These are qualities of practice that I alluded to in my last blog. Most spiritual or personal development practices imply “improvement” or at least some kind of movement towards something.

I know that I have swung from trying to “repress” or “avoid” particular negative emotions or actions I have labelled as harmful to myself and others, or problematic at the very least, to indulging in the emotions or actions.

When I repress I tell myself a particular kind of story – how “bad” or “weak” I am, how lost I am or how I just can’t get my act together. I wallow in a critic-fest.

When I indulge I tell myself a different kind of story. I make enemy images of the people I am affecting – how they deserve it, how they brought it upon themselves, how I am acting righteously or justly to bring them to some new awareness. I criticise them.

Both ways are just stories I make up to justify my responses.

Now, however,  I am trying a middle way, one that has 3 processes.

Acknowledging

Now, I try and notice when I am moving towards repression or indulgence. I say hello to this movement, holding myself with a kind of friendliness that one feels with an old, dear friend.

“Oh, hello my dear friend anger. I can sense you arising in my body – I can feel the tension and tightening across the front of my chest and the shortening of my breath. I acknowledge you there just as you are.”

Accompanying

When I say hello to whatever is arising – what comes is a relationship between me and it. For example a relationship between me and anger. I am not anger and it is not me but we are here, in this moment, together. I can sense how it moves through me. I can accompany its arising, its response to my acknowledgement and I, now, can accompany it as it tells me what is up for it. I can listen to it and listen for its deeper needs or the values it thinks it will protect by doing what it is doing. I can accompany it a little way down the road.

Accepting

I can accept that this is how I feel just now and as I journey with it I can notice moment by moment shifts and changes. Accepting doesn’t mean agreeing – it just means –yep, this is how it seems for me just now in this moment. I can accept that I might be experiencing suffering or discomfort. I can accept that it feels strong or overwhelming.

It may seem like accepting will be buying into the story (whichever one is being told) – yet that has not been my experience. I have found that once I accept whatever I am experiencing – no matter how subjective – a new possibility opens up for me. There comes a softening, a letting go, a relaxing of sorts.

And there, in that space I can invite something more.  I might invite some questions:

“Is this true, really true? Can I be absolutely sure that what I am telling myself  is true?”

“What needs or values are needing care in all of this?”

“Is there any other part of me that needs attention too? Is there something more that also needs to tell its story?”

“Is there something happening here that brings up old, unresolved material from my childhood? How can I best take care of myself if this is happening?”

“Can I get a felt sense of this – an image, a metaphor, a word that best captures all of it? Can I stay with this and explore my inner landscape and what it knows, in my body, about the best way forward?”

This process of acknowledging, accompanying and accepting is so helping me to connect more compassionately with myself. I am better able to stay with my present moment experiences and find such richness in them.  I sense they are the first step on a journey to a delightful self-acceptance.

Two days in a row! In my inbox today another email about how to get MAD! So here it is, a blog by Peter Singer, renowned philosopher and ethicist, published in full. Maybe a momentum is building, a new wave of action which leads to connection, equality, peace and real grass roots change.

I wrote, back in February about 2 simple ways to make a difference. What I like about Peter Singer’s blog is he succinctly describes what makes it so hard for us to get going making a difference (I have highlighted them) and then tells us how we can overcome these barriers. After you have read this I invite you to read my old blog (link above) where I showcase two wonderful ways to make a difference and you can go to his site too… gotta love the internet.

The End of Poverty

By Peter Singer on March 11, 2009 – 1:55pm in The Life You Can Save

If you saw a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond, and all you had to do to save the child was wade into the pond, and pull him out, would you do so? When I ask my students that, they all say that they would. What if wading into the pond meant that you would ruin your most expensive pair of shoes? That wouldn’t make any difference, they insist. A pair of shoes doesn’t count when it comes to saving a child’s life.

UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 27,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes. Meanwhile almost a billion people live very comfortable lives. Even in the current economic downturn, they have money to spare for a bewildering array of gadgets and luxuries. If you don’t think you are spending money on luxuries, when did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available for nothing? If it was today, or yesterday, then you are spending money on luxuries while children die from malnutrition or diseases that we know how to prevent or cure. What you spent on that bottle of water was probably more than their families have to live on for an entire day.

I wrote The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty in order to change this. If everyone who can afford to contribute to reducing extreme poverty were to give a modest proportion of their income to effective organizations fighting extreme poverty, the problem could be solved. It wouldn’t take a huge sacrifice. But there are psychological barriers that prevent us doing so. One chapter of the book draws on recent research in the psychology of giving to describe some of these barriers:

•We are much more likely to help an identifiable individual than to donate to help a group of people.

