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?”

Please share by posting your comments!

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!

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.

Last night I had a really funny dream about a friend and me.  She was convinced that we just HAD to get tickets to an upcoming RUSH concert, because it might be our last chance to do so.  First, I know I’m an oddity, but I’m not a big fan of concerts.  Second, I’ve never seen Rush in concert, nor have I wanted to.

When I told my friend about the dream, she laughed (via facebook lol ) and shared that maybe the ego gets afraid that we’ll give up rushing.  That really struck me.  If I give up rushing, my ego gets scared!?  How funny is that!?

And, it makes sense to me.  For rushing is always about being somewhere else, and enlightenment is about being right here.  And, the ego, well, it’s not about enlightenment, that’s for sure.

I don’t particularly enjoy rushing. Does anyone?  In fact, I do see it as an impediment in spiritual growth and emotional well-being.  So much so that I’ve given it up for lent on more than one occasion.  (No, I’m not Catholic — I just think Lent’s a pretty cool holiday when householders can adopt a more monastic point of view for a limited period of time and with limited renunciation.  Yes, I know that’s a strange point of view).

Slowing down to the pace of the verb you’re in is one way to stop rushing.  Think about it, what’s the verb you are in, right now?  Reading?  Slow down and breathe as you read.  Take in the words, taste them, smell them be with each word for just a tiny moment.  Fully giving it it’s due.  Breathe again.

What if you were to slow down to the pace of the verbs you are in while you are in them?  Washing dishes…driving…bathing…exercising….just being in the verb you are in.  This kind of mindfulness has the potential to open windows of understanding in your heart and bring you into the preciousness of the present.

Wanna join me there?  I mean here?

I’ve been moving deeper and deeper into my mindfulness practice in the last few years and am finding it to be a rich, sumptuous way of living.  I’m looking forward to sharing this exploration with a small group of women in the south of France.  If you are interested, give me a call or check it out here.

Someone for whom I care deeply has been very very busy for months now and has had little time to devote to our relationship.  At first I took it personally and was very hurt.  I thought it meant that she did not want to spend time with me.  I cleared that out of the way and no longer felt hurt.  I stopped taking it personally.  Then I got mad because I thought she “should” make time, (like time is something you can create out of thin air), because important relationships are important and she was not meeting my expectations of how you honor and maintain important relationships.  I cleared that out of that way.  Then I came to trusting our love and a strong clean feeling of love – pure and easy.  Phew!

photo by Michal Marcol

Having a cleaner vision, with less emotional static, I have been able to interact with her with less tension, more understanding, and a steady confidence in our shared love.  I feel like I’m interacting with Grace, rather than through clouds of pain and disappointment.  Again, PHEW!

Cleaning the windows of the heart requires awareness, diligence, humility, and skillfulness … probably other qualities as well.  Cleaning the windows of the heart is a kind of personal hygiene that many of us neglect or put off.  Yet it is just this type of cleaning that ushers us into interacting with grace.

Most of us brush our teeth everyday.  We get that personal hygiene is solely our responsibility.  Most of us don’t wait for someone else to brush our teeth or even tell us when it needs to be done.  Yet, when it comes to taking care of the various emotional waves and storms that move through our hearts and relationships, there’s hesitation.  There’s denial.  There’s avoidance.  In fact, many of us may differ on what it means to take care of the waves and storms of the heart.

From my perspective, this “taking care of” means first and foremost taking responsibility for.  How we feel, our emotional reactions are ours – we own them.  No one else is responsible.  And in that responsibility lies our power to “take care of.”  When we assume ownership of our emotional experience, when we take responsibility for our emotional experience – we access our response-ability, our ability to respond.

So, if we look at those four qualities – awareness, diligence, humility, and skillfulness – we can see how important each are if we are to clean the windows of the heart.  Washing away the debris of the pain from unmet expectations, for example, is made easier if you are aware of your emotional responses to your life experiences as they are happening.  Diligence means to me that you know that it’s not going to just take one washing to get a clean heart – some pains take some time to make sure that all the streaks are cleaned away.  With humility, there is a kind of willingness to be wrong, to be ‘less than’ your ego’s vision of you.  Well, there’s more I could say about the value of humility.  For the time being, I’ll leave it there.

Now we’re left with skillfulness.  These days, there are numerous skillful means of cleaning the windows of the heart – Z Point, Mindfulness, TAT, EFT, Hypnosis, Self-Talk, —- and so many more.

What do you do to keep the windows of your heart clean?

