Walking across Central Park one morning, the air was filled with a fragrance that I meet during the early days of summer each year. A group of trees, Silver Lindens, have blossoms, clusters of small flowers, that release a powerful, heady and, to me, enchanting fragrance that captivates me each morning as I pass them on my way to the office. The blossoms don’t last very long, which makes them even more special, and I—along with many other people—inevitably stop for a moment, bury my nose in them deeply breathing in the sweet fragrance.
One morning as I walked on, I began to think about the powerful effect scents have on our internal experience…
I used to do a lot of work with essential oils, using different fragrances to help support grounding, clarity of thinking, ease, relaxation and more. Often, with just a few moments of taking in a particular scent, clients would shift from stressed, agitated, or exhausted states into greater comfort or ease. I recall my very first therapy session, many years ago, where I suddenly smelled the scent of my father’s aftershave and how vivid that sudden memory was in my experience.
One of the things I learned when I began to use essential oils personally and in my practice was how quickly a scent can shift us from one state to another. For this week’s practice, I invite you to explore which scents allow you to shift into greater ease when you need a little time off from the stresses and strains of everyday life. You may already have scents that you know offer you immediate ease, and this week’s practice asks you to engage them a bit more than you may do already. The fact that essential oils come in small bottles makes them easily available as resources that are easy to carry through a day, but for sure essential oils aren’t the only sources of healing scents.
The challenge these days with essential oils, perfumes, and other scents we may wear is that so many people are allergic to them. Because of this, I no longer put scents on my body when I’m out and about working, at a class, or in other public settings. That doesn’t mean I don’t carry them with me, so I can sniff them whenever I need a moment’s respite, though.
You can also experiment with filling your home with scents that settle you into ease. I have a deep love of palo santo, which is a sacred wood that I burn as an incense. Some people love the scent of sage and other sources of incense. There are also the smells of cooking that offer some people deep ease and relaxation. I know a friend who only has to smell garlic and onion cooking and she’s in heaven, her whole body relaxing completely whenever that scent is in a space she enters.
Whatever your favorite scent for feeling instantaneously more relaxed, give yourself permission to engage it more often this week and see what happens. With our world as stressful as it is, moments of finding ease become gifts not only to our psyches, but also to our bodies. Giving our adrenal glands a little rest through eliciting ease can become part of a daily practice of self-care that has powerful benefits over time.
I recently saw a brief video about a man in Brazil who, through his focus and efforts over many years, restored a rainforest to an area that had lost its vegetation and water. As I watched the video, it reminded me of something that many people think is only fantasy but that, for me, is an ever-present reality. In my mind, this man was guided by Nature’s Intelligence to plant vegetation in a process that spontaneously returned water to the region where he lives. Here’s a link to his brief, inspiring documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndWyBU9mWlM
The other thing this video brought to mind is how powerful one person’s daily commitment and activities can be. During all the years this man planted vegetation on his land, his neighbors didn’t understand why he was doing so, and yet—through his persistence in heeding the call he felt from the land—he restored an entire ecosystem one small act at a time. For me, this speaks to the ways in which each of us can play an active role in caring for, and restoring, our world. Read More “722nd Week: One Person Can Make A Difference”
Watching a video of a talk from, I think, a Science and Nonduality Conference, a concept caught my attention and got me to thinking about the power of creativity and unexpected discoveries. In this talk, the presenter described the process of “emergence”, where nature is able to bring things together and create completely unanticipated results, outcomes we wouldn’t be able to conger up from the original elements involved. The example he gave that stuck with me is how, when nature brings together two inert elements—say, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen—there is no way any of us would expect that combination to create a liquid, water. For me, this is a powerful and inspiring example of Nature’s intelligence and of the creative, living context in which we live. Read More “704th Week: The Concept of Emergence—Expect Miracles”
Recently, I saw a clip from Fox News that got me to thinking about how many of us now engage conversations not to understand one another but to convince or to show that we are “right”. Read More “Week 665: Rediscovering Curiosity”
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a practice for this section of my website, and I do so now because of the quality of our collective human experience and expression at this time. Speaking from a perspective of frequencies, the collective frequency of our human family is expressing a quality of emotional experience that would be considered quite “dense.” Frequencies of fear, anger, hatred, suspicion are all quite intense and “thick” in the air.
