Category: awakening

A Recipe for Joy

First things first.

Clear your counter—or if you have a well-used space that has everything you might need nearby, at least make some room for the mixing bowls and other utensils needed!

We’re mixing up Joy, so consider the ingredients you need for the recipe today. You can make another version another day. What do you need right now?

My Ingredient List

Sacred Time
Spiritual Practice
Intimacy
Self-Care
Friends
Music
Dance
Play



Method

Creating Sacred Space

  1. Create sacred space for this time in your kitchen. You may want to light a candle or say a little prayer or intention for creating Joy. It could be as simple as taking a breath and saying, “May I open to Joy.”
  2. Take a look at your ingredients. If you want to mix these particular ingredients together, what mixing bowl will you choose? Make sure you choose one that has MORE space than you think you need. You’ll need room to stir the ingredients together—and, who knows, there may even be some kitchen magic from the combining, so you’ll want to save space for that!

Preparing Your Joy
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white space

white

           space

                      here

                                on

                                            this

                                                         page

as

       you

                  read 

                             this

I’ve always been attracted to things—to density and color and texture and variety and vividness. I filled my little 500-square foot cottage with comfortable, practical beauty to the point that Dave referred to it as my hobbit hole. And I felt completely at home with my stuff all around me.

When we go to our favorite B&B, we don’t choose the Air Room, the one that is simple, spare, and decorated all in white. We choose Fire, Earth, or Water—full of color, of something for the eyes (and the soul?) to hold onto.

But             there          is                 something           here            for me.

here

surrounded

by

space

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New Year’s Ease

This year I spent about three weeks really focused on learning from the past year and getting clear about how I want to live into this New Year.

I’m so grateful for this practice…there were many years I didn’t feel like I could take the time—or that it would make any difference if I did. I didn’t feel I could consciously influence the way my life would play out over time. I knew the value of practicing to change something in myself, but I felt at the whim of life’s unfolding events all too often…

As I reviewed, visioned, and felt into myself, over and over, a yearning in my soul arose—balance, ease, abundance, balance, openness, ease…

Ease, Work / Life Balance

I WANT this! And I’m struck with the fact that I only found out how much I want it by taking those 3+ weeks to settle in, to look at 2015, at all that I accomplished (or didn’t) and all that I had felt during the year…

As I was writing this post at my favorite local cafe, a friend I run into 1-2/month there stopped by to say hi, and as I showed him this New Year’s collage and talked about my theme for the year, he had an insight and spoke these simple and profound words:
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The Coming of Light

The Coming of Light by Mark Strand
Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

The New Year is almost here—it’s almost unbelievable how quickly 2015 has passed…

Even this late it happens…

  • even when my attention is firmly fixed on closing up 2015
  • even when I am relaxing and enjoying the holy-days with friends and family
  • even when I am reviewing and thinking and envisioning how I want to live in 2016
  • even when friendships fall away unexpectedly
  • even this late…

 the coming of love, the coming of light…
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Precious, Fleeting

Precious, fleeting…

Sara Avant Stover introduced this phrase in the last retreat this summer of Reversing Our “Curse,” her course on aligning with psycho-spiritual and feminine hormonal rhythms. She learned it from one of her teachers, Ty Powers.

And I’ve been living with it ever since.

Precious, fleeting…

As a woman, who, (quite astonishingly!), entered her 50s a few years ago, I am facing the fact of getting older. It’s happening to me! I never thought it would.

I was not concerned with ageing in the past. In fact, I enjoyed the woman I was becoming. My 40s felt so expansive and energizing—I even met and courted my husband during this time, and started a new life, moving halfway across the USA to be with him and his two boys!

And now, I am uber-aware of age. Of life. Of most likely not having as much of my life left as has already passed.

Precious, fleeting…

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Mindful Tea

This cup of tea
In my two hands
Mindfulness held completely
My mind and body dwell
In the very here and now.

This is a gatha—a mindfulness verse by the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He has written many verses about daily, ordinary life, all of which are calls to be mindful, to be present in the life we are living.

I’ve always loved tea in its myriad forms! I drink it black—straight up, flavored, or with heavy cream; green—from genmaicha to plain to green mango (a favorite); white or oolong—both plain or with flavors; and all the many flavor profiles and subtleties of herbal teas (sweet, clarifying, floral, rich, fresh, spicy, malty, grassy, fruity…).