•When others are also able to help, the diffusion of responsibility makes it less likely that we will help, especially if we do not see the others helping.

•We faced with more people in need than we are able to help, we focus on those we can’t help, rather than on those we can help, and conclude that trying to help is futile.

•Money is the obvious means by which most individuals can help those in extreme poverty in other countries, but thinking about money tends to alienate us from others.

How we can use the findings of psychological knowledge to create a culture that is more favourable to giving than our present one. One well-supported finding is that people are more likely to give if they know that others are giving. So we need to be upfront about our giving. Hence I have set up a website where people can pledge that they will meet a standard of giving that I set out in the last chapter of the book. My hope is to build a mutually supportive community of people who give to organizations working against extreme poverty. Each donor will be encouraged by the example of others, and if the community becomes large enough, it’s presence will encourage others who are not giving to join in.

Inbox coincidence? Twice in one day? Articles on Making A Difference in the world. Leadership starting within instead of waiting to be led? Well, its enough of a nudge for me to post the links to these 2 articles about Making A Difference.

Hey, WAKE UP.

You don’t have to make a BIG difference. You just have to choose to make a difference. A small step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction. But the big steps in your mind in the right direction are NOT steps in the right direction. They are just thoughts.

So…read on for some ways you can choose become a MADMAN (Making A Difference Man) or a MADWOMAN (Making A Difference Woman).

Next time someone says “You’re mad!” You can say, “Damn right, I am!! I make a difference. And that is what MAD is!”

Your next step:

How to make a difference in the world by The Change Blog

Many people believe that they don’t have what it takes to make a difference to the world. They believe only people like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and the likes, are capable of making a difference.

The truth is, every one of us is put in this world to contribute and make a difference to the world in our own unique way. It need not be anything out of the world. It just needs to be something you do with the intention of ‘doing good’.

The following is a guide as to how small people like us can make a difference to the world…

Personal to Planetary Transformation

A World That Works for Everyone by Monica Sharma, M.D. Director, Leadership and Capacity Development, at the United Nations, OHRLLS.

The next 50 years will show whether the world as a whole can come together as one, resolving the many seemingly intractable problems we now face. Or will we continue to muddle through, from crisis to crisis, never solving the problems of humankind in a definitive and sustained way? Yesterday, we were engaged in resolving a crisis:  HIV/AIDS. Today, we are focusing on global warming. Tomorrow, we may focus on nuclear waste. What remains constant in this changing world is the power of human wisdom.Never before in history have both opportunity and need been so great. Never before has ‘grow or die’ been more apparent. And never before have the means existed to effect planetary transformation. Indeed, this is the time to pioneer results-oriented designs that can then be applied across the urgent and significant issues of our time. This is the time for mindsets that foster the culture of peace. This is the time for a world that works for everyone…

Alright I can hear you ~ yeah, yeah ~ but what’s she gonna do?

O.K. here’s my commitment (gulp)

I’m am going to organise a team at work to do the Get the World Moving Walk to improve morale and raise money for a worthy cause. Then I will take it to the next level: Sydney to the Gong Bike Ride.

I am committed to starting a Local Compassionate Listening Circle – drop in to be heard or to offer a good hearing. I will find a way to keep it simple so it can grow with ease.

 

Technorati Tags: leadership,power of one,commitment,choices,engagement

I have a spiritual practice. Indeed, grammatically I should write I have a few spiritual practices. Why? Well, I am a pragmatic woman.

I want a practice that is given plenty of opportunity for expression in my daily life. Both through stillness and movement. Through silence and voice.

I want a practice that helps me feel good about myself – not just my mind feeling stroked – one where my body feels good about itself somehow. Both emotionally well and physically well.

I want a practice that can hold my paradoxes – that of wanting to grow and transform and wanting complete acceptance of myself all while “letting go”. A crazy-making fully-accepting, releasing of self through the attention to self.

For me this is a felt process of becoming. By felt I mean that I experience it in my body. The body becomes the bridge to Presence, to the transcendent experience. I don’t write “transcendence” because so far I have experienced fleeting experiences. Wonderful and momentary. I unfold gently and with inner wisdom at my own pace. I sense for what is alive in the here and now. I feel at the edge for needs my attention, what is new, fresh and vital. I learn to trust myself. I learn to watch and be with myself in a caring way. I learn to hold all of me with the same acceptance.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from my paths of practice which help me to stay connected to what really works for me. Mindfulness, Focusing, valuing oneself, transformation and peace. This is what I practice – literally. And practice is not the same as “this is what I do and am good at.” It is simply what I pay attention to and what I teach. Mindfulness and Focusing as a way to find one’s own unique path while joyfully watching everyone walk their own paths.

