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2023 October Meditation
Returning to what we explored earlier this year, notice any change in your experience over this time of recognizing the living presence of relationships, collaborative communities, that are everywhere in your life and that your radiating presence touches everyone and everything you encounter along the way.
Bring to mind all the many people and life forms who work behind the scenes of your everyday experience to make your life possible; think of farmers and what they produce to contribute to what you eat and enjoy; imagine all the people who make and repair farm equipment; imagine the people who participate in communities that bring you electricity, water, garbage pickup, mail and packages; imagine all the people who contribute in any way to items you use as part of your daily life, including gadgets, household items, clothing, and more; each time you do this meditation, think of more people who are part of this community, people with whom you are in relationship even when you don’t recognize it; offer gratitude and blessings to all of them—acknowledging that without them your life would be very different. Notice your experience in your heart space as you do this.
Please remember never to listen to guided audio meditations while driving or using dangerous machinery.
Here’s the YouTube version if you’d like to see images of nature as you listen:
854th week: Choose Your Frequency
I’ve written quite a bit lately about frequencies and the foreground/background dynamics of our underlying wholeness. One of the practices that, for me, is an effective and useful tool in affecting the quality of both my inner and outer life experience is taking time to choose the frequencies with which I want to resonate.
As I’ve described a number of times, what I mean by “frequency” is the tone and quality of what we experience and embody, and what we radiate into the world around us in every moment. For example, think of people you meet who seem to exude a sense of curiosity, delight, kindness, friendliness, etc. And, also, think of people you meet who seem to exude a quality of anger, fear, harshness, etc. These are all frequencies, and they are the tangible expressions of the qualities with which we resonate and which we radiate into our environment—both consciously and unconsciously. Most of the time, many of us—if not most—are unconscious of the these qualities, and we aren’t taught about how they tangibly affect our internal and external experiences.
Another aspect of our relationship to frequencies is the fact of our wholeness. Everything we have experienced and are is ever-present as part of our underlying and inescapable wholeness. When I teach about wholeness, I emphasize the fact that there’s nothing about us we can “get rid of” or “erase”. Instead, our wholeness is always with us, with some aspects of self expressing in the foreground of our experience and others sliding into the background. In this work with frequencies, we aren’t being asked to get rid of negative or troublesome aspects of ourselves. Instead, we are invited to choose a frequency that we want to experience in the foreground of our experience even as we allow our awareness to enfold all of what constitutes our wholeness.
This is where I call on the metaphor of a kaleidoscope, which I’ve shared many times. When we turn the tube of a kaleidoscope, all the pieces shift into a new pattern. Sometimes, a color we haven’t seen for quite a while may pop into view while another drops away. This is the way I think of the dynamics of wholeness: aspects of ourselves slide into the foreground while others drop into the background.
Read More “854th week: Choose Your Frequency”707th Week: Moments of Inspiration
Walking through Central Park on my way to work one morning, I had been pondering the gift of blessings. As I was just about to enter my favorite path amongst a long line of cherry trees, I noticed a cardinal sitting on a branch in a large bush to my right. I stopped and enjoyed taking some time looking at, and talking to, the cardinal. As I wished him a good morning—he was a wonderful bright red—he jumped onto different branches just above me and we basically hung out together for a few minutes. (And, for sure, his hanging out on those branches was no doubt what he intended to do with or without my being there!)
When it was time for me to walk on, I noticed that my heart was full with the few moments of interaction I had with the cardinal, and I wondered about the synchronicity of thinking about the gift of blessings and then running into this beautiful bird. Read More “707th Week: Moments of Inspiration”
Week 624: Finding Home Base
Each time I teach a Somatic Experiencing® training, I am touched yet again by the impact of people’s experience when they discover the power of the body-mind connection and the importance of grounding ourselves. Having a “home base” to return to in the body is an invaluable resource for re-centering and stabilizing ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis. Read More “Week 624: Finding Home Base”