July 2018 Audio Meditation

As I write this practice, I’m at a professional training outside New York City. The trainings are held in a hotel where we have been many times and it recently changed management.  What many of us experienced as we arrived for this training was a noticeable difference in the “feel” of the hotel, a noticeable change in how we were met by the front desk, and a noticeable change in the quality of service we have encountered along the way.

At this training, my job is to manage the assisting team, as well as deal with participants who have questions or issues about the team.  Each morning, we have a team meeting and take time to connect, settle in, and clear up any problems, questions, or issues that may have arisen during the prior day.  One of the things I do as part of our team meeting is to take time for all of us to connect to our individual core presence and internal steadiness and, then, to connect with our collective team presence and steadiness.  Our keynote is kindness, and I invite all of us to embody that particular quality as we move through the training days.  Our job is to offer supportive containment as well as teaching input.

One of the things I’ve asked the team to keep in mind is to extend that kindness to the hotel building and all its employees.  I ask this because we inevitably radiate into our environment the qualities that we carry with us as we move through the world.  I can imagine that the employees and building receive a good bit of negative input, given the ways in which the place has changed, and I want to ensure that we don’t add to a collective quality of dissatisfaction, annoyance, and other activating feelings that the changes tend to elicit.

Sitting in Central Park this morning in my usual place, which is quite close to where dogs play together during the off-leash time, I’ve enjoyed seeing the enthusiasm they bring to chasing balls or just running around together. One small poodle came by and was so excited to be able to run that he squeaked as he went in ever widening circles around his human companions as they walked down a hill. 

Something in the way this little dog gave his whole self to the activity touched something in me, bringing me a little more alive this morning. It got me to thinking about how we engage opportunities to express ourselves enthusiastically, celebrating life energy. There are times when the felines who share my home with me get into this same kind of abundant enthusiasm and one particular feline friend has a way of squeaking as she purrs when I rub her head in a certain way.

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you to do two things. First, notice what you experience when you take time to watch people or other earth-kin engaging in play or some other activity with unbridled enthusiasm. Pay attention to what happens in your body, the quality of your emotions, the tone of your thoughts when you do this. Then, notice how you engage pleasurable activities, things you really enjoy doing. They don’t have to be dramatic, just sources of pleasure or engagement. If you’re in a situation where you can’t actually physically engage in an activity, take some time to imagine that you are doing so. Allow yourself to experience the sensations and state of being that arise as you imagine whatever activity gives you real pleasure. Remember, the brain responds to imagined experience in just about the same way it does actual lived experience.

I’ve run across a number of articles recently that speak to the physical benefits of silence.  One I just read a few days ago talks about how silence generates new cells in the hippocampus of mice.  This is an intriguing finding, given that we know that trauma shrinks the hippocampus.  Here’s the link to that article: http://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-than-thought

Another article, which I read a while ago, speaks to a number of benefits that arise from spending time in silence, Read More “702nd Week:  Befriending Silence”