Learning from mental pain. Aprender del dolor mental.

Just as physical pain alerts us to troubles in our body, mental pain alerts us to where we need to be more conscious.  In other words, our frustrations, anger, delusions, and so on become our greatest helpers in freeing ourselves from suffering.  They point to where the “Ego” is trapped, and they remind us to begin to shift our identity to the “Soul” level.  They show us where we are resisting change and where we need to grow beyond past conditioning.

  ~ Ram Dass (from Still Here)

Así como el dolor físico nos alerta sobre problemas en nuestro cuerpo, el dolor mental nos advierte dónde debemos estar más conscientes. En otras palabras, nuestras frustraciones, ira, engaños, etc. se convierten en nuestros mayores ayudantes para liberarnos del sufrimiento. Señalan dónde está atrapado el “Ego” y nos recuerdan que debemos comenzar a cambiar nuestra identidad al nivel del “Alma”. Nos muestran dónde nos resistimos al cambio y dónde debemos crecer más allá del condicionamiento pasado.

I thought the whole COVID-19 quarantine thing would be over in 2 or 3 months, and when I realized in late July that it was going to continue indefinitely, I went through about 6 weeks of pretty bad depression until I started realizing that I needed to pay attention to what I was feeling in a different way.  I made an effort to meditate more (which, by the way, is the answer to almost EVERYTHING) and to make my yoga sessions more meditative, and I learned that Ram Dass is right:  it is possible to let mental pain show us what is really going on underneath the surface, which in turn allows us to make shifts in thinking and perceptions.  This kind of awareness is 75% of the battle, because it’s now much easier to make decisions, take action if necessary, and stay in a more positive mindset.  🤯 For me personally, I learned that the depression was really about resistance to change and being even more out of control than usual.  I didn’t like how different my life had become.  I was struggling with and resisting things I couldn’t control, such as not being able to see people I love and not being able to go to very many places.  Through mindfulness and meditation, I was able to relax around the resistance and desire to be in control, and they lost their power over me.  I have been able to let go a little better and allow things I can’t change or control to be as they are.  I still have days of depression, of course, because this all really sucks for all of us, but I’m doing a better job of taking things one day at a time and looking for things to enjoy and appreciate each day.  💗 May all of us be able to find joy in the present moment.

Pensé que todo el asunto de la cuarentena de COVID-19 terminaría en 2 o 3 meses, y cuando me di cuenta a fines de julio de que iba a continuar indefinidamente, pasé por aproximadamente 6 semanas de depresión bastante fuerte hasta que comencé a darme cuenta de que necesitaba prestar atención a lo que estaba sintiendo de una manera diferente. Hice un esfuerzo por meditar más (que, por cierto, es la respuesta a casi TODO) y por hacer mis sesiones de yoga más meditativas, y aprendí que Ram Dass tiene razón: es posible dejar que el dolor mental nos muestre lo que realmente está sucediendo debajo de la superficie, lo que a su vez nos permite hacer cambios en el pensamiento y las percepciones. Este tipo de conciencia es el 75% de la batalla, porque ahora es mucho más fácil tomar decisiones, actuar si es necesario y mantener una mentalidad más positiva. 🤯 Para mí, personalmente, aprendí que la depresión se trataba en realidad de resistencia al cambio y de estar aún más fuera de control de lo habitual. No me gustó lo diferente que se había vuelto mi vida. Luchaba y resistía cosas que no podía controlar, como no poder ver a las personas que amo y no poder ir a muchos lugares. A través de la atención plena y la meditación, pude relajarme en torno a la resistencia y el deseo de tener el control, y estas cosas perdieron su poder sobre mí. He podido dejar ir un poco mejor y permitir que las cosas que no puedo cambiar o controlar sean como son. Todavía tengo días de depresión, por supuesto, porque todo esto realmente apesta para todos nosotros, pero estoy haciendo un mejor trabajo tomando las cosas un día a la vez y buscando cosas para disfrutar y apreciar cada día. 💗 Que todos podamos encontrar alegría en el momento presente.

