Tag: meditation

Lingua Cordis

I saw this the other day and I realized that I need to pray this prayer more often. Sometimes it is so easy and clear to understand what we are want to ask God to support us in. We come to prayer or meditation with a list similar to what a kid brings to Santa Claus, even if the list includes lofty, selfless things like for someone else’s healing, or for peace in wartorn countries. But other times, our heart is panging us. Situations in our lives keep playing over and over in our heads, like a broken record, but we can’t even define what the real problem is in these situations. We want the itching to stop, but we don’t know where to scratch. I often pray for clarity in my life. And when I do this, I want real clear clarity. I want the window to my soul to be so extremely clear that I could accidentally walk through it and not even realize there’s a window there. I want the kind of clarity that knocks you so hard on your head, that when you wake up, you feel absolutely stupid for not realizing “the truth of it all” from the get-go. I want God to hear my heart and then translate its message in perfectly simple straightforward English with the exact next steps to take. And God usually laughs at these demands and tells me that I need to stop relying on translators. “Quiet down and learn the language of your own heart. All of the answers you have ever needed I gave to you there, but only you can understand your own heart’s language.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

878. What is one thing you won’t admit to yourself?

Scars and Wounds

gentle reminder from my elders this morning, “Remember to speak from the scar, not the wound” -@DrBlackDeer, Twitter

As an emotional fire sign, who can turn into a fire-breathing dragon in seconds flat, I needed to read this tweet this morning. We’ve all experienced so much emotional lashing out in the last few years, haven’t we? And there are a lot of people and institutions that have some terribly bloody wounds right now. These wounds need to be healed and to be integrated and to be understood before any healthy lessons can be gleaned from the experiences that created the wounds.

The best lessons come from the places and the people who have done the work and taken the time to heal. The best lessons come from people who have had the wisdom to do a lot of self-awareness, introspection, and self-care to heal the wounds, before assuming they have anything to truly teach about a particular situation. The most sound wisdom comes from a calm, serene, compassionate, peaceful part of others and of ourselves, and not from a brash, emotional, reactive state. Asking ourselves the question, “Am I reacting or am I responding?” gives us real clarity in any situation that has any kind of emotional charge.

In an emergency room, it’s much easier to talk about how I got a certain scar that is now mostly healed over, than to explain how I got a throbbing, full of pain, bleeding gash. In fact, in that situation of a fresh wound, talking about it is relatively pointless. The immediate action is to take pertinent steps to heal the wound and stop the bleeding. There will be plenty of time to talk about it later.

I keep hoping that 2023 will be that restful, reflective, “healing the wounds” kind of a year that it seems that we collectively need, in order to move on with clarity and purpose. Scars can be quite beautiful when they serve as reminders of healed wounds and wise lessons obtained from those wounds. The only thing that a fresh, throbbing, bleeding, gash needs is immediate, personal attention, and a quiet, clean, safe place to start the healing process.

In the beginning of this year, it seems to be a fine time to take a pause to lick our wounds. Healing is a timely, personal process that must happen, before that healing can be shared as wisdom which will be truly helpful to others. When we give our wounds the chance (and we don’t keep picking at the scabs), and the space, and the time to heal, they quickly become the healed over scars of our experiences. And then it follows: “Speak from the scar, not from the wound.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Your Attention Please

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

(On an aside, I am struggling a little bit with writing today. This is an odd experience for me. As you all well know by now, I’m pretty prolific. I think this morning’s “writer’s block” mostly has to do with the fact that I got a new keyboard. My last ancient, dusty, “several times spilled on” keyboard was disgusting and no amount of spray action from a full can of compressed air was going to save it. It should have been trashed a long time ago. Still, this new keyboard feels foreign to me. Despite being a best seller on Amazon, it’s noisy and stiff and it feels clunky. My other keys were shiny from use. These keys feel matte and dull and too spread apart. Subtleties truly matter. I now understand why the “writers of old” held fast to their old, trusty typewriters. There is more to writing than just writing. The means matter. They truly do. Please, stay with me, as I let this new keyboard slowly become one with the pathways of my mind and my heart, so that I can best convey what I want to say. Like so much in life, I see that this is going to be an eventual process, and a lesson in patience.)

A big trend these days is an emphasis on “staying present”, staying in awareness, staying in the moment, but this usually only makes sense when we are reading about it, or being lead on a guided meditation in a yoga class, and even then, if we’ve had too much coffee, or we have too many things on our plates to deal with, the staying with our breath thing goes right out the window. (there’s a reason why our bodies breathe on their own, right? We’ve got other sh$t to deal with.) The times that we truly are staying completely present, we ironically, aren’t usually aware that we are doing it. These are the times in which we are completely and totally and mindfully and emotionally involved in whatever we are doing right at that very moment, and this is usually when we are engaged in something that we love to do. When we are involved in our passion projects, we are one with the passion and one with the project. Time stops. We are staying in the flow of life, moment by moment, and it feels so great. It feels so natural and the realest we ever feel. So why can’t we always stay in that state of pure, jubilant, in-the-now presence? We can, but like all things, it has to be our daily intention, desire and practice to do it.

