Tag: staying in the now

Name ‘Em

“Name your feelings to tame your feelings.” – Holiday Mathis

The holidays are upon us and everything gets amplified at this time. Lights are brighter, food is richer, decorations are more ornate than ever, and there is more of everything coming at us at every angle, and loudly. SALES!! BLACK FRIDAY!! ANOTHER HELPING OF STUFFING!! GUESTS!! PARTIES!! JINGLE BELLS!! LIGHTS AND LIGHTS AND FLASHING LIGHTS!!!

With this amplification of our material lives, often comes the amplification of our interior lives. What has been lying low, deep below the surface, often gets jostled awake by the sensory overload happening all around us. In short, the holidays can be A LOT. They can be a lot of fun, a lot of merriment, a lot of celebration, a lot of excess, a lot of planning, a lot of mess, a lot of memories, and a lot, a lot, a lot of feelings coming to the surface.

Feelings are not good or bad. Our feelings are just our natural compasses to remind us to do course corrections when needed, and to soak in, and to bathe ourselves in our moments of our internal peace and happiness. Feelings just are. But we often try to avoid our feelings at all cost, especially the ones that we deem to be “bad” feelings. Ironically, that just makes our feelings more powerful. Avoided, unobserved, repressed, suppressed, denied feelings end up controlling us, and at worst, hurting us by stagnating in our bodies, which can later cause unrest and disease. But the way to control our feelings, is to face them head on, in a detached matter, and to notice ourselves feeling our feelings. (see quote above – “Name your feelings to tame your feelings.“) Just like we have the ability to notice our thoughts, we can easily notice our feelings. When a feeling arises and catches our attention, we should take a pause and name the feeling. Anger. What does anger feel like in my body? Where does the sensation of anger happen in my body? Happiness. What does happiness feel like in my body? Where does the sensation of happiness happen in my body?

I read a book recently that said we could take this “notice your feelings” activity even a step further. As we feel the sensations of our feelings, we should then feel love for that particular feeling, and love for the power of that particular feeling in our body. Finally we should feel love for ourselves for feeling that particular feeling and all of our feelings. This activity ends up disciplining us to notice and name our feelings, to feel our feelings, and then to alchemize all of our feelings into love and acceptance for ourselves, and for our natural state of constantly shifting feelings. (Credit: Arnold Patent)

When you take this activity seriously and you make a conscious effort to do it, what has become really obvious to me, is just how quickly the feeling moves on. It’s like the feeling is saying, “Okay, thanks! Thanks for feeling me. That’s all I needed. I just wanted to be noticed and acknowledged! Thank you. I’ll be moving on now!” But if you deny or ignore your feelings, they become like indignant children in the middle of a tantrum. Their intensity grows and sometimes they get out of control. They will plant themselves firmly in place and scream, “Don’t you ignore me! LISTEN TO ME!!! FEEL ME!!! I WILL BE FELT!!!! KA-POW!!”

The next time you hear “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, playing in your local grocery store for the 16th time before Thanksgiving, as someone muscles you out of the way for the last tube of sausage on the shelf, stop. What are you feeling? Where are feeling it? Love the feeling. It’s intense, isn’t it? It’s powerful, isn’t it? Aren’t our bodies amazing messengers? Love your body and yourself, for being so amazing and full of sensation. Now notice how quickly the feeling has passed. (on an aside, if the feeling isn’t passing, you may be ruminating in your thoughts and your judgments. Notice those thoughts and judgments. Are these thoughts and judgments even really true and objective?) At this point, after fully feeling your feeling, you don’t even have the inclination to ram someone with your shopping cart anymore. In fact you may even hum a little bit to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, or perhaps even sing it out loud, as you are experiencing your new feeling of holiday cheer. What are you feeling now? Where are you feeling it? Love that new feeling. Most importantly, love yourself for the best gift that you are giving to yourself this holiday season. You are giving yourself the presents of presence. And that is a priceless, serene gift that you and all of us, absolutely deserve.