9ben:

Buddhist psychology teaches that these are all ways you cause yourself suffering:

1. Wanting to control everything (and everyone) around you and thinking that it’s possible to do so. When you relinquish the illusion of control, you ease your suffering.

2. Wishing that things and circumstances were the way you want them to be, rather than allowing them to be just as they are in reality. This kind of struggling and resisting hurts your mind, spirit and body.

3. Clinging to anything. You might be clinging to good things, wanting them to never change. You might be clinging to people, wanting them to never leave you. Or you might be clinging on to your ideas of how things should be. Clinging causes suffering.

4. Wishing that the past had been different than it was. You cannot change or undo an event that has already occurred, and the time you spend ruminating and longing for a different reality is painful.

5. Wishing that others were the way you want them to be, rather than allowing them to be exactly as they are. It’s a terrible burden to go through life wanting others to think, believe, act and speak the way you want them to. This desire often causes others to suffer too.

6. Not accepting yourself exactly as you are in any given moment. It’s OK to want to evolve and grow, but you can’t bring about true, lasting change unless you first learn to love and accept yourself just as you are.

~ Beth

Cultivate Compassion: A 20 Minute Guided Meditation →

This is a nice compassion meditation from Sara Raymond that asks you to focus on making the world a better place, starting with your own compassionate heart 🧡

Recognize and connect to the commonalities between all humans.  As humans we all need food, shelter and a sense of safety.  We all crave love and desire happiness.  And we are all connected by the energy of the Universe.  Start by feeling the love you have for yourself and for those you care deeply about.

Know that everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they have at the time.  Know that everyone “sharpens their tools” at different times and at different rates.  It is often easy, and comes without thought, to judge someone for doing something differently than you would like.  Whenever you find this judgement happening, try to remember, again and again, that they are doing the best they can, just like you are.  Try to hold space for them in your heart.  Hold love in your heart.

Just like me, everyone is seeking happiness.  May we all find the happiness we are seeking.

Just like me, everyone is protecting themselves from suffering.  May we all be brave and strong enough to make space for our suffering.

Just like me, everyone has known sadness.  May we all experience love and joy to balance the sadness.

Just like me, everyone is doing the best they can.  May we all offer compassion to ourselves and to others.  May we all accept compassion from ourselves and others.

A Brief Introduction to Bhakti Yoga

I saw a reference to Bhakti yoga the other day and wanted to know more about it.  I learned that it is considered to be the yoga of love and devotion, and, in short, the practice involves concentrating your mind, emotions and senses on the “Divine” in order to merge yourself into the reality of love.  It is essentially a type of meditation.

To be more specific, the goal of Bhakti is to try to cultivate unconditional spiritual love by practicing directing your love and devotion to a god, guru, the Universe, or the Divine in all things (i.e., something seemingly outside yourself which is, of course, actually within you).  Note that “devotion” refers to your relationship with the Divine, not your subservience to it.  

When you’re in a meditative state, work with the emotions of love, gratitude and devotion.  Tap into them, focus on them, immerse yourself in them, and then send them out to your spiritual source, however you define that.  When you do this work, you are actually giving out the energy of love, and by doing so, you also receive it.  You are filling yourself with love, all by yourself.  The key to Bhakti is human emotion, just as it is with the law of attraction.  Your emotions of love and devotion, like the positive emotions of joy or gratitude, are the fuel you use to generate changes in your own perceptions.

When you practice regularly over a period of time, you will at times find yourself completely immersed in that love you are giving and receiving.  This is actually an exercise that expands your ability love.  It stretches your capacity to feel. You develop a romance with life itself rather than only with one person.  Bhakti is a larger, more steady sort of love than romantic love.

Traditional Bhakti practices can include (these are not necessarily required) kirtan (devotional chanting in songs) and japa (repetition of spoken mantras). Chanting is thought to open a process of healing and cleansing of the heart. There must be focus and intention when you chant, i.e., prioritize quality (the attention you are paying to what you are doing) over quantity (the number of repetitions).  For example, the chant can be whoever or whatever you think your spiritual guide is, but what’s really important is that you chant with full emphasis on the feelings of love and devotion.  Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough, but chanting and mantras don’t resonate with me.  Like at all.  I just don’t find them useful.  But many people do, and it’s worth playing around with them.

