Hummingbird Who are we when we’re alone? Are our wings whirring so fast they’ve become invisible? Can we be alone? What do we say to ourselves when we are alone? Do we say self-defeating, destructive or insulting things to ourselves? Or are we problem solvers? How do we phrase “the problem” to ourselves? “How can I end my suffering” and “Why aren’t I winning at life?” are probably the wrong questions. We want to find peace but also be engaged in a pursuit of increasing power and understanding. Obviously we can’t move forward until we stop “fleeing” from some fearful concept of ourselves. We forgive ourselves for making mistakes, for “quitting” qt the cul-de-sacs inside the maze, for becoming discouraged and fearful. Every day we will schedule alone time to ask sit quietly with ourselves. We were made for connection, true, but each of us is a distinct being with a distinct purpose which keeps evolving. “I cherish alone time.”
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Wildflowers Some flowers grow “in spite of”, not “because of”. They are responsive to demands outside our human interference, yet something within us is profoundly responsive to them. Could it be that we are denying our inner wild thing? Let’s focus today’s practice on tuning in to our deepest, unspoken needs. Our manifest yearning is to be one with the universe. Flowers are “process”, and we have been assured, creatures of time that we are, that there is a time to feast, a time to fast, a time to celebrate and a time to mourn. Wildflowers spring up anywhere and everywhere to remind us of the world’s radical inner beauty. What deep urges are springing up within us? “I honor my path” The Sunflower
Our first weapon against triggers is meditation. Contemplate the sunflower, it's million seeds, generous height, magnificent mien. Sunflowers are sun-worshippers and the sun loves them back. Sunflowers welcome the rain. They can wait out the storms. They are never afraid. Flowers encapsulate time. Flowers are process. Flowers are always “becoming”. What hurts a flower? What heals it? What is your favorite flower? Why? Let’s meditate on it today. Let’s hold our flower in imagination. Look into it deeply, and feel it speak to you. Feel the bud unfolding, deep within yourself. Each contains the seeds of future power and beauty, a rise and fall of the rhythm of life. We are all swaying to and nourished by this music. The sun loves us, the rain freshens us, the night soothes us. Imagine yourself as one of the cherished flowers of creation. “I am beloved.” Birdsong
Birds gotta sing. This goes deeper than mere communication, or display. Birds sing from the moment of birth until the second of extinguishment. If they’re not singing, they’re ill. They’re not all lone troubadours, either; each African boubou shrike couple creates a unique duet to keep track of each other in the dense brush. What is your song? Not all of us regard ourselves as creatives yet we share intensely in our culture’s creativity and dream about it at night. Our new daily patterns are all about unlocking our inner potential. Do you have a concept of the new person you are becoming? If this new person “despises” your old self, I can tell you already the transition won’t work. Your disavowed, castigated shadow will follow you like a vengeful nemesis. To release our creativity, we must accept the past, incorporate our history and move on. It’s a question of getting out of the passenger seat and into the driver’s perch. Being a passenger is fun. Being the driver is – exciting. “I love me” The Field It’s a big world out there. As we learn to curate the impulses and influences that come into our tiny corner of it, we feel a little frightened by the universal avalanche of need, plethora of goods and absence of satiety. An international pandemic only makes this worse. We are in serious danger of becoming phobic about other people as sources of dread, infection and sabotage. The “solution” to the extent there is any – would be to strengthen the confidence of our inner selves, setting up a supportive inner mantra of “Good choice! Right thinking!” in order to become our own teachers. Buddhists say the answer is to cultivate compassion; realizing we are all in the same boat with equal helpings of suffering and want. When we have solved the problem of knowing what is “enough” – and we are getting there – we will be able to turn and help the person next to us. “I celebrate good choices” Fruit
A glorious unsung benefit of discipline is our rediscovery of simplicity. When getting back to basics, you want not the banana “dish” or the banana “product” (and certainly not the fake banana!) you want just the banana alone. By itself. No ingredients added. Our eyes open to the perfection right in front of us. Blueberries! Raspberries! Melon! A little bit, eaten slowly – even worshipfully – is all you need. I allow myself a single apple a day. A gift to myself. I take it along in the car for when I feel overwhelmed by life’s – and geography’s – choices. Thank you, world! For all your bounty! “I appreciate life’s smallest gifts” Fish
Sharks never stop moving. Perhaps that is why they never get cancer. Weren’t we once amphibious? In our dreams we fly and swim, which, after all, is flying weightless through water. Is our dream of weightlessness in fact a memory of when we floated inside another being? Are we struggling to recapture a freedom that was once second-nature? Perhaps it’s only a question of remembering how to transform the oxygen all around us into a form that our bodies can use. And that’s not the only skill we have “forgotten”. Animals all seem to have navigational abilities unimaginable to those of us who struggle to get the map the right way up. All this implies the existence of a buried self, speaking to us now, through our own yearnings; transforming now into plans to “meet up.” Someday. Mantra: “I transform” Firefly
Not only is there no time like the present, there is no time BUT the present. Joy can be found living in the Eternal Now, just like fireflies.. And yet, our great human brains, seek to male future Nows different, more bearable by bending them to Will. The discipline required to change habits could cause us suffering Now. Soothing our Now with bad habits actually numbs us, does nothing but obliterate true joy, and makes us less likely to perceive deeply, experience and accept the abundance we have been promised. We seek abundance on a deeper level. So we will stop our flitting, our evasive maneuvers, accepting that in the present this may bring a temporary experience of suffering; trusting it will sharpen all our senses, as well as our ability to receive, and to feel gratitude. “I accept Now” Dawn Beginnings are wonderful but rough. Seen and experienced for the first time, anything is overwhelming. We desire this state, but we also fear it. Beginners are helpless. Confused. We don’t want to sacrifice our cherished, painfully acquired wisdom and “start over” but we do need to lay down new habits – which gives us that “lost, disempowered” feeling. The “cure” is Old Souls. We are not as helpless as we think. We are Old Souls in new bodies, trying to recall lost wisdom. We have a pattern of discipline to follow. We must trust and have faith that on the other side of our new routines lies healing. Mantra “I trust”. Night
If we want to change, we must deliberately disrupt our schedules. This could trigger disturbing dreams; waking up in the middle of the night, raging hunger episodes – punitive self-doubt. “Go with it”; we rebuild ourselves. Our old self won’t be lost forever. Just like the child we once were, it is forever inside us. We are learning new skills, training muscles we didn’t even know we had. Of course it feels “funny”. We return to those intermediate states we recall so well from childhood; Waiting and Wondering. What we forget is the power these states confer. We are amphibious sky creatures unbounded by time; we live in all states at once. Some say this is the ideal condition for maximum creativity. Remember negotiating new sex with a partner, discovering how to swim, or learning to ride a bike? These sensations profoundly unsettle at first. My son said, “This isn’t physically possible; you just fall over.” No. You learn how to balance. We are balanced between day and night, between past and future. Hovering. Aaah. Mantra: “I believe” |
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