Today is day 30 of my 60 Days of Faith. Yay! I made it to the half way mark. Consistency feels good. The value in doing this every day is that I'm to the point when I sit down that I think, "I've done this every day, what else could I possibly have to say about it?" Then, just like when I set out on a long walk, the steps get easier and my heart speaks out as I deepen into it.
This summer I am watching my work with the breathing circles unfold. Every time I put effort into stepping more into my faith and my passion -- and I love the breathing circles -- my faith expands and my work expands. It's not only about teaching others the work with the breath and with moving energy through their bodies. It is also about understanding my own, about recognizing negative and positive energies in my body, understanding what reactions cause them, and choosing which reactions to engage with. Understanding these subtleties leads to a better understanding of how different actions and reactions (a.k.a. karma) are going to make me feel. I like feeling good, joyful, powerful, and worthy so I'm training myself to listen to my body first instead of my mind. My mind will say, "your body's fine, it's just being a little lazy today." While my body is saying, "I need rest. I'm filled with stress and anxiety. I need some down time."
It's a tall order. Understanding this process a little bit every day is what I love. The fact that all of this information begins with the seed of feeling my own breath in my body through a simple breathing meditation is the beauty.
Faith is very much a part of this as we are conditioned to feel fear and anxiety and to expect the worst. Faith has us do just the opposite. It's not about being shiny happy people all the time, it's about seeing the darkness as a temporary state and moving beyond it...at least today.
Showing posts with label consistency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consistency. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 14
Saturday, June 20
Moving Mountains Day #6
It worked! I intuited and rejuvenated myself after a long day yesterday.
Here's how I did it:
When I went to bed at mid-night I said, "Six hours is all I need. I'm going to wake up at 6:25 AM and be ready for my day. I went through every step of my morning and planned out what I would need to do to be ready for my workshop today which started at 10:00 AM. The more details I included in my plan, the more precise I focused my energy, the more precise was the outcome. I felt aware, focused, and energized throughout the day.
Conclusion, having faith requires an investment. The more I opened to and believed in my power of rejuvenation, the more rejuvenated I felt. The more I focused on the details of the workshop, the more smoothly it ran. Awareness, just bringing your awareness to it is all it takes to make it happen. And then to ask. Ask for rejuvenation. That is enough to make it happen. Ask a tree, ask a star, it doesn't matter. Deep down in the heart of it all - a tree, a star, us -- it's all the same.
Focus, discipline, and awareness put the wheels of faith in motion for me this weekend. Discipline has always been such a bad word to me. Right along with the "C" word - consistency. Consistency and discipline are my new friends in the playground of life. With them I am gaining a stronger sense of self and greater confidence in my abilities and possibilities.
Here's how I did it:
When I went to bed at mid-night I said, "Six hours is all I need. I'm going to wake up at 6:25 AM and be ready for my day. I went through every step of my morning and planned out what I would need to do to be ready for my workshop today which started at 10:00 AM. The more details I included in my plan, the more precise I focused my energy, the more precise was the outcome. I felt aware, focused, and energized throughout the day.
Conclusion, having faith requires an investment. The more I opened to and believed in my power of rejuvenation, the more rejuvenated I felt. The more I focused on the details of the workshop, the more smoothly it ran. Awareness, just bringing your awareness to it is all it takes to make it happen. And then to ask. Ask for rejuvenation. That is enough to make it happen. Ask a tree, ask a star, it doesn't matter. Deep down in the heart of it all - a tree, a star, us -- it's all the same.
Focus, discipline, and awareness put the wheels of faith in motion for me this weekend. Discipline has always been such a bad word to me. Right along with the "C" word - consistency. Consistency and discipline are my new friends in the playground of life. With them I am gaining a stronger sense of self and greater confidence in my abilities and possibilities.
Monday, June 15
Moving Mountains Day #1
What is faith? What does it look like, smell like, FEEL like? These are among the questions I will be exploring as I, Jungle Jane, slide out of repose for a time and put my archaeology hat on to excavate the concept of faith.
Everyday faith presents herself to me as an opportunity to trust in a higher guidance. For sixty days I will report on instances of trusting faith and the miracles that ensued. These stories may be about a direct experience I have. They also can be instances of the faith of others that affected me in a way that strengthened my faith. These stories will weave together on my journey and I have faith that they will strengthen my picture of what faith means to me. Also, doing something for 60 days in a row will be a challenge to my consistency and my self confidence.
