Tuning In/Tuning Out

Thold radioere’s an old joke about a guy who lives next to a train track all his life. Every night the B&O comes through at about 2 AM, so loud and close that the floor boards rattle in the guy’s house. Of course, he sleeps through it. Then one night the train breaks down five miles up the track. 2 AM comes and there is no train, only silence. The guy wakes up with a start crying, “What the heck was that?”

We have a great capacity for tuning out the background noise in our lives. On one hand, it’s a crucial skill in a world where we are constantly bombarded with infotainment from an ever-widening range of media. If we couldn’t filter through it, everything would be a cacophony of sights and sounds. It’s a skill that is sometimes required even in the relative solitude of our own homes. Ask anyone who has ever tried to concentrate while having their attention demanded by a small child, for example.

On the other hand, we can get too good at it. When I was much younger and living in Boston, I used to walk to work down Summer Street. Every morning the sidewalks were lined with the homeless, sleeping near the subway gratings for warmth. Of course it was disturbing, but after a while it became normal, part of the daily routine. Now consider that this section of town was the heart of the financial district. Imagine how many high-salaried financial executives (of which I was not one) were stepping over their economic opposites each morning. I wonder what they were thinking as they did so. I don’t mean to tar everyone with the same brush, but the lives of the have-nots must have been incomprehensible to many of the haves who were about to rise twenty, thirty, or forty floors above it. It felt a lot more real to someone like me, who often felt one paltry paycheck away from living there myself.

I admit that is a dramatic example, but it is usually the dramatic that people find memorable. Yet even drama can seem mundane with enough repetition. Even personal pain and suffering can be tuned out with enough practice, allowing us to ignore the symptoms and defer dealing with the cause.

What kind of balance do you have between tuning in and tuning out the world? How much are you taking in, and how much are you filtering out? For each of us, there’s a reason we are where we are, but we have to be aware of where we are before we can begin to understand what that reason is. We can learn only if we’re paying attention.

Abundance, Lack and the Landlady

RainingMoneyUpdated 11/02/2013 – See below.

The Universe is trying to get my attention. It wants me to change my attitude towards abundance. I know this because I am currently at a point where, even though I make a half-decent wage, I do not seem capable of supporting my family and paying all our bills and debts. At the moment, the more I focus on abundance, the more all those demands seem to be imploding around me. Maybe that’s because what I’m really focusing on is the opposite of abundance, lack.

I should be panicking by now.  That’s what I would have done in the past. Maybe it’s because my parents grew up during the depression. I was taught at an early age that life was all about denying yourself things, about never having enough to justify spending it on yourself, about paying all your bills on time every time and saving the rest. Any deviation was selfish, and induced guilt. And being young when I learned it, I obviously had no money to speak of. I developed a low sense of self-worth that was based on money, and it was reflected in how little I was able to earn in the workplace. And of course one could only make any money doing a “real” job (i.e. suffocating drudgery). When I eventually made some progress in that area, the demands of raising a family and then going from two incomes to one mean that I now owe far more than I’m taking in.

I have been living in fear of the consequences of being in need, of lacking, and that lack seems to have increased its hold.  And I haven’t been standing in my power. A perfect example is my current relationship with our landlady. We seem to be running in arrears for months now. Meanwhile there is unfinished and unstarted maintenance and repair work that has needed attention for years now, and I have not been assertive about it because of my own attitude towards lack. Because we’ve been chronically late with the rent, I’ve let lack rob me of my power (bit of a vicious circle there) and hand it to the landlady, who has not lived up to her responsibilities.

I’ve been thinking about lack/abundance a lot lately, meditating on it, energizing abundance with Reiki and asking for angelic assistance. For better or worse, I’ve come to what seems to be a Tarot Tower point. Today I had to tell the landlady that I could only give her part of what we owe her ‘til later in the month. She text back that I had better get the money by tomorrow, very “disappointed” ( i.e. angry) and that her creditors did not accept excuses. Something clicked inside me, and I replied with a “compromise” – how about I give you nothing until you finish the jobs and repairs, which  we’ve been waiting for a lot longer than you’ve been waiting for money from us. Like the radiator in the living room that has never worked, and living room windows through which you can feel the winter wind blow. Our utilities bill for the last six weeks was more than the rent, which is not cheap. Correct the inefficiencies and I’ll have more money to pay your rent. What about the rewiring that’s needed doing for years? Last week a kitchen light bulb exploded with several of our small children in the living room.  You want to talk about my excuses? Let’s talk about your responsibilities, which you have ignored for quite some time now.

