Monthly Archives: November 2011

Meditating at the Beginning and How It Helped Me Become Authentically Me

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A mantra is useful for stilling the mind

A mantra is useful for stilling the mind

When I first began my meditation practice I was experiencing much inner distress. What I remember are these truths; I had a deep inner sadness that seemed to have been with me all my life, I was unsure of the viability of my marriage, and I was afraid of considering ending my marriage because I didn’t know what I would do to support myself and still care for my three children. Even though it appeared on the outside to all those I encountered that I my life was in good order, inside I was unsettled. One of the problems was that everything appeared fine on the outside, so how would anyone understand that I really needed my life to change, especially if I struggled with facing that truth? Meditation helped me to find my way slowly but deliberately, and mostly comfortably through my changes. But it took some time.

At the beginning when I “tried” to meditate I fell asleep. It took some time to find a time of day that worked, where I remained alert and felt rested. Many people share with me the falling asleep problem. I reassure them by saying, your body knows what it needs and it most likely needs more rest than you are giving it. This can be addressed. And it is important to find a time of day when you are feeling rested. This can also be addressed.

In the early stages of my practice, it was frustrating to sit and “try” not to think. It’s best not to try not to think. If all the wise souls who have become proficient at the practice of meditation suggest that it’s best to focus the mind through keeping it trained on one thought, one word, one image, then this technique is a tried and true method of developing the skill of focused mind. Having spent a lot of time practicing, I concur that it’s best not to try not to think. It’s more useful to follow the breath, or repeat a word or phrase as one works on stilling the mind. Persistence is the only answer here.

When we develop the discipline to sit, over time emotional content surfaces as our being moves out of the mind and back into a more full body existence. The head and the heart connect as we breathe deeply into our being and let go of the habit of remaining mind focused. Unexpressed emotional content that is stored in the body energetically begins to release, leaving us crying or raging or smiling with it’s release. The mind need not understand what is behind the emotion, just letting it release is the best approach in my opinion. Moving this stored up energy out of our body is healthy.

When I think about how meditation helped me, these are the thoughts that come to mind.
* I no longer felt trapped in the grips of my own thinking.
* I discovered there was a calm place inside me that felt restoring when I connected with it.
* In time I learned I could connect with the inner calm more easily as I continued to practice.
* My mental confusion about what to do in my life was eliminated as I started to live from the center of my being.
* I trusted myself because I was no longer confused by my thinking or outside forces on my decision-making.
* My decisions were made from a centered place in my being, that was stronger than my mind, a place I felt comfortable relying on.
* My ability to focus on whatever I put attention to was enhanced, causing improvement in almost every aspect of my life.
* My respect for myself grew as I felt centered and positive with my actions as they aligned with my inner world.

It has been more than twenty years since I began meditating daily. I have had periods when my practice slipped away for a time, thankfully not for too long. Somehow I got caught in believing I didn’t have time. Now I know that I don’t have time not to meditate. To live without this daily practice would be like giving up eating or sleeping. It feels so necessary for my well-being that I don’t even consider not making time for sitting daily. Can you imagine saying I don’t have time for sleeping? We all know what happens when sleep is not a priority. We are tired, we can’t think clearly, we need stimulants to remain in motion. Mostly I consider meditation in this way. The difference in how I experience the day is so profound now that to not do it would mean such a decline in the quality of my experience that there is nothing in me that would consider giving up the practice.

My motivation to meditate daily is this – I know that it’s up to me to choose to live through the center of my being, connected to a deep source of well-being and positive energy, feeling the compassionate depth of my heart in all interactions, and to remember that there is a stream of light holding me as I move throughout my day. It’s right there for me when I choose it. Therefore, daily I choose to be held and nourished by this daily practice.

This Week’s Daily Meditation Sentence – Week #9

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“I sail the sea of infinite energy and all is well.”

Would you like 3 months of free Life Coaching? Here is how you might have that opportunity. Beginning on September 19th, each week I posted a line of my morning meditation. In total it is ten lines long. Next week will be the last week in which I will post the last line of this wonderful meditation statement/prayer that I adapted from Helen Rhodes Wallace’s, How To Enter The Silence. The first email I receive with the entire 10-sentence statement after the last line is posted next week belongs to the recipient of 3 months of free Life Coaching with me. It’s that easy. Just send me an email with all ten lines next week and you have a chance for free Life Coaching.