I bought my first tea pot and cups when I was in Vienna on a study-abroad program in college, I inherited some of my grandmother’s lovely collection (see yellow flower cup below), and the rest is history!! I seem to keep collecting… 🙂

nana's tea cup-2

There is something so satisfying about making tea and pouring it out of a beautiful pot into a beautiful tea cup. This beauty is a call to presence, just like the mindfulness verse above.

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Opening to Present Moment Awareness

Preparing, perfecting, learning, improving, planning,
rehearsing, reviewing, remembering, practicing…

This is the voice of my habitual inner landscape when I get quiet and listen. The voice of my ego personality.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that in the midst of such wild beauty,
my mind continues this chatter?

My Enneagram One ego is constantly trying to make sure I do things right, aligned, good. If I do, then all will be OK—I’ll say the right things, support my clients and students in the right way, do my spiritual practice in the right way so that I develop in the right way…I think you get the drift!

I had the chance to witness this nearly constant stream of thoughts during the silent SHE Retreat led by Sara Avant Stover at a beautiful ocean/jungle resort the first week of November. Being in silence from after opening circle on the first night until after closing circle 6 days later really highlighted the chatter in my mind.

Journaling at bar

I knew my mind was busy. I’ve been meditating daily for about 10 years. And I’ve been to shorter silent retreats before. I knew, intellectually, that my thoughts were keeping my ego personality going. I had been told this many times. I have studied it. I have inquired about it. I have taught it. I thought I understood it—and I did, on a certain level…

But this was different.

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hollowing out

Some of you I will hollow out.
I will make you a cave.
I will carve you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.
You will be a bowl.
You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain.
Read more.

Hollowing out. Becoming a cave.

Being carved deeply. Into a bowl. Into a cup.

Able to collect, to gather, to hold.

This poem, which I posted a few weeks back, keeps arising in my bodysoul.

  • My mind wonders: What does it mean to be hollowed out?
  • My heart feels a bit scared of the carving.
  • My body simply senses—the stripping, the filling…
  • And my bodysoul?

She knows. She has experienced this over and over again. She understands that this is the lawful unfolding of life. Filling up, overflowing, hollowing out, and filling again…

hollowing out

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letting go

A couple of weeks ago I was having a really HARD time letting go.

We were innsitting for the first time in a year, so I was feeling a bit rusty on all the procedures and protocols necessary to run the Inn.

This new website was supposed to be live, but it wasn’t yet.

And I was under deadline—that’s always creates the most pressure—or my old website would quietly slide into oblivion without a new one to take its place…Ugh.

And it was my birthday, but the restaurant I wanted to eat at was unexpectedly closed and I had no bandwidth to enjoy it even if it had been open…I had been working all day. On. My. Birthday. I couldn’t let go. I had to work, to get the site done. Even on my birthday.

This created the most stressful experience
I have had in a really long time.

I was doing everything right—working hard to get all the myriad details needed to get my site live. And I kept running into roadblocks. Unexpected outcomes. New things to learn. More support to ask for…and support people not as readily available as needed—at the same time that I was managing guests checking in and out, cleaning guest rooms, feeding guests, and trying to have a relationship with myself and my husband…

It all came to a head the night I was planning to make my site live, when the software I was using to build the site became really glitchy.

I was going over the last details to make sure all the pages were really ready, and I found I needed to add a period—one small period.

I opened the page, added the period, updated, and took a look.

And ALL of the paragraph breaks were gone on the whole page! Even in sections that I had not opened! ALL of them!!! My page was one huge chunk of text, unreadable, and certainly not going-live ready…

Over the next hour, I patiently added the spaces back. And each time, while one space would be there, another would disappear. It was a nightmare! It literally took an hour to fix all the mess that adding one period created!!

And then I had to go on to other pages and the same thing kept happening…

I was using all my mindfulness practice tools. Sensing my tense body, noticing my thoughts, feeling my anger and frustration…I even got up and jumped up and down yelling out my anger, shaking, punching, and letting it course through me. Dave held space and witnessed this for me. (Thank you, honey!)

By the time I got to the last page, there were still a few spacing problems, but most of it was OK. It was late and Dave was headed to bed. I told him I had to stay up and finish it. I had to fix this page. It had to be perfect…No matter how tired I was, no matter how tense my body felt, no matter…

And he challenged me on this. This is the beauty of conscious relationship!

