We Are ALL One

We are all the same inside. This has been coming up a lot for me. First it was something I started to realize on my own and would repeat silently in my head while I was out in public, each time I made eye contact with someone. It came up again in my session with Mojan (one of the many, many coincidences between what I've been working with and what she told me). And again just in the last couple days in a book I've been reading. It is, in fact, the sutra I'm supposed to use for meditation today.
What I just realized about this, though, is that I usually use this to help me when I'm trying to relate to (or simply understand on a very basic level) people who seem very different from me.  But as I was scrolling through Instagram just now, discovering new people through the images they post and their captions is endlessly fascinating (sometimes), I came across a photo stream that was just beautiful. Lot's of nature in many countries and then some personal shots including images of 'work'. The guy I'm referring to right now is a baker or a chef and posted a few photos of delicious looking pies he made. Really beautiful looking pies (and beautiful photos). And suddenly I realized what I've been missing out on with this: not only am I the same inside as all these random people who I have trouble relating to (and am not particularly interested in, to be perfectly honest) but I am also the same inside as all these people I am intrigued by, who appear to have beautiful lives, make beautiful work and travel to beautiful places. We are the same too! And in realizing that, I also realized that all this while I've been thinking that I am not like them. Something about them is above and beyond me because my life doesn't seem to look like that yet. 'Yet' is the key!
I am freshly inspired.

I noticed earlier in the last few weeks some physical feelings that seemed related to how I respond to my own emotions. Most notably I noticed a shift in my posture and the difference between 'open' and 'closing/closed' in my chest. I've been reading The Places That Scare You A Guide To Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chodron recently -strongly suggested by Mojan- and it's very good but as with much 'required' reading I've been having a little trouble sticking with it, it's feeling a touch repetitive.
What's stayed with me most from it is the concept of feeling the feelings I'm having without allowing them to 'harden' me (reacting by slamming everything closed). The idea is to allow whatever I'm feeling and let it soften me instead. It's odd but I never quite understood what she meant by that and at the same time it immediately became quite easy to do. The more I've done it, the better I've felt and there now seems to be a new kind of space inside me. I feel lighter. It's like space that's been cleared to hold happiness and courage.

My favorite recent story of magic is this one:

If you read the previous few posts you already know that I practice meditation and am really into maintaining my health as naturally as possible.

After reading an article about vitamin D I decided that this summer I would try a little experiment -sunbathing every day on my back porch for 15 minutes. Business has fluctuated between very slow and picking up, week to week, since I started out on my own. I wanted to spend all of my time being as productive as possible and I also wanted to always be focusing on how to improve business. And as I also know that the state I'm in is as important as anything else, there are times when it all is one. 

So one day as I went out for my quick sunbath I decided that I was going to try to meditate without listening to any recorded messages or sounds. 

I lay down on the porch and tried to clear my head. I acknowledged the wind that I could feel and hear, I acknowledged all the sounds around me and the feeling of being outdoors which is so different than the feeling of being indoors. I acknowledged the feeling of the sun and the brightness on the other side of my closed eyelids. I thought to myself, "Dear universe that is within me and all around me, please send me what I need." At the time I was really wanting to have some new appointments booked and so what I hoped would happen is that I would get some new messages from my online booking system or a phone call or an email from a new client or two but I wasn't really trying to be specific. The phrase just felt appropriate in that moment.

After the timer went off (to keep from staying out too long and getting a serious burn) I went inside and just as I walked through the door my phone rang. I didn't think all that much of it but when I answered it was, in fact, a brand new client. Brilliant! I thought. We talked for a couple minutes, working out the details of her appointment, and when she mentioned that she also worked for herself I asked her what she did. She told me she was a spiritual healer and my initial "Brilliant!" kaleidescoped internally.

