My friend is putting together a class on clearing clutter, and this perennial struggle has been top of my mind.  Then this morning, my meditation gave me an unexpected insight into the piles and disorganization we call clutter.

As I sat in meditation enjoying an unusually deep peace and nothingness, I began to see myself sitting at my desk, as if my eyes were open.

Oh dear.

I’m still in the throes of removing the large desk (and emptying seven large drawers) in my office. Stacks of paper dot the office countertops as well as my massage therapy table.  Evicted empty drawers huddle in one corner.  The shredder has been throwing a week-long confetti party on the far side of the room.  And a few accretions of miscellaneous… I’ll be nice — stuff… are now seeping across my desk like a glacier field.

As I “saw” this (with eyes closed), I could vividly feel how stressed I used to get about clutter.

Clutter used to drive me nuts.  Whenever I needed to concentrate or start a new project that required thinking or creativity, I would instantly become super-distracted by things out of place in my environment.  (Coincidentally, I lived a fairly ordered but cluttered life, so there was lots to be distracted by.)  The piles around me would scream: “You don’t have time for THAT, you have to take care of THIS.”  And send me reeling into uncertainty.

Ugh.

But this morning, in that lovely meditative place, I felt my old reaction with compassion and love.  (Awww…)  Then the stressed feeling faded completely, and I was looking at my office clutter while once again feeling that kind of deep peace you can only experience far out in nature or in meditation.

Peace? Amidst clutter like this? But… yes. I could feel Peace in the desk, in the papers, in the… stuff. Peace. Stillness. The scene suspended itself, as if it was waiting for me.  And I got it: clutter is OK.  Clutter doesn’t matter.  Only what I thought and how I felt about clutter made it miserable.  Inside the clutter is stillness.  Inside me is stillness.  Inside each atom of clutter is Tao, Presence, or God.  Inside chaos is the deepest Peace.

And I can (and may) find that stillness, in the midst of any chaos.

I sat with that for a while, until I felt I could reach it again in a non-meditative state. Even now, hours later, I feel deeply peaceful.

Do I still want to create systems so clutter does not build up in my life?  Of course. But this I know: should clutter creep up on me, like when I’m moving furniture around or when I get too busy to file for a while, there will be stillness and holiness in the center of that clutter.

Today I activated this insight by plopping my laptop on top of the clutter and peacefully writing this out for you.

How can you find Peace and Stillness in your clutter?

© 2013 Daria Boissonnas

~ Daria’s Wednesday Wisdom column ~

How do you begin your day? For most of my life, I jumped right into a task as soon as I walked in my office. I felt like I was getting more done that way! When that task was done, I zipped on to the next one. Then I took lots of little (or not so little) breaks because I was working so hard. (Well, it made sense at the time, lol!)

In dealing with my increasingly busy days now, however, I am reminded of a joke. It says that Ghandi meditated for one hour at the start of every day, without exception. Discussing a particularly demanding day that was coming up, he told his assistant that he would have to meditate for two hours to start that day.

When the joke is told properly (sorry), you expect Ghandi to skip his meditation to better jump into his busy day. The absolute last thing you would expect is to spend even MORE time meditating!

Yet meditation has been proven in studies to calm us, relax us, and improve our thinking and effectiveness. It also can benefit your physical health. If you can get more done in less time because of it, then you certainly have time for meditation.

Start today with just 5… no, how about streeeeeetching into 6, 8 or 10 minutes a day! All you have to do is sit comfortably and feel your body or watch your breath. As sounds, thoughts, and life’s craziness rise around you, notice it, name it (thinking about my meeting, noisy kids, big worry, ankle still hurts, truck in street…) and let it go. Breathe it out if you like.

Just for a few, blissful minutes. Close your door. Take the phone off the hook and enjoy having NO responsibilities for a few minutes. When does THAT ever get to happen?

The Secret about Meditating

Beginners are often relieved to hear that there is no way to answer, “What should meditation feel like when I get it?” It feels like you, sitting quietly, naming the craziness of life and over and over, returning to the calm center that IS inside you. The masters never get to a magical point where they “have it.” You probably aren’t doing it wrong. Meditation is a practice, like playing soccer or lifting weights. You just keep getting better and better at it.

The more you practice, the faster you return to calm after interruption. The more you meditate, the faster you can return to calm when you are not meditating, for instance when the baby is crying, your boss is phoning, the pasta is boiling over, and the doorbell rings.

