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Patience…

Is patience a 4-letter word for any of you? I’d like to say that it isn’t for me … but … I know it has been. While I grew up in another era where everything happened more slowly, the world of fast food and quick fixes and gotta have it now  has certainly had an impact on me.

Yet, this past month I have been practicing gentle, minimal but regular, stretching on some long abused muscles in my body. After two years of constant pain (interspersed with occasional relief followed by overdoing it – again!), I have finally practiced patience and seen the benefit in pain-free, flexible movement. I realize that I needed to stop stubbornly trying to “do it myself”, trust the physical therapist, stop evaluating progress daily and allow healing over time. I wonder:

What in your world needs a large dose of patience?
What happens when you hurry it along?

What is it worth to you?

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Start small…

Have I ever shared with you how I began my daily journaling practice? After years of wanting to, intending to, planning to … but never getting to it, I finally took a real first step. I’d read Julia Cameron’s, The Artist’s Way, where she said: “You must begin the practice of brain drain – just write what flows through your mind – every day, first thing out of bed. Write until you have filled 3 pages.”

To which at first I said, “THREE PAGES?!!!!!!!!!! You have to be kidding! I can’t take that kind of time.”

Then I decided to start small. I made a commitment to 3 minutes of writing first thing every day. Seriously! I set an alarm for 3 minutes so that I could forget about time but not overdo it and miss my next urgent commitment. Are you smiling yet?

Here is what happened. Those three minutes were easy to keep and I did… until they flowed into 5 minutes and 15 minutes and … Well, they flowed into a practice which amounted to:

“I can’t wait to sit with my journal each morning and write until I am done. Sometimes it is three or more longhand pages. Sometimes, it is writing until the tears flow and whatever is blocking me for the day brakes open and I am freed. Sometimes the words flow until a poem or song appear, unannounced and unplanned.”

What is it that you want to begin?
What small, consistent step will you take in that direction …
starting today?

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Interrupt self-sabotage …

CutToTheCore

Bring to mind a situation, relationship, belief that both challenges you and that you are ready to experience shift around.  

Got it?  Now:

 

  • How do you sabotage forward movement?
  • If you were to change ONE thing in yourself around this, what would it be?
  • What have you stopped doing that needs restarting?
  • What would your magic wand shift in you?
  • What action will you commit to?
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Unmotivated …

DSCF1028

The day stretches before me with very little in the way of formal commitment – available time. Possibility awaits, yes?

Yes. Yet in this moment, motivation wains. I could sit and close my eyes and wander all too easily.

Is this ever your experience?

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with wandering, daydreaming, breathing into the spacious nothingness and smiling. Sometimes that is “just what the doctor ordered”.

And always, there comes a time to get motivated and take a powerful next step.

What is your next step?
What vision motivates you to take it?
Who loses if you refuse to step powerfully into your future?

What are you waiting for?

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Meditate … why?

meditate

Yes, I meditate. But it doesn’t look like that! It has never looked like that. Yet, how I “sit”, how I “let go and be”, is meditation for me. And I know that you have your own “method” or “way of being” that is meditation for you.

Today’s short message is meant as an invitation especially if you have never tried – or have tried and think you have failed at – meditation. There is no such thing as failing at it, by the way! Though I did … I “failed” … over and over and over again! Once I let go of doing it “their way” and trusted my being to meditate in a way that honors me, lets me “let go and just be”, I have found immense value on the journey.

Why do I meditate? Here are just a few reasons:

  • It relaxes my mental grip on life
  • It helps me widen my perspective
  • It calms my emotional and physical beings
  • It helps me feel connected to other humans and other life forms
  • It helps me love freely, less conditionally
  • It saves me from myself

If you have never tried it or tried and “failed”, consider trying again. Meditation is a practice, a journey, for everyone. There are many sources of guidance available – spiritual communities, the Internet, retreat centers – to name a few. My current inspiration comes from Adyashanti and Mukti. You can find their library of recordings here:

Cafe Dharma

What have you got to lose?
What might you gain?
Why not?