more reasons you should be meditating - plus sex advice, parenting advice and something sticky hits the wall

 

I was going to move this series on to 'celebrate good times'

(and if I just put that awesome Kool and the Gang song in your head .. you're welcome .. and if I didn't, here it is)

but I think I need another post about meditation. Because some people read the words "you should be meditating" and what they hear is "this is one more thing you need to do, why aren't you doing this - you loser you".

(and now that I write "this is one more thing you need to do" I am thinking about sex. If you are married as long as I am Dear Reader you might remember a time - maybe when your kids were little, maybe when you were working a lot, maybe last week -  when sex was the last thing on your mind, but maybe it wasn't the last thing on Mr. Reader's mind - and of course, this scenario works equally well in reverse, if you, Dear Reader are the Mr. Reader.

It sort of felt like one more thing someone wanted you to do when you just wanted/needed to go to sleep. And Mr. Reader would get annoyed or resentful because often men get mad instead of sad. 

Well, if you are lucky enough to still be together many years later this whole thing might have reversed itself on you - which is actually kind of cool in a way because Mr. Reader gets to experience how it feels to have one more thing someone wants him to do when he is exhausted and learn that he actually wasn't being rejected at all and you get to see that his annoyance was actually hurt feelings and understand that yes, in fact, you were rejecting him because that is exactly how you feel now. 

Not that this ever happens to hubs and me, of course, but if it happens to you and especially if you are in Act 1 of this little play, it is something to think about; a new way of thinking about what the other person is actually experiencing - just don't think about it while you are meditating.)

Back to this meditation message - it can be annoying. I get it. Because when I am meditating I can't believe I ever let my practice slip ... and then I let my practice slip.

I don't think that will happen this time though - I think my practice is really sticky this time. It's meditate or medicate this time.

(remember those things we threw on the wall as kids and they slithered down the wall, sticky like that - and if you are thinking I mean slinkys, I do not mean slinkys, I mean the sticky, gummy things not the metal spiral things but if you were throwing your slinkys against the wall - you really need to be meditating, so listen up)

One of the ways you will know you need to meditate is when you start doing some really inefficient unconscious meditating.

This is otherwise known as "spacing out".

You drive to work and do not remember those last 11 miles or you find your car keys in the freezer next to your wallet or you intend to drive to the post office and end up 5 miles past the post office before you realize what you are doing.

If you are absent minded, spacey or confused - get yourself to a meditation cushion now.

You are full. You need to release all the stuff you are carrying; the stuff that has glommed onto you from other people and plenty of your own stuff, too. Meditation will release this stuff for you. I promise.

(someone recently said to me "I keep releasing, releasing, releasing, when do I get to keep anything?" Ha! She cracked me up - then I said "Oh really, what exactly have you released?" And she proceeded to tell me about the closets she'd emptied and the attic she cleaned out. And I said, "Great!" then I said, because I know she is very vocal about her grown son making choices she does not agree with, "releasing is also about letting go of trying to control people and letting go is about accepting other people's choices" - she got quiet, then told me she had some more closets to empty ... which is OK, of course, everything in its own time - this is a process and creating physical space is always a good thing.)

HERE are 20 more reasons to meditate.

Nemetona is the Celtic Goddess who protected ancient ceremonial sites. We can connect with her energy to build an altar in our home; a little place of retreat and refuge for yourself ....

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - #3 necessary stillness

I have meditated on and off since high school. I think the times I was meditating I was more awake. 

(it may seem like it is harder to live our lives awake until we think through the alternative : we are asleep and life wakes us up - not like a mother who whispers "rise and shine sweetie" - this mother throws open the blinds and yanks the blanket, tumbling us out of bed and on to the cold hardwood floor, she doesn't even offer up a boo-boo kiss, she just strides out of the room - life is one tough love mama ... ouch)

My usual pattern is I get busy with work and outer stuff (trying to control the stuff I can't control, but I seem firmly committed to not understanding this) and stop meditating. I lose my connection to the big picture. I lose my connection with myself (which is the same thing). Then something happens to wake me up - something challenging happens. Almost always something that slows me down; sometimes something that stops me in my tracks.