Because I focus on frequencies quite a bit these days (see my video #5 in my Videos on Multidimensional Living on my website), I find myself deeply concerned about the current quality of our collective emotional well-being. Following is a variation on the Buddhist practice of Tonglen, a heart-based practice of breathing in distressing or negative frequencies, allowing the fiery Love in the heart to neutralize those frequencies, and then breathing out something more constructive or positive, be that love, peace, ease, harmlessness, etc. I think of this kind of practice, altered significantly from the actual Buddhist practice, as akin to what oysters do. We’re filtering out toxins in order to allow our collective consciousness to resonate with more positive frequencies.
As I’ve written about before, we are all affected by our human collective consciousness in every moment, even as we automatically contribute to that collective also in every moment. Quantum research has now demonstrated that we are inextricably entangled, interconnected, with everything else and that goes for our human collective presence, as well. So, the quality of the energies with which we are entangled truly and deeply matters. What we contribute to those energies through the quality of our own being and also our way of moving through the world truly and deeply matters, too.
Here’s the practice and I’ll offer some additional suggestions that you can explore if you’re not comfortable with the way the practice is set up:
Begin by settling in and taking a moment to ground yourself so that you are present, aware, and settled.
Bring your awareness to your heart space and in whatever ways make sense to you notice that your heart is filled with the light, energy, and frequency of Love. This Light is ever-present because it arises from an infinite source of Universal Love. It cannot run out, you can’t use it up.
Take a moment to also notice that this is a fiery Love. It is a purifying energy.
Now, become of aware of the distress in humanity in whatever way is comfortable for you to do so. You might focus on fear or anger or suffering. Any and all of our human negative feelings contribute to the density of our collective, shared consciousness. Choose what feels right for this time.
Breathe the negative frequency into your heart space, knowing that the fiery Love will immediately neutralize and cleanse what you have breathed in. Then, imagine that the neutralized energy is filled with, becomes, a quality, a frequency you have chosen to breathe out into the world this time—love, ease, peace, harmlessness, kindness—whatever resonates for you this time.
As you breathe out, notice that you first fill yourself with the quality/frequency of what you have chosen to breathe out. Then notice that your out-breath continues to carry the quality out to the world around you and recognize that it also becomes part of our human collective consciousness.
Do this for as long as you would like but be sure to track your comfort level. It’s always best not to over-do a practice like this. It’s more powerful than we usually realize and helping to shift the quality of our human collective is not a marathon—it’s a moment-to-moment, day-by-day process of taking the time to orient to qualities that express positive and constructive frequencies.
When you’re through, again notice your heart space. The presence of fiery Love is always there for you to experience and to share when you feel moved to do so.
When you’re ready, bring yourself all the way back, orienting to the sights and sounds of the environment around you.
If you are uncomfortable breathing in negative energy, you can begin this practice by imagining that you are surrounded by white light and that the white light begins to neutralize the negative quality right away, well before it reaches your heartspace.
If the whole practice makes you uncomfortable, here’s another one you might explore:
Begin by settling yourself in as you would do whenever you are going to have an inner experience. Be sure to give yourself a moment to become grounded and comfortably present.
Bring your awareness to your heartspace and gently breathe in and out through your heart for a few moments.
Next, imagine in whatever way makes sense to you, the dense field of our collective human emotional consciousness, a field of awareness that is shared by all of us. Allow a representation of its density to come into awareness. If you use imagery, allow an image to come. If you work more in the realm of words, let words come. If you work more in the arena of felt-sense, notice the felt-sense of the field of density.
Then, if it works for you, imagine that small points of light begin to show up here and there within the density and hold the intention that these small points of light bring the positive and constructive frequencies described in the practice above. Whatever mode of awareness you draw on to do this kind of work, the key is to notice that the density begins to fill with points of light that carry positive and constructive qualities into this collective field of consciousness.
If you don’t do imagery, perhaps there could be a sound, a word, a sensation or a feeling that you could imagine begins to penetrate our collective emotional field, conveying more positive and constructive frequencies/qualities into that field.
Take as much time as is comfortable for you to imagine more and more points of light showing up within the density and notice how that feels to you.
When you’re ready to come back, bring your awareness to the environment around you, noticing sounds, perhaps smells, and whatever you notice when you open your eyes.
These practices are forms of subtle activism, which we can all do even when we can’t go out into the world and actively work to help create a positive shift in our collective human experience. There are countless other practices in subtle activism that you can explore by simply googling “subtle activism practices.”
As with all these practices in conscious living, please remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion and to pat gently on the head any judgments that may arise, allowing them to move on through without your having to do anything with or about them.
Here’s the audio version of this practice if you’d rather listen to it. Also, please remember never to listen to guided audio meditations while driving or using dangerous machinery. You may find that you need to pause the recording when you are doing the practices, as I didn’t leave a lot of time between the various steps.