On stillness…..

More stream of consciousness…bear with me as I oil up my writing chops again:)

I’ve decided and it was reinforced during a reiki session, that I have to limit my news/internet/bullshit.  It’s causing me suffering and making me angry and agitated.  It’s also clouding my thinking.  I need cleanliness and clarity in my brain.

The election was a perfect example of allowing pollution into my third eye.  I KNEW that it didn’t matter who won and that my vote was inconsequential.  Turns out my intuition was correct because I did end up casting a ‘hold your nose’ vote for HRC and she lost.  HA!  If that’s not a reinforcement to listen to my guides, then I don’t know what is.

NOBODY thought she would lose.  NOBODY.  And yet, it was the fates slapping us down, blowing up conventional wisdom and within my soul and my deep knowing, I was correct.  I knew this was going to be a disruptive election. I felt it coming for a few years and I should have just walked my path and allowed.  But, I was influenced by the buzz, the spin, the hysteria surrounding this whole evolution.

I knew it and felt it months, no, years ago.  This is why I need to limit my consumption of this addictive brew of junk that is swirling.  It’s no difference than how I feed myself food:  No factory farmed meats, mostly organic, as local as possible.  I avoid toxins as best I can and yet, I allow them into my eyes, ears, psyche and heart.  What goes in, comes out and if we nourish ourselves properly, we are clean and clear and able to function optimally; physically, spiritually, emotionally.

During reiki this week, I was told by one of my spirit guides “Don’t underestimate the power of being still”.  Yes.  Stillness is where we find ourselves, our essence, our authentic soul/spirit.  There is no other way.  The constant drumbeat of media, internet, anger, outrage, with so much of it based on lies, is damaging to us.  Damaging to our collective psyche and energy.  We need space and silence and time to process the sensory stimulation of modern life.

When I was working, I had a very distinct and rigid routine every morning: wake up, brush teeth, let dogs out, get a cup of coffee, head to basement, prepare for morning radio show, 20 minutes of yoga, 20 minutes of meditation and GO!

I’ve lost that discipline and I miss it.  I have Saturn in Capricorn, so  a routine and even rigid boundaries around diet, exercise, discipline, even restriction, appeal to me.  My life is sloppy right now.  Not horrible, not tragic, but sloppy because I’m not doing what I need to do to function optimally and it’s like dragging a rock around.

But, that is me.  Everyone has to find that groove; the one that makes you feel like you’re powerful and lubricated and engaged. Maybe that’s playing music or painting or long walks or reading or cooking or just sitting with a beautifully fragrant candle.  It’s all about disconnecting with the chaos of modern life and re-connecting with the stillness within all of us.  It can be so hard to find.  But, it’s there.

We make life so much harder than it needs to be, by the stories we tell ourselves.  That old nemesis of awakening and enlightenment, The Human Condition is a tough one to wrangle into submission, eh?  Why have we allowed our lives to devolve into such an unnatural place?  Stillness will light the way out.

Don’t Know Mind

2016 is the year of the purge; a time to cleanse. Every astrological, metaphysical and spiritual video/newsletter/blog that has shown up in my inbox over the past week has reiterated this same theme. It’s the year to leave some wounds behind and get your shit together. We can’t build anything new, until we expunge the old. Shred it, smash it, burn it. Just do it.

I’ve recently gone back to reading some things with the Buddhist tone or theme that awakened me 5 or 6 years ago, as I began to re-shape my life and my reactions to my life. The overriding theme of Buddhism, to me anyway, is that we cause ourselves and others so much pain by our lack of honesty and clarity. We cling to what “should be”, rather than what is. In Buddhist terms, that is called suffering.

We do it all day, every day. Because we are humans. Because we live in our minds and we make up stories about how other people should behave. We judge, we criticize, we rant, we argue. In some horrible instances, we shoot, we stab, we blow up, we murder or sanction murder via our leaders and governments. All in pursuit of our need to control what “should be”.

Painful, isn’t it? Yes. And it affects our personal health, both physical and emotional, our global health and obviously, our spiritual health, which some believe is actually beginning to come back from the dead, despite so much evidence to the contrary on the 24 hour news channels.

Accepting ‘what is’ and letting go of ‘what should be’ is one of the greatest paths to clarity. At least it has been for me. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t suffer and rage, just like you. I do, but I’m more and more able to arrest it more quickly, thanks to meditation and practice.