Then like the prodigal son I come back.

Meditation is a practice. It's not something that works for other people, but not for us. It's like exercise - it can't work for us if we don't practice, but if we do practice it can't not work for us.

Stillness connects us to our higher self/the Universe/God/the Goddess (pick your comfort zone) - not that we are ever not connected, but sometimes the connection gets foggy.

I also find that stillness allows me to let go of refined flours and sugars. This sounds like a physical thing (and it is partly), but it’s really about vibration. Nothing fogs things up so fast as white flour and white sugar. The first thing that happens to me when I fall off the wagon and stop meditating is I start eating this crap again. I am sure this is a fear reaction to life requiring more of me. It is easier to just play small.

Over the holidays, I was listening to Decisive - the Chip and Dan Heath book about better decision making. It was very good, but made me wonder if they would have come to a different conclusion about the true value of intuition if they had been working with people who meditate regularly.

This is not hard stuff. It is not easy stuff either.

Dr. Wilder Penfield (is this the best name ever?!) is a famous Canadian neurosurgeon. His research discovered the brain's sensory and motor cortex and more. During his studies he found the area in our brains where decisions are carried out. He got very excited. He thought he would next discover the part of our brain where decisions are made. He never found it. Instead, he found there is no part of our brain where decisions are made.

So, how is this possible? We know we make decisions every day, every minute of every day in fact. Apparently our brain and our body are amazing tools for executing decisions, but not making them.

There must be a nonphysical "us" that does the decision making (this is a really powerful thing to know if we beat ourselves up over taking the 'wrong' action and if we are continually searching for that magical set of actions that will make everything work) - this is the part of us we get to meet when we meditate.

Get yourself a timer/stopwatch app for your phone or Kindle, an egg timer or just set your oven timer (start with 5 minutes in the morning and work up to 20 minutes once a day or 15 minutes twice a day - by the time you are up to 15 minutes, you will want to do this twice a day, trust me).

Dedicate a space to this. It's a practice and you need room to practice. Get yourself a yoga mat or sit in a special chair. Make the practice a ritual. Light a candle, darken the room. I have a space in my bedroom and I open the bedroom window while I make the bed to bring in some fresh air. Then I close the window, light the candle and just do it. When you get centered every animal in your house will be climbing all over you - ignore them. If you have young children, you will have to get up before them or they will be drawn to your stillness like a magnet (or a magnetic locket - warning shameless plug ahead - have you seen this). 

I think you can do the Chopra 21 Day Challenge anytime or go to Hayhouse and find a guided meditation you like or go to YouTube and click around until you find something you like. If you are already meditating there is a great 7 Steps to Rebirth meditation by Doris Eliana Cohen.

Most days I just start with relaxing my toes and work my way up to my head - saying to myself "my toes are relaxed", "my ankles are relaxed", etc ending with "I am relaxed" then focus on my breathing until my timer goes off. When thoughts intrude I just let them float away. Some days I do guided meditations.

The more we practice the better we get at listening to our gut and instincts. We will fool ourselves into doing things that make us feel badly much less often because we will be more in tune with our beliefs, our true nature and how we really feel.

We won't be saying stuff like "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up" or "I could have what I want if I could only figure out what I want", anymore. This kind of foggy energy will not be available to us - we will start getting clear (the clarity may not immediately or ever really answer these questions, this is a practice and a process after all, but the thing we should be doing right now will become clear and that's all we need anyway).

So, we are telling our stories in the best way possible, we are focused on how we want to feel, we are meditating ....

next up Part IV - the value of celebrating

New Moon in Pisces, Mercury moves direct, Mars goes retrograde ....

Pisces Magnetic Locket by Polarity

We have a new moon in Pisces on March 1st and this is the last moon in our astrological year!