How can you commit to living an easier life, right now, by starting your day with a few minutes of meditation? Put it in your calendar. Do this at home before you go to work, on the train or bus in the morning, or first thing when you get into your home office.

Try it out for just 10 days and let me know how it goes, and whether you have any questions. (Hint: Which days are more productive for you, the ones that start with meditation, or the days you forget or “don’t have time”? Yeah, me too.)

(c) 2012 Daria Boissonnas

This article series is about the many forms of human intuition. Do you know your strongest type?

To recap our intro article, intuition is a way you can receive information through the parts of your consciousness other than your physical body or rational, thinking mind.

Intuition is perfectly normal. Your job, my dear spiritual traveler, is to learn to recognize and decipher your intuition, and then use it to live a good life and help people.

Types of Intuition – 2. Clairaudience

Most flavors of intuition begin with the prefix “clair-”, French for “clear.” Not all are voluntary, able to be turned on and off, though you can get there with practice. In clairaudience, you receive information through what feels like a sense of hearing.

Sometimes, the information feels like it has actually been said aloud. Many clients and healers have told me of such events. They heard a profound and simple statement as if it was very clearly said aloud (except nobody was there or nobody else heard it). Those messages were deeply clarifying and became turning points in their spiritual journeys. This is one kind of clairaudient event.

Clairaudience can be subtle, too. When working with clients, I have heard clear messages for the client from his or her guides, higher wisdom, or dead relatives (can often tell who or describe them). It feels like I hear the entire phrase, as if it is being said to them. To me it does not feel like I’m hearing a physical sound. It often comes with emotions or the feeling of the consciousness that is “saying” it. So I pass these messages along as best I can. They are often super easy to forget, like waking from a dream and trying to tell someone what it was right away. For the client, the message is often profound. While random statements to me (tho often clerly loving), they are “wow” to the client, even to the point of tears.

You can think of clairaudience as a form of channeling, where the words of another consciousness come through you as if you are hearing them said. You are a conscious relay, shifting from your clairaudient higher consciousness down to the part of your consciousness that talks or writes. This type of channeling differs from claircognizance, which is like a brain dump: you know a lot of information in a deep way all at once.

Are You Clairaudient?

All right, I’ve had decades of practice as a psychic or empath, but I suspect many folks hear clairaudient messages and cannot tell them apart from our own thoughts. Instead, they assume this valuable guidance is just a random thought. That’s too bad when they brush off what could be a profoundly healing statement.

All the information you need in any situation is available to you. If your overtaxed thinking mind cannot figure it out, your higher guidance has an infinite number of alternatives. To create healing, we should always search with our hearts and higher consicousness for solutions beyond what the mere thinking mind can create.

To get better at recognizing how a clairaudient message feels different from random thoughts, simply listen. See if you can begin to feel the difference in how your thoughts feel. Pay special attention to statements or thoughts you hear in meditation, on nature walks, or during those wonderful times when our physical consciousness is just busy enough to let us drift into higher layers of consciousness: driving, showering, doing dishes or other routine physical tasks, for instance.

As with practicing any kind of intuition, you both need to hear it and get some feedback to test how accurate it is. Practice does not get you to Carnegie Hall — but practice with accurate feedback does. Keep a notebook handy and see how you do.

Yes, you are intuitive. All the information you need is available to you. How can you use your gifts to live a blissful life that benefits others?

Better Healing with Clairaudience

To listen is to pay attention to what you are hearing. Clairaudience goes beyond the physical ears and brain, however. It is an open state of receiving information.

If you are a healer or would like to create the permanent positive transformation that we call healing, then develop intuitive listening. Create a state of what feels like listening with your entire body and being. Then train your mind to receive it, bypassing the thinking mind’s habit of judging, measuring, categorizing, rationalizing, and rejecting. Enjoy the journey!

Next time:  clairemotional or empathic (not the same as empathetic).

What Next?

If you are looking for spiritual and intuitive development, consider a membership in GIA. Check out our benefits here: GIAwaken.com/benefits.

To ask Daria a question or share a comment, use the comment section below!

“I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.”

–Mahatma Gandhi

What do you do in the morning to prepare for your day? You likely clean your teeth and wash and feed your body.  But what about maintaining your connection with your higher self and inner wisdom?  Do you refresh your connection to Source and to your Calling or life’s purpose?