I also learned that Bhakti can include any emotion you may be experiencing in a given moment, not just positive ones.  The point is to use your emotions.  They are not a mistake, but rather can be a tool you can use to mature spiritually. They are your fuel, your energy, as long as you direct them to your spiritual source.  For example, you could reach out to spiritual helpers, God, the Universe, etc. with even a difficult emotion.  Think of it as doing and feeling everything for and with the Divine, the Holy, the entire manifest creation.  This is how you create a greater sense of connection with the Universe.  All that we feel, whatever emotion is arising within us, is also Divine.  We are divine. Humans are divine.  Why do we seem to think there is a difference between the human and the divine?

So the next time you dance, dance with and for the Divine, focusing your attention there.  The next time you cook food, do so with and for all that is Holy. When you write, sing, or create art or music, imagine that the whole Universe is right there writing, singing and creating with you.  Laugh with your spiritual source.  Cry with God.  Feel your connection to Spirit.

The heart, the essence of Bhakti is about surrendering your ego.  It’s like you are continually asking that your ego be absorbed by your Divine Source.  This includes your love and your grief, your devotion and your frustration, your motives, your desires and your dreams.  Offer them - offer everything - to the Universal Consciousness and feel yourself being loved and supported.

📿Beth

~ partially adapted from Hillari Dowdle, Gaura Vani, and Jai Uttal

A Spiritual Approach to a Broken Heart

 💔

1)  This truth totally sucks, but love and loss are interconnected.  You can’t experience connection unless you’ve also experienced separation.  Intimacy and devotion are actually closely related to separation and partition.  It’s just how the yin and yang of life works, whether we like it or not.  So the first thing to do as you grieve is to remind yourself that grieving over lost love is part of being human.  It’s OK to feel what you’re feeling because you’re human, but also because it’s wise to do so.  Heartbreak is part of the human condition - if it comes off the table, then so does love itself. Vulnerability is what makes life worth living; without it, we’d lack meaning and purpose.  So since you can’t transcend heartache anyway, you should embrace it.  Remind yourself that heartbreak is not the end of love; it’s the beginning.

2) The practice:  Sit in a quiet place and relax your body, starting with your feet and working your way up your legs to your torso, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, jaw and face.  Then pay attention to the physical sensations you feel in your body.  For example, when you’re suffering heartbreak you might feel a pain and tightness in your throat; a heavy, uncomfortable weight in your chest; and the sensation that there’s a cannonball in your gut.  Do nothing other than breathe and notice how grief manifests itself physically in your body.  All emotions have a physical manifestation in the body; your job is to see where grief, sadness and loss live in yours.

After you’ve watched how your physical body feels for a few minutes, shift your awareness to the emotion of grief itself for just a few seconds.  Pretend that you’re curious about what grief and sadness feel like, as if you’re watching someone else grieve.  Remind yourself that it’s OK to feel whatever you are feeling, and, most importantly, that it won’t kill you.  It’s hard, and it’s painful, but you absolutely have the capacity to allow it to be there.

Next, consider all the people out there in the world who are feeling the same thing you are right now.  This part of the practice is in no way about minimizing or trivializing what you are feeling.  It’s about reminding yourself that you are not alone.  Your pain isn’t personal to you, a way the world is shitting on you in particular.  It’s just a part of life, and many, many other beautiful souls are out there feeling exactly the same way you do, whether their loss is from a romance that is ending, or a friend that is leaving, or the death of a beloved family member.  Breathe and feel your pain with all those out there feeling it with you. You are connected to them; try to draw strength and comfort from this.