Then I took a deep breath and calmed down, because standing in your power isn’t about anger and aggression, although sometimes you can have those feelings, and for quite valid reasons. But no, standing in your power is about stating your truth unafraid, standing up for yourself against those who seem more powerful than you.  Have I met all my commitments? No. Has she met hers? No.  A compromise needs to be reached, or maybe we just need to move. Maybe we’ll have to – I can’t worry about that possibility. Nothing good will come from basing my actions on fear. I have to believe in the abundance that seems to elude me right now, that I can indeed support myself and my family, and act in accordance.

Update 11/02/2013:

The landlady was out to the house the next evening. I missed her – she spoke with my partner and  explained why she was in such bad form the day before. Then the she told my partner when to expect the repairmen for the various jobs to be done. After that, she said she’d be back the following week to discuss what to do about the rent  – she wasn’t even looking for money.

I don’t guarantee you’ll achieve the same results by taking the same approach, but it is amazing how, in this case, standing in my power not only freed me from the stress of worrying about what might happen, but also brought an unexpected,  positive outcome.

The Naughty Corner

Naughty CornerSaturday morning and my four-year old son is over excited. “I’m getting carried away,” he says, having heard me say it often enough. He’s jumping on the couch, dragging his little sister around the living room, tossing toys, being outside-loud and brash. No badness, just madness. And all the while we’re admonishing, pleading, reasoning (well, attempting) and just plain saying “no. no. no.” None of it had any effect. It was time for the naughty corner.

Despite the title, the naughty corner is for having a time out. A chance to diffuse a situation before it reaches boiling point, or at least a distraction that will break the anarchic tendencies that are being acted out at the time. The naughty corner is not primarily about punishment, although I’m sure our children have a different opinion, based on the wailing that can result from a few minutes of exile (one per year of age).

Children are working from primary colours whereas adults are usually more adept at shading, so naturally there are different perceptions. Both groups can have different opinions about what is acceptable behaviour, or why some behaviour is unacceptable. For example, trying to reason with a three-year old why it isn’t nice to take toys that other children are currently playing with, and that they would not like it if their toys were taken, and then patiently explaining the concept of sharing, once again, is a flawed concept starting with the phrase “trying to reason with a three-year old”. The child sees the toy. The child wants the toy. End of story.

However, that is not the end of the story for the adult. As loving parents, we owe it to our children to teach them right from wrong, acceptable behaviour from unacceptable, and that actions have consequences. And we can’t expect that they will always understand why. We are older, more experienced, wiser (we would hope) about such things.

And this got me thinking….

What if this 3D earth that we inhabit is, in part, a type of naughty corner? As adults, many of us exhibit antisocial or detrimental behaviour  – people argue, lie, manipulate, blame others for their actions, form bad or inappropriate relationships, smoke too much, drink too much, are too much. Not everyone, not always, and many are striving to resolve personal issues in an imperfect world. I would think those issues would need to be resolved completely before one could be trusted to play well together in an environment of love, trust, openness and rapid manifestation, if you catch my drift.

So we get sent to the naughty corner. Not as punishment, but as a teaching tool, another chance to internalize what we need to know before we can move onwards and upwards. We might not even understand why, but there is a reason. Eventually we’ll learn.

Just for today, I will not worry

Just for today, I will not be angry

Just for today, I will be grateful

Just for today, I will be kind to all living things

Just for today, I will do my work honestly

Info Share: Online Guided Chakra Meditations

English: Chakra picture produced by AuraStar20...

Chakra meditation is, for me, one of the staples of spiritual development. Like most things, regular practice makes it easier to clear, cleanse and open the chakras, and promotes harmony within yourself and with the multi-dimensional world around you. Usually I take the D.I.Y. approach, letting the meditation take whatever form and direction that seem appropriate at the time, depending on how I’m feeling and what my intention is, with some light music on the iPod when that option is available to me. The advantage is that you can do it anywhere at any time, provided you can give yourself that time.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s nice to give your conscious mind a break and let someone else do the driving. I find sometimes it helps me let go easier and sink deeper because I’m letting someone else guide me – one less thing to think about.

With that in mind, I’ve had a look at some online meditations that I want to share with you. If you try any of these, I’d like it if you gave me your feedback, and if you have any you want to share, please post them here as well.