Don’t be a victim to your day and your duties.  You are so much more than that. Decide right now to make ONE change.  Either set up a morning spiritual refresh activity or strengthen the one you have.

• Can you do a 10-minute relaxation meditation?
• Can you restfully contemplate your life purpose goals and vision for the world?
• Can you connect with the results you seek and visualize them so you can bring them out into the world?
• Can you sit quietly, ask a question, and listen for guidance or for today’s ideal focus or task?

You may resist this change for the first several days, but I challenge you to do this for 10 solid days in a row and see how it goes.

I don’t know about you, but if Ghandi found a morning refresh and centering worked for him, I’m inclined to think he knows something I haven’t figured out yet, and I’m willing to try it.  He was after all extremely effective at creating positive change.

Remember too that being “on” requires being “off”. Being successful out in the world requires inner success first.  The more centered, grounded, Connected, whole, happy, and spiritually refreshed you are, the better you can do what you were born to do.  And the more permanent positive change (aka healing) you can create in the world.

You can do this!  You were born to do this.

Source of quote (and a good article): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-goldberg/meditation_b_827796.html

At breakfast this morning, I told my daughter she was my favorite child and I loved her more than anyone else in the world.

She said no, that wasn’t true, I loved all my kids the same.

I smiled and said, exactly — I love each of them the best of all, more than anyone else in the world.

How is that possible? 

This concept came from a zen koan story I read many years ago.  It piqued my interest at the time because I LOVE puzzles and it made no sense!  How can each thing be the best? 

There are actually many ways to explain why and how this is true.  But understand this first: you can’t use logic to solve this puzzle.  Your logical, thinking mind categorizes and compares.  It ranks and sequences.  It draws straight lines between points.  It would say my statement was impossible.

Luckily we all have access to different types of consciousness, or thinking if you must call it that.  Our consciousness is like a rainbow, and the logical, thinking mind is merely one color.  My statement makes perfect sense when you are in a different slice of your consciousness.

For instance, try this:  the next time you are deep in a meditative or altered state, ask yourself how everything can be the best at the same time.   You will likely be able to see it then.  (Hint: your higher consciousness is not limited by the sequence of time, either.)

The Key to Healing and Leaving the World a Better Place

Our job as humans is to access the knowing we find at the higher levels of consciousness and bring that wisdom down into the world. The thinking mind is absolutely requred to live our daily lives, but it’s not all you have.  Accessing your greater consciousness changes the world.  It creates win-win mindsets and accesses permanent positive change nobody could have thought of.

Really, would you rather live in a world where everything was best of all, where everything was seen as a stepping stone to something even better?  Or do you prefer a small-thinking world where everything is either good or bad, where there are such things to overcome as negative, naughty, evil, painful, and hateful? 

Connecting with our higher knowing takes us to new and better places in our logical, physical world.  It opens doors.  It is the only thing that creates genuine, transformative healing.

Back to the puzzle.  Once you understand my statement “up there” in your greater consciousness, you can understand it logically in many ways.  For instance:

• Each person is unique.  If you are the only one of you, you must be my favorite one of you. 
• In that moment, enjoying my daughter’s presence, with nobody else in my perception, she is the only person in the world to me and therefore my favorite.
• Each person on the planet is equally valuable, therefore they all fall in the same value category, such as favorite.
• Your turn: In what other ways is each of my children my favorite?

What if each and every child was seen and valued as if they were the most precious child in the world?  This is not pollyanna thinking.  This is enlightened thinking.  It the only thing that creates positive change.

And for the record: you are my favorite reader, ever.

It’s here — Healing 101!

Have a few ideas about how to make the world a better place?  Empower yourself to do that by learning to think waaaaay beyond the box — that is, to think like a healer.

Discover how you already have the ability to do the “undoable,” change the “unchangeable” and make the “impossible” happen.

Register now to listen FREE to Healing 101 and learn:

1. What is healing?
(It’s so much more than physical repair of your body!)

2. Why is every person on the planet a natural healer?
(Just how are YOU a healer?)

3. What three main types or styles of healer are there?
(And which is yours?)

4. How can you awaken YOUR inner healer and tap into your own natural abilities to make a BIG meaningful difference?

5. Five things to listen for to benefit most from each call. Also download in our pdf Listener’s Guide on the listening page.

