OSHO Day 6: Living Dangerously

“When the seed becomes a sprout it is going into something unknown. When the sprout starts growing flowers it is again a movement into the unknown. And when the fragrance leaves the flowers — again, a quantum leap into the unknown. Life needs courage at each step.” ~Osho

Play should remain your life, your center of life. Work should be as a means towards play. Work in the office and work in the factory and work in the shop, but just to have time, opportunity, to play… Play means doing something for its own sake. To live dangerously means to live life as if each moment is its own end.

Thought for the day: “There is always enough time to play.”

Being obsessed with the familiar is boring!

Osho says, “there are only two types of people in the world: people who want to live comfortably. Seeking death, they want a comfortable grave. And then there are people who Live and choose to Live dangerously, because life thrives only where there is risk.”

Taking a chance, taking a risk, isn’t always a physical risk. Driving too fast, mountain climbing, road-tripping alone, these are only physical risks. When Osho speaks of living dangerously, he asks us to also take mental and spiritual risks as well. He asks us to turn away from ordinary respectability, because this is not life. This is not Living, capital-L. Ordinary mundane things are not spiritual things. They hold no substance. Sure, money, work, a house, these things are, yes, needed, but they should not be the goal. They are the decoration. They should not be your center of life. Osho says the goal of life is play. So, we could all do well to make more time for play. Play means doing things for its own sake. Living in life each moment with its own end, unafraid, with the knowledge that yes, death is there. But you are not afraid of it. You know and accept and enjoy those moments of death, enjoying the reality of death. Love brings you face to face with death. Meditation brings you face to face with death. Remember, the art of risking. Never miss a chance. Risk is the only guarantee to be truly alive.

Today’s Homework: Coming out of our shell & Letting go of our armour.

“Dissolving the Armor”
This meditation is about dissolving a layer of protection, a certain type of
invisible “armor” with which we have learned to face the world, creating our
“risk-free” zone.

One of the ways we protect ourselves from situations or people that feel
threatening is to create a kind of armor around ourselves, a “protective shield”
that helps us feel less vulnerable, more safe and secure. It’s easy to see this in
others – we even have a common expression to describe it; for example when
a person who is normally shy and timid starts to speak up, we say, “she’s
coming out of her shell.”

Sometimes this armor can be useful – even necessary. But the problem is that
it often becomes a habit, a pattern, almost like a second skin that keeps us
from feeling fully alive, spontaneous, playful, confident in ourselves and of who
we are. But this shield has been with us for so long we don’t know how to get
out of it – and we should in fact be able to take it off as easily as we put it on.
A woman came to Osho with just this difficulty, and this is what he said:
“You carry an armor around you. It is just an armor – it is not clinging to you,
you are clinging to it. So when you become aware of it you can simply drop it. The
armor is dead: if you don’t carry it, it will disappear.”

He went on to suggest ways to start becoming more aware of this armor, using
a meditation technique that brings awareness to where the armor is expressed
in the body.

There are three parts to this meditation.

The Method
While walking or sitting:
Walking or sitting, exhale deeply. The emphasis should be on exhalation, not
on inhalation. So exhale deeply – throw out as much air as you can throw.
Exhale through the mouth, but do it slowly so it takes time. The longer it takes
the better, because then it goes deeper. When all the air inside the body is
thrown out, then the body inhales; don’t you inhale. The exhalation should be
slow and deep and the inhalation should be fast.
This will change the armor near the chest.

While walking, running or walking briskly:

Start a little running, jogging, or walking at a brisk pace. And now, while your
legs are in movement, just visualize that a load is disappearing from the legs,
as if it is falling off them. When our freedom has been restricted too much, our
legs carry the armor. So start running, jogging, walking, or even unstructured
dancing, and with the legs in movement feel that armor around them falling
off. And again, as in the first step, put more attention on the exhalation of your
breath.
Once you regain your legs and their fluidity you will have a tremendous energy
flow.

Before going to bed:
When you are ready to go to sleep at night, take off your clothes and while
taking them off, simply imagine that you are not only taking off your clothes,
you are taking off your armor too.
Actually do it. Take it off and have another good deep exhalation while letting
that armor dissolve.

Nourishment Meditation

“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.” — Hippocrates

Nourishment

It has been a whole month since the tidal season of Lammas/Lughnasadh began. Lughnasadh is all about nourishment and the things in our lives that give us food for our mind, bodies, and souls. This soul-food goes way beyond hearty New Orleans cuisine. According to a dictionary, nourishment is the sustenance that is necessary for growth, health, and good condition. But the type of nourishment I am talking about here is what is necessary for sustaining love, magic, and harmony in our lives.

Until the next tide of Samhain I invite you to delve a little deeper into our Solar questions than ever before.

