Centering Tools

Healing Circles

Ending Cycles

It is amazing what can happen in the course of a seemingly ordinary day - like today.  I slept in after unwillingly being up late, choosing to forget again that when I have a cappacino at 7pm, as I did to top off my daughter's birthday dinner in an Italian restaurant we both love, I lose about half a night's sleep. 

Speaking of birthdays, I guess it's more than time to admit I'm not getting any younger despite the fact that I am more peaceful and happy - different than my younger years - than at any other time in my life these days.  I'm also hugely concerned about so many things in the world, as well as being "in the thick" of my own personal shifts.  The paradox for me, which I feel is quite synchronisitic with where we are nationally and globally, is that I know within the next couple of years a very long cycle for me is coming to an end, which I'm very glad about. 

The unfamiliar universe awaits, and that's more than okay with me.  My fantasy is that the world as well would do a lot better to approach this great shift with this heartfelt vision and clear attitude, and we would all be greatly eased because of it. 

One Unfolding Day

The rest of the day . . .  involved not one but two trips to the supermarket, which set me up to most synchronistically "run into" a woman I have known for a long time who is critically ill with cancer.  She has found her way to being completely, simply honest about all the implications she faces and the effect on those around her.  It is no surprise to me, given who she is and what her consciousness has become, that she has the most tremendous, longstanding support from staunch friends that I think I have ever seen.  I continue to energetically transmit to her on an ongoing basis.

I also went for a long walk with my daughter, who has spent essentially the weekend, with a little more to come, celebrating  her sixteenth birthday, roaming one of the most beautiful, oldest flowering parks in the nation.  We had some very serious, heartwrenching things to discuss regarding a most challenging situation that has fortunately greatly evolved and eased since last fall for us both. 

I became aware of such intense discussion as a great paradox against the backdrop of the most vibrant display of colors I have ever seen after countless visits to Highland Park, so named for the profusion of lilacs presented there.  Today they were not yet in bloom, but the daffodils, tulips, magnolias, and cherry blossoms were, so brilliant, so exquisitely beautiful that I felt greatly priviledged to be able to witness and receive their glowing energy as we wandered with so many smiling others.

Facing Spiritual Reality

This has been a week of love and loss, beauty and caring, warmth and upset.  I returned home this week and fell all over myself playing "catch-up", an additional dimension in a number of ongoing layers. 

I think what today has taught me is that the simple circumstances of each unfolding day contain all the elements that compose healing circles.  One supports and clarifies and enhances the next, and because they are there, we must simply admit and declare and accept and allow ourselves to be fully present in them all, and share with ourselves and others easily, trusting in our own capacity to not survive - but continue to simply be present, for that is enough because it's real. 

Power is something else.  Power is offered to us through all the elements we experience through each and every day of our unfolding lives if we are able and willing to accept each dimension for what it is, and release our ego's demand to have a short answer that will be the current delusion to what guarantees survival - the real short answer is:  there isn't any.

Beauty, peace, happiness, camaderie, the full array of brilliant and present and accepted emotions, and all synchronistic surprises - yes.  I believe we live now in an intense time propelling us toward a great unknown.  We can only face this great challenge with our willingness to seek and speak the truth, and unconditionally love and respect ourselves and each others - for we are all equal.

Blessed be.    

 

Rhythms

Plugged and Unplugged

I think, untampered, days are designed to open up like flowers.  They each offer a universe of multidimensional feasts to the senses, teeming with rich, multifaceted life on this flowing earth plane. 

I have spent the past 9 days visiting my son and his partner, my daughter and son-in-law, and my 6 month-old grandson in New England.  I've seen great cities, forest-ringed ponds, and rock-strewn,wild ocean shores.  I've seen history greatly matched with the current HBO special, John Adams, about the founding of our country, and yet continued to be very much plugged in to the world with its equally poignant, peaking political struggles.

One short Day Far Beyond the City

Day-to-day life doesn't care about all this.  It just flows and grows within its own unfolding rhythms. 

A few short miles from the bottlenecked east-coast interstate I lay on great warmed rocks, casually placed as if strewn by a careless giant, alone except for the ever-pounding surf gently spraying its salty foam before me in small explosion after explosion.  The overgrown trail hasn't even sprouted  rose buds, only prickles that easily grab and entangle my hair as I hike, but the radiant sun high in a cloudless blue sky promises spring, and it seems to me the ocean laughs and rejoices.