Finally, think of what would make you feel a little better right now in this moment.  I don’t mean that you should think of what would “fix” your problem, but rather what would give you a little comfort for a short while.  For example, maybe a sense of peace and acceptance would help.  Or the feeling of love and connection to the earth and all beings.  Or the energy of healing and strength. When you’ve settled on a blessing, use your inhales to invite some of it into your heart for a minute.  Then, because a good way to soothe the pangs of heartbreak is to expand your realm of who and what is loved beyond the traditionally romantic, use your exhales to send the same blessing back out into the world to all those who are suffering just like you are right now.  Imagine that the energy you are sending from your heart space out into the world is reaching them and strengthening them.

In addition, if you have a spiritual practice beyond meditation, then immerse yourself in it.  Your primal instincts might be to avoid doing so, but a time like this is when you really need it, because it will help you connect with a deeper source of love, the love from which all relationships arise.  Your spiritual practice gives you a broader perspective which will make it easier to accept loss, and then heal and move on.

3)  We then come to the ultimate spiritual practice when you’ve suffered a romantic loss:  Be willing to do it all over again!  Fall in love again, and never stop.  You never run out of love; you contain limitless, infinite quantities of it, and you always will.  You must expect that you will find love again, even if you also find more heartache.  Because there will always be more love. Believing in this love can even give you a sacred purpose to the pain you are going through.

I am sending you love, strength, light and healing ✨

Beth 

  ~ partially adapted from Hillari Dowdle, Douglas Brooks and Laura Cornell.

You can go through your whole life not even knowing you HAVE bullshit, or you can spend time meditating regularly and start to recognize it.  Awareness is 75% of the battle when you’re trying to change something about yourself, so obviously you can’t evolve and mature without awareness.  Examples of bullshit would include stories (many of which rise to the level of outright lies) you tell yourself and believe, criticism and judgment of yourself and others, habitual ways of responding to triggers, unreasonable fears, and, best of all, letting your ego run the show.  Your own personal bullshit can, of course, take other forms, but you get the idea.  The point is that you have to actually LOOK at it, stick your toe in it, watch it, and see it for what it is.

The way meditation can work is you sit and breathe and watch what bubbles up.  It takes time and practice, but eventually you begin to recognize the endlessly repeating stories, the same thoughts that arise again and again, the same fears, the same judgments.  You begin to see that your thoughts are just these things your brain spews out all day.  Your perceptions and opinions aren’t iron-clad and can actually change.  You can learn to be kinder to yourself and others.  You can allow things to be as they are and not fight and struggle and try to control everything all the time.  You can start to have “aha” moments where you say, “OMG that’s actually total bullshit!  That’s not really true!  I don’t actually have to respond that way!  I can allow him/her to be just as they are!  I think I’ll let that shit go.”

So go ahead, get up close and personal with your own bullshit.  It’s OK to be human, so no need to judge yourself about this too.  It’s just all about noticing.

Namaste,

Beth

A meditation on your life’s purpose / Una meditación sobre el propósito de tu vida.

Your purpose in life has absolutely nothing to do with what you do, what you’ve accomplished, or how much stuff you own.  Your purpose, and your source of fulfillment, must come from deep within you.  It’s about who you are on the inside and how you connect with the Universe and other beings.

Who you are is a limitless spiritual being.  Who you are is pure consciousness, and you are connected to everything and everyone in the Universe, right now, as you are, no matter what it is that you “do.”

Breathe these ideas in and out for several minutes, and then let go and just breathe, marinating in their energy.

📿

Tu propósito de la vida no tiene absolutamente nada que ver con lo que haces, lo que has logrado o la cantidad de cosas que posees. Tu propósito y tu fuente de satisfacción deben venir de lo profundo de ti. Se trata de quién eres en el interior y cómo te conectas con el Universo y otros seres.

Quien eres, es un ser espiritual sin límites. Quien eres, es conciencia pura, y estás conectado a todo y a todos en el Universo, en este momento, tal como eres, sin importar qué es lo que “haces”.

Respira estas ideas dentro y fuera durante varios minutos, y luego suéltalas y respira, marinándote en su energía.

  ~  Namaste, Beth

Mindfulness, Buddhist psychology and meditation.