Lately I’ve been asking for archangelic help with the meditations, since being introduced to the concept during last Springs Body, Mind and Spirit Festival at the RDS, during an Angel Chakra meditation led by Caroline Flynn, which is not online. However, there is an angel chakra meditation which, while being completely different, is led by Doreen Virtue, who I hear knows a thing or two about angels. This meditation lasts about a half hour, and includes working with the ear chakras, which enhances the ability to hear angelic messages. This guided meditation is my current favorite because it’s helped me go so deep .  You might find it more useful after the first listen, because there are a couple of instances which sound a bit like “I meant to say this earlier”, such as what size to visualize your chakras, which isn’t mentioned until she gets to the throat . Still, I’d highly recommend this one. Be aware that, while the quality of this video is pretty good, there is at least one other version out there where the sound quality is rubbish, so if you search for it instead of using the link I supplied, be careful to make sure you’ve got a sound (pun intended) copy before beginning.

The next meditation will give you an idea of how long I’ve been at this. It is Shirley MacLaine’s open-eyed chakra meditation, which was originally released (and is allegedly still available) on DVD in the mid-80’s. This meditation makes great use of color, (hence the “open-eyed” bit) which can useful for the sometimes visualizationally challenged such as myself. Visually, most of the recording is composed of swirling kaleidoscopic variations of the chakra colors, which works better than I may have just made it sound. Shirley leads the meditation gently but firmly in a no-nonsense manner.  This one runs about 40 minutes, which is a good, long time for the “work out” it bills itself as. I’d recommend it, and not just because I’ve had a crush on Shirley MacLaine ever since I saw “The Apartment” at a drive-in at the tender age of twelve. One significant caveat – the online version is broken into four parts, so you need to keep one hand near the keyboard to keep continuity and skip the ads. Or you could just order the DVD.

Unfortunately, we don’t always have such large patches of time for meditating, but there are a couple of quickies out there. I’ve found a short chakra meditation  at Your Angel Circle that is basic but effective and runs about 9 minutes of a 10 minute video. It makes good use of different sound vibrations for each chakra. Not bad if you’ve got precious little time.

If you have any favorites not included in this post, please let me know what they are. A bit of variety a is great way to keep a daily practice fresh.

Doubt Takes a Back Seat

English: A single white feather closeup. Deuts...

I’m coming up on my first anniversary as a Reiki Master next month. With a houseful of small children, and an overworked, stay-home partner, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to stay in practice, from winding babies to healing backaches to clearing negative or chaotic energy, not to mention self-healing that helps me to be more open and present where I’m needed most.

Being, as they say, a certain age, I admit it took me long enough to get this far on my own spiritual journey, considering that from youth I felt, no, I knew there was something more to life than what I was learning in school, weekdays or Sundays. On several occasions I was even whupped up the side of the head by it, usually through friends who were in tune with this something more. But I was “stuck”. I wanted to connect, but for a long time it just never seemed like it was going to happen for me.  I was full of doubt and my life was full of many of the distractions available to me in modern times.

That was then. Daily I feel Reiki flow through me and out to others. I meditate, clear out and exercise my chakras, and have even gone deep beyond the casual flirtation I used to enjoy with my tarot cards. But old habits die hard. Self-doubt was a part of my makeup far too long to go without a fight. Oh, it’s fairly well subdued these days, but it does occasionally like to let me know it’s still around, just in case.

Yesterday I was sitting in the car, waiting for my partner’s mother to come out of the house, having a quiet moment to myself during an otherwise busy day. I suddenly heard a voice behind me, from the back seat. It was doubt. Out of consideration, he decided to stop by not to criticize or attack me – he knows that would just raise my defences. So instead, he gently offered a few “what ifs”.

“What if”, he said, “all this Reiki stuff isn’t real? What if you’re just making yourself feel it flow through you? What if it’s just the power of suggestion? What if the people around you just think Reiki is affecting them, and any healing is a coincidence?”

I stared out the windscreen, half listening, emotionally detached from doubt’s monologue as he prattled on. And as I did so, I saw the tiniest, pure-white feather drift slowly down out of nowhere from a seemingly empty winter sky, landing on the pavement in front of me. I got out of the car and examined the feather. I knew how it got there, why it was there, and what it meant. Feeling grateful and slightly awed, I picked up the feather and got back in the car.

Doubt now knew that I wasn’t paying any attention, so he stopped talking and got out.

Just for today I will be grateful.

See a list of Reiki precepts.