Buddhism

“There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centred on the body.” Gautama Buddha

Focusing & Spirituality

Experience is a myriad richness.
We think more than we can say.
We feel more than we can think.
We live more than we can feel.
And there is much more still.

“You need to stand again in your own experiencing – in your own felt ongoingness, which is that intricate complexity inside of life – to put into the world what hasn’t been said yet that you are carrying from your particular experiencing” Eugene Gendlin

“A subtle, bodily feeling with vague meanings that brings new, clearer meanings involving a transcendent growth process.” Elfie Hinterkopf

How do I live each day so that a felt consciousness of living in a Presence can grow and deepen right within the experiences of daily life? The habit of felt sensing (Focusing) is a practical, physical way to open my body’s consciousness to the transcendent giftedness of everything, including events that threaten biological life. Living itself can be prayer. Our body itself, which we so identify with mortality, is meant to be our conscious bridge into immortality. It is the body process that creates an experiential faith. The habit of felt sensing gives us the body-feel for how in the practical order we can live connected in this world of gift, no matter what happens to us. Rev. Ed McMahon

You – as a gift to the world

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will never have it. Martha Graham, American dancer and choreographer

Spiritual Transformation

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. J. Krishnamurti

Peace as spiritual practice

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. Unknown

A few weeks ago I did an exercise from Mark Silver’s called “finding your Jewel”. This exercise is about finding out what is your unique gift in this world. In business there are thousands of massage therapists, life coaches bloggers, for example, but what is it about you that will attract particular clients.

Mark believes that  what our heart most deeply yearns, or thirsts for is the very same quality that our clients yearn or thirst for.

So, following his guided mp3 I sensed into what my heart yearns for. What came first were all the qualities that I am told are my strengths and that help my clients; clarity, insight, support, intuition.

Then, inviting still more. Going into the more vulnerable heart-felt space the word acceptance came. I yearn for acceptance; just as I am and just as I unfold and grow in the light of life’s experiences. Then, inviting still more I knew I hit upon a deep inner truth when the word trust came.

At first, my mind says, “Of course you want trust, who doesn’t want trust, how can you live in a world without trust! Obvious!”

Then, more came.  I yearn to trust my own heart. I yearn to trust my own judgement enough to be able to hear how other’s experience life. I yearn to trust my own reactions and emotions. Not to be swept away by them but to sense into what they are trying to tell me and paying attention to that responsively. Now I know when I have touched in to something essentially true for me when a sheen of tears come and my heart turns. TRUST & ACCEPTANCE.

Now, I have been sitting on this post for a few weeks. Not quite sure what comes next and yet sensing its not quite finished either. And today I saw a quote in Davina’s blog Shades of Crimson.

“Heaven and Earth can never meet as long as you hold even one person outside of your heart.” from Devrah Laval, The Magic Doorway into the Divine.

Davina asked herself “When a person can’t even hold themselves in their heart, how could they possibly attract their dreams?”

When a person can’t even hold themselves in their heart, then what?

How many people do you know who can truly hold themselves in their heart? All of themselves? In Davina’s blog her life coach asks why should she be in a lifeboat if her ship is sinking.  This brought Davina closer to the qualities she admires about herself. What about you -would you be able to let of all the parts of yourself  on to the lifeboat? Would you be able to accept all of you and bring them on board? Or would you turn some parts away? Or maybe you might not even notice some parts that need to get on?

And then who would be left on the lifeboat? Would that actually be “you” at all? Or just the you you have been told to be by your culture, your parents, your school teachers, priests, counsellors, and your inner critic to name just the obvious sources of advice and admonition we receive as we grow up. Would you really be “living” if all of you didn’t come on board.

For me, this raises the question what do our shadow parts bring to us as a gift? Do they bring energy, vulnerability, compassion? What is the jewel hidden inside our judgement of them? Why do these parts we shy away from, deny existance know they should be on the lifeboat?

How does it feel to even be considering bringing them all on board – and who is the part that thinks it gets to decide who stays behind and who boards?

When you can’t even hold all of yourself in your heart, then what does that mean for how you live “the all” of your life?

I am hearing so much talk about the how tough times are getting. Underneath all of this talk is a subtle message about reining in our lives: our spending, our expectations, our lifestyles.

However I say NO! Let’s look at this differently. Rather than shrinking we can THRIVE!

No, I’m not advocating new age positive affirmations that will miraculously turn your life around if you say them often enough, loud enough and with great gusto.

Neither am I advocating wildly ignoring the environment around us. We probably will know people who will experience the harsh reality of job displacement or retrenchment, loss of a regular income and the related personal and relationship challenges that come with that.