Our thoughts can be useful, because they are what help us plan, analyze, and recall facts.  But too much of the time we are totally lost in our thoughts.  We think they are us; we give them too much power over us.  We believe everything they say.  For most of us, most of the time, our thoughts are not useful or productive.  They are often simply repeated patterns we have fallen into.  They are stories we believe and tell ourselves over and over again.  They keep us in the past remembering, or in the future worrying.  They tend to keep our attention away from the present moment, which is the only time when life truly happens and which is the only place where the spiritual and the material intersect.

When we spend too much time lost in thought about the past, we tend to create suffering for ourselves in the form of regrets and disappointments.  We relive past angers and resentments.  We literally re-experience the bad things we’ve been through, and our bodies are physically impacted by them again and again.  Similarly, when we allow our minds to focus too much on the future, we bring on even more suffering in the form of worry, anxiety and fear.  We create stories about what might happen, or what might not happen. Our bodies physically experience that worry, anxiety and fear multiple times.

Meditation is the best way I’ve found to skillfully manage the constant, running stream of mind garbage my brain spews out all day.  But if you put your efforts into suppressing your thoughts, your thoughts will win.  What is more important, especially when you are first learning to meditate, is to learn to recognize your thoughts as merely thoughts.  Your thoughts are not you; they do not define who you are.  They are not necessarily important or interesting or true.  The crazy person who lives in your head is not who you really are. Thoughts are just these things everyone’s minds emit all day, and the point of meditation is to change your relationship to them.

So rather than fight them and try to repress them, the goal (whether during meditation or during the course of your day) is instead to get curious about them, with kind and gentle attention.   You are not your thoughts but instead are the witness of your thoughts.  There’s you, and there are your thoughts.  Be a kind and loving observer of them.  Are you remembering the past?  Then when you notice that, make a mental note, “Remembering,” and gently come back to focusing on the breath or otherwise staying present with whatever you are doing.  Are you worrying about the future?  Then say to yourself, “Worrying,” and come back to the present moment.  Did you just catch yourself planning? Label that “planning” and bring your attention back to your point of focus right now.  Ruminating?  Fantasizing? Criticizing?  Judging?  Do the same thing.

In time, you will begin to see the thought patterns that reappear again and again, the same old stories you continually tell yourself.  You may notice that you relive certain experiences from your past, over and over.  Or maybe you tend to replay conversations with added comments that you wish you would have said.  Perhaps you question everything people say and do, trying to figure out if there was a hidden meaning.  As you get better at observing them, eventually many of your thoughts will start to seem a bit boring and silly, but always be kind to yourself when you notice this.  Maybe even see the humor in it:  “Oh, there’s that cute thing my mind does again!” With a daily meditation practice, you’ll begin to stop believing everything you think. And once you are able to not take your own thoughts so seriously, it becomes easier to simply let them come and go without feeling like you’re fighting them.  This is what it means to change your relationship with your thoughts.

It takes practice over time, but you can also come to know what your true nature is by learning to get curious about your thoughts, feelings and emotions.  You will learn to witness them without getting lost in them.  When you sit and breathe and meditate, ask yourself, “What exactly is going on inside me?  Where do I feel it in my body?”  Eventually you will see that this stuff is all temporary. Your feelings and emotional responses are just experiences that all human beings have.  Like thoughts, they come and go.  You can begin to give yourself permission to feel whatever it is you’re feeling without worrying too much about what it means.  At the same time, witnessing yourself in this way - as if you’re outside of yourself looking in - often brings insights and understanding that help you better make sense of things.  But mostly it’s about letting go and allowing whatever is there to be there.

With respect to meditation “working,” try letting that kind of expectation or desire go.  While there are lots of different ways to meditate and your experience may vary from sitting to sitting, ultimately the point of it is to quiet your mind, and to recognize thoughts, emotions and physical sensations as passing, temporary things (i.e., nothing to get all caught up in).  The point is to just be, right here and right now, not to achieve anything or to create some cosmic, metaphysical experience.  Jack Kornfield (a leading teacher of meditation in the West for decades) has said that a spiritual life is not a process of seeking or gaining some extraordinary condition or special powers.  In fact, such seeking can take us away from ourselves.  For a spiritual journey to be genuine, we have to stay much closer to home by simply focusing on what’s right here in front of us every moment of every day.  We need to keep it real. When you practice regularly, it’s common to feel calmer and more at peace, but that shouldn’t necessarily be the goal.  The goal is simply to live in the now, moment by moment.

