I am a big believer in mentors.  Mentors have enriched my life throughout my life.  My first mentor was Dick Olney, the father of Self Acceptance Training.  More recently, I’ve been studying with Zivorad Slavinski, the founder of Spiritual Technology.  Both Dick and Zivorad have deeply influenced me both personally and professionally.  More recently, I’ve found business mentors – two incredible women who are teaching me how to share what I have to share.  As a social worker, I’ve been challenged to find teachers who come at business from a heart-centered/service oriented place – enter Tory Johnson and Michelle Pippin.

When I’ve asked Tory about some project I’m working on, her first question is something along the lines of “what outcome are you going for?”  I love that question.  It refocuses me back to my intention.  It brings me back to beginning with the end in mind.

Well here’s where it gets interesting for me.  A few months back I did a piece of Spiritual Technology work with a friend of mine, Judith Daniel, that Zivorad calls the “Unification of Time.”  One of the many benefits of this piece of work has been that I’ve come more fully into the present with more clarity about the past and future.   At least that’s how I’ve experienced it and what my clients describe. 

This means that though I’ve had a daily meditation practice for the last almost 30 years and have long experienced the benefits of mindfulness meditation, after this work I’ve found myself effortlessly experiencing myself in the present.  For those of you who have read Eckhart Tolle or practice mindfulness meditation, I trust that you can understand what I’m talking about here.  Another of the benefits of this piece of work has been that I’ve found myself being much clearer about my goals in just about every area of life.  Further, this clarity has not come from sitting down and fretting over goals, it’s been more like I’ve become aware of goals from a purer place within, goals that are aligned with me at the deepest level.  Very cool.

Anyway, back to the beginning with the end in mind.  After this work with Judith, I found myself thinking more and more about my death.  If you’ve never contemplated your death, it’s a worthwhile contemplation.  In thinking about my death, I found myself remembering Tory’s question and asked myself, “What kind of death do I want?  And if I want that kind of death, what do I need to do NOW to set the stage for that?”  I’m beginning with the end in mind — with the awareness of my eventual death.   I’m quite certain that when Tory asks me this question, she is not intending that I think about my death, but about what I’m offering in my business.  What’s a contemplative girl to do?

This contemplation has inspired me in numerous ways.  I’m walking more, I’m coming out of the closet with offering more workshops in spiritual technology, even the way I interact seems to be changing — effortlessly.  This contemplation is putting my life in perspective in a different way.  Of course, I’ve always known that I will one day die.  But somehow holding that contemplation has opened up life for me in a new way.  It feels like I’m living more fully, more freely.

It’s like Steve Jobs said, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

How do you stay on track with living more fully and following your heart?

It was a dark night in Memphis.  I was heading to the hotel.  Friendly people on the corner greeted me.  As I turned to respond, I missed the curb and BAM!  In an instant I was on the ground.  My glasses flew off my face and my bag went flying.  Yowee.  Kazowee!

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All is well, just a scrape here and bruise there.  No big deal.  The big deal came later as I sat down to reflect on what happened.  I have fallen in the past, on ski slopes, in the back yard, on stage (during rehearsal, thank goodness) and countless other places.  In fact, I remember my father saying that I could trip over a rose in the carpet.  It seems I was way over due for a little self reflection about this pattern.

A practice of self reflection can help us unearth old tendencies and release patterns of feeling and being.  Moreover, self reflection goes a long way towards cultivating greater self awareness.  Engaging in rigorous and honest self reflection demands both courage and compassion.  For in order to cultivate a life long discipline of self reflection, you need to know that you are not going to beat yourself up every time you find yourself “less than” some ideal image you hold of who and how you should be…so you need self compassion.  And, courage, hooboy do you need courage to be honest with yourself as you reflect!

Can you see how this works?  Because if you are going to be rigorously honest with yourself, you need the courage to face what you find.  And if you are going to willingly address what you find, you need to be compassionate with yourself so that you can face whatever you’ve found with a kind heart.

