I go to hell for her? The answer is easy - NO WAY!

I will not retaliate, I will not fume or plot or even bother to judge or even let it take space in my mind. The only responsibility I have is to work with my own karma i.e. my response – and leave her to deal with hers. I choose to stay out of hell and the internal rage that feeds it. Instead I open my heart and link in with love I feel for the natural environment, instead of fueling my negative judgement for her abuse of it. I link to gratitude that I can work with my life rather than rage at those who do not share my perspective. I choose to find the love in my life that can transcend such provocative acts of ignorance.

Once again, we see that to get to what we love we must expose the blocks and judgements we have around it that keep us closed and separate. As usual, there’s no point in trying to prepare for our awakening. I was ready to deal with the family triggers and found only acceptance -while a grumpy old lady who uses our Mother Earth as an ashtray made me temporarily lose my mind – too funny!

So my new affirmation divined today is:

Forgive… let the past be the past

While it is heavy work, it is worthy work.

Until next time

Namaste

Sally

www.yourbeautifullife.com.au