I'm sharing this, in part, for the obvious story of having manifested something amazing in a mere 15 minute sunbath, but also because it brings me to this really fantastic message: we often think we know exactly what we need. We ask for it over and over, we're always focused on it and when it doesn't seem to be coming to us we get reeeeally frustrated and disappointed. The truth is, you always get what you need. You may not know it or recognize it but it always comes. Give the universe a break and stop asking for specific things at specific times, if you really want to see it work just ask for it to send you what you need.

When I met this woman to do her hair it was the most lovely visit I've had with any person in many years -and I have some really fantastic clients. I felt almost as if I were taking advantage because just being in her presence is very healing and I have never met anyone before who seemed to see me and intuit me so accurately. I have my first appointment with her next week and I'm beyond excited. I have no idea what we'll end up talking about or what she might tell me or help me work out but I know it's going to be really amazing. 

For a quick shift of mood or perspective I've recently learned the beauty of list making. I've always been a list maker but perviously they were generally toward the practical -tasks I needed to keep track of, things I wanted to do for myself, and elements of the future I want to create. That last one may seem less practical and more in line with the magic, it was intended to be.
I recently saw a video of an excellent talk given by Mike Robbins and followed it by reading both his books (ok, I devoured the first one and am halfway through the second one now) and becoming a super fan. While what he talks about is, basically, pretty common personal development stuff he presents it in a brand new way and clearly has a pretty strong grasp of the magic but with his background in sports he comes across as very much a man's man and it's a beautiful blend of qualities.
Following his advice I've started to make gratitude lists at least twice a day. Once in the morning to get me thinking in the best possible way and once in the evening when I can incorporate things that actually happened during the day and the ways that those things shifted my perspective and process.
When I initially read about this I thought that I kind of did this already and I wasn't super excited about incorporating it into my life but I'll try anything once or twice. As I wrote the first list I was really amazed at how I felt myself changing into another person, I felt my vision clear, I felt a little lightheaded and the results were amazing.
Much as we all know that there are many things we're grateful for, it's interesting how little we realize just how grateful we are until we actually sit and give them some undivided attention.
The first time I made a list it started with really obvious things like how grateful I am to have this lovely apartment that I live in. I knew this all along, just last fall when my building changed owners I thought about it a lot as I wondered if I'd be asked to move out. But at that time, wanting to embrace the possibility of change with a positive attitude, rather than think about how grateful I was to be here I thought about where I might want to move and how amazing it would be there.
As the list progressed I touched on all the every day things and eventually more spiritual things but each item I added amazed me at the feeling of actually expressing it. I'm very grateful to have all of my arms and legs and very grateful that they all work but I never think about it. I'm grateful for the freedom I have to make my own decisions independent of the needs of another, but rather than consider or express that I usually am thinking how nice it would be to have a boyfriend or a husband to share responsibilities with. It amazed me that to simply choose to look at what I have made such a huge difference and I know that I'll never go back. I've since been making lists every day. It was a great exercise to start up during the brief time when my meditation practice fell by the wayside. I do kind of wonder just how much of my time I can devote to the many practices I'm collecting but when I start to think that way now I only realize how grateful I am to have the time to do these things for myself.