  ~  Beth

What’s your story?

Here’s what I’ve learned over the years about meditation and my relationship with my thoughts and stories.

1.  You can learn to recognize your thoughts for what they really are.

An important part of a meditation practice involves recognizing that many of your thoughts are just random words your brain emits.  Not only are they not necessarily interesting or important or true, they are actually crazy a lot of the time.

Until you are able to develop some conscious and objective awareness of the way you think, you are controlled to an amazing degree by your thoughts. Much of the time, you won’t even be aware that you’ve got this constant, borderline-insane stream of thought happening all day long (Michael Singer calls it the “crazy roommate who lives inside your head”).

2.  You will discover that your thoughts have become your “stories.”

Over time, the thoughts your brain churns out become your stories.  You believe these stories without looking at them with a clear, critical eye, or even without recognizing that you are letting them define who you think you are.  You identify completely with these stories; you think they are you.  Your stories will be things like:

“I don’t like that person.”

“That person doesn’t like me.”

“I need this set of circumstances to be OK.”

“I am not good at this set of skills.”

“I’m not a good enough person.”

“I’m afraid of these things.”

“I cannot tolerate these things or those people.”

3.  You will be able to begin to asking yourself if your stories are all actually true.

It takes time and practice, but after a while (maybe after a long while), you will get used to watching during meditation and noticing how your thoughts have developed into full-blown stories.  Then the next step of your work can begin - you can step back a little and look at these thoughts and stories and ask yourself, “Is that actually true?”  Maybe it’s true and maybe it’s not.  Maybe it used to be true but doesn’t have to be anymore.  Maybe it’s true now but it won’t be in 6 months.  This work is a powerful tool that allows you to separate yourself from your thoughts and stories.  There’s you, and then there are your thoughts.  There’s you, and there are your stories over there.

4.  You will realize that you can change some of your stories.

This space, this breathing room, can really open things up for you.  Not only can you let go of the stories that aren’t necessarily true, you can even change some of them.  You can create new stories that serve you better.  Now maybe you can begin to say things like:

“Some things about that person trigger me, but I can also find things I like about him, and I can have some compassion for his struggles.”

“That person doesn’t seem to like me, but maybe I’m actually projecting how I feel about myself today, or maybe she’s having a bad day and it’s not even about me.  Or maybe she really doesn’t like me that much, but that’s OK too.”

“Maybe I don’t actually need this set of circumstances to be OK.  Maybe I’m stronger and more flexible than I think I am.  Maybe I can learn to just be with and accept things as they are.”

“I am great at a lot of things, and I can get better at other things.  I don’t actually suck that much.”

“I am a good enough person, just as I am right now.  This doesn’t mean that I’m not learning and growing and evolving, but I’m inherently a perfect manifestation of spirit too.”

“Some things actually aren’t that scary when I really take a good, hard look at them.  I can learn to overcome this particular fear.”

“I am capable of tolerating a lot more than I think I can when I allow things to be as they are.  I’m stronger and more easy going than I thought I was.”

When you are no longer a prisoner of your own mind, and when you no longer define yourself by the stories you tell yourself, it’s a lot easier to find an inner sense of peace and contentment.  It’s like free therapy, or do-it-yourself psychoanalysis.  This is why we meditate.

  ~  Beth ❥

Life plan for bringing about world peace in 7 steps.

1.  Be Peace

Develop a regular meditation practice for cultivating peace within yourself. Put your attention on your heart and inwardly repeat these four words: “peace, harmony, laughter, and love.”  Invite the energy of peace, tranquility, serenity and calm into your body with each inhale.

