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Showing posts from December, 2013

Too good not to share....

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"In 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler of  Japan, confiscated the swords, daggers, and spears belonging to every citizen. He announced they would be melted down and used to make a giant Buddha statue. I'd love to see you undertake a comparable  transformation in 2014, Capricorn. You shouldn't completely shed all your  anger and pugnacity, of course; a certain amount is valuable, especially  when you need to rouse yourself to change situations that need to be  changed. But it's also true that you could benefit from a reduction in your  levels of combativeness. What if you could "melt down" some of your  primal rage and use the energy that's made available to build your  personal equivalent of a Buddha icon?" --Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology ( www.freewillastrology.com) I have shared Rob Brezsny's wisdom on my blog before and felt this one was a gem. If you have never read him, check him out! Even if you are not "into" as

Joy in Anicca

"The great thing about JOY is not that it lasts, but that it always comes around again." --The Universe As I have mentioned, I struggled this time at the ten-day silent meditation retreat I went on last month. One of the things I struggled with, ironically, was the lack of JOY I felt in the discipline and austerity of the program this time. Normally I am very comfortable with this kind of environment. Discipline. Austerity. To-the-minute timekeeping. These are things at which most mid-western-raised adults excel. Not this time. This time I was hungry for joy, for freedom, even a little bit of excess. I knew this flew in the face of the idea of anicca , or impermanence. The whole point of this meditation is to learn not to crave positive feelings and sensations, as well as not to have aversion to negative feelings and sensations, because both have the inherent quality of impermanence, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to feel some JOY. So on my daily post-lunch

A Seasonal Review

"The Four Agreements: 1. Be impeccable with your word; 2. Don’t take anything personally; 3. Don’t make assumptions; 4. Always do your best. ” -- Don Miguel Ruiz   There are certain quotes that come back to me again and again. This one - not so much a quote as a recipe for living - is one of those and it seems particularly appropriate to review it as Christmas week looms. #2 especially has been on my mind today: Don't Take Anything Personally. My guides have reminded me of this agreement at exactly the moment I needed it most over the past couple of weeks. When someone I am around is in a bad mood, my first instinct is to think they are mad at me or that I did something to cause their bad mood. How insane is this? Because of this agreement, instead of reacting to what I presume to be their anger at me, I have asked myself this question: What if their bad mood has nothing to do with me?  Just asking this question wakes me up and makes me realize that while ther

The Airlines are Right

"Help Yourself First." -- S.N. Goenka In one of his nightly lectures via videotape , S.N. Goenka advised against getting involved in any situation or taking any action until you are feeling equanimous .  If you know anything about Vipassana meditation , you know it is all about equanimity . Equanimity is the thing. Equanimity is defined as, " mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, esp. in a difficult situation ." I like to think of it as getting to neutral. This advice reminded me of the part in the airline safety speech about putting on your own oxygen mask first before assisting others and made me realize how often I leap into situations when my equanimity is something less than perfect. This is especially true when my kids are fighting. Nothing gets under my skin like the two of them going at it. Invariably I jump in, blood pressure rising, voice raised, and more often than not, make things worse. There are certainly times when we need

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"A Spiritual Catalyst is someone who precipitates change for the betterment of all." -- Reverend Karen Lindvig at Seattle Unity Church on December 8, 2013 This quote struck me not in and of itself, but because of the two questions that Reverend Karen posed afterwards: Who has been a Spiritual Catalyst for you?  AND For whom have you been a Spiritual Catalyst?  The first one was easy. Whenever I think of someone who has pushed me to expand, who has opened up the world of Spirit to me, I always think about my sister-in-law. When I first met her I thought she was bat-shit crazy. She did my numerology at Thanksgiving, sent me on a shamanic journey the first time we went to visit her and gave me a psychic reading for my birthday. I was pissed. I DID NOT want to have the reading. When she brought her friend "the Psychic" over to our house my attitude was, "Let's just get this over with."   Within minutes of starting my reading, I was cryin

Life Mastery

"You are the master of your own life; you are the master of your own future." -- Gautama the Buddha One of many quotes from the retreat whose basic message is: you create your reality. What the Buddha is saying here is that we decide each day, each moment what kind of life we want to live by HOW we live it. By how we act. By how we think. By how we treat others. By how we treat ourselves. Decide what kind of life you want to live and then plant the seeds of that life. At the retreat S.N. Goenka told a story during one of the nightly video-taped discourses , about a man who planted seeds from the Neem tree (known for its bitter fruit) on his land. When the tree grew and began to produce fruit he was very upset that the fruit it produced was bitter and not sweet like sugar cane. Of course we are meant to laugh at this man for his foolishness, but are we any different? We lie, we cheat, we steal (in large or in small ways), we give into anger and then we want life

Smiling helps :)

While sitting for hours - HOURS - in meditation during my most-recent Vipassana retreat, I remembered something I read recently in Malcolm Gladwell's book, " blink " - that our bodies don't know the difference between a fake smile and a real smile. That when we smile, certain chemicals are released, certain reactions take place, in our body that make us feel good and our body does the same things when we fake a smile. While observing my breath for what seemed like the 40th hour in a row, I decided to give it a try and - low and behold -  it works!  When I started to smile, my mind calmed down, my body relaxed and I could turn my attention to my meditation once again, instead of focusing on the pain, discomfort and sometimes overwhelming boredom I felt. Smiling, even when I was faking it, really did help.