Today, our meditation will focus on what soul-food nourishes us? We will be diving deep into our subconscious as we self-reflect on the things in our lives that give us sweet contentment, salty pleasure, sour enjoyment, bitter gratification,  and umami fulfillment.

It is important in our lives and is likewise beneficial to our health to recognize the things in our lives that brings us joy and misery. Acknowledging those situations or people allow us to develop a better sense of gratitude and also allows us to know ourselves even better. To be able to show compassion for oneself by understanding oneself and therefore one’s actions related to a cause or several causes will bring untold illumination.

HEARTFELT MOMENT 

We can all do a better job on knowing what makes us, well, us. Socrates so long ago knew what he was saying about living an unexamined life. We can wander forever not knowing why we are why we are. Why certain situations continue to befall us? I believe that this is because we put ourselves into cycles of nourishment and starvation. It is a roller-coaster ride of perpetual up-and-down.

So, let us ponder the concept of nourishment.

Light a candle, get comfortable. Assume a special meditative position that feels right for you. Walk, sit, lay down. Acknowledge how you are feeling as you are coming to this moment of self reflection? Also, acknowledge how you may wish to feel.

Breathe.

Let us and allow yourself the time to go on a journey.

Delve deep. Breathe in and out. Feel the tension leaving each body part of your Self. Complete and utter relaxation, breathe it in.

Follow your own inner compass.

Sink real deep. What constitutes nourishment? Are there ancestors speaking to you on whispering winds?

Examine your pleasures and miseries.

What tastes of sweet, bitter, sour, salt, and umami do you taste? How and when do you experience these? Is it around a certain person, place, or thing?

How and when do you feel deprived of these nourishments? Are you starving now? What are you willing to do to nourish thyself? What constitutes nourishment in your life, for your life so that you may live a life worth living?

Only you can answer these questions. The best part of shamanic meditation is that it can only be done by you. Your journey can only be traveled when you are ready to make the first steps towards healing. No one else can tell you the “right” way to do it.

Meditate and see what answers present themselves. Journal and see what dialogue develops.

Namaste.

Are you in touch with your emotions?

It really does make me wonder how is it possible in this day and age that people still allow themselves to go around in apathy?

These emotionally resilient people are perfectly fine with simple mundane existence rather than actually living.  

But living and being in tune with your own emotions does wonders for your well being. This self awareness of having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions allows you to understand other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment. 

This emotional awareness is often called Emotional Intelligence or EQ. 

“Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify, use, understand, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. Emotional intelligence impacts many different aspects of your daily life, such as the way you behave and the way you interact with others.

If you have high emotional intelligence you are able to recognize your own emotional state and the emotional states of others, and engage with people in a way that draws them to you. You can use this understanding of emotions to relate better to other people, form healthier relationships, achieve greater success at work, and lead a more fulfilling life.”

Having a good EQ is all about Self-awareness.  By recognizing your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behavior, you learn and have a firm grasp of your strengths and weaknesses, which all increase self-confidence. Having this awareness then allows you to manage your emotions and you’re able to better control impulsive feelings and behaviors. By managing your emotions in healthy ways allows you to take initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances with ease. Self awareness also allows you be aware of others. By understanding the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, you are able to pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially, and then can recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization.
All of this in turn allows you to live holistically and peacefully as so you can develop and maintain good relationships. 

So why is it so important to be in touch with your emotions? Because it improves your health! Your mental, physical, and spiritual health on all levels! It also helps your performance at work, and also improves your relationships especially those important romantic ones that allow you to create connection.

There is a wonderful article here that suggests ways to increase your Emotional Intelligence. 

Some people however in one form or another develop a low emotional intelligence and thus apathy towards their emotions, in my opinion, due to some sort of emotional numbness which occurs as a response to extreme physical or psychological trauma. If this is the case, healing is just around the corner. Abuse survivors, sufferers of PTSD, or simply the pangs of a deeply broken heart can wreck havoc on a person’s psyche and spirit. 

I have often struggled with patients who had such strong emotional blocks that they were unable to continue treatment. Once we were finally getting somewhere, their response to the release of these emotional blocks was too much for them to handle at the time, which under the circumstances is understandable. My point here being though is that emotional blocks take time to heal, and healing can only happen if you want to be healed. There is no reason to feel undeserving. This attitude is directly related to the trauma. So, when the time comes for you to open those emotional doors beware, you may become uncomfortable. But being uncomfortable for a short time in my opinion far outweighs the pain and suffering of staying in emotional limbo for all of your life. 

Why exist when you can live? Treatment and help is available, as well as affordable if not for free. Don’t allow yourself any reason to not seek the help. Love yourself enough to let your Self find peace.  

Namaste.