Once you register, we will send you a link to the listening page, including Healing 101 and our first four interviews.

Discover Our Groundbreaking “I Am A Healer” Series

Register for access to these free calls here and we will send you occasional emails as soon as new calls become available.

You have a tremendous power within you — right now — to make a meaningful positive difference in other people’s lives.  To move beyond problems to a place where they simply become irrelevant:  to heal.

Join us as we celebrate our goal of bringing more healing into the world with our groundbreaking FREE interview series — “I Am A Healer”: 100 Inspiring Stories from Ordinary People Who Are Changing the World and How YOU Can Too.  To listen, all you have to do is register.  Then mark your calendar for Tuesday, November 30th at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern.

It doesn’t take much to awaken your natural Inner Healer.  Listen to this information-packed call led by Global Institute for Awakening Founder Daria Boissonnas, and expand your possibilities by learning:

1. What is healing?  (It’s so much more than physical repair of your body!)

2. Why is every person on the planet a natural healer?  (Just how are YOU a healer?)

3. What three main types or styles of healer are there?  (And which is yours?)

4. WHat you need to learn to awaken YOUR inner healer and tap into your own natural abilities to make a BIG meaningful difference

5. What to listen for on the calls. 

TO LISTEN TO THIS CALL, REGISTER FOR THE SERIES HERE:  http://GIAwaken.com/100healers

Register for this interview series right now, and listen to this introductory call with Daria Boissonnas, Founder of the Global Institute for Awakening.

Have you been guilt-tripping yourself about not having a spiritual practice?  The truth is, you already do have one.  Maybe you’re not meditating like a monk or levitating like a lama, but you do have a spiritual practice. 

The question is:  is your current practice doing for you what you need it to do?

This month’s focus in the Global Institute for Awakening’s Life Mastery ~ Healing Mastery Training Program is on building a spiritual practice.  In the training call, available to anyone who joins as a member, I discussed the two sides of every spiritual practice:  maintenance and moving you forward.  You must include both.

Your big assignment here on this blue planet – should you choose to accept it – is to genuinely express the gifts and blessings you already have within you.  Doing so makes the world a better place.  (And the Universe guarantees in spades that you have such gifts and dreams!!)

The purpose of your spiritual practice, then, is to train your body and mind to align with this wonderful Potential and gift within you, so you can easily share it.  Whether you’re just starting out or know exactly what your purpose is – your spiritual practice hones your skills so you are ready for the next leap in life.  And the next.  Spiritual practice helps you train, nourish, and utilize your body and mind so you can get out there doing what you came to the planet to do.  Your spiritual training ultimately helps you live an enjoyable life while you share your message for the world.

It does not have to be boring or difficult.

Anything in your life can be “spiritual”, and so your spiritual practice can be anything.  Maybe you go for regular walks to commune with nature.  This activity tones and resets your energy patterns and relaxes you.  Perhaps you choose to love your children unconditionally.  Perhaps you get body massages regularly or go to therapy to clear childhood issues.  Perhaps you take a moment to appreciate all you have at the end of the day.

If it helps you make the world a better place or improves your personal relationship with the Universe, it’s a spiritual practice.

Your main goal is to nourish and nurture your body and mind and heart and dreams, while you sharpen your skills to do even more good in the world.

How might you improve your daily spiritual practice, today? 

If you’d like some guidance, join as a member and listen to the September training call right now!

I used to avoid exercising.  I could not make myself do it.  Have you been in the same boat with self-improvement or resolving a certain problem? 

Yes, I had the treadmill that slid under the bed.  I had weights and tapes.  But they gathered dust, and I loaded up on the guilt.  I wanted the results (fitness, health, self-confidence, a hot body) but I didn’t want to go through the process. 

When I decided it was really, really time to get in shape, I found a shortcut.  I found a way to make it easy: I took a class.  (A martial arts class, but that’s not the important point.)

While I could not make myself exercise at home, I could drag myself to a class and do what the teacher said.  Classes had other benefits: beginners like me to comiserate with, advanced students to ask for tips, and intensive weekend classes with national-level teachers to learn special routines.  Yeah, I was sore for the first while, but all of us beginners were.  It was funny and we bonded.  It wasn’t so bad.