(Jupiter squares Uranus today so we may each get a little treasure we did not expect - probably within 48 hours before or after - this one has a liberating feel to it - it is up to us to notice and accept that sliver of blue sky being offered up - if we refuse to be liberated, bailed out, unhooked or released then that is up to us - this could be something tiny like an unexpected trip out to dinner and we do not have to cook, thus liberating us from our crockpot or something bigger like our grown son gets off our couch and gets a job, thus liberating our mind from worry and his bills from our wallet)

Mercury starts moving direct in a couple days, but Mars goes retrograde the next day - we have had Venus retrograde followed by Mercury retrograde now followed by Mars retrograde - helping to create the longest winter (not the season but the feeling of winter) in years.

Mars has been in Libra since December (not a place fiery Mars likes to hang out - it's all raw energy vs creative energy with Mars battling Venus) and once he starts his retrograde, things will gets a little more intense. If you know what house Mars is in your natal chart this will be the area where the fiery God of action may be making himself known; the place you will have an itch that needs scratching, the place you can't sit still, but every move you make will feel a little like you shouldn't have made it.

If you have any planets 27 degrees in cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) you will feel this 'lashing out' - the most. Mars retrograde in Libra for artists is like your best friend steals your design and people turn against you for calling her out on it! You gnash your teeth, un-friend the whole lot of them and probably regret it later. On the bright side if anyone decides to sue you now this will likely turn out badly for them.

Now, back to this Pisces new moon. This is an early, early morning new moon, so if you do new moon affirmations and I am hoping your do - try for Saturday morning. This is one new moon that isn't for everyone. Pisces asks us to feels things deeply. There isn't a lot of grounding here. The Pisces new moon is the last moon of the year.

The year only ends on the paper calendar in December, folks. The Universal year ends with Pisces (this is why we always feel a little off about the January new year start - our bodies know we are still in the fallow season of winter!) and Pisces asks us to sacrifice (which is always a sacred act).

Lent starts March 5th and isn't just good practice for Catholics.

This moon is 10 degrees Pisces, affecting those born with planets at about 7- 15 degrees of the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces) most strongly (high emotions).

Check your natal chart HERE.

You can use the house 10 degrees Pisces resides in your natal chart to see where this new moon's sacrifice could be most effective for you. HERE is a good basic list of what each house of the zodiac is about. For example I was born with 10 degrees Pisces in my 4th house which is all about our family, home, roots, security so my most effective sacrifice (sacred act) to end the year would be a sacrifice related to this ...

This is an excellent time for energetic support to make changes with things ruled by Pisces including our imagination, compassion, releasing victim-hood, spiritual healing, sensitivity, trust, addictions, lymphatic system, colds, feet, toxicity.

Some affirmations I will be using this weekend include:

I easily relax my mind and body deeply at night for a minimum of seven hours of restful sleep.
All debilitating sensitivity is easily lifted from me.
I trust that everything that occurs in my life is working for my higher good.
I easily attract, recognize and begin attending the right yoga class for me.
I easily release the habit of procrastination.
plus 5 more - Jan Spiller advises the power of 10 with this, so what the hell, let's go with 10.

AFFIRMATION TIPS: get into a happy frame of mind - always make affirmations from a  positive place - write your affirmations down by hand in script, speak them out loud - I write my affirmations on strips of paper and burn them, releasing the ashes into moving water - then release your attention from these things knowing that your intention is known. Know these things are already yours. xo

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - #2 focus on our thoughts and especially on how we want to feel

Candace Pert was a neuroscientist (she passed away a few months ago) whose amazing career included two excellent books "Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel," with Deepak Chopra and "Everything You Need to Know to Feel Good".

In the early 90's while serving as the chief molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health she made an amazing discovery that thoughts are real, physical things.

She found that every thought we have (and emotion it produces) has a unique neuropeptide associated with it. Our body produces that unique neuropeptide every time we think that particular thought and experience that particular emotion. These neuropeptides are amino acids produced by the hypothalamus (the control center) in our brain.

Every time we think a thought our hypothalamus translates the thought into billions of neuropeptides that are uniquely associated with the feeling we experience by that thought. Our bloodstream is just flooded with this stuff. 

These billions of neuropeptides join with our cells by inserting themselves into a special receptical in each cell's membrane - just like a key fitting into a lock.