Reiki and the Daily Obstacle Course

Alvin Kraenzlein Winner of the 60m, the 110m h...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some days seem to be laid out in an obstacle course of hassles and distractions. You wake up with a clear idea of the BIG IMPORTANT THING you want to accomplish today, but you can’t find a matching pair of socks. You finally find the car keys under the sofa, but when you start the car you realize you’re just about out of petrol.  Then there is the traffic, and the frustrated drivers in the traffic. By the time you get to work your mind and emotions are a little on edge, and the clear vision of that Big Important Thing you were going to accomplish might have gone a bit fuzzy.

So you get a cup of coffee to sip while you collect your thoughts. But before you leave the kitchen you’re accosted by someone you can’t refuse who needs a report that is key to them and seems trivial to you. You walk back to your desk trying to figure out how to generate that report as quickly as possible. Then you sit down and check your mail. There are three more people dragging you in different directions, HR says your performance review is due, and the credit card company confirms that, yes, you really did spend too much money before Christmas. By this time, that edgy feeling you had when you arrived at work might have turned to full-blown panic, and that big important thing you envisioned when you first arose is discarded because you have been drained by the distractions.

Unless you live a fairly hermetic life, each day brings a variation on the obstacle course. I know the feeling of being overwhelmed by it. I would get to a point where I’d look for more (pleasant) distractions to make me forget about the original (less pleasant) distractions.

Grounding and using Reiki helps me release that feeling of being overwhelmed, and the emotional and mental fatigue that can come from the obstacle course. I use Reiki to calmly energize myself and to give energy to the things I want to get done on a given day so that they go smoothly, with more chance of success and less chance of stress.

Will there still be distractions if I don’t use Reiki? How do you test that empirically? What I do know is that any distractions don’t affect me as much. I don’t give them as much energy, it’s easier to let the small ones go, and the large ones don’t cloud my thoughts and emotions as much as they might, which gives me the opportunity to make more aware decisions.

I also have a few guidelines I use to help me through the obstacle course.

  • Don’t sweat the small stuff – One encounters a lot of little hassles over the course of a day. Many of these are little blips. When they’re over they should be gone from your life. Hold on to only the parts that can be used to make amusing anecdotes. The rest can only wear you down if you keep giving them energy.
  • Live in the moment – whatever you’re doing right now, that’s what you’re doing. Everything before already happened, and everything later hasn’t happened yet. Focus on where you are.
  • Determine what is important – Try a little time management. Some tasks are urgent. You can’t defer collecting the kids from school, for example (although you might be able to delegate, which is another story). Other tasks are important, like creating a January budget you can live with. You don’t actually need to do it, but it could improve the quality of your life in the cold, hard winter. Other tasks are not so urgent or important. If the task is neither, maybe you don’t need to do it at all.
  • Learn to say no, or at least “later” – You might be surprised how many people who need things “right now” don’t need them quite so much an hour from now, or maybe they even figured out how to do it themselves. You don’t need to process every request immediately like an organic CPU. Determine what is important; some requests you don’t need to handle at all.

Just for today, I will not worry

See a list of Reiki precepts.

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Everybody’s Right

Tea_for_the_Tillerman

One day when we were all rather bored in college, somebody came up with the idea of creating stories based on the cover of Cat Steven’s album “Tea for the Tillerman”. I don’t recall what those stories were, as we went around the room. I do recall that, after a quite detailed bit of fiction, the album was handed to a student who declared, “I have a better one.”

We all laughed at the presumption, and in fairness he caught his error immediately, turning a bit red. “Uh, I mean a different one”.

The reason that stayed with me all these years is probably because I have heard similar things on a daily basis and have spoken them, mostly unintentionally. We all have our way of doing things – the “best” way, the “right” way. Your ego is very self-assured, though you might try to convince yourself otherwise. As one college professor pointed out to me, “Everybody is right. If you don’t believe me, try finding someone who is wrong.”

All this “rightness” can be stressful and tiresome. It can lead to conflict and tension when we try to impose our “rightness” on others, or when they try to impose it on us. I can feel my solar plexus tighten when my “rightness” is challenged, and I think. “I can do this myself, thank you. I have planned a route/changed a nappy/written a report/made dinner before. Nobody died.”

Life is a learning experience. Coaching and guidance are valuable in the learning process. They can be given with the best of intentions, but unless we are open to receiving them, they only serve to cause us stress. We remove the resistance to constructive criticism when we give up the constant need to be right. That doesn’t mean you should take every bit of advice on board as something you must do. Be open to listening, then determine what works for you. Most people are just trying to help, even when their “rightness” gets in the way of positive communication.

Of course, there are people who are intent on showing you how wrong you are. But that’s their problem. Don’t make it yours. Let it go and your solar plexus will thank you.