After about 8 months, the results of consistently going to classes started to become clear.  Consistency is a huge key to success.  When you show up, things happen, even when it doesn’t seem like it at first.  You have to get the momentum going energetically.  Consistency tones and strengthens your energy system and helps you make change.  Without doing anything extra, I started dropping weight.  Eventually I whittled down to size 6, which I hadn’t been since coming up through the sizes in early high school.  Wow, was that fun!

The Formula for Success

To get unstuck doing something good for yourself that you are resisting:

1.  Commit to a quality program that takes you to your goal, even if you can’t commit to yourself.  Find a wise teacher and a great place you’re excited about.  Pay enough so you want to get to classes.  Show up and let the teacher take it from there.

Tip:  Please don’t let this be the class you take to distract you from your misery.  Let it really help.  Where are you stuck in your life?  Take a look at your top 5 frustrations and miseries.  Think about what you need to break through them.  Ask friends, make a list, find places that do that.  You are worth it!

2. Keep showing up.  Even when you can’t see the results, they are building.  Your body, mind, and energy is rearranging itself.  Each time you go to class (or meditate or take those vitamins or…), you reinforce to yourself that you are the kind of person that does that, easily and regularly.  It WILL pay off.   

Tip:  Make a cool chart and check off the classes so you can see your progress!  Mark on your calendar when you do the exercises so that you can see and appreciate all your work!  Track your meditation time and add it up.

The Institute Recommends

Here’s a training program that will help you live a successful life that really counts, discover your purpose in life and do it, and increase your physical and financial health while you give back to others: our membership.  It includes our monthly core curriculum spiritual training and guidance program.  Each month, we build and strengthen a new spirtiual or self-improvement muscle together.  How good can your life get after a year of consistently building 10-12 new habits of dealing with life in a positive effective way?!  Get the details and sign up here:  http://GIAwaken.com/benefits

It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I’m the one that designed the program to be the kind of spiritual training and healing mastery program I always longed for.  It’s worth it at ten times the full price!  Get 12 months of self-improvement practice and spiritual guidance to create success in all you do.  We create positive habits – so you don’t even have to think about reacting well to life and reaching for success in all you do.  If this calls to you at all, take a look at the program here http://GIAwaken.com/benefits.

Join our other members in creating an energy pattern of radical self-mastery.  I so look forward to helping you make your life count in a big way while you reach your dreams more easily.  Join us to get where you want to go, even if you’re dragging your feet.  Join here:  http://GIAwaken.com/benefits.

Are you looking for a way to sail more smoothly through life’s knock-down events, have more patience with your kids and coworkers, and rev up your thinking?  Try mindfulness meditation. 

Lots of meditation research has touted its powers to de-stress your approach to life, but new research from UNC says even a short program of mindfulness meditation can significantly help you focus and think faster!  Who can’t use some of that? 

Here’s how their article described the meditation program:

The meditation training involved in the study was an abbreviated “mindfulness” training regime modeled on basic “Shamatha skills” from a Buddhist meditation tradition, conducted by a trained facilitator.  As described in the paper, “participants were instructed to relax, with their eyes closed, and to simply focus on the flow of their breath occurring at the tip of their nose.  If a random thought arose, they were told to passively notice and acknowledge the thought and to simply let ‘it’ go, by bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath.”  Subsequent training built on this basic model, teaching physical awareness, focus, and mindfulness with regard to distraction.

Here’s the results:

The meditation group scored consistently higher averages… on all the cognitive tests and as much as ten times better on one challenging test that involved sustaining the ability to focus, while holding other information in mind.

You can find Buddhist centers in many towns and cities that offer inexpensive meditation programs to the public.  Or find tapes and websites you like.  We offer specific meditations occasionally in our mini-coaching program for members of the Global Institute for Awakening.  (Join today and change your life with us by establishing one awakened habit per month!)

Links/Resources:
• UNC article:  http://www.publicrelations.uncc.edu/default.asp?id=15&objId=656 
• Pubmed article:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363650 
• Benefits of membership in Global Institute for Awakening:  http://www.GIAwaken.com/benefits

I’ve been meditating more and more recently, how about you?  Most of us know meditating can de-stress you big-time and strengthen your ability to hear inner guidance.  But when you sit down, do a million thoughts come flooding into your mind?

Me too!  But still I sit down, and I always learn something.  Practicing dealing with mental interruptions makes it easier each time.  Like going to the gym, but you are exercising your mind.  Mental strength is crucial to unlocking your Potential to heal yourself and the world.