BUT, what if we perceive 2009 as a year of recalibration rather than recession. This is an opportunity to REVIEW, RECOGNISE, RE-FOCUS, RELEASE, RE-SET & RE-CALIBRATE. We can review the highs and lows of 2008 exploring our journey and the meanings we have made from it. We can recognise where we expend our time and energy and how aligned that is to our what we really want. We can pay attention to what’s working – and what’s no longer serving us. We can re-focus on core essentials and strengths. These essentials give us pleasure, confidence, outcomes, joy and integrity. These are underpinned by our values which become our new focus and motivators.  We can release our blocks to action, our limiting beliefs clearing a way for the new and fresh to enter our lives. We can re-set our compass bearings setting a course which takes us to where we CHOOSE to go. We can consistently re-calibrate by committing to staying focused, paying attention to our daily intentions and actions through self-awareness and keeping an open mind to what needs changing or adjusting.

The biggest variable in how this year goes for you is

WHAT YOU DO!

Personal responsibility and taking action is going to be what makes the difference between a year you can celebrate and a year you may wonder what happened – it just slid by or a year you’d rather forget.

Now, I’m not saying that we, literally, bring everything into our lives by our thoughts. Nonsense. People don’t bring earthquakes, hurricanes, accidents, and the like upon themselves. No!

I am saying the only thing we are in control of  is our intentions, our reactions and being a living expression of our core values.

And by paying attention to these we can choose to have a certain quality of life, our inner life holds our bearings no matter what is going on with our outer-life. We can choose to have a certain quality of relationships  and we can choose to spend more time on the things that make us feel great. If we are doing things that seem unavoidable, like driving the kids to school we have the choice to explore ‘the how of doing that.”  We can choose to recognise the underlying value we are meeting (contributing to the kids well-being & safety for example), and from that place we can find plenty of ways to meet those values (form a group to share the driving, pay a teenager to escort the kids on the school bus, move closer to the school so they can walk etc.)

The bottom line is we only have 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  How do we  spend them? How do you want to spend them?

How are you spending them now? What percentage either brings you joy or meets your values?

Curious about how to thrive not survive in 2009?

1. REVIEW

What was great? Mapping the peaks & valleys of 2008. Find meaning in what happened.

2. RECOGNISE

What are you already saying “yes” to? What are your “yes” opportunities?  What can you say “no” to? Where is your energy being drained or displaced? Where are you expending your time and energy? How much of your time and energy is actually supporting your deepest values and aspirations?

3. RE-FOCUS

What do you want to focus on? Strengthen your strengths through identifying your core values and deepest passions.

4. RELEASE

What do you need to let go of in order to allow the entry of the new? Beliefs? Relationships? Busyness? Habits? Explore and embrace your blocks to transformation. When we listen to ourselves with non-judgmental curiosity what one always finds at the bottom of the barrel is precious life-going-forward energy.

5. RE-SET

Reset your compass bearings for thriving. Making choice-full-conscious decisions for self-care and growth. Once you’ve listened to all the concerns and worries of any specific inner voice then you can begin to listen for what that voice, that part, does want – what it’s passionate about. Experience the sense of wholeness and ease that comes when your joy and passion for living are lined up with the intentions that hold your hopes and dreams.

6. RE-CALIBRATE

Practice a simple technique for consistently checking in with what your body knows about how you are tracking; for me this is Focusing, for you it might be mediation, listening to your inner voice while watching the ocean, surfing, running, dancing. Learn to re-calibrate with sensitivity not reactivity, building your capacity for self-empathy, self-trust and emotional resilience.

Thriving is a choice for life ~ your life.

Urban Monk recently posted a reader discussion question asking “What is spirituality?”. 

Here is my response, coming spontaneously, sensing into my living experience of it without drafting and editing.

For me, spirituality, is a verb not a noun. It is a paradoxical process of becoming. In order to let go we need to embrace. For example, in order to let go of resentment we need to embrace it with a tender, loving care, come to understand it, sense for its point of view, then it lets go of whatever it is holding onto.

My sense of spirituality is that is not just “the path” either. So far,my main pathways have been my Buddhist practice, Byron Katie (for wonderful and eye-opening reality checks)but most of all Focusing. Through Focusing I come into an intimate,caring, observant relationship with my inner landscape. I can process new living experiences and allow old material to unfold and heal without feeling like I am forcing the process. Through Focusing (www.transformative.com.au) I am increasingly in touch with my own inner wisdom and my self-care and self-trust is growing.

