Gently, please!

It appears that I need a new mantra. Asking for messages, asking to be open, has left me with bandaids all over my body. As much fun as I am having with my "temporary tattoos" of peace and yin & yang signs, I have to say, I could stand to receive my messages more gently. I'm reminded of Richard from Texas in Eat, Pray, Love--he was asking repeatedly for his heart to be open and to receive a sign when the opening had occurred. After a few months of this prayer, he ended up having open-heart surgery. "So now Richard is always cautious with his prayers, he tells me. 'Whenever I pray for anything these days, I always wrap it up by saying, "Oh, and God? Please be gentle with me, OK?"'"

I can totally relate. In addition to the average, run-of-the-mill stubbed toes and bumped funny bones, I've fallen down the stairs (twice in one week!) and bruised my tailbone, I've had a knee injury that left me literally on the couch for six weeks, I've thrown my back out such that I was unable to get out of bed for three days, I've had countless sinus infections and stomach flus that completely knocked me out. Heck, in the past month alone, I've had a concussion, gotten poison oak, and even stabbed myself in the foot. My friends say I'm a klutz, that I'm accident prone, but I know there has been a message in each of these incidents--usually one that had been ignored previously, which is how it ended up ultimately being delivered in such a large way.

So I've learned that, "Gently, please!" is a good addendum to any request for aid. And perhaps even more importantly, I've learned that I need to be mindful. Mindful of my thoughts, mindful of where I'm going, mindful of what I'm doing. And if I'm asking for messages, if I'm asking for things to be clear, then I really need to listen for an answer. I never saw anything that looked like poison oak, but I know exactly where I was when I brushed up against it because, in retrospect, my intuition had pointed it out to me. As I was walking up to a tree that was hanging out over the sidewalk, a thought popped into my head, "Poison oak!" And I kind of laughed it off and thought, "It's a good thing this branch I'm walking past isn't poison oak." The next day, I had what looked like a spider bite on my arm. Again, poison oak popped into my head. Instead of ignoring it this time, I put a bandaid on it, "just in case." One itchy week later, I definitely know the next time any thought of poison oak pops into my head I will recognize it for the intuitive message that it is. Hindsight may be 20/20, but when we're paying attention, we can have real-time guidance as well.

So I go into this new week with my double request to be more open and to receive messages clearly, but always to have my prayers answered gently. What kinds of messages have you been receiving lately? Could you use to receive them a little more gently? Join me in my "Gently, please!" mantra this week and let me know how it goes! Namaste.

Photo: "La Fleuve," originally uploaded by Powderruns

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Surrender

"The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure. As stars high above earth, you are above everything distressing. But you must awaken to it. Wake up!"
~Baruch Spinoza

Surrender is a dirty word for many people. I've known folks who have been on the spiritual path for longer than I've been alive who still have great resistance to the concept of surrender. When you look at the primary definition on dictionary.com, it's really no wonder: to yield (something) to the possession or power of another; deliver up possession of on demand or under duress: to surrender the fort to the enemy; to surrender the stolen goods to the police. Even the definition that I'm using doesn't sound much better on the surface: to give (oneself) up to some influence, course, emotion, etc.: He surrendered himself to a life of hardship. There's great fear that surrendering means we'll have to give something up, or even just give up in general. But what does "giving up" really mean? To me, anyway, it means to stop trying. And boy oh boy, is there ever a lesson for me in that. There is great power in ceasing to try to do anything. It's like Yoda says: "Do or do not. There is no try." The more we try the less we do, not to mention the more we get frustrated.

One day last week I was working on some things having to do with my finances and I could feel myself getting anxious about it--never a good sign. As I was trying to shake off the anxiety, I had an image pop into my head of Liz Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love, when she was lying on her bathroom floor crying and talking to God. This image was quickly followed by one from the movie Saved! where one of the Catholic schoolgirls is kneeling by her bed crying and praying wildly. I thought, well, I've never tried it--who knows, maybe it's exactly what I need to do. So I went into my living room and knelt down, going almost into Child's Pose with my forehead touching the floor. I just started talking out loud, expressing how I was feeling about money and where I was looking for resolution. Before I knew it, a flood of emotion came out and I started to cry, ultimately lying there with my head on my arms repeating, "I just need some help, I just need some help," over and over again. Suddenly, I felt this deep sense of calm and stillness come over me--I moved into a seated position and sat there for a few minutes breathing in my newfound peace. Before I could get up and go back to my work my phone rang--it was a friend who wanted to pay me to do some work for her. I burst out laughing and when I hung up I simply said, Thank you.

I've invested a lot of energy lately trying to surrender--what happened that day was that I actually surrendered. I gave up in the sense that I stopped trying to do anything. My intention was in place, but I was holding on to it so tightly there was no room for the Universe to provide. By letting go, by surrendering, I opened myself up to solutions I never could have forced into being. In the end, surrendering isn't about giving up anything--it's about moving yourself into alignment with Life so you can begin to accept all the good that Life has to offer. This process reminds me of the poem at the beginning of Wayne Dyer's Your Sacred Self:

Broken Dreams
author unknown

As children bring their broken toys
With tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dream to God
Because He was my Friend.

But instead of leaving Him
In peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help
With ways that were my own.

At last I snatched them back and cried,
"How can You be so slow?"
"My child," He said, "what could I do?
You never let them go."

What are you holding on to? What are you ready to receive? Can you begin to see how you might surrender it to the Universe, thereby allowing it to come into fruition? Take the leap of faith with me this week--truly surrender whatever it you find yourself holding onto most tightly. Experience the deep peace that surrender brings, and see what shows up to support you. Namaste.

Photo: "Sweet Surrender," originally uploaded by What's in a name...

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The grounding, Part II

This process of grounding is truly a process. While I did finish the task I set out to accomplish yesterday, it did not leave me with the feeling of relief and order that I was hoping for. The good news is that I can now be lazy and not have to look for things (ha ha ha). The bad news is that it seems the whole apartment needs this type of overhaul. Our place is pretty small and our hobbies tend to take up a lot of space. The office bears the brunt of this and until we have more room in which to set up a system of organization that can actually be maintained, order really needs to be restored fairly regularly or we just have to live with the consequences. Office aside, the kitchen really needs to be tackled, and then when that's done, I should really do something about old magazines, and then go through the paperbacks to see which ones can be donated to new homes, and then there are closets that need some reorienting, and then . . .

When does it end? At what point does getting organized become just being a perfectionist, or only seeing what's wrong instead of being able to see what's right? Or is that just "all or nothing" thinking, where if one thing is organized then everything else should be, and if one thing is disorganized everything might as well be? And what about Nietzsche's discovery, "You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star" -- where is there room for my creative chaos?

As with everything else, it seems, I need to find a balance here. Order enables me to be still, to reduce distractions, to see clearly, and chaos enables me to mix things up, to get silly and crazy and messy and see what happens. Order provides the grounding so that when I am open at the top, truly connected to that divine creativity that is calling me to expand, I can be stretched yet maintain my connection to the earth. One of the reasons I love Yael Naim's Far Far so much is that she's talking about that birthing process, praying for something to happen to her, feeling the beautiful mess inside and recognizing where it will lead. "I guess I'll have to give it birth / To give it birth / There's a beautiful mess inside and it's everywhere." Sometimes things have to get messy before we can get clear, but that mess needs space in which it can live and breathe and feel safe once the birthing process is complete.

So I will continue to ground myself, to get organized and nurture myself and my family. And I will continue to reach out into the stars, to let things get a little messy and see where it leads, knowing that I have laid the foundation that makes it possible for me to find order and clarity when I need to. Namaste.