Centering Tools

A Thanksgiving Exercise

Here's another exercise for you to do to let yourself unfold this Thanksgiving.

See what others are grateful for and what they sometimes forget to be grateful for

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t6uhxzQWOBlaNd4C2Zn9S9g&output=html

A Most Powerful Self-Healing and Intuitive Development Tool for the New Year

Bridging from One Intense Year to A Call for Right Direction

Happy New Year!  The holidays seem to have whizzed by like a hurricane, albeit happily – a wonderful one.  They offered, beyond the presents and extended celebrations, groundbreaking family news about my oldest daughter expecting twins next summer, recovery on other fronts from acute illness for myself and my son, and the sad death of a colleague after a long, courageous battle with cancer. 

I managed to do a fair amount of end-of-year reflecting this season in the wake of all the intensity, and what struck me about what I felt I newly relearned in 2008 were the following key truths:

1.  Life demands we live it on its terms.

2.  It is full of hard choices.

3.  When we commit to making those hard choices, letting go of any expectation or agenda, we experience core healing and development that lifts us into our next highest level of consciousness – in other words, we centrally transform and evolve as human beings.

The Real Path of Necessary Change

2008 was a groundbreaking, intense, pivotal year of hard-earned hope, exploding consequences/crises from longstanding poor choices, and a profound reality check.  2009 feels correspondingly different, and a continuation of all that broke open this year, with challenging opportunities to forge a real path of necessary change to reflect caring and accepted responsibility.

My New Year’s gift to you is a five-minute journaling and guided meditation process I call NoteTaking© that I invite you to try for the next thirty days as a transformational opportunity to heal yourself, build personal power, and clear internal space to allow your soul to profoundly guide you to achieve your dreams.  All you need is the willingness to commit to five minutes a day of uninterrupted reflective time, paper – ideally a pad or journal to keep your notes together – and a pen.  Here are the five steps for you to complete, each lasting one minute:

Five Steps to Transformation

Step 1.  Settle back, close your eyes, and take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths.  Then ask yourself the following question:  How do I feel? 

Step 2.  Open your eyes and record one or more feeling words as your response(s) to this questions, like scared, excited, happy, peaceful, etc.

Step 3.  Now pick just one feeling to focus on, and return to a deeper meditative state by once more settling back, closing your eyes, and taking several more regular, cleansing breaths.  Imagine you can easily and fully go into this particular feeling, wherever it exists inside you.  Observe any bodily sensations that occur, and notice your thoughts and where they seem to take you as you continue to listen, observe, and hold your focus.  When you feel a sense of completion for now, slowly and easily return to full waking consciousness.

Step 4.  Now open your eyes, and record your experience.  Feel free to draw as well, using crayons or colored pencils, which will further open your intuition. 

Step 5. Read your notes, and record any additional insights which occur.

Three Results to Become Your Dreams

Congratulations!  You have just completed NoteTaking© and experienced the three key results that will transform your life:

1.  You’ve centrally communicated to yourself that you’re worth five uninterrupted minutes a day, which recovers and rebuilds self-esteem.

2.  You’ve opened your innate intuition and insight and allowed it to keenly communicate to you, trusting in your power to guide and befriend yourself which directly moves you to make right choices to manifest your dreams.

3.  You’ve listened unconditionally to yourself and fully accepted your feelings, which in turn allows your feelings to express and release themselves for core body-mind-healing, empowerment and spiritual development.   

Keep me posted at marjorie@centeringtools.com on all your results, and have the 2009 you dream and are fully capable of!  Love, light and happiness - Marjorie

Client example: to describe an inner journey

In the spirit of this holiday season, I wanted to post this wonderful poem
by another member of my monthly memoir writing group, completed in response
to my recommendation from the previous class to write a poem describing an
inner journey to one's heart.  Happy Equinox, spring (where is it?), Easter,
Passover . . . and beyond . . .

in-joy - Marjorie
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Taped to our refrigerator, is a poem, very yellow and aged but one that has followed me thru many moves. It‘s title is “Not in Vain” by Emily Dickinson.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again
I shall not live in vain

As our Sunday sermon on Stewardship was delivered a few weeks back, my mind began to compose some thoughts in church.  I decided to put these thoughts into verse when I returned home.

HELP WANTED
I took a walk thru life one day
And this is what I saw
The many faces of a crowd
Following me, calling to me, begging me
To remember them with kindness

I took a walk thru life one day
Imagining what might happen
Would good fortune come to those who also walk
Or only just a few?

Who decides where each blessing falls?
Who pray tell is in charge of it all?
Anyone can say “get moving”
But who determines our will and spirit?