Stay tuned.  I’m in the process of putting together a couple of recordings to help you clean windows.  If you don’t want to wait, check out my shop for some resources that can help you right now!

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  My apologies.  I’ve been quiet inside myself for a while — I went a on a silent retreat in early March and seemed to have just continued in the silence inside myself.  I treasure these times of silence and didn’t want to push myself to write when really I just felt silent inside.

I find silence to be nourishing to my soul.  It gives me a chance to hear the rumblings beneath the surface of my mind and uncover new insights, places in my life that are calling for my attention as well as helping me to become more present for my life.

This silence doesn’t always mean just an outer silence, but an inner silence — a willingness to be quiet for a while and listen —

In this most recent listening, I found some places in me that were hurting a bit and just needed a little time to be noticed.  I noticed the excitement I’m feeling about a couple of projects I’m working on (Provence Retreat for Women & an audio series, Reclaim Your Life).  And, I found myself delighting in the simple pleasures of life ~ my family, my dog, & my breath free of seasonal allergies

Huxley

If you gave yourself just a bit of inner and outer silence, I wonder might you discover.  What’s calling for attention in your life?  Consider practicing a bit of silence and see what you discover.

Just hear those sleigh bells ringaling . . .

Surely I’m not the only one to realize that here we are in the middle of December and I’ve done nothing, that’s nuh-thing with a capital “NUH.”  The sweet part about this for me is that this doesn’t really bother me.  I consider it to be one of those charming idiosyncrasies about myself that I just embrace.  For some reason, holidays sneak up on me…birthdays, valentine’s day, anniversaries.  You get the picture.

I think that part of this is due to my thinking that the real gifts are the wonderful attributes and qualities that ooze out of the people with whom I share my life.  AND, they’re all the ways that I try to share myself with others in an authentic, transparent way…letting my own lovely qualities shimmer.

It might sound hokey, but it’s true.

From where I play, there are lovely qualities that shine in each one of us.  Some of those treasures might just need a little polishing so we can bring them out for company.  I’m polishing a couple right now myself, patience and persistence.  I never knew polishing virtues could be so much fun.

Last week, a woman shared with me that for the first time, she really got what a tremendous gift she could give her husband by really listening deeply to him, without trying to fix him, without rushing to some new task, without ideas about what he’s REALLY saying…just listening.

So what are the real gifts that you want to give those folks with whom you share your life?

My VA extraordinaire, Terri, suggested that I make a mini-video telling you about my class.  I’ve not made little videos before, but I did it!  Is there something you’ve not done before that you or someone else thought might be beneficial for you to do?

What are you waiting for?  As you can see, this little video’s not perfect, so what?  Join me and try something new!

Better yet, watch the video, share it with friends and sign up for my free tele-class!

A client recently shared that she and her husband had a bit of a row.  And, although she now has a plethora of effective tools at her fingertips to clear and release negative feelings, she just wanted to feel bad for a while.  So she gave herself 5 minutes, “I’m going to be as mad as I want to be for 5 minutes and then I’ll let it go!”

Now, there’s a couple of points I want to make here.  First, recognize that there is a part of all of us who derives a kind of pleasure from the deliciousness of feeling bad (perhaps that’s something that would be worth clearing) AND, we all have the power to let things go . . . if and when we want to do so.

What I love about this is that she indulged that delicious feeling of being mad and then did her work to release the feeling.  The 5 minutes of being mad reminded me of having a small slice of yummy chocolate cake as opposed to sitting down and eating the whole cake.

This whole scenario took no more than 15 minutes.  Within 15 minutes, she restored her state.  She was able to clearly articulate her point of view to her husband and listen to his AND resolve the issue.  That’s not easy to do if you are all wrapped up in the emotional turmoil of feeling bad.  If you are caught up in the “charge” of feeling bad,  it’s pretty tough to authentically and lovingly connect with yourself and others.

Years ago, I started telling people that I thought that nothing was more important than their feeling good.  Recently, I heard an Abraham-Hicks tape where Abraham said the same thing.  I think it might be easy to mis-interpret that statement.  And, I stand by it.

Feeling good re-aligns you and me so we can see and appreciate the beauty in ourselves and others.  From that place of feeling good, you are empowered to flow with the current of LIFE and move in the direction that will support you in creating a fulfilling life.

It’s not as though I’m advocating that you squash those around you so you can feel good.  I’m advocating for each of us to take full responsibility for our own feeling good and learn how to restore our state to a state of feeling good.

If you are interested in learning a practical tool for restoring your state to a state of peace and feeling good, sign up for my FREE tele-class, Make Peace With Where You Are!