If you are just learning about this opportunity today, it’s simple to scroll through my blog and find the nine sentences posted so far. They are all clearly marked.

I look forward to working with someone through this experience. It’s my way of giving a little, when many individuals are interested in making positive change in their lives. I love sharing the skills I have learned and developed over time. All you need to work with me is the desire to grow, and access to a telephone or computer with video capabilities. The rest we will figure out together. Looking forward to getting started in January!

This Week’s Daily Meditation Sentence – Week #8

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Now do I lift my mind to the free and liberating currents of expanding life.

Here is this week’s beautiful adaptation from Helen Rhodes Wallace’s, How to Enter the Silence.

Yes, we choose where we place our mental attention. For many of us, it can be a challenge to remember this. Particularly when we find ourselves caught in anxiety, ruminating or worry. But with practice, we indeed can put our mind where we want it to be. And there are beautiful currents of energy in which to focus and engage. It is up to us to learn to connect our minds to those places. It is a choice.

You Can Calm Yourself

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When we move more deeply into our being we discover a profound place of peace and light. Living in this culture, we often find ourselves faced with fear-based thinking and living. If you are not accustomed to “seeing” those aspects of the world this way, it’s a powerful shift simply to start paying attention to the direct and indirect messages that strike fear in the heart. What I have learned in my own personal experience, and what I have seen through the work of dedicated clients, is that we have much more power than we may be aware of in how much anxiety and stress we experience.

* If you experience chronic anxiety, no matter how much, you can do things to calm and soothe yourself. If you are accustomed to relying on medication alone to work with these feelings, you are missing great opportunity to improve the quality of your life. As our mental health knowledge has grown, we know that developing habits of self-soothing is one of the most effective approaches to dealing with anxiety. Examples of self-soothing are: calming and perspective altering self-talk, deep breathing, regular time-out for relaxing, regular practice of yoga, Tai Chi, and/or meditation.

* When you are experiencing anxiety it is important to empower yourself with tools to self-calm. This process of gaining skill inherently alters the anxiety because one feels more in control rather than being controlled by feelings.

* Self-acceptance, acceptance of life and acceptance of others can be considered as areas for deep exploration. When we feel fully accepting and at peace with what is, anxiety is naturally eliminated. This is a personal journey open to anyone who feels they suffer with chronic anxiety.

* Learning everything you can, education about the chemistry of anxiety, about how we as humans experience anxiety and what causes this inner condition, learning about fear and the philosophy about innate fears we bear simply by our humanity – these are areas worth spending time reading and learning. One of the most powerful tools for feeling more confident and strong is knowledge and understanding. It breeds compassion.

You can calm yourself. You may not know how, but that does not mean that it isn’t possible. We all deserve to feel safe and at ease inside. There is much we can do. Only you can give yourself the gift of spending quality time investing in creating a life that feels good, moment-to-moment.

Here are examples of mantras, or lines to repeat, for directing the mind to calm itself. Try saying them again and again, slowly, connect the words with an increasingly deeper breathing pattern. Spend at least a couple of minutes and lengthen the time as you become more skilled with the process.

Slow down. let go.
This anxiety (or whatever word fits) is a feeling and I am more than my feelings.
I breathe in calm and breathe out fear.
I fill myself with love and peace as I focus on my heart.
I find calm and quiet when I direct my attention there.

This Week’s Daily Meditation Sentence – Week #7

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There is only the infinite and its manifestations of joy, wholeness, harmony, peace, efficiency and prosperity; all else is unreality is the next line adapted form Helen Rhodes Wallace’s, How to Enter the Silence.

Have you ever considered joy, peace, harmony, efficiency, wholeness and prosperity as the only lasting realities of life? This is a powerful statement to consider. What if you decided to tell yourself that anger, selfishness, greed, sadness, loneliness and bitterness, for examples, were all an unreality – a manufacturing of your ego that can not last without you personally promoting and creating those conditions? What if these were simply emotions or states that were meant to guide us into the realities of – joy, peace, harmony, efficiency, wholeness and prosperity? Well, this is a powerful and life-altering perception to choose.

