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.

Hey, you! You’re a spirit

I’m spiritual, but not religious.  For many of you that statement means that I’m not serious. That I can’t make a commitment.  The stereotype of that kind of thinking is an air-headed flake that can’t quite make up their mind.

For others, even uttering the word religion or for that matter, spirituality, will mean the conversation is over.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the words “I’m not like that” or “I’m not interested in that”, when I want to talk about spirit or the metaphysical or even religion.  Complete tune-out happens.

And that’s too bad because as humans, we truly are spiritual beings in a human body (I didn’t invent that phrase, by the way).  Our soul and/or spirit needs to be fed and nurtured.  It’s probably more important to our health, than is the physical.  The two are tied so closely together that many can’t even feel or recognize their spiritual component.

When I say that I’m not religious, that doesn’t mean that I reject religion, but that I just don’t embrace it as my personal path.  In fact, I believe that we are entering a post-religious era on earth as we watch all of our sacred institutions crumble due to corruption and because they no longer serve the needs of the ‘flock’.  They serve themselves and wealthy benefactors.

Religion in it’s current form, feels to many of us as if there are too many rules.  It should make us feel loved and uplifted, not punished or judged or broken.  I believe that we are made in love and of love and for a religion to assume that we are all sinners isn’t healthy for the world.

Having said that, Jesus was such a great teacher and the Sermon On the Mount is something that I re-read fairly often.  To me, that’s the essence of Christianity in it’s simple message.  If you’ve never read it, I encourage you to.  It’s powerful and a beautiful example of how we should walk in the world and treat others.

But, that’s my opinion. We’ll see how we evolve.

What I want to express to those of you who reject organized religion and are also throwing out spiritual practice with that dirty water, is that you can make your own path and form your own belief system.  You don’t HAVE to label it.  You don’t HAVE to join a group or community (although sometimes, that feels pretty good).  You don’t have to go anywhere or label yourself.  You ARE spiritual because you are part of humanity and an inhabitant of Mother Earth.

My personal belief system is constantly widening and expanding and morphing and growing.  I’m like an octopus with eight arms, reaching out to wherever my intution leads me; many beliefs and practices speak to me and that’s okay.

I started with Christianity for obvious reasons and then studied Buddhism, began to meditate, was drawn to a more metaphysical approach. I am fed and inspired by nature, so I am drawn to some Native American/indigenous peoples practices.  I recently began reading about shamanism and have incorporated that into my meditation practice.  Delving into astrology in a deeper way has opened up my eyes to the ancient wisdom of man.

Every step that I take results in a richer spiritual understanding of not only myself, but everything else on earth and of the things that we can’t see, but that we can feel.  Death no longer scares me; in fact, I now believe that it will be another phase of my development and existence on another realm.

So, when I suggest to people who tell me that they’re struggling or angry all of the time or feeling lost or adrift, I tell them to begin a spiritual practice.  I usually suggest meditation and yet, so many reject it.  “I’m not religious.  Look at all of the wars and violence and killings that religion causes!”

Yeah, I get it.  I used to say that, too.  I used to say that I don’t believe in anything that I can’t see or prove.  “Religion is the opiate of the masses”, right?

So, don’t be ‘religious’.  You don’t HAVE to pick one.  And contrary to conventional wisdom here in the U.S., you don’t HAVE to be Christian.  You have a huge, rich, diverse body of spiritual thought, philosophy and literature to choose from.

Thousands and thousands of years of wisdom is available to pick from.  Be a rebel WITH a cause; your own spiritual growth.  The choice isn’t religion or atheist.  You are a spirit.  Your spirit aches for acknowledgement and growth.  Let it out to play.  Find what speaks to you and if it’s a tree, then study some earth based rituals.

The truth of the matter is that we are all made of earth, air, fire and water.  There’s a reason that we love walking the beach, a campfire, the smell of fresh cut grass ; we crave those parts of us and too often, we deny them.