Just for today I will be kind to all living things

See a list of Reiki precepts.

Garnish

“I wGarnish_6ouldn’t want to work with my wife in a place where there were a lot of knives”, I said. We all laughed –  myself and the Chinese couple working in the kitchen of their restaurant. We knew each other well, so we could joke like that. Plus this was a dream.

The woman was chopping garnish that would most likely be used only as decoration on the plates being brought out to the diners. She suddenly turned sad, and although she didn’t say, I suspected that she was contemplating why she spent so much time performing a task that had no utilitarian value. “Subversion is what happens when you begin to think about what you’re doing”, I said. One says such things in a dream, and attempts to decipher them later.

Preparing a meal for presentation isn’t a crucial activity. Without it, the food will probably taste the same to the diner, and it will certainly have the same nutritional value. But will the dining experience feel the same? Won’t it be diminished in some small way, a little of the art removed?

We may focus on the rare, major events when we look at what defines our experience, but most of daily life is composed of small details. On their own, each detail may seem as insignificant as a grain of sand. But the combined effect of the quality of each detail is as noticeable as the quality of a beach.

Giving a smile or a pleasant response to a stranger. Cleaning up after yourself in a food court, clearing the clutter from your desk at work, or wiping the few drops of spilt coffee from the tea station. Drawing a maple syrup smiley on the pancakes or placing a note in the lunch bag. Practicing feng shui on the kitchen counter, playing background music for the chores, or bringing table flowers for no particular reason. These are all little acts of appreciation, messages to each other that say “I care”. Performing one of these acts takes only a moment out of our day. Separately, none of them are a big deal. Combined, those mundane details can have a great impact on our experience, and how we feel about ourselves and the people around us.

Just for today, send little messages to the world to show you care.

No Dumping

Emotional baggage is a peculiar thing. It is invisible to the naked eye, but it can feel so heavy when you carry it.

I’ve let myself get weighed down under such baggage, and struggled in such a way as to attract attention to my load. And it does attract attention, usually in the form of fellow travellers. “Let me dump my bags,” I might say. “Pick them up. Feel how heavy they are.” And they might listen politely, even sympathetically, but mostly they are waiting for me to finish so that they can dump their bags, so I can see how much heavier they are than what I’m carrying. And there we all are, having a dumping party, trying to get each other to carry our bags.  You can probably guess how effective that is.

In fact, it does work to the extent that people can dump their bags and add them to your load (or vice versa). Funny thing is, dumping of this kind doesn’t seem to make anyone’s load any lighter. Instead, the baggage seems to multiply so that there is enough weight to go around for all who will help carry.

Of course, we all know you don’t need to be actively taking part in dumping to be targeted as a dumpee. Sometimes you seem to be a magnet. You can be minding your own business, having a cup of coffee and reading a paper, when you are suddenly approached by dumper. You may even recognize this person, and know them by name. You may even see them regularly, in your kitchen at breakfast, for example. They might not even be speaking to you directly, but they are speaking. And dumping.

Because of your proximity, and the fact that you might care about this person, you can’t help but listen, even if you remain behind your paper (which can actually encourage more dumping). As you listen, your back gets sore and your shoulders sag. More to the point, you start to feel what the other person is feeling. You might even become sad, frustrated or angry. Before you know it, you put the paper down and you are pacing the kitchen pontificating with one hand and sloshing coffee with the other, agreeing with the dumper.  Emotional power is raised to a crescendo that might include an argument about how much you agree with dumper. Then suddenly, the dumping session is over and the dumper is out the door, reminding you to clean up the coffee you spilled. And you still have their bags.

Somewhere in Alabama there is a store selling unclaimed airline luggage at an 80% discount (seriously).  Apparently, lost and found can do that after 90 days of trying to locate the owners.  And it is a pain for the owner, I’m sure, but eventually the cameras, clothes, jewellery, books, iPads, etc. get replaced. Or else the owner realizes that those items aren’t all that important.

If only it was so easy to lose emotional baggage, not that I would encourage anyone to buy it, but at least it would have value to someone if they did.  Because, really, these bags are just weighing us down and getting in our way. We don’t need them, but we’re so used to carrying them that it is hard to let go. It seems more comforting to share out.

I think you’ll feel much lighter and freer if you can shake those bags off your back. It might take a while to loosen the knots, but you can do it. And when someone sees your unburdened back as an invitation dump their own bags, don’t let them do it. Instead, help them to ditch their bags.

Just for today I will do my work honestly

Just for today, I will be kind to all living things

See a list of Reiki precepts.