Conscious Contact

Some people call it meditation, some prayer, others call it "plugging in", or being fully present...

Whatever the semantics, its necessary.

How many of us actually take the time to consciously get in touch with whatever we believe in? Its an age old concept, and all who do it on a regular basis will tell us that they feel much more at peace, have more energy, are a lot less fearful, breath easier, rest easier, and have a greater sense of concentration... just to name a few of the benefits.

This seems like such an easy thing to ask of us in light of the payoffs but it can be one of the most difficult things for us to do...

But as we practice sitting quietly and listening(maybe for only a few minutes at time to begin with)We start to feel connected to that Something that lies beneath (or above) it all...maybe for you it's Nature, Chi, God, or Life...the name isn't so important. What is important is the experience.

The future and the past fade away and the reality of the present moment seeps in reminding us that we have everything we need in that moment. After a while this practice teaches us that we can feel this way at any given moment. It becomes easier to find a place of stillness, even in the most chaotic situation because we have been practicing and now we know how to tap into our individual strength.

I've been reminded of this recently and thought someone else out there might like the reminder...tap in to your source of strength regularly and try to improve your own individual conscious contact with what It is. Maybe even think of it as a form of preventive medicine...

"Seemingly" bad

I was meeting with a group of people last week and the woman who was speaking was talking about how she had a tendency, in the past, to think negatively when things weren't going the way she would like them to go. She had fought changes in her life and in the lives of the people that she loved. She would fight because, in her mind, she thought she could see what was best for her and her loved ones...

Of coarse, despite her best efforts to control things, events turned out differently than she wanted. She fought the whole way...stressing herself out, being an emotional wreck, arguing with herself and the people she cared about. She did this a number of times over a number of years and each time she made herself sick about each situation. Finally, the pain got bad enough for her and she got sick of fighting and gave up. She decided to try, one time, to just let "it" go (whatever the next "it" was). To stay out of the way, keep her opinions to herself, and let things happen the way they were going to. She decided to have a little faith.

Wouldn't you know it, she felt 100% better. She wasn't sick about "it" and she hadn't lost precious moments of her life living in the future...

She looked back at the past events she had been fighting and the outcomes that had occurred, and realized that everything had turn out just the way it was supposed to, even GREAT in some cases. Better than she would have created or expected. And in the cases that turned out to be "seemingly" bad, she decided to accept that she didn't have all the answers and couldn't possibly know what had to happen for everyone in each situation. Sometimes we have to go through the "seemingly" bad to get to the good.

What I got out of her sharing her experience is, what is "seemingly" bad is not necessarily so. I believe we need to do only what is in front of us, one decision at a time, and let go of the rest. We don't need to know what is going to happen or how things will turn out. So we let it go.

The only reason "the best indicator of the future is the past" is because we keep FORCING the past to be recreated.

Take a break. Let Life/God/Nature take over for a while. Just do your part as it relates to you in the moment and the rest will be GREAT, even better than we can imagine.

Its Not My Fault. Or is it?

It's funny how some of us do everything in our power to convince ourselves that our circumstances are not our fault. If only I had this or that...if only that person would have done this or that...if only...if only...

So many people live their entire lives never being present, never doing what is right in front of them. At any given moment we can decide that we are responsible for our happiness and make a new decision. Even if that decision is simply changing our mind about a situation.

The simplest answers are usually the right ones, and changing ANYTHING is really just that simple. All we have to do is decide that things are not going to be the same and DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Think a different thought about a situation, about another person, or about ourselves.

I used to train dogs, and I believe people are not so different from them behaviorally. Dogs act a certain way because they have been given a certain response to their actions. We do the same thing. We act a certain way because we have been "conditioned" to act that way...whether we have conditioned ourselves or have been conditioned by our parents/society etc... doesn't matter. What really matters -and what makes us different from the dogs- is that we have the ability to reason. We have the ability to see that our actions are just a result of conditioning our thoughts.
So, all we really need to do is re-condition them. Choose to think differently. Believe whatever you want to believe. That's our gift here in the US. Freedom of choice and thought.

Just be careful what you choose to believe, whether it be about yourself or the world around you. Focus your intention on what you want to have happen NOT what hasn't happened...Or what might happen...There is more power in your reoccurring thoughts than we can even begin to comprehend.

Changing can be scary but I like to remind myself that no one really knows what this life is all about anyway. It's up to us to find our individual path and we each have our own set of customized tools inside of us to find and create it.