Here’s an issue that came up for me right away in meditation this morning, and the spiritual principles I remembered to help me let it go and sink back into just breathing.

Issue: A struggle to tune out my busy environment out of a fear that I might miss something. I might need to hear that!  I might need to get involved and fix that!  What is making that noise?  This is a long-term pattern for me: I also used to be a pack rat as a child and young adult, too – I might need that some day! 

Let go to flow.  Know and trust that what you need will come to you in its own time.  Right now, I choose to meditate, so I choose to let meditation come to me. 

When you are interrupted with outside sounds, thank and bless what you hear as a great opportunity to exercise letting it go.  Name it and thank it and send it floating away.  (“weird truck-y sound, thank you, let go…”)  Return to watching your breathing.

Fixing is not flowing.  Thinking something can’t be done without me is a form of pride or self-importance. This type of thought actually blocks energy flow!  By seeing something as broken or needing fixing, you judge it and limit its potential.  Fixing something broken can’t get as good results as seeing its highest potential and getting out of the way of it coming to fruition.  Practice getting out of the way by letting go of these thoughts (“fixing, thank you, let go…”) and getting back to meditation.

Bonus: Apply this wisdom elsewhere in your life today.  Let go of something else distracting.  For instance, instead of receiving 20 emails a day (I know that’s not an exaggeration for some of us!) with products and services you don’t need right now but are curious about, let them go for now and seek them out when you really need them.  Or: let go of stockpiling supplies or clothes that you “might need” some day and give them away.  Remain present, figure out what you need to do NOW, and focus on taking that next step instead of wondering about what you might do in the future. 

Did that help?  Happy meditating. 

Happy new year!  What are your goals and hopes for 2010?  We at Global Institute for Awakening wish for the best and happiest for you and your spiritual journey in the new year, and we would like to share a powerful exercise for spiritual acceleration.

We’ve put together a short list of bullet points to help you in each of the seven tasks of the spiritual journey. (Be sure you’ve gotten a copy of our 7 Steps to Awakening kit, in the upper right corner of this website.) You can use this list as either an intention-focusing, manifestation tool or as a prayer.  Or go through it as a prayer first, then as a manifestation/attraction exercise.

One pass through took us less than 3 minutes.  To make a hugely positive impact on your year, mark your calendar to do this twice a day for two days in a row, or once a day for five days in a row.

1. As a prayer, begin with your favorite opening, or consider:  “Dear God/dess, please open me to receive your divine grace and guidance right now, this year, and always. Forgive me my attachments and self-limitations, and please…” Then use the bullet points, beginning each with “help me to…

2. As a life-flow or manifestation exercise, watch your breath for a minute, relax and then begin each line with “I choose to…”

• lose all attachments to past events or things
• forgive all judgments of me, by me and by others, and to lose all attachments to those judgments
• lose fearing criticism or harm from others in the future
• lose the benefits I gain from carrying my past troubles around with me, and [please help me to/I choose to] find those benefits elsewhere
• lose all doubt, lose doubting myself, lose doubting my mission, lose doubting my guidance, lose doubting my abilities, lose doubting my power, and lose doubting God
• lose expecting and requiring the world go the way I think or want it to
• lose all fears that limit my healing effect on the world

• know myself wholly, as I am divinely known
• fully love and support myself, as I am divinely loved and supported
• know, trust, and step more fully into my spiritual journey
• fulfill my greatest potential for bringing genuine healing to the world and to myself
• build faith and knowingness in my innate ability to perfectly fulfill my spiritual mission
• appreciate the past and carry only its beneficent gifts with me
• surrender to my healing mission and allow it to guide me forward

“I give thanks knowing this is done. Amen.”

May these and other blessings come your way in 2010.

Further Resources
To learn more about your spiritual journey, where it leads, and what steps you must take to walk your spiritual path well, join our emailing list to get spiritual tips and great offers that can help you awaken more easily.

Have you been taught to see your thoughts as “enemies”?  As a bad habit you need to “fix”, as the source of illness and imbalance, poverty and unhappiness?  Do you bore yourself repeating positive affirmations so you can develop positive thought habits that eventually can cancel the “bad” ones? 

Stop right now.  (What a relief, eh?)  Read on.

