Just Listen

My husband and I recently returned from a wonderful backpacking trip, where I was reminded of the simple tool of just listening.  When we’re backpacking listening is easier, without clocks or cell phones or anything we have to do except be there. 

Sitting quietly surrounded by nature’s beauty is a perfect time to ask of divine intelligence, “What would you have me remember right now?”  We are always answered when we think to stop and ask. 

I have had some wonderful conversations with God sitting on a log overlooking a little alpine lake at 9,000 feet, and although nature does help our connection with the divine, we can stop to listen anytime.

The quiet voice of God within us, while ever present, often goes unnoticed when our minds are too busy with the details of life.  So it’s helpful to cultivate strategies that allow us to stop, and hear the voice of the larger truth that imbues all life experience. 

One thing that helps me hear is to write.  My journal-writing has transitioned over the years into part journal, part letter to God, and part God’s response to me.  My journal entries have begun “Dear God” for awhile now, and as I spill my thoughts and feelings onto paper God’s perspective begins to come through in what I’m writing, as direction or validation or loving acceptance. 

Of course it’s all God.  As I write to God I write to myself, and as God’s responses come through in what I’ve written, I know that God within me has all of the answers that I will ever need.  There is nothing I lack.

Certainly prayer and meditation are important ways to listen to the highest within us, whether we seek to know what our best course of action might be, or just want to hear what God is wanting to say to us in that moment.

We can also just take a minute and stop.  When we pull our awareness back from the racing thoughts of the day, God is there, in the voice of loving wisdom that lives in our hearts.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Being Peace

Our physical bodies are designed to process spiritual energy.  All thoughts or emotions, every decision, the dynamics in relationships, are at their core vibrations of spiritual energy.  These myriad vibrations of energy are divine consciousness in action, creating all of the experience available to us in remembering that we are God.

It is important to remember that experience can be conscious or unconscious; sometimes we are aware of the vibrations passing through us, and sometimes we are not, but we are still affected by their presence.  There are countless examples of this, but a very common one might be feeling peaceful, and then walking into a room with one or more people and having your mood quickly fall to a lower vibration, such as competition, self-consciousness or contention.  While we would most likely own this lower vibration as something within us that we have created, it is actually us absorbing a vibration moving through that is not us at all.

On a minute-to-minute basis we are being affected by, and responding to, vibrations of spiritual energy.  With awareness, spiritual energy is something that we can manage more consciously.  Not only can we choose to accept, or release what is "going by," we can also "set the energy" in our bodies to any vibration that we prefer.  It is our spiritual birthright, as unlimited creators made in God's image, to design our best life.

There are a number of ways to consciously design our bodies' energy.  Lately I've been choosing to set my body's energy at "peace."  Because we create that which we focus our intention upon, simply choosing peace, owning peace, and remembering and affirming that "I am peace," makes it so.  By doing this we reset the vibration of the body.

An even more powerful technique for setting the vibration in the body is to use the clairvoyant ability that is innate in all of us, which can be found in the mind's eye, and in our imagination.  The idea of peace, and any other thing we can imagine in this lifetime, vibrates at a certain frequency, and that frequency can be seen as a color.  Because we all see color in our own way, there is no right or wrong way to do it.

Today, in my mind's eye, peace is light yellow.  Now I decide, how shall I fill myself with peace?  The simpler the better, so I am back in kindergarten.  I see a big yellow ball of peace above me, and I bring it down into the top of my head and watch, in my imagination, as it moves through me and fills every cell of my body.  Or I "see" the air around me filled with peaceful yellow light, and I breathe deeply.  And now I watch, in my limitless imagination, as I fill a giant pitcher with the color of peace, and pour it out over the top of my head and it washes over me, releasing anything I hold on to that is not peaceful.

I find new joy in coming as a child, as I remember that I am peace.

May your life be a rainbow of colors of your own design, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Welcoming All

A favorite quote, from Rumi:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival,
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your home
Empty of it's furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight.

May you cherish every moment of your amazing life, and may this tool be a blessing. . .