Enneagram type One personality, I’m afraid…It serves me well in many ways, but following it in search of the ever-elusive perfection of this page was potentially opening up a huge can of worms, perhaps even another hour of fixing (and jumping up and down)…

My ego personality SCREAMED internally that I HAD to stay up and fix this before making my site live. I couldn’t make it live if it weren’t perfect!!

And instead of listening to this habitual message, I took a deep breath and agreed with Dave. I could live with that imperfect spacing. I could let go of needing the site to be PERFECT before making it live.

I made it live. I did not announce it quite yet, but making it live and imperfect gave me a chance to let go even a little more. I could breathe more deeply. I could get more rest. I could stop filling every moment inbetween guests with computer work.

I. Let. Go.

Of something that felt so familiar, so seductive, so comforting in its own way.

And it created space. Space for me to experience more life, more ease, more joy. More, not less.

It’s like instead of continuing to toil around the outside, I quickly jumped into the center of the collage. (If you click on it, it will expand so you can see the details.) All that perfecting and perfecting wasn’t getting me there, even though I was efforting like crazy. Letting go dropped me there. In that openness. In that bounty. In that ease.

How do we let go?

I have often argued that we can’t do it with the will alone, which is why it can feel a bit crazy-making when someone tells us to just let go…If we could, we would have already! But realizing it would be healthy to let go and actually being able to are totally different things.

I love what my Diamond Approach teacher says about this—we practice so that we can be available to grace. I think it’s grace that allows us to be able to let go, not will.

I have been practicing for many years to open to grace. In this case seeing my perfection pattern over and over again, allowing more imperfection in small ways, feeling the pain of the perfection push, feeling the ego distress of not perfecting something, feeling healthier and happier when I don’t let perfection rule my life…

These years of practice allowed me to be open to the grace that Dave reminded me of in that moment—to relax my ego’s grip and drop the perfection pattern, to let go.

Fall is a season for practicing letting go. As we look back at what we’ve grown since the Spring, and consider what we want to bring with us, we also discern when it’s time to let go. For me, it’s a long-held habit, a way of knowing myself that needed to go. What is it for you?

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Your Body–Refuge? or Refugee?

Take a moment right now and sense your body.

When you sense your body, what arises?

Perhaps it’s “I feel fat.”
Or “Ugh—feeling gross.”
Or “I don’t sense anything.”
Or “Ouch, that hurts.”

What’s your version?

Most often, the women I work with sense their body and judge her. (Yes, if you’re a woman, your body is a “she”! Please make the appropriate substitutions if you’re a man.)

She is never quite right—too fat, too thin, not fit, not comfortable, not satisfied, too hungry, craving unhealthy food…she is just plain wrong.

How do you think your body feels with all this judgment?

Here’s a hint: When you feel judged, how do you feel? Hurt. Sad. Angry. Confused. (And probably more…)

Your body is you. She is intimately intertwined with your soul, part of what I call your bodysoul. When you judge her, you are judging you.

Would you judge your girlfriends this way? Probably not.

Imagine living with an intimate partner—your body is about as intimate as it gets!—and all you ever hear is about how messed up you are, over and over again.

Would you feel good, happy, resilient, vital? Your body doesn’t either.

In fact, in these conditions of persecution, she is kind of like a refugee. She can’t really leave very easily, but she can check out. Perhaps you don’t sense or feel very much because she’s in hiding. Or perhaps she’s trying to escape, on hyper-alert, running on stress, but unable to go anywhere, causing you to feel anxious, upset, frazzled…

If she’s checked out or on high alert, she won’t be comfortable, and she won’t be able to focus, find well-being, make nourishing choices, or make changes easily.

Just like your friend, she doesn’t want to be shamed or coerced into change. She wants to be accepted as she is. Loved as she is. Understood as she is. Then, perhaps, she could easily make nourishing choices, or consider making some changes for her well being.

What would it take to welcome her home?

Imagine your body as a place of grounding, grace, and gratitude. Imagine feeling her support, her love, her exquisite attunement to your needs. YES! This is possible.

What if you could find refuge in your body instead of forcing her to be a refugee? Sense that in your bodysoul.