As promised (to myself) I'm trying to be more disciplined about my daily practices.
When I decided to get serious about meditating a couple months ago (though not for the first time) I spent a couple weeks using a recorded guided meditation from the fantastic Dr. Joe Dispenza's website. I first learned about his work when I read his book Evolve Your Brain which absolutely amazed me and confirmed and expanded many things I had long suspected about life and health and my own potential. I can't even begin to share with you the amazing information in this book, if you're interested you'll just have to read it yourself, I'm sure I'll be talking about it more in my future posts.
I wanted to mention this because meditation can be very hard. My mind doesn't want to be quiet and clear, it wants to fabricate scenes and possibilities and thoughts, which is great, the problem is that unless I put some work in it just keeps recreating the scenes, possibilities and thoughts it already knows. It's hard to learn to generate new and original ones, and to enable change in your life and world you really have to learn how to generate new and original thoughts.
I generally would do the meditation at night before bed and again in the morning after breakfast. For a few weeks it was great. I'd get really excited about my before bed meditation and was really finding a great routine in the preparation and practice of it. But after a while I found that, maybe because I had come to know the recording so well, it wasn't working for me the way it used to. Sometimes I would fall asleep mid-way, sometimes I'd get annoyed with a particular stretch and my thoughts would creep in and interrupt.
My morning meditation practice was following a similar path but I was sticking with it (it was a little easier to not fall asleep, at least) until some guys started building a deck in my neighbors back yard and my morning meditation became impossible. Once the routine was broken I found myself forgetting to make time for it when it was quiet and possible but I had found some great books to read that were providing me with other exercises to work with so I felt that at least I was doing something and I was certainly making progress. This leads me to one of the things that really takes discipline: not only making time for my practice but having the flexibility to implement more into my practice, to not just choose meditation or list making but to find a way to place these throughout the day in a balanced way. (In fact, though I was really great with my meditation last night and this morning, I totally slipped up on my lists -maybe I'll talk more about in the next post.)
Moving on! After reaching a point where the recording had become more of a repetitive distraction than an aid I changed my meditation practice. As I said, it's very hard to keep a clear and quiet mind for an extended period of time but since I'd learned some techniques from the recording I decided to use something else to accompany me: binaural beats. Binaural beats are a really interesting concept. I've read quite a bit about them now and I'm not entirely sure what's true. Some people claim that listening to binaural beats stimulates the creation of specific brain waves and allows you to retrain your brain using their influence, others say that at best they aid relaxation. Either way, I'm interested. Using binaural beats to meditate gives me something to block out the subcity noise that's all around, it gives me something to focus on when my brain wants to be more active than it should be during meditation and it encourages relaxation all in itself.
So that's my up date for this morning on meditation and discipline. I might add that trying to get my thoughts organized enough to write these posts is also a discipline I'm not entirely accustomed to yet so I hope that the information I'm sharing is useful and inspiring and I promise to alternate between topics like this, which I think are toward the practical, and topics that deal a little more with the magic of life.

The most amazing magic that's been happening in my life lately is synchronicity. It seems that all I have to do is exist, as I naturally do, and some perfect piece of information, inspiration or guidance finds me just as I need it. 

This evening I read a spiritual forecast for the month of July on a website I found via a friend posting to facebook an article from the same website they were sharing with another friend. 

The forecast for July talks about the energies for the month, which are Expansion, Discipline and Magic(!). 

The first reason I love this so much is because there is a voice in my head telling me that I always have to push and work hard for even just bits of gain. There's no logic behind it, it's simply the mainstream notion that this is the only way to create anything in your life: make happen by action. What I'm really working to master is making things happen by intention and understanding that it is my intentions that determine what my actions should be and that, in fact, my intentions will generate the need for action rather than action generating the need for action.  

So I was really excited when I was reading this article but it was a little bit conceptual at the same time so as I read my thoughts were kind of wobbling between, "This is exactly what I've been working on!" and "Maybe I don't understand what they're talking about..." the latter thought encouraged by the section on Discipline that I hadn't yet reached. But as I did reach it I found that the Discipline that was encouraged was the Discipline to continue working on Expansion and my heart smiled and I felt... justified?

Which brings me to why I'm writing about my experience of having found and read this post (and why I decided to write about all this): keeping focused on any kind of work can be really hard at times. Sometimes it's hard to make yourself clean the house, sometimes it's hard to make yourself work on something for your job, there are times when what we know we should do feels hard. What I'm working on that is feeling particularly hard these days is my faith in my self, my intuition, and my values. These are all really important things, obviously, but some days when life isn't going quite the way I (really, really) need or want it to, it's easy to wonder if it's a total waste of time to meditate or write lists of what I'm grateful for twice a day or get myself someplace where I can be immersed in nature. 

Just as I've begun questioning my practices and everything that I believe in, I find something that tells me that what I'm doing is important and so important, actually, that now (when it's just become so difficult to focus on) is the time to not just keep at it but to make of it all a discipline.