When considering my faith there are three distinct periods of my life. The first one began at birth and ended around the time I was five years old. I have faint remembrances of seeing light and energy around people, maybe their auras. I had heightened senses of smell and taste. I had a strong sense of intuition and acted on it immediately without forethought. The second period, before cancer (BC), lasted from six years old to age twenty eight when I got cancer. From six years into my twenties, I grew increasingly skeptical, fearful, and insecure until it culminated in the biggest fear of all, getting cancer. The seeds of change occurred at age twenty six, when I met Jimmy and had to face the truth about love -- that it existed, that it could happen to total strangers, and that I desired to experience the feeling of open-hearted love for the rest of my life. After cancer, I began to search for a deeper meaning in my life, to question my own skepticism. I knew deep down -- even though I was not yet aware of it in my consciousness -- that my battle was not with cancer but with the incipient fear and lack of faith with which I carried myself.
My report about faith on this day, DAY #1 of my journey, is in my prayers the night I found out I had cancer. I have never felt so scared and isolated as that first night I lay in bed in complete darkness knowing that cancerous cells inside my body were replicating themselves. I became very aware that I could not blame anyone for my cancer. If it had been a car wreck I could blame the other driver, a broken ankle I could blame the uneven pavement. I had no one to blame. I felt empty. I could hear my mother's voice saying to me as an angry teenager, "Oh ye of little faith."
I didn't believe that the HPV virus caused my cancer either. That logic did not hold up for me because there were so many people with HPV that did not get cervical cancer, that had unprotected sex and went on to carry healthy babies to term. During this time I focused particularly on Courtney Love. She was the premier voice of the loud mouthed bitchy sexually promiscuous drug addict yet she did not get cancer AND she had a child. If logistical research was behind who got cancer and who didn't, I reasoned, she would get it and not me.
Everyday faith presents herself to me as an opportunity to trust in a higher guidance. For sixty days I will report on instances of trusting faith and the miracles that ensued. These stories may be about a direct experience I have. They also can be instances of the faith of others that affected me in a way that strengthened my faith. These stories will weave together on my journey and I have faith that they will strengthen my picture of what faith means to me. Also, doing something for 60 days in a row will be a challenge to my consistency and my self confidence.
When considering my faith there are three distinct periods of my life. The first one began at birth and ended around the time I was five years old. I have faint remembrances of seeing light and energy around people, maybe their auras. I had heightened senses of smell and taste. I had a strong sense of intuition and acted on it immediately without forethought. The second period, before cancer (BC), lasted from six years old to age twenty eight when I got cancer. From six years into my twenties, I grew increasingly skeptical, fearful, and insecure until it culminated in the biggest fear of all, getting cancer. The seeds of change occurred at age twenty six, when I met Jimmy and had to face the truth about love -- that it existed, that it could happen to total strangers, and that I desired to experience the feeling of open-hearted love for the rest of my life. After cancer, I began to search for a deeper meaning in my life, to question my own skepticism. I knew deep down -- even though I was not yet aware of it in my consciousness -- that my battle was not with cancer but with the incipient fear and lack of faith with which I carried myself.
My report about faith on this day, DAY #1 of my journey, is in my prayers the night I found out I had cancer. I have never felt so scared and isolated as that first night I lay in bed in complete darkness knowing that cancerous cells inside my body were replicating themselves. I became very aware that I could not blame anyone for my cancer. If it had been a car wreck I could blame the other driver, a broken ankle I could blame the uneven pavement. I had no one to blame. I felt empty. I could hear my mother's voice saying to me as an angry teenager, "Oh ye of little faith."
I didn't believe that the HPV virus caused my cancer either. That logic did not hold up for me because there were so many people with HPV that did not get cervical cancer, that had unprotected sex and went on to carry healthy babies to term. During this time I focused particularly on Courtney Love. She was the premier voice of the loud mouthed bitchy sexually promiscuous drug addict yet she did not get cancer AND she had a child. If logistical research was behind who got cancer and who didn't, I reasoned, she would get it and not me.
That night I prayed to overcome the fear that swelled in my body. If it was my time to die, I prayed, to make peace with that. If it was my time to live I prayed for a way to strengthen my belief in a higher source of power. Praying felt silly, it felt forced and self-conscious. It also felt empowering, as if my prayers weaved a blanket that swaddled me to sleep.
Eleven years later my faith has brought me to a place where I have enough perspective on my fears and skepticisms to write about them and share them with others. In archaeology, excavation requires endless hours digging and screening the dirt, and filling out paper work. There are tools -- shovels, trowels, dental picks, maps, and compasses. The more I think about it, yes, archeology is about faith. Moving mountains -- whether dirt, doubt, or fear, happens one shovel load at a time.