Trouble surfaces on many corners
Homes are not always a safe place to be
Children do not feel secure or wanted
Violence visits way too many too frequently

My walk is of no value, if action is not taken
My steps become an echo if I do not heed the call
My walk needs a direction, a purpose
I need God’s hand and help to make it work at all.                   

March 2008
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I welcome client submissions.  Your story, your thoughts, your feelings are
not only powerful testimonials to your own healing and development journeys,
but wonderful related offerings to others'.  Keep 'em coming to
marjorie@centeringtools.com, with many thanks.

One Chapter At a Time

I'm happy to share with you all one of the pieces a client wrote in my senior memoir writing class.  I anticipate you'll all enjoy this as much as I did. 

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One Chapter At A Time

Life is like a book.  You live it one chapter at a time.  At present, I am living chapter seventy in my book.  I have a zest for life.  I take the good with the bad and try to make the best of it always wondering what comes next.  How a person lives their life will determine how good the book will turn out.

When I was a little girl, I often wondered what my future life would be like.  My parents were divorced and my sister and I lived in foster homes.  We moved every couple of years or so.  My father wanted us to remain together.  This started with chapter three and continued until chapter eighteen.  I always lived with an eye on, “what comes next?”  My sister was only fifteen months older than I.  We were treated almost like twins wherever we were living.  We were in the same grade from second on as my sister was kept back a year.  I had almost finished chapter eleven when my father died.  It was only six days before the start of chapter twelve.  Chapter seventeen of my life was saddened by the fact that my sister moved out after graduation and we were physically separated for the first time.  Even though my sister moved miles away for most of her adult life, we were never farther than a phone call away.  My sister passed on in chapter sixty-nine and left a void that cannot be replaced.

My life has many chapters that contain mysteries.  I’m getting better at solving them as time goes on.  There are adventures in all the chapters, some good and others not so good.  There are happy times and sad times.  I pity people that get stuck on a chapter in their life and can’t get past the insignificant details to continue on.  They keep reliving the same things over and over, holding grudges and staying angry as if that will change the chapter.  Once it is written, it is best to move on. 

I know someone who keeps repeating what her life was like when she was young and living at home.  She didn’t have it easy but if I say so myself, it wasn’t as difficult as most people had it at that time.  Besides, all the people that hurt her are gone now.  She holds the resentment and anger and it is keeping her from enjoying what little she might have left in her life.  She has so many blessings and can’t acknowledge them because she is caught in the past.  Her book has almost seventy chapters, all the same.  It would be a boring read. 

My philosophy is to record the facts and move on to the future with hope that all will be much better.  Live your life one chapter at a time and make each one an adventure. 

The Taser Incident

It may not be Kent State all over again, but...

My 22 year-old son directed me to www.youtube.com  this evening and asked me to view the video from Florida State today showing a student who repeatedly asked what my son said were “politically incorrect” questions of John Kerry as he attempted to close his presentation to students.  I watched in horror as the student was quickly tackled to the ground by the police, who tasered him. 

Tasers are not exactly safe alternative to guns.  Moreover, they ought not be used any more liberally and without sufficient cause.  I understand some reports say that as many as 200 people have died as a result of receiving these electric shocks, but maybe the authorities didn't know that.

My son said to me, “Your generation wouldn’t have stood for that.  No one did anything.  Now the APA is reporting the student as a known prankster."  What's the intent of that kind of headline?  I'm not sure, but I do know that if I hadn't known better, I might allow my attention to shift to an irrelevant and completely anecdotal claim.

Hysteria and Blame are Dangerous Combinations

When I was 20 years old, in May, 1970, I also watched in horror as the media played again and again the fatal shootings of Kent State students engaging in a peaceful anti-Vietnam war protest.  I joined thousands of students protesting that incident and the war. 

Hysteria and blame are dangerous combinations.  History shows us again and again that rhetoric, justification, and rushing to act on impulse in fact incite riot, even murder. 

How Our Inherent Capacity to See and Respond to Ourselves and Each Other as Human Beings is Compromised

These responses also deny our inherent capacity to see and respond to ourselves and each other as human beings.  John Kerry reportedly said that he has never had an experience like this in all the years he has spoken in public.

It has been said we will not achieve peace until we find peace within.  It has been said that until we can treat each other as we most wish to be treated, we will continue to abuse and violate each other.

The Response that Transcends

I remember singing with the thousands that filled the Capital Hill Mall so long ago in May, 1970, “When will we ever learn?”  It is a profound spiritual directive that flies in the face of countless millennia of endless murders fueled by streams of hysteria, oceans of blame, floods of justification, and an infinite sea of mindless impulse.