Each neuropeptide receptacle on a cell's membrane is designed to fit just that one particular peptide and no other. So once that neuropeptide finds the right receptacle it gets absorbed into the cell (the cell that literally creates our physical body).

Dr. Pert discovered that over time our cells develop more and more unique receptacles based on the neuropeptides they are most frequently capturing. Our cells even begin to crave these familiar neuropeptides (the ones they have built those unique recepticals to receive). Our cells start telling our hypothalamus to produce these particular peptides because we have developed an actual physical need for them.

So, our cells are not craving stuff that feels good (meaning good thoughts and good emotions) - our cells are craving thoughts and emotions that are familiar.

This gives the need for us to "focus on the feelings we want to have" a whole other impetus. It also helps to explain how focusing on how we want to feel rather than focusing on what we want to get actually works.

(also the law of attraction which is much, much bigger than The Secret and operates more like a tuning fork with like attracting like)

Focusing on a goal always brings up resistant thoughts - Why aren't I there yet? Why don't I have that yet? Why does she have that and I don't? What if I don't get it? What if this never happens for me? This is the "what we resist persists" problem with attracting what we want.

Focusing on a goal also requires us to actually have a goal in the first place which means we have to know what we want which is the place we might get stuck because we often don't know what we want in the first place.

Luckily, we don't have to know what we want. We only have to know how we want to feel and all of us, every single one of us already knows that. We just have to get our hypothalamus to start creating the right neuropeptides and our cells to start producing the right keyholes!

Now our cells may have had decades creating all these keyholes for chaos and shame and fear and guilt and grief, but we can start building new keyholes today - right this minute. We can start focusing on how we want to feel (regardless of what is happening in our lives) today.

How might this work? Well, let's say we have a goal of making more money, but we can't really see how we can do this or what this would actually look like. So, we don't worry about that part (worry thoughts will just produce worry keyholes in our cells and we will literally become made of worry).

If we want to attract more money we think about the feelings that extra money would bring us which could be : safety or freedom or joy or peace or being loved or cherished or attention (which I've heard is the number one thing women want from men) or appreciation (which I've heard is the number one thing men want from women) or some other thing or all of these things.

We make a list of the emotions we want to feel.

(always write lists out by hand and use script since there is more energy in our physical makings and more fluid movement with script writing - I have heard some schools are no longer teaching script - maybe they have forgotten we all need to be able to sign our names and our unique signatures come from writing script letters a hundred, gazillion times)

We spend time each day with this list feeling each emotion. 

We think about things we have experienced before or we just make stuff up - our body doesn't know the difference. We just feel what it feels like to be secure - to have enough money that we can take care of everything we need to take care of easily. We feel what it feels like to be happy and joyful. We dance around our studios and bedrooms and kitchens. We breathe deeply from our bellies with this stuff.

We also notice when we feel these emotions throughout the day (and we will start feeling them more and more) and we savor them.We don't wait for something to happen to feel a good emotion, we just feel them for no outside reason at all.

(think about that Meg Ryan diner scene in When Harry Met Sally, you know the one I mean, we need to really savor these emotions that we want to feel - other people will just want some of what we are having)

When we notice a negative thought coming in - we catch it before it produces the negative emotion. We let that thought go - we replace it with another thought - one that produces the emotion we want to build keyholes for-

the kind of emotion we want to feed our body; the kind of emotion we want our bodies, and lives, to be created from; the kind of emotion we want to attract more of.

(yes, I'm dangling participles all over the place - ignore this)

Now, again this isn't about pouring pink paint over our problems and pretending they don't exist (as Marianne Williamson says) - sometimes we are going to get mad or feel overwhelmed or sad or scared - once the thought has brought on the emotion, we let our bodies feel it, then we let it go - breath it out with a pulse breath.

We move on to a better thought and an emotion we want to have. We let our bodies chow down on that.

I turned my entire life around very quickly many years ago with just this step and meditation. I have gotten out of practice but am back on the wagon .. will report on what develops.

next up part #3 necessary stillness