spiritual healing

Waking Up

Posted on by maswami

The alarm bells are ringing shocking us from our slumber. The light is pouring in upon our eyelids commanding us to action.  The time to awaken has arrived. 

 Many of us have been sleeping for a long time.  We have seemed awake – we have performed our tasks, earned our incomes, gathered with our family and friends – but there has been a piece of our consciousness, an important part, that was not yet activated this lifetime. This consciousness sleep has taken different forms for each of us. For some, this sleep has manifested as a compulsion to escape through drugs, entertainment, food, low-vibration conversations, time with “friends” we are not even sure we enjoy.  For others, it has manifested as continuous victimhood – the delusion that one is powerless or that others have entirely taken one’s power.  It manifests as suffering through situations, jobs, friendships that we know are doing us harm but that we mistakenly believe we have no power over out of fear.

Fear is the biggest delusion, the biggest consciousness sleep. Fear prevents us from owning our authentic selves, from manifesting the life we want, from fighting for our beliefs, from believing that the hopeful, loving vision of the world that resides in our hearts is possible. 

 The time has come to wake up. The time has come to accept ourselves, to embrace our power.  The time has come to be the person we each came here to be.  The time has come to make the change in ourselves and in the world that we most want to see.  The time has come for the old ways to be sloughed off like a ragged piece of clothing that no longer fits us. 

Our true self, our eternal self, out highest self is whispering to our hearts right now telling us, “Now is no longer the time to sleep. Now is the time to BE fully, to LOVE fully, to DREAM fully with our whole heart, our whole Self.” Now is the time for each of us to be the alarm clock. For each of us to sound our wake up cry to others. For each of us to shine our inner light out as brightly as we can so that we can reach other, awaken each other, activate each other’s souls. The time has come.  We are being awakened.  

Accepting conflict 

Posted on by maswami

It can be vey difficult for some of us to live with conflict.  Our anxiety and fear yearns for all relationships, decisions and problems to be solved, as if life were simply a series of dangling knots to tie off and move on from. 

But life is not this. It is ever changing. It shifts. It runs up against itself. It encounters friction. It smashes against itself. It creates and it destroys. 

We experience conflict whenever our external life is not a match with our internal life. We experience conflict in our relationships when others don’t feel or act or behave as we think they should or when their actions or feelings create pain that we want to stop.  Some of us fall into frequent conflict with life because we expect the world around us to solve our problems and we do not realize that we are simply seeking outside of ourselves what we need to look for within. 

But all of this conflict serves a purpose. It creates change, self-reflection, examination of ourselves and the world around us.  While we may not feel we always have perfect harmony in our relationships, that is alright. We can seek a greater harmony – acceptance of the world and our lives as it is today with all of it’s apparent unfinished business, dangling ropes, and knotty confusions.  

We don’t have to be Pollyanna about it.  We don’t have to always like it and we certainly don’t have to invite in unnecessary conflict by repeatedly insisting on our way or setting ourselves up as victims. But we can accept it and even see the beauty in it. Afterall, it is the conflicts creatures have with their environments that cause them to evolve and grow stronger and more in harmony with their environment over time.  

We are all evolving.  We are all coming into greater harmony. Even if you don’t feel like we are after watching te news or arguing with a friend, the truth is we are.  Be patient. Trust. Enjoy.  It is happening. Right now. Seek that greater peace. 

Giving up 

Posted on by maswami

Sometimes we want to give up. We want to run away. We want to hide. It’s too hard. We’re too tired. We hurt too much.  We are full and we don’t want to risk anymore hurt or disappointment.

Sometimes giving up is a form of intuition. Sometimes it is relinquishing control over something we never had control over in the first place.  For example, the person who pushes so hard to  achieve something only to realize along the way that it isn’t what they fully desire.  Giving up delusions, control, expectations and judgments can be freeing.

But there’s another kind of giving up. It happens when we are just too full of feelings.  When we are exhausted. This kind of giving up shows up as despair. We feel we can not go on. We feel trapped. We feel desperate.

When this kind of giving up shows up, we have the option of letting it take up as space in our lives. Instead of entirely giving up, why not give up for an hour.  Give up trying to force yourself forward and take a break from life.  Sit quietly outside, lay down for a few minutes in your bed. Turn off all distractions and just be receptive to healing energy.  

You may find your amazed by the shift that takes place.  You may have to have a big cry.  You may need to visualize your being flooding with white light.  You may need to simply let go of doing and switch to being and receiving.  You may simply have a lot inside you that needs to release and shift.  After giving giving up some space, you may find you don’t  want to give up at all.  You may find you are more supported, more capable of healing and recharging than you ever ever knew.  

Working at our own pace

Posted on by maswami

We are given so many “shoulds” in life. Not only what we should be doing and how we should be feeling, but how fast and in what ways we ought to be going about it. 

We worry that we aren’t doing what we are supposed to. We worry that we are taking too long. We worry that we started late and are never going to finish.  We worry that we are too slow. We mistakenly believe there is a race and that we are losing.

In truth, we are just moving at our own speed, in our own way.  

It is a common misbelief that others have it figured out when we don’t, that others are more together and productive than we are, that others have “the secret”. 

But this isn’t true. We have each been given what we need for our own lives, for our own paths. It does not matter what another does or what another thinks we should do or how fast another thinks we should do it.  

What does matter is that we are listening to ourselves, that we are taking care of ourselves, that we are valuing ourselves. And part of valuing ourselves is accepting that we all have our individual way and style of doing things.  

