meditation

Are you spiritually superstitious?
I’m pretty sure I am.
No, in the spirit of full disclosure, I KNOW I am.
I’ve taken to practicing all these little rituals to maintain a semblance of spiritual order.
It’s like I just keep catching myself repeating certain actions, or developing habits
that are starting to make me feel like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

Do you do that?

Sure you do.

You don’t?

Shit.

So.. I write this blog…everyday.
Unless I don’t, which is seldom, but I’ll still post an inspirational saying or photo.
The pressure is immense! (not really, I actually love it)!
But somewhere between my devotion to this blog, and my amazement that something actually comes to me to write every day, I’ve become spiritually superstitious, I guess to keep things flowing in an orderly manner.

Until recently, I didn’t get out of bed until my little ritual was complete,
And it went like this:
1) Wake up, say “thank you” (in my head). 
If I say it out loud, my husband will think something amazing happened last night, another thing he can’t remember, and it’ll just piss him off. 
So the “thank you” is always silent. And must not be skipped!

See, there it starts!
Because…step two is:
2) Sit up and meditate.
But if I’ve forgotten the “thank you” part that comes before, then it kinda turns into my mantra, so the Universe can be clear how much I appreciate another shot at this life.
Then my mind isn’t empty enough for it to count as a REAL meditation,
so I have to sit longer until it does. 
I can feel you judging!

3) Then I write. 
Really what I do is I just get out of the way, and let the Universe/Muse write.

Then I get out of bed and pee.
Always in that order. 
If I change it up, it just doesn’t flow. I’m just not on my game.
Like the major league pitcher who wears the same socks and underwear to
every game he pitches, to ensure his good luck, I’ve developed these crazy superstitions.
( Hmmmm…same socks and underwear, food for thought).

I’m sure I do it also to maintain my good standing with the Universe.
It’s never too late to start, right?
Because…
Do you curse?
I do.
I have a mouth like a sailor, and I fear that may be the end of enlightenment for me.
Do monks cuss? I don’t think they do.
Nuns do, this I know for sure!
I remember a nun in third grade called us “damn kids”.
She may then have spontaneously combusted…I can’t remember.

I can just see it, I’ll be on the top step of the ladder to Heaven/Nirvana,
and I’ll realize I left the secret password to the Pearly Gates on the kitchen table,
or in my other purse! 
“Are you f* ing kidding me, Shit!”

“You can’t say that! 
God doesn’t like a potty mouth! 
No wings for you”!

So, I feel like if I say thank you, and meditate and then write, in the proper order every day, and I mean EVERY day, it offsets the cursing, and all the other stuff.
Like I have earned the “Grace” every author requires to create.
See what I’m talking about?
Are you with me?

But… last time I checked we were all human.
We curse and we cut in line at the cleaners, (well, I guess I should just speak for myself) and we sleep in and forget to meditate (gasp).

We can shake things up and still enlighten, right?
Perfectly imperfect?
If my desire and intention are pure, no need for ritual or luck.
None of that “same socks and underwear” stuff needed to ensure my success, because I’m learning it really isn’t a matter of luck at all!
It’s all about trust.

I can pee first and then write! No harm, no foul!
I try to write three hours a day now, (the operative word being “try”), so it doesn’t have to be first thing anymore, and as far as I can tell, the earth is still spinning on its axis.

So now it’s:
1) “Thank you”
2) Meditate,
3) Then get up… To maintain world order for now, and to keep the “Grace” coming.
But, if you start to notice things have gone a bit awry,…
I may have slept in.

Two Saturday mornings ago at Yoga, Diana* kept repeating a phrase,
and as she did, it worked its way through my fuzzy, lazy, Saturday morning brain.
and it has continued to do so.

I receive ALL blessings.

Think about that one.

I receive…ALL blessings.

It started with my head, my brain, and I said “Oh Yeah, 
I do that”!
Then a few minutes went by as it percolated down to my true, true heart
and another “Ah ha”!
I absolutely DONT do that”!
And I know I’m not alone.

Why are we so stingy with the blessings we allow ourselves?

As I let it really sink in over several days and numerous meditations,
I realized that my blessing allowance was similar to my Christmas
shopping…only in reverse!

Instead of the “one for them, three for me”! that I was experiencing
and wrote about in “December Shopping Maniac”,
I could be a real Ebenezer Scrooge when reaching into
my bag of blessings.

I have MANY, MANY! Don’t get me wrong!
It’s not about counting the ones you have,
although that is a practice I HIGHLY recommend.
It’s about allowing yourself to continue to receive.
And therein lies the rub.

After careful consideration,
Here’s where it occurred to me I might be stingy with my blessings:

The blessing of patience,
I’ve been praying for that one since the 80’s!
Sometimes I’ve got it, I’m freakin Mother Teresa,
mostly I don’t, my hand are in tight fists, and I just won’t allow myself
to be blessed that way.

The blessing of financial abundance has alluded me for yet another year,
not that I don’t have enough to live, because I do.
But the blessing of a career that provides real relief from financial worries.

I receive ALL blessings.