That said, I trust there are an unlimited number of paths which lead to the same place. The place where we feel at ease with ourselves, neither enmeshed nor disconnected. Where we see things as they are and not through the singular filters of our mind thereby morphing the world to fit our story and beliefs. The place where our well-being is as important and no more important than anyone else’s. The place where we honour all life and the world in which we live and our body-mind is open and awake, resilient and vulnerable, intuitive and logical, restful and alert, compassionate and wise.

And, “this place” has the quality of flow. We flow and are in the flow. We connect to the flow of life and it flows through us and to us.

Genuine new beginnings emerge from a realignment of ways of looking at the world and a renewal of energy.  We often look for external signs to guide us into a beginning, but our inner attitudes toward life, our renewed self-knowledge and our intuition are really the hallmarks of our new beginnings. 

Staying on course

By relying on our inner voice to tell us where to go in life, we are likely to have more motivation than if we were to depend on the traditional expectations provided to us by others. 

Each day is an opportunity to check the alignment of our new beginning, to bring awareness of what is manifesting in our lives.  If we fail to do this, sooner or later we may inadvertently find ourselves reverting to our old ways of living or wondering how we wandered off course with no real awareness of doing so.

This process of checking-in and micro-adjusting our intentional choices to our our ongoing living experience will  depend on whether or not we can bring the Witness or Observer to bear on our continuing experiencing  and the quality of Presence we bring to our checking-in.
 

Trusting your Inner Voice through Focusing

In Focusing there’s a flow of awareness. What we can sense is how it is now. Yes, that includes the "now" of the past, our memories and the reactions of parts of us to what happened before. And it changes in response to each moment of our living while remaining aligned to our inner truths or essence. 

 
But I hear more than one Voice in there you say. I hear the voice that says do it, the voice that says you should be careful, the voice that says this is the wrong this to do.

We have many voices in us, and they can be in competition to be the one we act on. This can sometimes feel like an argument or even a war inside. These competing voices are often driven by fear, worry, and anxiety — and there can be a strong inner pressure to do what they say – and this can lead to a sense of overwhelm, disappointment or even the paralysis of procrastination because the voices might be advocating different steps or actions. Something just doesn’t feel right and there doesn’t seem to be a sense of ease.  And, of course, this would not be the inner sense of rightness that we talk about in Focusing.

These warring parts are what Barbara McGavin and Ann Weiser-Cornell call "Partial Selves," and they arise from an attempt to resolve a situation of trauma, blockage, or missing-ness. Because they are only  partial, they are not going to be able to bring about the resolution they seek—yet they do need to be listened to. But when I say they need to be listened to, I do not mean that we should act on them!

We need to ground ourselves firmly in Presence or our Inner Witness and listen deeply to what they’re afraid of and what they truly want for us – we need to hear their positive intent and let them know we have heard that is how it is – for them. One by one we listen to each partial self. Their energy eases up when they get heard. This leads to an inner calming that clears the way for the inner sense of rightness to be heard. Just saying hello to each voice-acknowledging their fear, anxiety etc can bring us into a clearer space and from this space we can sense the next right step.

This next step, sensed from a clear space after listening to our inner voices will feel fresh, intuitively supportive and a relief. The body knows the just right micro-adjustment if we listen.

Just 2 more thoughts…

We each need to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance, directly and  fearlessly.

Shakti Gawain

I feel there are two people inside me – me and my intuition. If I go against her, she’ll screw me everytime, and if I follow her we get along quite nicely.

Kim Basinger

I found this sentence inside a blog written by Susan Piver. She was talking to Stephen Mitchell about the difference between positive thinking and wishful thinking.

Susan wrote,

I asked him if, in his lifelong study of the core teachings of all religions, he’d ever come across this idea. I wrote down what he said, because it was so excellent. Here it is:

The teaching of every one of the great sacred texts is that control is an illusion. When you understand that ultimately you are not the doer, you can step back from yourself. That is the only path to serenity.  In other words, letting go of the illusion of control, and realizing that you never had it in the first place, allows you to live in the most dazzlingly intelligent, beautiful, and kind reality that you could ever have imagined—and beyond what you could have imagined.

"All I have to do is relax, to allow the world to dazzle me instead of the other way around."

STOP. STOP READING NOW.

GO BACK AND READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN AND SAY IT OUT LOUD. TAKE SOME TIME TO PAUSE AND ALLOW YOU BODY-HEART-MIND TO PROCESS THAT SENTENCE.

WHEW!!! What a relief.

An underlying, background striving tension just  slips away and long, deep breaths get sucked into my body where the tension used to be. I’m going to make this my modus operandi for a while.

I am Cheshire-cat-curious about what will come!