What I found is an old pattern rooted in a fall I took as a child and the guilt I felt about that fall.  I also found a feeling of fear about my body.  Armed with this knowledge, I was able to dismantle the intrapsychic structures supporting this old tendency using spiritual technology.

Spiritual technology processes are fabulous tools that aid in releasing the tensions that accumulate in life and beyond that, they provide a means of releasing the pain caused by being caught between pairs of opposites.  In this case, it was the duality of confidence and fear along with guilt and freedom that were influencing my behavior and my state.

What might change for you if you approached your self reflection with greater courage and compassion?  Are there pairs of opposites showing up in your life that are contributing to patterns that don’t support your well-being?

I have a cracked flower pot on my front porch.  It’s far from perfect.  Yet, there is some beauty in its imperfection that fills my heart.  It reminds me of the sweet container that is my body.  Less than perfect.

My body at 52 can no longer do all the cool stuff it could do without effort in my twenties, thirties and even forties.  Yet, still it carries me around everyday.  It is a container for my life that sometimes feels like a cracked pot.  It carries old injuries and is the container for current pleasures.  Everyday, without fail, it carries me.

I have mourned the loss of former capacities.  I’ve rid myself of the old expectations of what this body can do, much like pulling old flowers that have long past offered their last blossom.  The last year or so I’ve embraced new ways of being with my body that honor where I am now, rather than where I was.  I’m learning to plant new flowers and pleasures into the container of my life.

Looking at this flowerpot reminds me to love and live where I am rather than where I was and where I might be later.  How do you remember to live where you are?  With what blossoms are you filling the container of your life as it is now?

I’ve been taking a bit of a rest from my normal routines lately.  Sometimes resting looks like “not doing.”  For me lately, resting has looked like resting my routines.  When I do that, I find surprises in life that I hadn’t previously noticed.

For instance, I like to walk in the field behind my house.  I have my routine of walking the field in big circles.  While resting that routine way of walking the field, I wandered around in the field and found all kinds of patches of new spring growth, violets and other un-identifiable wildflowers (at least to my eye).  Even more than that, I found myself in the middle of the field laying on my back watching the sky pass by.  It was magic.  I found a patch of space that called for a picnic, all in my own backyard, all this glory from resting my routine walk.

I’m a big believer in the value of routines.  I think that they give Life a container in which to be.  And, I’m a big believer in resting routines to see what else might show up.  I wonder what kind of magic you might find in your life if you rest your routines a bit.

For many people, the holidays is fraught with stress and disappointment.  For me, the tragic part of this tale is that such disappointment and stress is imminently avoidable.  But here’s the paradox, if you let yourself feel any disappointment without dissolving into it and if you let yourself reflect on the sources of stress, you are more likely to be able to restore yourself to a sense of peace.

However, restoring to peace sometimes means letting go of the fulfillment of unmet expectations — yours and others.  It means discovering what demands you are placing on yourself and evaluating whether and how to let go of these demands.  Are you sensing a common thread here?  Let go.  Really.  Try it.  Right now, take a deep breath and let go.  Let go somewhere in your body.  Let go of the straining to get this done and that done.  In this letting go, you can truly begin finding a path back to your own peace. 

Isn’t that what the holidays are about?  Peace?  Love?  Joy?  Yet, it seems that the need to protect your peace is even greater at the holidays than at any time of year.   This year, make time to protect your peace.  Take a yoga class.  Go for regular walks, just to walk.  Take my mini-retreat class, Yoga of Relationship ~ You & the Holidays.

There are any number of ways you can create a more fulfilling holiday.  If you find yourself dreading the next round of the holidays, take a few minutes and get crystal clear on your intention for the holidays.  What do you want to experience?  If you have that kind of experience, what will that mean to you?  What do you need to change or do in order to create a holiday experience that reflects your intention?

Here’s a call to action for you.  Take five minutes sometime this week and reflect on your intention for the holidays.  Then answer this question, “How will I protect my peace this holiday season?”

