Find Peace

Our human tribe will never accomplish peace among ourselves until we learn to be at peace within ourselves.  For if we are at war with ourselves, unable to accept and love the light that we are, we will have no capacity for peace.  When we see the differences of others, it will be with mistrust. We will be as at war with them as we are with ourselves.

May compassion be what lights your way.

Making Room

If we want stupidly wonderful things to find their way to us, and who wouldn't want a lift out of the lists and projects and do or die stuff that many of us find occupying the hours of our day, we have to make room for them.  By widening the angle so there's space in our everyday perception for what otherwise would seem of such lesser importance that we would not notice it at all.  Then, letting what is stupidly wonderful and almost overlooked become our centerpiece.  I have an example:

I'm driving to an appointment that was scheduled weeks in advance and I absolutely cannot afford to miss, on a route that I have timed down to the last ten minutes.  With an extra fifteen minutes built into the travel time.

I run into the worst traffic snarl I've ever encountered.  I can see cars stacked up in front of me for miles.  We are crawling from one red light to another.  We are going to get where we need to be long after we need to be there.  I'm going to be there long after I need to be there.  

And on the radio comes Bolero.  Sinuous, hypnotic, floating above the cars in front of me and beside me and in back of me.  It comes to me that I get to listen to Bolero from beginning to end in the middle of a frantically busy day, guilt free.  Stupidly wonderful!

I could have completely missed out if I had continued to count the minutes passing, not taking note of the music in the background. All that was needed was to widen the angle and make room.

Imagine what might be waiting for you, just as soon as you allow for making room.

Giving

Today, I wanted to come up with the most simple way to give.  One that doesn't involve money or special abilities or very much time.  In part because altruism is a good thing, and in part because it makes our soul feel great.  And when that happens, all of ourself feels great.

And so here it is:

Notice someone in your field of vision.  It can be someone in your thought vision, or someone you are physically looking at.  It can be a human someone, an animal someone, a plant someone.  Send them this message: "I love you."

You won't believe how truly great this feels until you try it.

Higher States

Every now and again, science collides with the experiences of higher states and produces a result that is stunning in it's everyday usefulness.  I'm specifically referring to a recent discovery that brain wave patterns observable in recognized meditators matches the brain waves produced by laughter.

I suppose this bit of news is unremarkable for anyone who has spent time with the ones we honor as great spiritual leaders–they laugh easily. At times, they actually giggle. The meditation state, you could say, being so similar to the other.

Here's the everyday usefulness part of the discovery:

We all have it in us to get the juicy benefits–the peace, the open-heartedness, the ability to be in the flow of the moment–of higher states of consciousness.  Because we are engineered to laugh.

I invite you to take this nugget of guru-ness you posses, treat it with the highest respect and consider it as important a daily practice as a master of meditation considers their daily meditation time.

You'll be glad you did.

Give Me Five

There seems to be a widely-held belief that meditation takes long, uninterrupted stretches of time.  With maybe the word "boring" coming into the picture. So we skip it.

How about if we give it five uninterrupted minutes: 

Long, slow breaths at the beginning (which should be good for about thirty seconds)
Sinking into our body consciousness (20 more)
Finding that point of light in our center (10 more)
Letting be whatever is there to be (3, maybe 4 minutes)
Long, slow breaths at the end (another 30 seconds)

I'm telling you, you're gonna love it.

Dented

It seems to me that we often relate to our emotional selves in the same way we do our cars–we see ourselves as getting bashed up and dented in our interactions.  Then, unlike the way we treat our cars after a collision, we let the damage remain. 

Can you imagine having a bashed in fender and weeping over the loss day after day instead of getting the insurance company on the job to fix it?  That is exactly what we do when we admire the wounds relationships inevitably cause and impress ourselves with what a terrible loss we have suffered. 

"I'll never get over this" successfully stops our inborn ability to heal.  And the wonderful thing about our inborn ability to heal is that we do not have to understand how it works.  We just have to let it. 

The activation process for healing, regardless of how deep and complicated we see ourselves to be, is mindlessly simple.  Make two statements:

• I know how to heal.
• I let myself heal.

Then, let it go.  Do this every time your thoughts head back to feelings of woundedness.  Say them with love and conviction.  

You absolutely, in your core, know how to heal.

Things I Learned From My Father

Here's a few things I learned from my father:

• When crossing a stream, don't look down at the rocks, look straight ahead to the opposite bank.  Same goes with driving.
• If you take the coin the tooth fairy left to be a nickel and it's a quarter, it will still spend like a quarter.
• When whittling, always face the blade away from the body.  
• Do not sing while fishing.  Neither the fish nor the other people fishing will appreciate you. I believe this may apply to public transportation as well.
• It doesn't matter if you don't sing in tune as long as you put your heart into it.
• If you love your garden, it will love you back.  He never came right out and said it, but it was hard to miss.

When I sift out the gist of all of this, it comes out something like this:

Keep your vision uppermost, embrace your gifts, you are responsible for your own well-being, give respect to every being, lead with your heart, don't be afraid to love.
Amen.