One of the most obvious ways that we suffer from ‘should be’ syndrome is with politics. We are all so invested in the outcome of elections that we fight and argue and call the other side awful names and in too many cases, expunge those who disagree with us from our lives or our Facebook friend list.

I’m not voting in the Presidential election this year. I’ve been lectured, I’ve been cajoled, I’ve been criticized and called selfish for this decision. I’ve been told, “well, then you can’t complain if you don’t vote”. Really? Watch me.

Here’s why I’ve made this choice: Every 4 years, we choose teams and then we fight and we name call and we invest a lot of time advocating, often with great hostility, for our team. It’s painful and frustrating and time consuming to go all in for one candidate or the other.

Then, we have an election. Half of the people celebrate. “We won!!”. The other half are bitterly disappointed. “Our lives will be horrible, now”. Neither is true. So, again, we are living with what “should be”, rather than “what is”.

The losing team, now spends the next 4 years berating, complaining and hoping for complete and utter failure of the winning team. There is no compromise, no tackling of problems or working toward solutions. New problems and crises arise and the losers complain bitterly that it’s all the winners’ fault.

The winners refuse to see that there might be some credence in the philosophy of the other side. That the losing team might have some good ideas. “Elections matter. We won. You lost. SHUT UP.”

Sound familiar. Sound painful and non-productive and silly?

We are all too invested in outcomes. We all just want to win and be right and then rub the losers’ noses in it. Nothing really changes. Nothing gets solved and it is a vicious, every-4-years cycle that I choose to remove myself from.

I honestly don’t care who wins. I have to live my life regardless of who is elected as the Leader of the Free World. So, why invest? I have to deal with ‘what is’ after an election. Period. This is referred to as “don’t know mind”. In other words none of us can ever predict an outcome with any accuracy at all, so why try? Any one of those running could be a great leader or a horrible one. We just don’t know, do we?

Think about some instances in your life that seemed tragic or painful or catastrophic, that actually resulted in a decent outcome or at the very least, some personal growth. I was fired from several jobs. In that moment, it was horrible, but I ended up in better situations.

I suffered some very painful losses of loved ones over the course of a short time and yes, it was extremely painful, but I’ve had a spiritual growth spurt thanks to that shock.

We honestly have no idea of the consequences of any action. Embrace that, open up to it and begin to let go of the ‘should be’ and live with ‘what is’.

So, what if we just remain open to whatever arises? What if after the election we accept the outcome and accept that we have no idea whether it will be good or bad? Because it will be; good and bad and calm and chaotic and scarce and abundant. That is life. Accept it for what it is. You will adapt, you will change, you will be forced to.

And that’s okay. Nobody is right or wrong.

Life has a way of making us face reality anyway. Might as well be two steps ahead, eh? Embrace the ‘know nothing’ mind. Be free. Surrender.

So long to what’s not workin’…

Friday is the Spring Equinox.  A time for saying goodbye to things that are weighing you down; for leaving behind the things that aren’t working in your life.  Make a list of those items and burn them, preferably Friday.  And then move on.  I sat down and wrote this in my journal this morning, so it’s kind of stream of consciousness:

Today is the day that I am letting go of my burdens. I’ve been carrying around my sadness and loss like a huge backpack of rocks for a long time. It has weighed me down; I gained about 20 pounds and let my body go to hell carrying this junk with me. No more. I’m moving toward freedom, light, joy, renewal and all of the good stuff. Enough is enough.

I’m an optimist. I know that things work out for the best. Yes, there is a lot of pain in the world; so much suffering and some of it by people that I love, but I cannot absorb that and allow it to ruin me. I have to rise above it, see the good and the beautiful. I need more music and movement and nature and sunshine and beaches and water and walks. I want to learn to play the guitar.

I’m going to slowly let go and shut down my Jane London Facebook page. That is no longer me; I no longer need that affirmation and adoration. I will write my blog and hope that it resonates, but I won’t be obsessed with views and comments and pats on the back. It’s a beautiful thing to connect and help others. I love that people compliment my writing and I hope that I get better and keep writing, but I have to focus on what’s in front of me.