I read some of Mary O’Malley’s writings lately about staying in awareness and her writings are the most helpful, practical “take” on awareness, which I have read in a long while. She has a blog and several books on the subject. O’Malley suggests that you take a look at all of the “story tellers” in your mind. If you are worried about the future, you are with a story teller. If you are ruminating about the past, you are with a story teller. If you are harshly judging yourself or others, you are with a storyteller. Your peaceful awareness part of yourself, the part of you that can notice your own breath, notice where pain and other sensations are in your body, the part of you that can notice your emotional response to happenings, doesn’t make a judgment. It just peacefully and unconditionally notices everything right in the very moment. Like it notices your physical pain, and your emotional trauma, it also notices your crazy train flow of thoughts.

Therefore, if you are feeling the need to find a pause in the storm of your thoughts or your emotions, or you need to find a pause in your reactions to your thoughts and to your emotions, check in with yourself. Take that deep breath and ask yourself, “Was I scared about the future? That has nothing to do with where I am right now. I was caught up in my “story telling”. Was I criminally flogging myself for something I can’t change in my past? That has nothing to do with where I am right now. I was caught up in my “story telling.” When you feel yourself getting emotionally roiled, check in with your thoughts. What kind of “story” is brewing in your mind? Call yourself out. “Storyteller!!” When you make this a practice, you can start calling yourself out on your own mind’s imaginary storytelling all of the time. This will help you to better intentionally respond to the circumstances happening in your life, versus having knee-jerk, overly-charged reactions. When we call out our Storyteller, we get back to noticing what is actually real, what is in the moment, what is actually happening now. When we stop with the “story telling”, we get back to what actually is. When we bring our attention back to “what is”, we are truly noticing and experiencing the peaceful flow of Life, without the distractions and made-up stories of our overactive and oftentimes preconditioned imaginations.

“Happiness arises from getting what you want, and this comes and goes in your life. Joy arises from being with what is – all of it!”
― Mary O’Malley

“With full attention, you become an instrument of healing on our planet, for all that you touch and every being you meet is then transformed by the power of your focused attention. Therein lies the possibility of Heaven on Earth.” – Mary O’Malley

“We live in a story in our heads that is always trying to get us to “do” life, dictating to us, telling us we need to make ourselves and our lives better or different from what they are. In our endless trying, we have forgotten how to be. We have forgotten how to open to the marvelous and magical adventure of life. We have forgotten how to trust ourselves, to trust our lives, and to live in joy.”
― Mary O’Malley

Landscapes

Image
post credited to Think Smarter, Twitter, writer unknown

I love this post. Who makes up the landscapes of your life? Who’s your delicate flower? Your raging ocean? Your quiet forest? Your towering mountain? Your colorful sky? Who has knocked you down and left you breathless? Who brings sunshine into your life? What if you listed all of these different people right now, and then listed the lesson that each of them has taught to you in your own life. Wouldn’t this be an insightful exercise? Wouldn’t you be amazed at the blessings different people have been, and can be, in order to help you to find your own true north, your own true self?

On the opposite side of the coin, imagine what force of nature you might be in other people’s lives. Are you that same force of nature for everyone whom you meet? I’ve known sweet, cuddly panda-types who are able to turn on a dime into raging Kodiak mama bears, if their children are being threatened. And I adore them for that transformative power.

It’s interesting, too, when all of these people come together as a family, or as close groups of friends or co-workers. You almost get a whole new experience and lessons when this happens. Your family and your people who make up the different landscapes of your life, create unique worlds for you and each bring out different aspects of yourself. What group of people make up your rocky terrain? Who’s your smooth sailing team? Where do you fit into these different landscapes? How do you feel in these different elements? How do these different terrains morph you into different forms?

During the holidays, it is so easy to stay distracted and busy and bustled and frazzled. Don’t forget to take a pause and give yourself the precious present of your own presence. The holidays happen at the end of one year, and on the cusp of a new year. There is no better time than now, to spend some quiet time in meditation and in contemplation. Turn the twinkly lights down. Put the to-do list into a closed folder for a moment, and take some time to breathe and to relish and to cherish and to mourn and to feel and to cry and to laugh and to hope and to pray and to smile and to believe and to listen and to hear and to smell and to taste and to savor and to see and to really see and to swell and to relax. Notice what happens when you do these things. Notice what happens in your body. Notice what happens in your mind. Notice what happens in your spirit. Be curious about you. Take some time to be human. Take some time to just be. Realize your own presence, your own energy, your own scenery and delight in it, and all of its amazing abilities. Realize everything that you bring to yourself, and to all of the different people in your life. Realize your part in every landscape of your life and be in awe. You are amazing. You are a vital part of it all.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.