2.  Think Peace

After you’ve been meditating long enough to have developed a regular daily habit of it, introduce the intention of peace into your thoughts when you’re not meditating. Several times throughout each day, take a few seconds to breathe and be quiet, and then silently repeat words like this to yourself: “Let all beings be happy, loved, and peaceful. Let the whole world experience these things.”

3.  Feel Peace

Begin to pay attention to experiencing the emotions of peace. The emotions of peace include compassion, understanding, and love.  Start looking for opportunities to experience these emotions when you see, hear or read something that might trigger them, or when you are connecting with other beings.  As often as you can, take one minute to fully experience what compassion, understanding and love really feel like.

4.   Speak for Peace

Your words have an incredibly powerful impact on your own heart and mind and on the hearts and minds of others.  Start practicing this daily intention: “Today, I will try to be mindful of the words I speak. I will refrain from complaining, condemnation, judgment and criticism.”  Try to consciously notice when you forget your intention and slip into non-peaceful speech.  When you notice this, do NOT judge, condemn or criticize yourself.  Simply say something like, “Oops, non-peaceful speech!” and recommit yourself again to your intention.

5.  Act for Peace

Begin to look for ways to help someone in need. Help can take many forms; if you’ve been working on steps 1 through 4 for a while, you will start to notice natural opportunities to help other beings in large or small ways. Small gestures are perfectly fine - you don’t have to do something huge like join the Peace Corps.  Remember to try to keep your ego out of it.  Try to mindfully offer help without asking for or in any way expecting gratitude or recognition.  Your goal is to change the world, not to feed your ego.  If you find yourself wanting to be recognized or thanked, say something like, “Oops, there’s that cute ego thing happening again,” and simply let it go.  Never beat yourself up for it.  Self-judgment destroys peace.

6.   Create for Peace

Start thinking about creative ways to resolve an existing conflict, either in your personal life, or in your family circle or among friends. Intend to create trust and eliminate hidden hostility and suspicion – the two great enemies of peace.  The best time to think creatively is right after a meditation sit, but be open all the time to the bubbling up of ideas and insights around this.  Trust your instincts.

7.   Share for Peace

Eventually, try to share your practice of peacemaking with at least two people. As more of us participate in this sharing, our practice will expand like ripples in a pond, reaching many instead of a few.  Teach someone how to meditate, and explain the peacemaking steps you’ve been working on.

As you continue to embrace the love and serenity that is your true nature, you will step into your full potential as a change agent for the entire world.  But remember, peace MUST start with you.  We cannot have world peace until all beings are at peace with themselves.  This is why it is so critical to work on your own inner peace before you attempt to go out into the world to be a peace activist.

Namaste, Beth

(partially adapted from Deepak Chopra)

huntingtonlibrary:

A one-minute meditation for your Monday afternoon.

Slow down for 60 seconds with a breezy moment in the Palm Garden. Breathe.

One of my favorite places in the world is the Huntington Gardens and Library, right here in Southern California.  They have recently been posting one minute meditations featuring a tranquil scene from the gardens.  Listen to the wind rustling the palm fronds.  Dig it and breathe   :)

Meditation and emotions.

The real source of “stress” is actually internal; it is not external, as people would like to believe. The readiness to react with fear, for instance, depends on how much fear is already present within to be triggered by a stimulus. The more fear we have on the inside, the more our perception of the world is changed to a fearful, guarded expectancy. To the fearful person, this world is a terrifying place. To the angry person, this world is a chaos of frustration and vexation. To the guilty person, it is a world of temptation and sin, which they see everywhere. What we are holding inside colors our world.

The basic rule is that we focus on what we have repressed. Stress results from the accumulated pressure of our repressed and suppressed feelings. The pressure seeks relief, and so external events only trigger what we have been holding down, both consciously and unconsciously.

It is because we are angry that events “make” us angry. If, through constant surrendering, we have let go of the pent-up store of anger, it is very difficult and, in fact, even impossible for anyone or any situation to “make” us angry. The same, therefore, goes for all other negative feelings once they have been surrendered.

HOW MEDITATION IS USED TO LET PENT-UP EMOTIONS GO:

The mechanism of letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going.