If you’re struggling, know that we all are.  We all suffer as humans, we all are challenged, particularly by modern life, where we feel so powerless and untethered and unloved.  Your soul will tell you what you need, if you JUST LISTEN.  Stop rejecting spirit.  You don’t have to go to church or join a religion or follow rules.

Your path is yours.  Not your parent’s or your children’s or your government’s or your neighbor’s or your friend’s or your minister’s/priest’s.  Locate your spirit, talk to it, listen to where it guides you.  Be you.  Be brave.

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.

The answer is spirit

I have this theory and I share it every chance that I get. My theory is this: we as humans, are not evolved enough to function effectively in the modern world. Technology and the pace of life has outstripped our ability to process and adapt.

Look around and you will see stress, chaos, anger, frustration, violence, fear, road rage, supermarket rage, Facebook rage. We are chronically offended, scared, angry, busy, fat, sick, unloved, confused, over-medicated. This is primarily in our wealthy and powerful 1st world country. The problems in the 3rd world are even more dire.

The world is exploding and we are paralyzed to react, other than with anger, fear, closing borders, blaming the ‘others’. It’s damned painful, isn’t it?

We don’t understand ourselves right now. We feel as if we’re trapped between two worlds or planes of existence. We were told that technology and progress would save the world; would lessen our burdens and infinitely enhance our ‘quality of life’. But, not so much, eh?

We aren’t ready for all of this. We aren’t ready to live in the big, wide world. It’s too much. Too much information, too much chaos, too much to do and to buy and to hoard. For many of us, too much pain.

Too much.

So, what do do? How the hell do we begin to cope and to see a way forward?

Spirit.

There are many who claim to be religious, but are you in touch with spirit? Do you embrace the sacred and the divine, meaning that you believe and realize that we are all connected. All of us and every single thing on earth and in the cosmos. We share energy and when the energy becomes so negative that we can barely stand to be in our own skin, we have to actively attempt to change it.

Here is what I and millions and millions of others, throughout time, have used to try and tap into this energy: meditation. You can call it prayer, if you’re more comfortable with that, but I believe that prayer and meditation are subtly different. However, the main objective is to quiet the mind, tap into this infinite energy that animates and surrounds and connects us to all that is.

This is a practice. Think of it as part of your personal hygiene regimen. It’s emotional, mental and spiritual hygiene. We need this as humans. The ancient wisdom all speaks of various forms of leaving our bodies, to commune with other spirits and the spirits of the universe.

You can do it alone or you can join with others. We need group energy. We need to get back to ceremony and ritual. We need that as we need food and water and air and fire.

Some of you may have watched Oprah Winfrey’s recent 7 part series called “Belief”. Although it didn’t dig very deeply into religious or spiritual tradition, the one thing that I took away from it was this: we need ceremony and ritual and actual physical gatherings to sustain us. We crave a ‘tribe’ to celebrate and reflect on rights of passage, growth, death, birth, love, belonging. We are too scattered and too divided and fragmented.

In order to begin to make sense out of this global chaos, we need to make sense of us. Make sense of our lives, our purpose, what animates us; we need to find a way to listen to our souls and then to begin to share that with others.

Be honest. You feel this, too. Maybe you can’t quite articulate it because of the unease, fear and anxiety you’re feeling. You may feel foolish, as you’ve rejected religion and spirituality for some reason. It’s not scientific or factual or concrete or ‘modern’. You might have to take a leap of faith that is airy-fairy and some of those close to you may mock your interest in something so lacking in ‘proof’.

That of course, is the beauty of faith and spirit and belief. Once you commit, you begin to see and feel proof. You begin to trust your feelings and intuition and you start to KNOW something that you dared not think about, in these times of technology and progress.

It’s ancient and it’s in your DNA, both physical and spiritual. Give in. Embrace. Know yourself and you will begin to know and love others. You will begin to see what we’re doing to each other, to the earth, to all that is around us.

I promise.