Tag Archives: Meditation

MYSTICAL MUSIC FROM SPIRIT

Sunday morning I awoke with the words of a James Taylor song ringing in my head.  “Just shower the people you love with love/Show them the way that you feel/Things are gonna work out fine if you only will….”

Listening For Spiritual Answers

This happens fairly often.  It has probably been happening all my life, but it was only a few years ago that I realized I needed to pay attention to it.  At a spiritual retreat on how to create the life you want, the facilitator told us to notice what song was in our heads when we awakened the next morning.  I don’t remember what song I heard, but it was one that spoke to me.

Sometimes the song in my head is one that I recently sang at a gathering, but sometimes it’s one I haven’t heard for a long time.   Either way it always answers a question that has been gnawing at me.  Regardless of the question, the advice given in Sunday’s song was good advice.  In this case, some anxiety about a couple of people had surfaced, but so slightly that I had not turned inward to ask for guidance.  Despite that, the answer arrived before the question.

I also occasionally hear an answer before I finish asking the question.  Before I noticed this happening and started paying more attention to my inner life, I probably missed many answers. I was negligent about taking the time to listen to my inner guidance.  I was told many times by spiritual counselors or by my own guides that I wasn’t listening.  As I became more aware and consciously tried to slow down, I occasionally asked my inner guidance, “Guides, am I listening better?”  For much too long, the answer was usually “no!”

Staying Connected With Our Inner Life

Functioning in the world at a job or just dealing with daily chores like changing the oil in the car, cooking supper for the family, or taking care of health issues can easily consume our energy and fill our minds.  But what I’ve realized is that I get messages all day to slow down.  When I drop three things in a row, start tripping over furniture or spill a glass of water, perhaps I need to slow down.

When these things start happening, they usually continue until I do stop.  For example, I use two water filters that sit one on top of the other so that I get a result similar to remote osmosis.  One day just before I was expecting a house full of people, I hurriedly filled the top one and quickly placed it on top of the other.  As I rushed from the room to do the next task, a crash and the sound of water flooding the kitchen stopped me.  The top filter had slipped off and fallen to the floor.  Luckily my friend and her husband had arrived early and helped me stem the deluge and mop the floor before other guests arrived.

Being in the Moment

It all comes back to being in the moment.  Only then are we really conscious so that our energy flows in a way that allows us to easily direct it to the task at hand and to open that space where we can actually hear our inner voice advising us.  And sometimes that inner voice may reach us singing in that holy moment each morning just before we realize we’re conscious and our mind presents us with its list of things to do.

I love that moment and always try to sing along.  It’s always good to start the day with a little mystic music, even if you have to make it up.

© 2011 Georganne Spruce

How do you stay in the moment?

Related Readings: Expand Into the Place of Inspired Mind

How Meditation May Change the Mind

BEING THE RIGHT ONE, Part 3, Meditation

Using Meditation to Find Your Inner Self

In order to be “the right one”, rather than looking for completion outside ourselves, we must be in touch with our inner selves.  However, during most of the day, our focus is on the outer, the daily routine of our lives, and our minds are concerned with working, solving problems, shopping and running errands.  The chaos and noise of the outer world and our active minds distract us from being in touch with our inner selves. 

Over the years, I have learned to integrate my spiritual and material lives so that, for the most part, I am at least marginally in touch with my center most of the time.  As problems arise, I stop and turn inward for a moment, observe and evaluate my options.  It has taken many years to reach this point and the practice that has made this possible is meditation.  Years ago when most of my friends practiced Transcendental Meditation, I was drawn to Buddhism and began the sitting practice of zazen.  Now I’ve created my own version of a meditative practice.  It doesn’t matter what form of meditation we use.  Any form will put us more in touch with our spiritual selves.

Meditation Takes Us Beyond Ego

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of meditation is that it takes us beyond our egos.  When we are caught up in the turmoil or pressure of everyday life, our egos are often fully engaged.  We are concerned with how we do our jobs or who will get the promotion or be laid off.  Parents worry about their skills as parents.  Are they doing the right thing about their children’s problems?  Why is this friend or partner being distant?  Don’t they like us anymore?  Did we do something wrong?