Solar question prompted by Caitlin Matthews, Celtic Devotional.
The following are a list of interesting facts about emotions. 

1. Some researchers fear that technology, particularly social networking, is creating emotional disconnection rather than connection.^f
2. Emotional abuse is similar to brainwashing in that it attempts to systematically wear away a person’s self-confidence, self-worth, and self-concept. Emotional abuse can take many forms, including using economic power to control, threatening to leave, degrading, belittling, continually criticizing, name calling, or shouting.^e
3. Any emotion has three components: 1) physiological changes (e.g., acceleration of heart rate) 2) behavioral response, such as a tendency to escape from or stay into contact with whatever is causing the emotion, and 3) a subjective experience, such as feeing angry, happy, or sad.^e
4. A 1980 study by Robert Plutchik proposed eight primary innate emotions: joy, acceptance, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. He suggests that complex emotions such as guilt and love are derived from combinations of primary emotions.^c
5. A human can make over 10,000 facial expressions to express a wide variety of subtle emotions.^c
6. Body language often reveals emotion. For example, a person standing with their arms on hips with elbows turned outward is an example of a territorial display. Someone with their hands folded and their thumbs popped up indicates that he or she has something positive to say. Touching the nose indicates someone is hiding something. A former FBI agent and specialist in nonverbal communication states that the “feet provide the strongest body language signals.”^e
7. Emotions are contagious. Negative or unpleasant emotions are more contagious than neutral or positive emotions.^c
8. Researchers note that when concealing a strong emotion, people tend to let out “micro-expressions,” or sudden leakages, of emotion unbeknownst to themselves very briefly, in as little as a 24th of a second.^c

REFERENCES

^c Eckman, Paul. 2003. Emotions Revealed. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

^e MacDonald, Matthew. 2008. Your Brain: The Missing Manual. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

^f Sandler, Elana Premack. “Facebook, Emotions, and Identity: The Social Network and Teen Emotional Health.” Psychology Today. March 30, 2011. Accessed: June 10, 2012.

The 5-Step Path to a Life of Love

So, today I am already missing Deepak Chopra’s calming voice.

Now that my 21-day challenge is done, I continue to meditate. I imagine Deepak’s voice, and begin a mantra of my own making.

I found this article he wrote a few years ago, and I just had to share it. I hope you find it just as eye& heart-opening as I did. It is wonderful how such a person can ripple outward so incredibly. His teachings are universal, which is why I feel he is so moving, and inspiring. He transcends all religions and goes straight for the core of spirit: Love.

So, as you go about your day today, think of these 5-Steps. Do you already follow some? Are there some you could work on?

If you have sincerity and love in your heart I know you will be able to take from this article what you can to heal and grow.

Namaste.

Deepak Chopra, co-founder of the Chopra Foundation and co-author of the new book War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality, reveals how to create a life founded on the world’s most generous and joyful emotion.

Love has arrived at a strange crossroads. It seems very odd to say, “I want to be more loving. Is there a scientist who can help with that?” But in modern life, our notion of love has shifted. More and more we are told—in magazines, learned journals and media reports—that love can be broken down into medical explanations, that it is produced by reactions in the brain, both chemical and electrical. We may wish that love is divine, ideal and life-transforming, the news says, but to be realistic, we should throw out our old, unscientific notions and learn more about what the brain is doing to us.

I strongly oppose such a view of love—in fact, it frightens me. On the spiritual side, there’s a completely different and higher view of love, which goes something like this: Love is part of creation, woven into the very fabric of the universe. We love one another because we have tapped into nature at a deeper level. Yes, the brain is responsible for giving love its physical expression, yet ultimately, love comes from the soul.

A catchy phrase from an old pop song said, “Love the one you’re with.” Although you can journey outside yourself, the person to give your love to (and who, in return, must return that love), in truth, the one you are with every minute of the day, is yourself. The more rewarding way to find it is to go inward to the very source of love. If you do not do this, your love will depend on your mood swings, on how others see you and on the lovable and unlovable traits you see in yourself and others.

As soon as we measure people by what is lovable and unlovable, trouble arises. The unlovable person is labeled odd, an outsider, bad or an enemy. We create unhappiness instead. We practice nonlove, that voice inside that whispers in our ears, “They are different from us.” Or, “Fight for what you want and don’t quit until you win.” Or, “When bad things happen to other people, it’s their own fault.”

We need to restore love as the key to happiness—a difficult task. That’s why we need a spiritual path, so that we can walk away from nonlove and its confusions. Here are five basic steps that can lead you to a new life where everyone, most especially yourself, is worthy of loving and being loved.