I am enjoying playing with this perception right now. Whenever I have difficult emotions arise, I stay still with them, and begin to question their source. My powerful shift has led me to see how often it is me that creates this inner condition, that with effort and consistent attention, I discover how it is an unreality, simply a passing condition that teaches me important information about who I am beyond my transient fears and hurts.

This week’s statement takes us into a big leap of wonder about who we really are and what our deepest source of wisdom and power is, what we can do with this source of loving kindness and passionate desire for integrity. It will challenge you to look at how you take responsibility for every aspect of your life, consider your conditions and how you want to contribute to them, specifically. It certainly is a statement to hold up, to experiment with and to use for individual growth!

This Week’s Daily Meditation Sentence – #6

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“I fix the words of health wisdom and prosperity in my mind and I let the action of Supreme wisdom take place.”

I love this statement from Helen Rhodes Wallace’s book How to Enter the Silence. The message reminds us that our effort is to make clear our intentions, to hold the positive thought in our mind, and then to release the organizing of how to to a greater intelligence, that of a divine energy. We must consistently act on our own behalf, but we never know when what occurs in our life is an event meant for our best interests, even when the event may be one we don’t like. The not liking is our ego making use of divine order. From our limited perspective, we cannot understand from the full view of all that exists. We simply cannot, on the mental plane, manage the vastness of all.

How do we let go? We breathe in a deep breath, pause and repeat, I fix the words of health wisdom and prosperity in my mind and I let the action of Supreme wisdom take place.

Holding Space for Another

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The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
~~~ James Baldwin ~~~

Holding space for another person is an unselfish act of giving. What does holding space mean? It means that we bring our full attention and being into the moment when we are with another. It means we set aside our mental process for a time. We disengage from giving attention to our emotional process. This does not mean that we do not feel anything as we attend and allow with the other. Instead it means we simply let the emotion or feeling arise, but continue to give good attention to the other, so that their experience is allowed in its fullness. We usually do not speak but rather we make good eye contact (unless intuitively it seems best not to). Our body language reflects that we are open and available. We may speak briefly if a question is asked directly, yet the attention remains with the other until the time is complete. Any speaking is usually reassurance so that the other continues, just a reminder that we are right here and listening. The time feels complete when the other has spoken or shared emotional content until they arrive at a place that feels “finished” to them, when there is a sense of emptiness or completion to the process that they are sharing. They will “feel” this completion, usually a sense of emptiness and gratefulness arises. And hopefully, a feeling of peace as they let go of what may have burdened them.

Doesn’t that sound good? Who doesn’t want that kind of loving attention? Unfortunately, we may have been conditioned to resist or feel discomfort with it. We may not be accustomed to having such undivided attention and time offered freely from another. We can recondition ourselves to enjoy this experience, as we find it and learn to let go in the space held by another, for us. Just as we can recondition ourselves to receive it, we can also learn and practice the skill of holding space for another.

What does it take to gain this skill? Willingness – we must be willing to let go of our own needs and wants for a time to offer our space to another completely. This might mean a shift in how we normally operate in the world. It means learning to let go of self interests and of being right. It means we let go of wanting equal time, and waiting to respond to the other to get our opinions or thoughts into the mix. It means we cultivate the practice of simply being with another, without agenda other than being present and attending to other. It means we develop a tolerance for letting another feel their feelings without the need to fix, change or control. It means learning to hold the heart open while we allow and acknowledge.

When we give the gift of holding space freely, we also receive. We receive a sense of wonder that we are capable of this loving kindness – that it really is this “simple” to be supportive and caring. Often times we have been conditioned to believe taking care of others is tedious work. In this belief we often do more than what would be truly helpful. The simplest act of this kind requires that we also have taken time and loving attention with ourselves, to heal and soothe what needs attention within us, so that we can let go and offer to the other fully.

Perhaps this is the key to unlocking our innate ability to hold space for another – finding and experiencing the loving space we most deeply want from others, from those that willingly give.