I’ve spent more time on the feelings and lives of people I barely know than on my own household. My husband is neglected and needs me. My mom needs me and I need to re-connect with my siblings in a way that isn’t about just grief and caring for my mom.

So, this is the way forward. Leave the old ways that were not working and were conspiring against my growth and happiness and freedom. In the end, I will die. Will all of the things I worried and obsessed about really matter? Some will, but most will not. I guess it could be argued that none will matter.

I will die and turn into pure energy and love. Why not try and do that while I’m here? We all have that potential, but modern life conspires to keep us burdened and scared and confined. Not me. I’ve done all of that. Freedom. Letting go. Let’s do this.

Tossing the baggage….

I got a reiki session yesterday to begin to clear away some of the grief that has settled into my body. Reiki is sort of like a massage for your energy field and is designed to dissipate or dissolve any blockages and get the good stuff flowing again.

During this session I received a very clear message that said: “You have got to stop carrying all of this baggage. Stop carrying both you and your husband’s burdens.”

It came through clear as day. The interesting thing is that I’ve been suffering with elbow pain for months and none of my practitioners could figure out what was causing it. Lugging around heavy baggage, perhaps?

I believe that we carry all of our emotions in every cell in our bodies, meaning that over time, the bad stuff builds up and causes pain and disease. Chronic and very serious disease. Like cancer and auto-immune afflictions and diabetes and arthritis. Biggies. We carry around lots of guilt, regret, unexpressed anger, rejection, abuse, both verbal and physical; all of the things that add up to a lot of pain in our lives.

So, I sat down to make of list of what I’ve been carrying around that was resulting in psychic pain and sore elbows. It was quite a long list, but a big, glaring one happened recently and so I figure I would just unpack it and see if you can relate.

I am trying to balance being honest and authentic with being kind, to myself and my fellow humans. I’ve always been quite blunt, but that doesn’t always mean I’ve been honest, but now I’m trying to ask myself how I truly feel about friendships, obligations, invitations etc.

A few months ago, a close friend from long ago, popped up on my Facebook page and we re-connected. She reached out to me and quite honestly, when I saw her request, my first words were “Oh, shit”. Our relationship ended about 10 years ago; it was one of those that just wilted. No big bang or blow-out. She was not responsive during a difficult time with my husband’s health and I decided it was time to “weed my garden”.

Now, I will admit that I never really heard her side and wasn’t all that interested. In my view, the friendship had just run its course.  We texted and messaged for about a month and she was going through a difficult time, having lost her mother a few years ago and more recently her father. She wanted to talk and I just wasn’t ready, so I told her that I had been angry with her for about 10 years.

Let’s just say my timing was not good and it turned very ugly, very quickly. As I was writing my note to her, explaining why I just wasn’t ready to talk, a little voice was whispering…okay screaming in my ear, this will NOT go over well. She will NOT react well or take this in the spirit you intend. But, of course, I hit ‘send’ anyway.

Add this to my bag of guilt that I’m toting around, causing my elbows to scream in pain. I wanted to be honest and tell her that I wasn’t quite ready to fully resume our friendship. I had hoped it would open a discussion between two grown-ups, but it did not. I am afraid that I was unkind and selfish to dump it on her. However, I felt it needed to be said.

How on earth do we all navigate this stuff? How do we communicate our truths and our feelings without bruising others?

This is one, minor incident, but it illustrates the stuff that burrows into our cells and make us feel small or cruel or mean. That is baggage. It’s not necessarily the huge, glaring mistakes that we’ve made, although those weigh very heavily as well. But, I’ve found that I can sort of stand back and get some perspective on my big-ass screw ups. It’s the little ones that take me down.

We all say we prefer honesty, but I think that’s a lie. We don’t. Which is probably why we have such a hard time being honest with ourselves and why we often don’t say what we mean or ask for what we really need.

I was not ready to resume this friendship and my sneaky way of expressing that was to say something that I KNEW in my gut, would end it. So I did and it worked and now I feel crappy about it.

Kind of. Part of me said Thank GOD that’s over. So, there are two sides to every action, but I tend to only focus on the part where I can beat myself up. That is what clearing baggage is about. It’s when you can look at a mistake in judgment or a moment of unkind behavior and forgive yourself.

My affirmation for today is: I forgive myself. Try it. My elbows feel better already.