Step 1: Believe in Love
When you say, “I love my work,” or “I love my partner,” you are expressing belief and showing faith in something outside yourself. As good as that is, even better is to have faith in love as part of yourself. When anyone asks me, “How do I find the right one?” I always give the same advice: To find the right one, become the right one. Belief in love is a spiritual kind of belief. It holds that love exists as a universal quality, outside ourselves, that can never be defeated, only covered over. Thus love and nonlove are not equals. Love is permanent; nonlove is temporary.

Step 2: Don’t Limit Love to a Few People and Deny It to Others
It’s very common to say: “I love my own children, and I love my neighbor’s children. But when it comes to my kids, I love them more.” That’s perfectly understandable. But there’s a spiritual teaching, going back thousands of years, which goes “The world is my family.” If love is universal, no one can be left out. To leave others out of your love is the same as inviting them to leave you out too.

Step 3: Make the Search for Love an Inward Search
Often we feel loved and insecure at the same time. The one we love is somebody we invest in emotionally, and emotions, by definition, are changeable. The one you love may turn indifferent or worse. The problem here is a kind of illusion. When you take someone into your heart, it’s like filling a hole inside. If that person should spurn and reject you, suddenly the hole reappears as a terrible ache. Yet the hole was always there, and only you can fill it permanently. Ultimately, the inward journey is about finding your own fullness, something that no one else can take away.

Step 4: Seek Other People Who Value Love As Much As You Do
There’s an old tradition: If you want to be wise, be in the company of wise people. I’d say the same is true about love. If you want to know about any human experience, seek out those who have walked the path of that experience. In our society, we are embarrassed to talk personally about truth, compassion, faith and love. This inhibition is part of our insecurity. Think of spirit as a community; it’s not a talent you develop like a teenager learning to play the guitar. Perhaps community is too big a word, however. Perhaps you can start by finding one person who is wise in the ways of love, who knows what it means to live at a deeper level. That’s a wonderful step in the right direction.

Step 5: Believe in Love As a Powerful Force
The first four steps depend on this one, believing that love has its own power. This is a power to transform. It’s a power that cuts through doubt, suspicion, distrust and even hatred. Unless love has its own power, there are too many reasons to act from nonlove. We see all around us people who madly pursue pleasure or money or status because they don’t trust in love. Without such trust that love can make a difference, of course you will pursue surrogates. Pleasure, money and status are compensations when love is absent or too weak to transform your life. No one has to give up on such surrogates, but it makes a huge difference to know that they are nonlove. The power of love is that it dissolves nonlove. That’s the kind of power you find on the spiritual path.

None of the steps is automatic. Each takes work and practice. But now, more than ever, it’s all important to reinvent the spiritual side of love. The steps may not be easy, but they are not impossible either. You only need to follow them with all your heart.

Day 21 – Miraculous Living

“The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still.” —A Course in Miracles

Miraculous Living

Congratulations! Today is the final day of our 21-Day Meditation Challenge and we honor your spirit and commitment to deepening your experience of love and happiness in your relationships.

By spending time each day in reflection and meditation, you have made a shift from fear to love, from ego to spirit, and from separation to unity. Perhaps you have let go of old grievances and pain and touched into the sweetness of forgiveness and gratitude. While this meditation challenge is coming to an end, the evolution of your consciousness is infinite. You have planted the seeds of intention for miraculous relationships in the fertile field of all possibilities, where they will continue to bloom and flourish in the days, months, and years to come.

In our meditation today, we will join together in celebrating the love that is already here in each one of us.

Our centering thought for today is:

“Love begins with me.”

Our Sanskrit mantra for today is:

“Aham Brahmasmi.” The core of my being is the ultimate reality, the root and the ground of the universe, the source of all that exists.

MINDFUL MOMENT

Continue to focus your attention on the presence of miracles in your life, sustaining the practice of writing in your journal about the grace, gratitude, and love that is ever flowing in abundance when we see with the eyes of spirit. Dedicate today to being in the spirit of miraculous relationships. Let your true self ripple out and bless the world with your unique and special signature vibration of love and light. Choose love. Be love. Give love—now and always. — Deepak & Oprah

Well, we are here. Day 21.

Cocreating love, wholeness, joy, peace, understanding, gratitude, spirit. We are love. It is our essence, and it is our very nature. To love, and to create connection. To allow ourselves to be quiet and reflect, each day. Beyond ego. Talking with and touching our soul. Sharing gratitude with those we care for. We are a united consciousness of love.

Over the last three weeks we have learned how to free ourselves from the past bindweed in our minds, bodies, and souls. We have learned that our mistakes are temporary, and that our mistakes do not change our essential nature nor our true essential identity. In truth, our true identity has never been changed, just forgotten.

We are here to love and be loved. To give and be joy. To give and be peace.

This is what it means to live miraculously, by cocreating them with the cosmos.

Doesn’t that just tickle your fancy?

Love begins with us. Every day. Every night.

Namaste.