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881st Week: Adapting with “Attitude Adjustments”
I just returned from a week away for vacation. I was at an all-inclusive spa-type location, surrounded by the beauty of nature. On the third evening there, a powerful thunderstorm came through, some said bringing it with it a “small tornado”. The storm brought down three transformers in the area, so all the power flicked out in a moment and didn’t return for a bit over 24 hours.
The loss of power ended every imaginable kind of activity and the employees at the resort were really quite creative and focused in coping with the loss of power, especially around how they managed a kitchen that needed to feed three meals a day to a lot of people.
An immediate effect of the power outage was the dwindling power in every kind of gadget. Because of this, many of us searched for the few outlets that were connected to the generators and this led to a group of five of us hanging out in a room that had four connections wired into the floor. Sitting together for several hours, we discovered new friendships we wouldn’t have had time to create had the power not gone out.
All this got me to thinking about the powerful impact of the choices we make when faced with challenging or disappointing circumstances—although, admittedly, this was a challenge of privilege and not a challenge of survival or even of need. I started thinking about the importance of being willing to have an “attitude adjustment” when faced with unexpected developments, and that awareness demonstrated how our attitudes generate the filter through which we experience and interpret our world and our experience.
Read More “”Week 659: Attending to Self-Regulation
I recently listened to a conversation on the BBC about global responses to our new President-elect and what I heard got me to thinking about survival attachment dynamics. We know that children need caregivers who are, among other things, predictable, consistent, and trustworthy in order to develop a sense of secure attachment. When caregivers don’t have these characteristics, children tend to develop a fundamental insecurity at a deep, biological level. Read More “Week 659: Attending to Self-Regulation”
740th Week: Everything and Everyone is Connected
Growing up with a multidimensional perspective on reality, I have always believed that I live in a world of inescapable connection and interdependence as part of one dynamic whole. One of the aspects of this point of view is a recognition that all of us affect the world around us in every moment, automatically radiating the qualities we carry and express as we engage our daily lives. And, because we are all part of one energy reality, we are automatically and inevitably affected and impacted by the radiating qualities of everyone and everything around us, as well.
Here’s a link to a short video by Bruce Lipton, in which he talks about the underlying energy reality within which we live:
http://upliftconnect.com/bruce-lipton-communicate-energy/
Read More “740th Week: Everything and Everyone is Connected”891st Week: Settling into Presence
One of the themes that has woven itself into and through my work for many years now is the importance, and power, of orienting our awareness to the place in us that reveals our core presence. This is a place I’ve written about a number of times. It’s where we discover the ever-present steadiness in us, the place in our wholeness that cannot be disturbed no matter what happens. It’s a reliable and accessible steadiness and is part of our core presence.
The other thing we discover when we settle into our core presence is what I refer to as the “unique energy signature” each and every one of us radiates throughout our body-mind being and out into the world in every moment. It is the “signature” of the presence we bring into the world, and it can be quite helpful to invite ourselves to orient to this aspect of our being. Becoming aware of it offers a way to deepen a sense of grounding and embodied presence, which is a state that stabilizes and supports us no matter what may be happening with, to, or around us.
For this week’s practice in conscious living, I offer the following guided meditation. Please remember that these meditations are offered as a possibility of how you might want to work with this. It’s important that you change whatever doesn’t resonate with you, as we are all “unique energy signatures”, unique expressions of life, and we want to honor our particular way of being in, and moving through, the world.
Read More “891st Week: Settling into Presence”788th Week: Cultivating Steadiness
One of my favorite dynamics when working with clients or managing my own internal process is to notice what’s in the foreground of awareness and what’s in the background. For me, there are certain qualities that are always in the background of my being, whether I’m aware of them or not.
One of these that is also always present in my body, within the core presence that is always inside me even when I’m not aware of it, is the quality of steadiness. Whenever I work with myself or anyone else, I inevitably invite bringing awareness to this ever-present steadiness before jumping into anything else. Also, related to the reference I made in last week’s practice about tapping into universal archetypes, I hold the belief in, and experience of, what I call the Spirit of Steadiness—what you might think of as the Archetype of Steadiness, the embodying presence that radiates this quality as its primary expression.
For this week’s practice, I’d like to share with you a “foreground/background” practice of bringing the steadiness that is always there in the background into the foreground of awareness as well as your embodied felt-sense. I’ll share it the way I’m used to doing, but I hope you’ll adapt what’s below to match what works best for you:
Read More “788th Week: Cultivating Steadiness”720th Week: Small Acts Matter
Several times in the last week, I’ve run across postings in classes I’m taking, as well as postings on Facebook, that speak to something that offers what, for me, is a source of support during these challenging and distressing times. Unfortunately, at the moment, my brain won’t give me the names of the people or places where I’ve run across these postings, so I’ll share some general ideas about what has touched me along the way.
I’ve written before about the importance of not going into collapse in the presence of what seem to be overwhelming circumstances. One of the ways to avoid collapse is to feel able to act in ways that meet, ameliorate, or change what causes suffering to our brothers and sisters of every species all around the planet, and to the planet itself. Read More “720th Week: Small Acts Matter”