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

Rocking the Boat

“What others are doing around you seems very important when you have not found your own steadiness. You want to say to them, “Don’t rock my boat! If you rock my boat, I can’t be steady.” But the truth is you’re the only boat-rocker in your world. Only you can rock your boat.” – Esther Hicks

I read something recently that said when we are focusing our own energy outside of ourselves, it’s like our energy becomes a desperate scavenger, wildly looking for somewhere to land and to feel steady and full. Scavengers are always on the hunt, wildly searching for the next carcass to fill them up. It’s an exhausting way to live, trying to make everyone and everything else stay on their even keel, so that you can feel steady. It never works, but it doesn’t stop us from trying, does it?

I wish I had a dollar for every time I said to myself, “Once everything is perfect at home i.e. once all house projects are completed to my utmost satisfaction, once everyone I love has no health problems or job concerns or relationship worries, once we have just the right amount of money in savings, once all of our vacations/celebrations are planned and then said vacations/celebrations are executed happily and successfully with pictures to prove it, once my dogs are as well-behaved as that guy’s dogs in the neighborhood whose beautiful dogs act like an extension of him without even wearing leashes, once everyone accepts that the pandemic is under control and we no longer have to wear the stifling masks, etc. etc. etc. . . . In short once everything outside of myself is just plain “easy peasy” (but not too easy that I feel bored), then I can sit back and feel good.”

If I had a dollar for every time that I put conditions on my own happiness, at least my money security issues would never be a concern for the rest of my life. Why do we make it so hard to allow ourselves to feel good all of the time? Isn’t feeling good and peaceful and tranquil our birthright? Isn’t this pure steadiness what we really are, at our deepest cores? If our souls are the energy of Love and our souls are with us all of the time, why do we put blinders on to that fact? Why do we scavenge outside of ourselves for the very Love and Peace and Tranquility and Knowingness that is with us all of the time, if we just take the time to sit still enough, to fully realize and marinate in this fact? We give ourselves glimpse of our souls when we pray or when we meditate or when we savor the very moment we are in, without having to change anything about it. Why do we rob ourselves of living in this bliss, on a regular basis? Why do we spend so much of our time, sending out our energy to scour around in the past, or to scavenge desperately in the future? Why do we constantly rock the boat, when it is our natural state to keep it steady??

“Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” – Sharon Salzberg

“When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment, is the miracle.” – Osho

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward other land. There is no other land. There is no other life but this. ” – Henry David Thoreau

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

Breathe.

Why is it that all of your year’s biggest events all seemed to get bunched up into a three week span, in any one year? I’ve lived long enough to have experienced this phenomenon, again and again and again. And of course, at the same time, all of the regular daily stuff, and all of the little pop-ups (and even sometimes, unexpected big pop-ups) that show up in life, still happen, too. I spent most of this morning so far, making arrangements and changing arrangements, and letting people know arrangements, etc. And this morning, I have also had quite a few people tell me to, “Breathe.” At the tennis tournament yesterday, while watching our daughters play a very tight tie-breaker, all of the other tennis moms, looked at each other and reminded each other, to “Breathe.” Last night when I was trying to fall asleep, which I couldn’t do, even though I was utterly exhausted, my husband whispered to me, “Breathe.”

Now of course, we don’t need a command to breathe. We don’t even need to tell ourselves to breathe. It’s automatic. And if we aren’t breathing, we’re dead. So what do we mean when we tell ourselves, and we tell others to “Breathe.”? I think “Breathe.”, is shorthand for “Bring your attention back to your breath.” “Breathe.”, is shorthand for, “Get out of your crazy, over-wheeling mind, which is living in the “What ifs?” and the ramifications of all of the “what ifs” of the future, and notice how your body is taking care of you. Your body is your vehicle that’s going to take you through all of your experiences that are crammed into a two-and-a-half week time period, and you don’t want your body to get sick. You don’t want your mind to stir up all sorts of emotions such as fear and distress and overexcitement with its whirl of endless streaming thoughts. These thought storms, when overdone, cause all of these overwhelming emotions, which are taxing on your body, and can cause your body to break down. So, Breathe. Take each moment at a time. That’s how life works. Life works in “the now” and the easiest and quickest way to remind yourself of that fact, is to Breathe. The Universe has got this. You’ve got this. Don’t miss out on anything. Don’t miss out on any moment, or on any nuance. Just breathe. Breathe.”

Breathe.

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