As Eckhart Tolle points out in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, “…almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain, which I call ‘the pain-body.” (p. 140) He goes on to explain how negative emotions feed the pain-body and make the ego more powerful.  The only way to combat this is to be present so our egos don’t control us.  With regular meditative practice, we can be present, an observer in our own lives, operating from our peaceful center and unobstructed by the needs of the ego.

 Meditation Supports Spiritual Awakening

Meditation takes us to a place deeper than ego where we are able to release our attachments to the concerns of the day and our emotional pain.  This place is sweetly quiet, a place empty of conflict where we learn to observe our thoughts and emotions and release them without judging or attaching to them.  In this holy place within, we become an empty vessel and create a space where Spirit can visit and provide us with deeper insights.  In this peaceful place, all is well and joy flourishes.

Once we are able to find this peaceful center and commit to experiencing it on a regular basis, the inner balance this creates spills over into our daily lives.  We learn to identify those moments when we are about to turn an incident into a major drama and are able to choose not to.  We notice that we are being caught up in the fear that something negative might happen, and we choose instead to envision the event turning out positively.  Instead of panicking because we don’t know how to solve a problem, we are able to sit quietly and wait for the mind to clear.   

Knowing we can choose to experience our challenges with a positive or neutral attitude gives us more power over our lives.  Knowing we have a center that is peaceful and connects us with the Infinite Mind gives us a beautiful security.  In this place of inner joy, we are healthy, whole, and complete.  Having access to our inner selves, we know we will always have the capacity to be “the right one” in our own lives.         © 2011 Georganne Spruce

TOSS AWAY THE OLD MAP

Last weekend, I spent a wonderful day at a spiritual retreat on reconciliation, facilitated by Laura Collins, www.livingrituals.com. We began with a meditation, and slowly, peace descended, caressing and embracing me. I began to let go of the tension and squirming in my chair to find just the right balance so I wouldn’t put pressure on the nerve that had been creating some pain. As I relaxed, I became excited about having a whole day to look inward – a kind of date with Spirit.

One room was designed with tables as stations for different areas of reconciliation: Self, Spirit, Community, Family and Earth. At the first table, I read a poem by Joyce Rupp, and one line resonated as a theme throughout the day: “Toss away the old map.” I slowly and repeatedly allowed that thought to move through my consciousness.

I realized that the present chaos in my life exists because I have stopped following the old map for my journey, and I have realized that part of the map no longer describes the existing terrain of my life. I am in the process of creating the life I’ve always desired, being a writer, but in the last few years, the world of publishing has changed. In order to succeed in it, I must dive into technology in a way I would prefer not to do. The old map of paper books, paper letters, paper queries is rapidly becoming extinct and I grieve the lost. But as I explore the new possibilities, I can see more opportunities for writers because of the expansive nature of the Internet and the networks created through social media. It is just that, for a non-technological person, the learning curve seems enormous.

So, as I moved through this day of meditation, reflection and quiet, I released more anxiety and let the layers of protection drop away. As each layer opened to the next, I began to ask “Am I being the person I want to be?” As I thought of my personal life, tears of sadness, assured me I was not. Where was the core of peace and love I valued? The emotional turmoil of the last few months flashed across my mind. Although I have been following a new map to develop my writing and to promote it, I have been plodding down a worn muddy path in my personal life, hanging onto anger and disappointment about a loss there, weighing down the joy that often tries to surface.

During the retreat, I wrote in my journal, felt the sun pour through the window and sank deeper into the silence, reminding myself that I did not have to do anything. I wandered to a table and began leafing through a tiny book written by Pema Chodron. Stopping on one page, I read, “What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us we’re stuck.” Ah ha! The mountain of sadness and hurt I have been unable to conquer in the last few months is showing me the rocky terrain where I’m stuck. I cannot reach the summit with this old map. I have to let it go and design a new map for my journey, one that traces another path to the summit that is smooth and sweet with honeysuckle.

As the vision of this new map formed in my mind, I was filled with the loving warmth and peace of the Divine Mother and assured that the new map for my soul’s journey, as well as for my work, was unfolding before me. I sat in the silence, hands open to receive it.        © 2011 Georganne Spruce