The blessing of peace of mind.
A life without worry.
Why are we so damn stingy with THAT one?!
What is our/my attachment to that 3am appointment 
with dread and anxiety?

I receive ALL blessings

The blessing of time.
More time for sleep.
To take walks.
More time to laugh.

The blessing of letting other people do things for me.
Ohhhh that’s a hard one! 
Stingy,stingy,stingy!

I receive ALL blessings

I wrote it on the bathroom mirror to remind myself. I know I’ll see that at least twice a day!

Take a few minutes,
What blessings do you need to work on allowing?

XoxJanet

* DianaLang.com

Words don’t teach.
It’s the emotions triggered by the energy on the page.
Isn’t that amazing!

It’s not the sentence structure so much as the words that are chosen.
They create a resonance, an energy match so to speak.
You get an “Ah ha” moment, which means the barrier of resistance is broken down,
and that allows the “light of insight” in!

You remember that depiction of the lightbulb over someone’s head
when they have a great idea or epic insight?

That turns the pen into a kind of magic wand,
a conduit that transports thoughts and ideas from one persons head 
or heart into another’s.

Words can make us laugh,
They can make us cry,
They can trigger lost memories,
and impart profound wisdom.
Words can sooth a soul…or break your heart

All that happens, when your own energy matches the energy on the page,
which is conveyed by the…words.

Have you ever re read a book only to discover whole paragraphs you don’t remember?
I’ve even had chapters that I swore I missed, like the pages were stuck together or something! That’s how unfamiliar the text felt to me!
What really happened was I was not an energetic match to the material at the time
I first read it. 
It never stuck. Not in my brain, certainly not in my heart.

Songs are even more powerful because you’re combining the energy behind the words with the vibrations of the different tones.
It is especially effective in letting the light in when you sing, because your cells literally vibrate from the resonance in your body and your resistance lowers immensely.

Maybe you don’t sing, ( you’re lying, you do, loudly, in the car, I know)!
But you can try this:
When you “OM” during a meditation, 
that tone starts open and in your head,
then changes as it closes, and goes deep into your chest.
It’s like a mystical yawn, it’s full of oxygen.
It grounds you, and changes you.

Where words are holy,
Music is sacred.
And there you go!
Holy and sacred, 
two words that carry an energy that 
speaks to your soul.

I like the word appreciation over gratitude.
It’s cleaner,
It’s clearer,
It feels better to me.

Gratitude can still have the energy of overcoming something attached to it.
“God! I’m so grateful THAT is over”!

Thankfulness can carry a similar energy to gratitude.
“I’m so thankful to be done with THAT”!

Don’t get me wrong, reaching for gratitude and thankfulness,
can pull you up and out of the sticky tar of hate, fear and anxiety.
But I have found that through the years, as my gratitude journals
evolved, I could read back and feel in those words of gratitude, 
the wounds that had not healed, 
the fear that I was trying to banish.

It felt like gratitude and thankfulness were part of the healing
process, part of the energy working to sooth me.

Appreciation feels like the finish line.
It feels like the wind is at my back, the past is far behind me, and
I am reaching that line, having stopped to heal along the way with:
1) forgiveness
2 gratitude
3 thankfulness.

So…currently the clean air of appreciation stands waiting for me at the finish 
line, with a towel and some Gatorade.

Try it and see if you can feel the difference.
XoxJanet

http://daily.represent.us/matt-damon-blows-your-mind/

This got me thinking. Do we blindly continue to “follow the leader”?
History shows that allowing others, even if they are in a position of authority, to dictate our actions, can undermine a society.
It is the slow drip effect. It starts slowly, it is subtle, and most importantly, it doesn’t FEEL right.
What does YOUR heart say?

Your ability to lead a healthy and happy life depends more on your perception of the events that unfold around you than it does upon the actual events themselves.
– Christiane Northrup

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
~Gilda Radner~

I LOVE that!! What a contradiction! Right?!!

In AA they call it letting go,
And letting God.

AMBIGUITY (noun)

the quality or state of having a veiled or uncertain meaning 
Synonyms ambiguity: ambiguousness, darkness, equivocalness, equivocation, inscrutability, inscrutableness, murkiness, mysteriousness, nebulosity, nebulousness, obliqueness, obliquity, opacity, opaqueness

Sounds scary, right?
But then you add the word…the perception of
Delicious

I saw this quote a couple of weeks ago and it’s been rolling around in my head.
What did she mean?

The lack of clarity about a situation does not necessarily mean it cannot be desirable.

Delicious Ambiguity means to Revel in the Unknown. What appears
ambiguious has many delicious things for life. Keep your eyes open,
Your MIND open, and things will reveal themselves.

Then I found this on the Web just the other day and it all started to make sense.
It’s a prayer of sorts that feels to me like it can help put us in a place of 
Delicious Ambiguity. 

I’m saying it every morning.
It goes like this:

Dear God, 
Put me in the right place even though I don’t know where it is. 
Dear God, when you do it, make it comfortable for me and help me to see the sense of it. 
Make it easy and bring me the right situations and synchronicities to put me in this place I don’t know about.

XoxJanet