Thursday, June 11
Grains of Sand
There's a feeling of consistency and security here. The Texas beach at Matagorda is my oldest home. It's the one place, this same spot on the beach, I've been coming my whole life, from a time I was younger than Ruby Jane at 5 years old, is now. Before my grandfather built this beach house, we stayed at the octagon 1970s condos next door. Before that we stayed in the town 30 minutes away at a Best Western and drove my grandparent's Suburban to the beach every morning and stayed all day. They parked at a spot that is directly over the dunes in front of the place where our house sits now.
Memories, wonderful memories, come to shore with the waves. Memories of playing in the surf all day, of building sand castles and picking up a never-ending abundance of shells. Memories of a time before I knew the clock.
Today numerous pelicans and roseate spoonbills grace the flightpath over the dunes. I make sand castles with my daughter who is just now beginning to have a concept of time. The beauty of nature unfolds around us in a clear and simple way.
There is one thing about Texas beaches that continues to baffle me, it is that cars and trucks drive on the beach. A couple of years ago the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) built a welcome center for the birders that come here. Matagorda Island is known for its birding. The LCRA partook in a little community planning, reconfiguring the roads around our small subdivision of 7 or so beach houses. Their original intention was to close a small portion of the beach to drivers and create a car-free zone for birders. This lovely idea never happened so the cars continue to cruise the entire beach. In Texas it seems that the right to drive on the beach is right up there with a right to bear arms, so I wrote a little poem last year that I will now share:
CARS ON THE BEACH
Rubber tires were not meant for this
Four round black weapons
At the base of two tons of steel
Breaking the fine bones
Of mollusks and crustaceans
Assaulting tiny grains of sand
As they tread
Trash piles up
Outside my house
Despite the signs, the
Litter recepticals
Empy bottles
A half eaten flip flop
Cigarette butts
Aerosol Cans
A Can of Spam
Hot sticky
Sun marries water
At high noon
Sticky hot
In a diaphanous cloud
Of humidity and humility
Laughter
Overdubs seventies rock
And I watch
Shaded by the leaf of
A giant
Rubber
Tree
Memories, wonderful memories, come to shore with the waves. Memories of playing in the surf all day, of building sand castles and picking up a never-ending abundance of shells. Memories of a time before I knew the clock.
Today numerous pelicans and roseate spoonbills grace the flightpath over the dunes. I make sand castles with my daughter who is just now beginning to have a concept of time. The beauty of nature unfolds around us in a clear and simple way.
There is one thing about Texas beaches that continues to baffle me, it is that cars and trucks drive on the beach. A couple of years ago the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) built a welcome center for the birders that come here. Matagorda Island is known for its birding. The LCRA partook in a little community planning, reconfiguring the roads around our small subdivision of 7 or so beach houses. Their original intention was to close a small portion of the beach to drivers and create a car-free zone for birders. This lovely idea never happened so the cars continue to cruise the entire beach. In Texas it seems that the right to drive on the beach is right up there with a right to bear arms, so I wrote a little poem last year that I will now share:
CARS ON THE BEACH
Rubber tires were not meant for this
Four round black weapons
At the base of two tons of steel
Breaking the fine bones
Of mollusks and crustaceans
Assaulting tiny grains of sand
As they tread
Trash piles up
Outside my house
Despite the signs, the
Litter recepticals
Empy bottles
A half eaten flip flop
Cigarette butts
Aerosol Cans
A Can of Spam
Hot sticky
Sun marries water
At high noon
Sticky hot
In a diaphanous cloud
Of humidity and humility
Laughter
Overdubs seventies rock
And I watch
Shaded by the leaf of
A giant
Rubber
Tree
Monday, May 25
Awakening with Confidence
It's a beautiful New Mexico morning. Morning Star Venus woke me up this morning, no really, she shined so bright in my window this morning that I had to open my eyes to see what light burst into the room. I awoke to a midnight blue sky fading into early morning. When I walked outside the birds, wow, loud and strong, so many different voices. I kept walking. Soaking up their vibrancy for life at such a young hour of the day.
The momma raven is so busy this weekend. She flies into the tree and out of the tree and skims by the window on her way. She is teaching me tenacity and the truth and focus of being a mother. Of doing your job with fire and strength. Of exchanging love and focus with the work at hand. Her work with her chicks this spring is almost done. If you look high up in the pinon tree you can see them, three, maybe four, flapping their wings, gathering the confidence to take flight.
Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. The word itself connotes flying high, strength, truth, not looking back in a way that will take you into a downward spiral. Julie Andrews just popped into my head -- the song she sings in "The Sound of Music," as she carries her guitar down a tree lined lane walking with her head up high, swinging her guitar -- convincing herself at every step that she is worth it that she can handle the job at hand that she has been called to do. This image helps me to see that confidence is not something that can be planned out in the brain. You cannot convince yourself that you are confident. It's got to come through in choices and actions, and as my friend Scott just pointed out, being consistent with them. There's a moment in the movie when J.A. gets to wrought iron gate and sees the mansion and the music stops. For a moment she gasps out of fear, out of the task at hand, whatever it is, it takes her out of the moment. As soon as she starts singing again, "I have confidence..." she slowly pulls herself back enough into the present to remember that to experience the confidence she must move through the gate.
Movement, flow, water, that's what it takes to build confidence. I mention water because it is the world of emotion. If emotions are stuck and are holding us back, you know the really yummy ones? I do. Fear. Lack of confidence.Blah.Blah.Blah. The list goes on and on, confidence will be placed in the bin of procrastination. At this point exchange becomes very important. Replace the negative thoughts with love, humor, laughter, joy, the list goes on. The more I practice exchange in this way the more beautiful, expansive words come up. The more I realize that my thoughts are my choices and I strengthen with every exchange, through love, that part of my mind that has to figure everything out. Exchange. Exchange. Exchange.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking that the raven is lucky because she doesn't have to deal with a mind ruled by logic that wants to use the blocks to convince herself she's not good enough. Then I remember that as a member of the food chain Ms. Raven has many more problems than I. There's a conundrum here I just realized that has to do with the raven as a member of said food chain that has to live day to day watching her back -- dare I say, in survival mode. Yet as I watch her do her job with consistency -- bringing her chicks food, watching out for them from treetop perches -- I connect to her power and --when I breathe into it -- can feel how spirit flows through her. She is connected to nature, to the universe in a way that is the very nature of thriving. The chicks have the same innate survival skills ready in the wake and with practice, consistency, they will fly into the oneness with the rhythm of life.
The momma raven is so busy this weekend. She flies into the tree and out of the tree and skims by the window on her way. She is teaching me tenacity and the truth and focus of being a mother. Of doing your job with fire and strength. Of exchanging love and focus with the work at hand. Her work with her chicks this spring is almost done. If you look high up in the pinon tree you can see them, three, maybe four, flapping their wings, gathering the confidence to take flight.
Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. The word itself connotes flying high, strength, truth, not looking back in a way that will take you into a downward spiral. Julie Andrews just popped into my head -- the song she sings in "The Sound of Music," as she carries her guitar down a tree lined lane walking with her head up high, swinging her guitar -- convincing herself at every step that she is worth it that she can handle the job at hand that she has been called to do. This image helps me to see that confidence is not something that can be planned out in the brain. You cannot convince yourself that you are confident. It's got to come through in choices and actions, and as my friend Scott just pointed out, being consistent with them. There's a moment in the movie when J.A. gets to wrought iron gate and sees the mansion and the music stops. For a moment she gasps out of fear, out of the task at hand, whatever it is, it takes her out of the moment. As soon as she starts singing again, "I have confidence..." she slowly pulls herself back enough into the present to remember that to experience the confidence she must move through the gate.
Movement, flow, water, that's what it takes to build confidence. I mention water because it is the world of emotion. If emotions are stuck and are holding us back, you know the really yummy ones? I do. Fear. Lack of confidence.Blah.Blah.Blah. The list goes on and on, confidence will be placed in the bin of procrastination. At this point exchange becomes very important. Replace the negative thoughts with love, humor, laughter, joy, the list goes on. The more I practice exchange in this way the more beautiful, expansive words come up. The more I realize that my thoughts are my choices and I strengthen with every exchange, through love, that part of my mind that has to figure everything out. Exchange. Exchange. Exchange.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking that the raven is lucky because she doesn't have to deal with a mind ruled by logic that wants to use the blocks to convince herself she's not good enough. Then I remember that as a member of the food chain Ms. Raven has many more problems than I. There's a conundrum here I just realized that has to do with the raven as a member of said food chain that has to live day to day watching her back -- dare I say, in survival mode. Yet as I watch her do her job with consistency -- bringing her chicks food, watching out for them from treetop perches -- I connect to her power and --when I breathe into it -- can feel how spirit flows through her. She is connected to nature, to the universe in a way that is the very nature of thriving. The chicks have the same innate survival skills ready in the wake and with practice, consistency, they will fly into the oneness with the rhythm of life.
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