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Our lives take place in the context of relationships.  We have relationships with ourselves, with others, with life, with nature, with our work..the list goes on and on.  Relationships can be like a yoga mat that is slung over your shoulders in every moment of life.  It’s so ever-present, you might not even be aware of the presence and impact of your relationships on your overall state.

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I think that relationships are one of the most perfect practice spaces for yoga.  Ultimately, yoga is about releasing the deep tensions held in the body and experiencing union.  The tensions we feel in relationship inhibit that feeling of union, yet the tension itself is easy to release.

The first step seems to be to access awareness of any tensions you are experiencing.  Then, instead of looking outside of yourself for a fix, look inside.  Poke around inside yourself a bit and see if you can find the beliefs, old hurts or future worries that are adding to  your tension.

Then access any number of tools and resources to the release the tension.  A simple one you can begin with a 3 minute breathing space.  Begin by just noticing what you are thinking and feeling, like someone watching a movie.  Just notice, without judging or getting engaged.  Then bring your attention to your breath and take a few easy breaths, noticing the movement of the breath in the body, observing the breath.  After a minute or so with this, allow your attention to expand to include your breath, feelings and thoughts.

In just a few minutes you can release a bit of the tension that might have you in it’s grips.  The three-minute breathing space can be like one pose in yoga, like tadasana, mountain pose.  Your practice strengthens and grounds you.  Opening the way for you to enter the next moment of your life with greater ease.  In this way, you begin to learn and practice the yoga of relationship.  The idea is to use your relationships as a practice mat to release tension and move closer to a feeling of union.

If you find that you don’t really know where the tension is coming from or how to fully release it on your own, that’s where the support of a skilled therapist or coach can help.  Your part is then to show up and receive the support that’s available.  Just as you wouldn’t try to do some of the harder yoga poses without the support of a skilled teacher, there are aspects of relationship tension that call for skilled support.

Do you know?  Do you know how truly remarkable you are?  Or have the challenges of life distorted your view?

I think that in the ups and downs of daily life, many of us just forget how very precious we are and how truly remarkable life is.  We human beings tend to get caught up in the ups and downs and dramas of life.  In this way, it’s easy to get pulled off center and shift out of balance.  That’s where centering practice and self reflection can really serve you.  With centering practice, you really learn what if feels like to be centered and balanced in life.  With self reflection, you learn what has pulled you off center and how to get back, back to center, back to you, remarkable YOU!

A few nights ago, a ferocious storm blew through my neck of the woods.  Funnel clouds were spotted, trees down and rain blowing sideways.  That night, I was to facilitate a women’s group.  This group has met weekly for about ten years.  The intention is to explore how to fully live life from a place of True Being-ness, using peace, love and joy as the markers.  On this stormy night, it was a little touch and go whether or not to meet.  As I looked at the radar and remembered where people were driving, it was clear that our group time fell smack in the middle of  a little window between storms.  We decided to meet.

Sometimes that’s the way life is, we are between storms.  Yes?  Yet, how frequently are you living as if the storms of the past are still raging when the sun is shining, or just a few raindrops remain?  It’s a gift to learn to release the worries of the past and simply greet life in the present.  Even if that present means dealing with the debris from the past.

These days, there are ample resources to support you in learning to live in greater peace, love and joy.  There is support available to help you deal with debris?  Are you accessing your resources?  What are they?  Often, it is valuable to take a few moments to assess where the challenges are that are taking you off center.  I’ve crafted a little survey to help you look at this, it will take less than five minutes to complete.  However, the aim is that in those five minutes you’ll have a clearer picture of what challenges are taking you off center.  Wanna play?  Click here.

I’ve been re-reading a translation of the Shiva Sutras, an text from the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism.  One of the sutras reads, “Nothing exists that is not Shiva.”  Shiva, of course, is another name for all-pervasive consciousness, God, the Great Mystery, Allah, Shiva, The God of 10,000 Names.  This teaching is echoed in Psalm 139 in the Holy Bible, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?  If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”

This God of 10,000 Names seems to have left clues about how to live a life filled with wonder, experiencing the Great Mystery in all that is.  So instead of wasting time dismissing the beliefs and ideas that don’t match our own, what if we all found some common threads and wove those threads into a coat of many colors, a coat that warms our heart and opens us to a greater sense of the wonder of the Divine, right now?  For, isn’t right now all we really have?