Nearby my youngest daughter, soon to come of age, stands triumphant on the highest rock, arms outstretched to touch the bright blue sky, laughing at the crashing waves far below.  We just took a day, a great day to see what the newly-opened earth was up to, even far from the rest of our family who live so close to land's end. 

Unending Treasures

The next day I'm knee-deep in my grandson's lopsided smile as we sit in an old, slanted Adirondack chair in a tiny closed yard surrounded by peaked houses, in the midst of the vast metropolitan spread.  Birds don't care about all this - they just sing, and my grandson continues to turn his head seemingly by degrees as he listens intently to their trilling chorus.

If we let it be and partner and rejoice in it, life embraces us and sweetly leads us to its treasures.  But we have be able to survive first, and be given space and opportunity to surrender to what's naturally real - not to mention, of course, centrally be willing to be present. 

Meet the Challenge to Survive

It really doesn't take much, said Henry David Thoreau, who, over a century and a half ago, spent a year in a small hut overlooking the pond I walked earlier this week writing his memoirs, as a guide to restoring rhythms.  He reminded us that we otherwise "lead lives of quiet desperation", which I believe is the price we pay for being out of touch with who we are and what we are, minus our attachments and conditioning.

A year was his choice, and an amazing choice it was - such a guide to us all, who continue to so greatly profit by his sacred record, On Walden Pond, which reads like a flowing meditation.  A day was my choice, and when I return next week to my home so far away from here, and my work, it will be an hour or two as many times a week as I can grab. 

Perhaps I'm greedy, but I don't think so.  I'm just trying to survive, knowing long ago without my rhythms my Self is gone forever.

For You

The only way to know yourself is to know your rhythms.  How ironic that when we settle back in a comfortable, supported position, close our eyes, and tune in to our deepening breath, we enter our sacred center from which we can then radiate outward in corresponding essence partnership with the natural world.

So here, of course, are my recommendations - today's Top Ten:

1.  On as regular a basis as you can prioritize, get yourself out in nature for an hour or longer.

2.  Every day spend five minutes or longer simply being fully present and singularly focused on your regular, deep breaths.

3.  Spend fifteen minutes or longer each day observing the world you live in with all your sense fully "plugged in" - see, hear, taste, touch, smell.

4.  Let yourself be lovingly touched by life - animal, plant, human, earth, air, water, fire - beyond judgment.

5.  Be greatly honest with yourself and others.

6.  Listen unconditionally to your feelings, and watch them release themselves like waves beyond your ego-driven interference, miraculously offering their meaningful gifts to you.

7.  Spend five or more minutes every day sitting outside, empty - by that I mean, not thinking or doing anything.

8.  Sit by a body of water as regularly as possible.

9.  At least once a month, take a half-hour and record your worst fears, asking your restored rhythmical self to accept and, through its endless flow, release them as You Will.

10. Every day, say to yourself 10 things you love about life, and take a moment when you've finished to settle back, close your eyes, deepen your breath, and say,  "Blessed Be".

(Picture downloaded from Wikipedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Henry_David_Thoreau.jpg)

Your Recent Positive Feedback

Well I went ahead and decided to share your feedback.  It means a lot to me and your encouragement is an integral part of the process to bring Centering online.  So here are a couple of comments people made after receiving the last email newsletter.  I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

The Power of Letting Go Times 10

Let Go

I call it the most essential recovery piece, given our cultural woundedness, for integrative healing.  Here are, in no particular order, my top 10 results of being willing to let go:

1.   You disentangle

2.   You transcend power struggles

3.   You evolve

4.   You have proof that you can - and do - survive

5.   You separate from your wounded ego

6.   You free your intuition and tremendous authentic spirit to well advise you

7.   You take a breather

8.   You experience a different universe

9.   You experience reality beyond agenda

10.  You are fully present in mindfulness

The How-to

B-R-E-A-T-H-E.  Settle back now, open your body's position so your body is free from tension, relaxed and supported, and begin counting ten (today's magic number) full, deep, easy breaths.

Now say . . . each and every time you inhale . . . this phrase . . . let be . . . each and every time you exhale . . . let go.

Experience . . . detachment.  Float, in the endless, opening space of your free consciousness, en-joy . . .

To Shift

Slowly, easily return to full, waking consciousness, and open your eyes.  Now, continuing to enjoy this space you've created of being detached, write in your own journal the above "top ten" list, changing all the "you's" to "I's" - and then go back and complete each sentence through your present experience of letting go.

Then choose, as you are moved, in any and all aspects of your present life with whatever corresponding challenges are occurring.  See what happens, and resolve to once a day - or more! - let go.