There is a scientific basis for the observation that self-awareness is increased much more rapidly by observing feelings rather than thoughts. The thoughts associated with even one feeling may literally run into the thousands. The understanding of the underlying emotion and its correct handling is, therefore, more rewarding and less time-consuming than dealing with one’s thoughts.

The feeling can then be worked with by first accepting that it is there, without resisting it or condemning it. And then one begins to empty out the energy of the feeling directly by letting it be what it is until it runs out.

If the feeling has been totally surrendered and let go, usually all thoughts associated with it will have disappeared entirely and been replaced by a concluding thought which handles the matter quickly.

  ~  David R. Hawkins

WHY IT MAKES SENSE TO TRY TO STAY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.

The past no longer exists.  The future hasn’t happened yet.  So all of life takes place in a series of moments we call “NOW.”

When we spend too much time lost in thought about the past, we tend to create suffering for ourselves in the form of regrets, disappointments, reliving anger and resentment.  We literally re-experience the bad things we’ve been through, and our bodies are physically impacted by it again and again.

When we allow our minds to focus too much on the future, we often bring on even more suffering in the form of worry, anxiety and fear.  We create stories about what might happen, what might not happen.  Our bodies experience that worry, anxiety and fear multiple times.

Bringing yourself back to the present again and again (via meditation, and mindfulness when you aren’t meditating) is the best way to cultivate peace and equanimity in your life.  The past is like a dream, so let it go.  The future is a total fantasy, so let that go too.  At least a few times each day, try to just breathe and be right here, right now, which is the only time and place you can really find peace and contentment in life.

  ~  Beth

Why do we have to meditate every day?

spiritualgateway:

It is very simple. Every day you eat; that is why you live on earth. You cannot live on the food you ate yesterday. Similarly, the divine child in us also needs nourishment every day. Every day you have to feed the soul. Meditation means the conscious feeding of our soul. If we eat every day, we become very strong because of our regular nourishment. So also when we meditate every day the soul is being nourished. Then it gets the opportunity to manifest itself better, that is to say, to manifest the Divine on earth. This is why daily meditation is necessary.

- Sri Chinmoy, Meditation: God speaks and I listen, part 1

Working with difficult, unpleasant life changes.

The alternative to accepting changes in our lives truly sucks.  It’s a no-win situation with us holding on for dear life to things we cannot control.  We endure panic as we attempt to hold the future at bay and to keep things exactly as they are now, and we freeze ourselves into a rigid and narrow existence as a result.  This makes for a kind of half-life (or half-death) in which we become utterly dominated by our own fear.

But here’s what resisting change means:  Without remaining open to change, we cannot remain open to life.  And our desire to control change is our greatest obstacle to wisdom, because whether we like it or not, facing our dread of the future is an excellent vehicle for entering into the spiritual dimension.  Thus we are not only causing ourselves suffering, but we’re missing out on growth opportunities.

So we must be willing to open to all that each moment contains, including that which seems most threatening.  How do you do this?  By thoroughly familiarizing yourself with your demons, which in turn reduces your fear.  You must confront yourself consciously and deliberately with mirror reflections of changes that worry or frighten you.  In practice, what this means is observing your fear with kind and gentle attention.  Breathe.  Watch your own reaction to your list of life changes that terrify you.  Breathe.  Get curious and notice how the fear feels in your body.  Breathe.  Take care of the fear like you would a beloved child, and then let it go. Breathe.  It’s just fear; it’s an emotion that comes and goes, and when you fully acknowledge it, it loses its power over you.  Do this over and over, day after day.

Over time, this work lessens our dread of scary future changes.  When we begin to see the inevitability of change, we stop being surprised and overwhelmed when the laws of nature take their course.  This does not do away with suffering, but it does cast a different light on it.  We can shoulder our burdens with more dignity and good nature, having prepared ourselves for the changes that life brings to all of us.  We stop pretending that we have any control over anything, and we get more comfortable allowing the future to unfold as it will.

(partially adapted from Ram Dass)