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. . .

Caring for the Body

For a very long time, our awareness of God has been of a deity out there somewhere, exerting his influence based on criteria we don’t understand, leaving us always looking outside of ourselves for some philosophy that can help us know what we need to do to earn his favor.

At this point in human evolution many are being guided toward a much broader awareness of God, one that recognizes the very real presence of God right here in this physical realm, in the middle of every part of being human. We are just beginning to consider the magnitude and ramifications of the truth that wherever we are, God is, in every situation, every thought and every emotion we’ve ever had or ever will have.

Most importantly, we are realizing that for this to be possible, God must reside within every one of us. Regardless of how we choose to perceive that mind-boggling notion, the bottom line is that we are living God’s life. God is experiencing her God-self through our own experience.

Most of us have heard the much-known maxim that our bodies are temples of the soul, but I’m not sure we’ve caught up with the utter truth of that enough to care for them as sacred expressions of God’s life. Many of us find joy in following a spiritual path and finding a deeper meaning for our existence, but don’t fully consider the role of the body on that path. We seek spiritual truth “out there” without even realizing that what we’re seeking is right here. We live in it 24 hours a day. In body, mind and spirit there is no separation; it is all God.

I’ve realized that caring for the body is a spiritual practice unto itself. I can sit for an hour of meditation and prayer, and connect with divine intelligence within me. I can also choose to eat a meal of healthy food, and honor and validate that divine intelligence that created me. When I choose to exercise or move my body in some way that is fun and healthy, I celebrate God’s life within me.

When I love my body enough to consider what is best for it, and honor it by following through with its needs, I am the embodiment of the holy trinity; I am the lover, the loved, and love itself.

All acts of self-care are ultimately acts of love. They are our prayers of gratitude for our ability, through these precious temples, to be God’s life.

May you practice random and frequent acts of self-care, and may this tool be a blessing. .

Present Time

Lately I’ve been renewing my love affair with present time.  It’s always been a very one-sided relationship; present time being right here with me, always waiting to be savored, me gallivanting off to who-knows-where in my mind, unable to resist my two-timing obsession with the future or the past.

I’m always amazed by how tough it is to stay centered in the now.  No matter how aware I am of the added quality and depth of my moments when I focus on what’s happening in this moment, the pull to worry or reflect about future or past is often irresistible.  I know it’s all perfect, part of a plan that is divine beyond understanding in helping me remember my truth about being human.  I like to think of it as part of the total entertainment package, the perfectly-orchestrated challenges that allow us to choose our best selves.

Playing with being in present time as much as I can is a wonderfully satisfying and creative endeavor.  When my attention is pulled back from future or past, I can place my full attention on being; now I experience what it is like to be a teacher, as I choose to be fully present in that expression.  Now I delight in being female, as my attention rests in what that feels like and how I express it.  Fixing my hair and choosing jewelry is sure a lot more fun when I’m in present time, with my attention on enjoying my femaleness rather than what I I'll be doing at work later.

As I sit here, present in the now, I find joy in very simple things.  My feelings are a validation of myself, being me.  There is no judgment or resistance, only what is.  I am grateful to be able to experience, period.  

I have hands that type these words, and do countless other amazing things.  In present time having a body is a celebration, not always easy or painless but an unspeakable gift nonetheless.

May you be present in your moments, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Not I, But God Within Me

So many times I've despaired over things that I don’t do well enough, or despite my best intentions still manage to get stuck on!  Human experience being what it is, we all have challenges; some of them are pretty easily solved and some take years and years to navigate through. 

In the middle of our own particular challenges, we can feel unsure about our ability to find a solution.  Whether it’s something new or something we’ve been dealing with for awhile, challenges are challenging exactly because they require us to dig deeply within ourselves and change how we’ve been thinking.  Challenges are opportunities to let go of old patterns and open up to new ways of seeing our experience that better reflect the truth of who we really are.

Still, slogging through difficult and confusing situations is uncomfortable, especially if they’re those “core” beliefs that seem to take an act of God to finally see the truth about.  But I’ve learned, and keep remembering, that an act of God is exactly what’s needed.

In each act of remembering and in every moment of grace, it is not I, but God within me, who does the work.  In my most sad, confused or frustrated moments, when I feel like I’m going to feel this way forever because I just can’t seem to figure out how to do it differently, if I can place my awareness back to God within me, I no longer need to figure anything out, because there is nothing that I lack.  Any sense of lack or forgetting is swept aside by a much larger truth that perfect and divine consciousness guides my thoughts and actions, and I know just what to do. 

When I remember that God within me is doing the work, my burden is light and my path is clear.  I realize that in each moment everything I require is available to me, and I am whole and complete.  All I need do is claim it!

The change in thinking that I sought today was this:  I know what to do because there is no idea or answer that I lack.  It can be no other way. 

And as is the case when I get back to remembering, I was brought again to heaven, right here on Earth.   I love that we can do that!

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Celebrating!

There is always something to celebrate. Celebration is a form of gratitude; it's a way of acknowledging our unlimited ability to create and opening ourselves up to our best and highest expression. To me, celebrating is a form of prayer, a way of saying “Thank you, God” for the gifts we’ve been given. It’s a validation of the goodness and God-ness that makes up our human experience.

I’m a fan of the happy dance. When my mom recently got good news after having trouble getting her car smogged, I did the happy dance. When my husband got a bonus check yesterday that was unexpected, we did a big, loud high-five in celebration. In my family we often toast each other over dinner, with our glasses of water or whatever we are drinking, just to celebrate sitting there eating, and being together. “Tuesday” is a wonderful reason to celebrate. Random acts of gratitude can be large or small in expression, and they reconnect us with the truth of all that we can do, be and have.

Today is my birthday, and that is something to celebrate. I don’t think grown-ups have nearly enough permission to celebrate their own birthdays. This morning driving to work I danced to the radio, sitting there behind the wheel looking very foolish, I’m sure, to others driving by, happy in the awareness that I have experienced another year being me. Happy, too, knowing that today begins another year growing in my awareness of the perfect good from which this existence is created.

As my family sang happy birthday to me last weekend over the lighted candles on the birthday cake, I felt tremendous gratitude, for all of them, and for my precious life. The happy birthday song was a celebration of all of us, for being here now, filling the world with our own unique voices.

May you celebrate all of the large and small things in your life (especially your birthday!), and may this tool be a blessing. . .