I watched this student repeatedly ask the police this question as he begged to be taken out of handcuffs, “Why are you doing this to me?”  If we could see all others as “me” and “me” as all others, we could return in relief to our own spiritual centers with a true sense of belonging equally to the realm of humanity.

Our Innate Sense of Integrity

“Why?” is not a question that should be answered with blame, justification, rhetoric or hysteria.  It is, I think, a thoughtful question meant to be answered in a thoughtful way, and in a way that respects our innate sense of integrity.

When my son was much younger we rented a cottage for a week in the summer at Chautauqua Lake.  I went for a hike one beautiful day, walking up and down rolling hills, enjoying the warm sunshine sparkling across fields of corn.

His Spiritual Transformation

I was amazed to see a gift shop spread across both sides of the road called the “Purple Cow”, owned by a man who chatted there briefly with me, sharing he had written all of the spiritual definitions of key words displayed on parchment paper throughout the store.  He said he had undergone a spiritual transformation following his terrible experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War.

I’m moved to share with you the parchment I bought that day, which hangs in my dining room.  I take it out at times like these, and share it occasionally in my groups and classes, and with clients.

Here it is:

Understanding

You stand at the threshold of meaningful life when you realize the key to life is not love but respect.  For love is what you are, the motivating force in every act of life driving you to and through every moment of existence.

Respect is the source of fulfillment, opening doors forever closed to less sentient beings.  ©1993 Purple Cow

A New Legacy

Do we dare to embrace – BE – in a center of respect as our commitment to transform ourselves, evolve and support the world, and respectfully gift our children with this new legacy?

Any day now my daughter is set to give birth to my first grandchild – a new child in an old, troubled, costly, goofy, perilous world.  Probably a little over 20 years ago that student entered the world, a most fragile infant with wide unseeing eyes.

We must see with vision that centers in our hearts, in our reknit spirits, if we dare hope to find a way to “put us all together again”.   So BE us, with ourselves – with each other. 

image originally produced on The National Ledger, The National Ledger, LLC.  http://www.nationalledger.com/ledgerdc/article_272616148.shtml 

 

 

The Power of Journaling

Get Serious Through Journaling

September is such a significant month.  It is the dividing line between the quarter of Summer and The Rest of the Year.  We "take a fall" into Fall as the weather begins to turn away from the full bloom of summer to Get Serious.

School restarts, and we are moved to initiate, with an eye toward bringing to fruition, our goals.  In centering, self-healing and empowerment terms I can think of no better time to initiate your own journaling practice for maximum benefits.

Journaling Transforms Lives

The ancient art of entering and staying in a reflective creative space for no other reason than to attentively and unconditionally listen to any part of yourself that is moved to speak to you about anything at all has, in the past couple of decades, been indicated more and more through body-mind research to initiate and extend innate healing responses.  Examples have included improved recovery of many chronic and life-threatening diseases, including cancer, heart disease and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

In my Centering practice I have seen significant transformation occur in many clients who journal, resulting in experiencing key insights, empowered choice-making and central resolution in their lives.  Here are the guidelines I recommend:

Simple Techniques for Healing and Empowerment

1.  Journal every day.

2.  Keep it - meaning your expectations and your requirements of yourself for journaling - short and simple - write for a minimum of 5 minutes, and include how you feel.

3.  Draw.  I mean it.  Drawing is not just for designated artists, children or architects.  Remember our earliest languages were pictures.  Also remember the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words"?  Draw diagrams, stick figures, or whatever shows beyond your judgment how you feel.

4.  Record any snippets of dreams you remember.

5.  If you want extra guidelines, adopt my "fill in the blank" list, completing any or all of the following sentences:

I need

I wish

I'm scared

If only

In my heart of hearts I think

If I could let go of ____________ I would

How Journaling Profoundly Improves Self-Esteem

Here are the life-transforming messages your subconsious receives from consistent journaling with these essential guidelines:

I'm worth writing about and committing to.

I accept myself unconditionally.

I am completely open and honest with myself.

I listen to myself with respect and attentiveness.

It is not necessary for me to always know what to do - it is enough to simply express myself.

What powerful affirmations we've just created!

Of course, for my final, very serious, "welcome to autumn" empowerment recommendations, I can't help inviting you to read the above five italicized sentences while looking at yourself in a mirror every day.  See what kind of miracles you can create!

Happy landings, and please tell me all about your adventures.  Better yet, tell yourself...every day.