Some of us may prefer to move very gently, taking small baby steps toward our goals. Others may prefer giant, daring leaps.  Others may not be sure what their goals are.  Still others may simply know that they resent the pace of their current life and find it too stressful.  Others may be burnt out, angry, short-tempered and completely unaware that the problem is that they have unconsciously cultivated a life  that is too stressful with too fast of a pace for them.  Still others may be stirring up drama and trouble out of boredom because they are not putting enough energy in the directions that could truly create satisfaction for them.  

Everyone is in their own place, moving through life at their own pace.  We get to figure out for ourselves what our pace is.  We get to put our intention toward manifesting a life that moves at our ideal pace. 

But only if we are willing to take the risk of believing that we are important as individuals, that we have value even if we don’t meet others expectations, that our needs matter. 

So listen to your heart and your body today and think about the pace that feels right for you. 

When we start a meditation practice 

Posted on by maswami

When we start a meditation practice it is like the beginning of any new relationship – there is trepidation, anxiety, excitement, impatience. There is trying too hard and giving up. There is confusion and frustration. 

There is also that thin slice of space that is cracked open inside of us when we sit for just our first practice. Amidst the noise of thoughts and the quiet boredom of self-consciousness, there is that first moment of connection – that first shaft of light that  we open ourselves to, illuminating and elevating our quiet inner self to something so much more – a personal connection with the entirety of the universe.  

The more we sit and ask that light to brighten, to widen and saturate us, the more it will, until the experiences that initially were awkward become exquisite. The more we show up to this relationship over time, the more it deepens, the more natural it becomes, the more multi-faceted. 

The way to begin is simple, but profound – set the intention to create a wonderful, gratifying meditation practice. Sit with this intention for a moment or two and let it fill your being. Then trust that it will happen. Find a comfortable space and begin. Bring a sweater or jacket in case you get cold. Temperature changes are normal.  If you feel antsy focus on your breath. You can also find guided meditations on YouTube if that’s a more comfortable way to begin. 

Sit and trust that the intention you have set will be created over time. You can start with five minutes. When you are finished, stay relaxed for a few moments and note how you feel.  The tiny subtle seeds of loving calm you may just barely notice sprouting, will grow over time. 

With any spiritual practice, we never lose what we gain from it. Even if we step away for a time we can always step back in and we will still retain what we have created already.

But to create anything, we must begin.  Even if we are nervous. Even if we are scared.  Even if we are bored.  We can close our eyes and simply by sitting with the intention of doing so, we can crack open the light and begin to see. 

What do we see? That the divine is blissful, ever-present, peaceful, and readily available to assist in many forms.  That we are a part of this eternal. That we have the capacity for generating more freedom and healing than we ever realized. As we sit and ask for our true nature to be revealed, over time we find that beneath all of the noise of desire and confusion, we are already cared for, we are already magnificent. We see that we are part of a miracle and that miracles are happening all around us.  We encounter the always loving nature of the divine and realize the existence of other divine beings in spirit form who want to guide and help us.  

All of this is possible, but only if we begin, and the only thing we need to begin is our belief in the possibility of bliss, of divine assistance, of freedom, of healing release.

Momentum

Posted on by maswami

Many of us learned Newton’s First Law in school: “an object in motion stays in motion; an object at rest remains at rest…unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

Newton is talking about objects or matter, but quantum physics is already beginning to understand what ancient yogic practitioners realized through direct meditative contact with the divine ages ago: everything is energy; matter is simply a dense form of energy.

Simply put, the things we are doing, thinking, the ways we are behaving and moving, we will continue doing. The things we are not doing, we will continue not doing. 

Unless they are acted upon by an unbalanced force. The word unbalanced can be confusing. The meaning is simply that a force has to be introduced to stop or start the momentum. 

Many of us do the same things over and over again, hoping for a different result and only finding the same old disappointment and pain. Many of us long to stop channeling energy into destructive patterns and to instead create constructive, mind-body-soul nourishing patterns, but we are afraid we can’t or that we don’t know how and we fear that to learn would be embarrassing or impossible. 

In yogic texts, the sages talk about samskaras. These are patterns of energy that we repeat whether they are ways we move within our physical body or ways we interact with others. The pain a samskara creates could be experienced in the body, mind, or spirit or likely, some combination of all three. 

A deep samskara can be visualized as a long trench in the ground. Because it has been so deeply carved out, it is much easier to continue walking in that same trench.  It takes effort to turn in a new direction and carve out a new pattern.

The first step is to recognize that change does take effort, that it is indeed difficult. The deeper the samskara, the more difficult change will be. So in recognizing that, we invite compassion and patience into our relationship with ourselves and others. 

The second step is to accept that the divine wants to help us with this.  Letting go of our samskaras (or the energetic patterns or habits that don’t serve us) is part of why we incarnated to this life in the first place. We are here to experience, learn and grow and when that serves our highest vibration and the highest vibration of the world, the divine steps in to help us. This could be in the form of intuition, coincidence, a book, advice from a professional, advice from a stranger, etc. 

if we want change, we can seek it, no matter how afraid or difficult it may seem.  We can lean on the divine in all its forms for help.  We can pray or ask for guidance with our next steps and then listen through meditation and through the responses of the world around us and we will be guided one step at a time as to how to proceed.

Some samskaras are very deep and daunting and take multiple lives to work through.  This is okay, don’t worry about the results. Just put your feet on the path and simply by stepping onto it, you create the momentum that can move you forward.  

Seek and ye will find. Knock and the door will open.