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to bring myself back to now is to use my senses.  I’ve found that you can use the details provided your senses to enhance your awareness of God in the present moment.  Simply remind yourself, this thing I see, this scent, this sensation,  this sound, this taste, this, too, is God.  This, too, is God.  This, too, is God.  Our senses can take us to the experience of God or away from the experience of God.  Honoring each thing we touch, each thing we taste, each thing we hear, each thing we smell can bring us ever closer to experiencing the all pervasive consciousness of the Divine.

With this kind of honoring and respect, imagine what kind of colorful coat might we weave together!

Things don’t always unfold as I think they should.  Does that ever happen to you?  Come on, you can tell me.

Long ago, for Lent, I gave up having expectations, not that I’m Catholic or Episcopalian.  I just like the idea of Lent.  (Note to Self, write about Lent, during Lent!)  I found that I was not so successful at completely letting go of expectations, but it sure did make me more aware of the role expectations play in Life.

What brings this to mind is my recent trip to the mountains of North Carolina.  Let’s give a shout out to 75 degree weather!  Anyway, we were staying on the border of the Pisgah National Forest, where I fell in love, again, with trees.

What do trees have to do with expectations?

Expectations, if we hold them too tightly rob us of delight and peace in the unfolding moment.  Whereas, trees, ahhhhh, trees ~ their very existence demands that they be flexible.  The wind blows, they bend,  The snow falls, they bend.  They don’t seem to mind the wind and the snow.

In fact, the wind seems to empty them of their dead branches, revealing even more beauty.  So, they flow with the wind and let go of what is no longer alive.

I think we can learn from trees.

Where might you need to bend a little?

Where might flexibility open the door to delight or peace in the unfolding moment?

What expectation might you be holding on a little too tightly?

How might being a bit more flexible enrich the forest of your life?

Finally, what ideas or beliefs might you release like so many dead branches if you bent with what is, rather than with what you think should be?

I love love love ‘follow my nose days.’  I aim to have a ‘follow my nose days’ at least once a week.  These days were inspired by one of my long time favorite books, “The Secret River” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

These are the days I wander through my life, following my nose.  It feels like finding and re-aligning with the Current of Life moving through me in the present moment—rather than setting out to accomplish a set of prescribed tasks.

Following your nose if the mindful practice of sensing the impulse of Life within, mindfully attending to whatever I’m doing until that impulse leads me elsewhere.  Being while doing.

Humans are a hidden stream whose source is hidden. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

On one recent ‘follow my nose days,’ I felt drawn to unload the dishes, mindfully.  This lead me to cleaning out underneath the sink, mindfully.  This lead me to deep cleaning my laundry room, mindfully.  On any other day, I might have called these activities ‘chores.’  On this day, these activities led me to a state of bliss.  I kid you not.

On other ‘follow my nose days,’ I’ve read, walked, played with the dogs, rolled around on the floor and stretched.  The trick is to do whatever you are doing with complete attention and when you feel drawn to do something else, do that, EVEN if the thing you started is not finished.  There are no rules, no shoulds.

In fact, following your nose frees you ‘should’ and teaches you to release the tension of ‘should’ in each moment.  These are the days I practice living as Brother Lawrence, as if there were no one but Thee and Me in the world.

The perfectly precious gift of following my nose is realigning myself with the Current of Life in me.  The bonus prize is the pure peace that comes from aligning with that Current.

If you can’t take a full day, take a morning or an afternoon.

If you can’t take a morning or an afternoon, take an hour.

If you can’t take an hour, take a half hour.

Follow your nose.  What happens?  What Wisdom flows to you when you are aligned with the Current of Life in you?  Can you sense the Source of your stream?  I’d love to hear your stories.