First of all, for several reasons, affirmations don’t often work, and I rarely use or recommend them.  One issue is that they are like steering a horse by its tail.  (Believe me, it doesn’t work well!) 

My main point is that by seeing your thoughts and feelings as “bad”, you polarize yourself against yourself. You lock yourself into a neverending mind battle that limits your personal potential and distracts you from empowering and healing yourself and others.  

Making your mind and its thoughts your enemy LIMITS you living life to the fullest!!!  Bottom line: it can be a form of resistance to your spiritual path.  (And that means resistance to success as a healer.)

Here’s why:  Thoughts are a natural byproduct of your logical mind.  It is your mind’s job to produce thoughts, as it is your lungs’ job to breathe.  Do you watch every single breath to make sure you’re breathing “right”?  No, though you may do breathwork periodically for health, and good for you.   

Likewise, to live a good healthy spiritual life full of healing, you don’t have to correct and adjust every thought or OUTPUT your mind thinks.

You have to adjust the INPUTS.

What are you inputting into your mind?  Actions based on fear and worries?  Pleasing your internalized parent or teacher instead of honoring your heart?  Maintaining a relationship or job that’s not supporting you exploring your full potential?  A long string of fascinating healing classes that help you avoid figuring out what you are meant to DO with them? 

Do you regularly nurture your soul in quiet meditation, contemplation, or prayer?  Do you connect with truly loved ones, nurture your body, love and advocate for yourself, share your unique gifts freely, have fun, enjoy life, get what fulfills you and makes you divinely happy? 

If not, then try this experiement.  Go do that.  Change those inputs.  Reach for fulfilling your life’s purpose, your life’s healing mission.  And then tell me what happens to your thought patterns after a few months. 

If you need help, we are here to support you in your spiritual journey towards your greatest potential, that of being a conduit and receiver of Genuine Healing.

Does the idea of “praying” make you uncomfortable?  That doesn’t make the process less powerful.

For thousands of years sages have recommended spending time each day in prayer, or even living your entire life as a prayer, so you might suspect it has a spiritual benefit.  Anything with a spiritual benefit translates into a potential mental, emotional, relationship, or physical benefit, too.  Without consuming chemicals — and it’s free.

Sounds good to me.

So what is praying and how can we get this done without invoking discomfort or unpleasant childhood memories of formal religion?  It starts with getting into a quiet and comfortable space.  Try your favorite chair.  I like to close my eyes, but you don’t have to.

This is not meditation: meditation is listening.  Praying or not-praying is talking — to your conscience, your subconsious and to the Universe at large, or to God if you like to put it that way (I happen to, but it’s not necessary).  I see prayer as a type of visualization or manifestation.  It actually has been proven to have results in many studies,* and it carries an energy that can be perceived by some people.**

You don’t have to address anyone.  By getting into a relaxed appreciative state, your thoughts automatically go out in a preaddressed, prepaid envelope to the right place. 

Step 1.   I start with appreciating what I have or what has happened to me recently.  Anything and everything.  “Thanks that was a fun and great movie last night; I appreciate my car starting every morning; I love my beautiful children, my house, my collection of space rocks, my pet werewolf Fluffy…”  Whatever you can think of that brings up a genuine positive emotion.  That will get you in a good space for the next phase of our not-praying: visualizing.

Step 2.  What would you love for to happen?  Your Aunt Bertha to recover from her hip fracture?  Your company to grow and expand even in recession?  For someone to find a way to clean up toxic environmental waste?  Use your imagination but make sure what you are asking for is not selfish and gives you the warm fuzzies.  Ask for things that help those around you.  Remember that the sages also say that you are everything and everything is you, so wishing your annoying neighbor would drop dead is not in your personal best interest.

Some holy texts encourage us to pray constantly — to be in this state all the time.  Can you do that?  Wouldn’t it be a fun, mind-bending experiment to walk around for one day constantly in appreciation of every little thing (“thank you for this clean toilet flushing and the cool feeling of the clean water on my hands and for this soap dispenser being full…”) while also visualizing the best outcome of everything you do (“I love that my 9:00 meeting will start on time and end early and that I will surprise myself with how much writing I do today…”).

Here’s one teeny-tiny catch:  you have to completely ignore when the actual outcome doesn’t match your not-praying visualization.  That’s not the point.  The point is to practice expecting it.  Praying, or not-praying, is a powerful exercise for your mind that actually opens you up to greater potential. You might find after about five minutes that your mind is quite flabby and out of practice of expecting the best.  Hmm.  Better fix that!  Try again.  Get back on that horse!

This exercise can keep you in that uplifting state of mind I describe with the technical term of “magical”.  Others call it a state of divine Grace. 

Try it.  I dare you.  And let me know how it goes.

*For info about results from prayer, try any Larry Dossey book, especially Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine, available at amazon through this link. 
**Read Dannion Brinkley’s At Peace in the Light, where he describes being in a severe pain from an aneurysm and could see and feel when a number of people started praying for him.  Other documentation of this phenomenon lies in many, many other books.  Go find ‘em.

by Daria Boissonnas

I have a spiritual teacher who says if your goldfish dies, it’s OK to be sad for a while.  If you are still sad 12 years later, something is wrong.

Grief and other emotions that drag us down should eventually fade as we come to accept and relate to what happened. When they don’t, something is “stuck”.  You’re still attached in some way.

The more you cut your attachments to things — through contemplation, meditation, healing work, yoga or exercise, prayer, bodywork or more — then the more present you can be in The Present.  And the more you can help change the world for the better.

Many, many blessings on your journey.

~ Daria’s Pastoral Reflection on meditation, presented at James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Church, Madison WI, on July 29, 2007 ~

So… our topic is meditation. And let me say up front that I do not meditate regularly!

Not on a schedule anyway.

However, I have definitely meditated, and perhaps even a fair amount. More when you consider rocking a child in the dark, humming a tune over and over while maintaining an open empty awareness (so you know when they fall asleep) — while not falling asleep yourself — is a meditation. So is empty-minded weeding, or doing dishes, although this sort of time can be contemplative too. Try this one tomorrow: in the shower, just listen to the water.

I love guided meditations; they’re fun and interesting. I love breathing meditations; I had asthma as a kid and I love how easily and deeply I can breathe now. I like focused meditations because my mind wanders so fast and freely and far. Yoga is like a moving meditations. I’ve done eating meditations, walking meditations, and plain old empty-your-mind-and-breathe sitting meditations.

To me, meditation is a life skill exercise. An exercise that prepares us for what we must do in life. In grade school, we practiced artithmetic tables until they were second nature, because we now spend the rest of our lives adding and subtracting. We practiced writing because once we were out of school, we found ourselves writing all the time.  (Look here! *pointing to paper* Who wrote an email yesterday?) We also learned to exercise so that when we need it, we can do something physical, easily.

So why meditate? What am I practicing?

The Buddhists have said for millennia (or so) that to be happy, you have to let go of, or step beyond, your rational, busybody, judgmental inner dialogue, and simply BE. Be present in the present. Desire and opinion and preferences will drive you nuts because these thoughts, this thinking process, is a distraction from the reality in front of you. The working of our minds prevents us from seeing what is truly in front of us, and from enjoying it and loving it as it is. (If I criticize something, am I really seeing it for how it is, or am I just seeing what I wish it was?)

So why do I meditate? To practice. To practice getting beyond my rational mind into my knowingness. So I can quickly access that place of no judgment, of listening, when I need it. So I can hear my heart speak.

Last night my husband and I had a fascinating discussion that essentially boiled down to this: if someone tells you something, or that they experienced something you are unfamiliar with, how do you know it’s true? My darling husband said you really can’t tell, so his first reaction to hearing something new is to doubt.  (Anyone identify with that approach? *raising one of my hands*)

But I looked at him… lovingly and patiently of course… and I said, oh yes you can tell whether someone is lying or not. You absolutely can, every time. That information is available to us. A part of you simply knows. In fact, everything you need to know to make the right decisions, to exercise your free will, and to live a happy life, is available to you.

There is a place of knowingness we all have, which is beyond rational thought. In my lifetime, for me, it has not once ever been wrong. I can’t always hear it, true. I more frequently doubt it or rationalize it away. But now I actively try to find that inner knowing, recognize it, and honor it by listening.

And the first step to knowingness is quieting my inner chatter.

Don’t get me wrong — I love my rational mind. It can do fun things. I love puzzles and reading about new things. I need my mind to do so many useful things, such as run my healing practice. But sometimes I want that guidepost of inner knowing. I need to hear my soul sing. So I practice getting there.

I meditate.

© 2007 Daria Boissonnas, all rights reserved.