Category Archives: Inspiration

Inspiration

Harry Potter, Puppies, and the Origin of Joy

LeakyCon!Growing up during the “Harry Potter Era” taught me innumerable lessons, one of which is that I love Harry Potter.  I can’t count how many times I’ve read J.K. Rowling‘s gift to this world, but each time I do I am no less entertained than the time before.  Every time I go through the series it feels new.

New things, feelings, experiences, and insights provide an unparalleled joy.  Why is that?  Is it possible to feel that same sense of joy more often?

The joy that comes from the new is actually the joy that arises from the now.  Usually we do not truly experience the present moment, because our thoughts and perceptions are clouded by a heavy veil of past.  It is so natural to view everything through the eyes of the past that it can be impossible to notice we aren’t seeing the reality of the eternally new present.

New things unveil the joy of the present because we have no past experiences through which to filter them.  The beginning of cultivating that experience in everyday life is to acknowledge you are viewing the present through the lens of the past, and do no see the actuality of what is.  This opens the door for the infinitely new now.

On that note, get a boost in present moment awareness with these adorable puppies experiencing the newness of life.  Dogs are great teachers of presence because they are always fully experiencing each moment.

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Inspiration

How To Stop Deflecting Miracles

Waterfall Is there someone in your life you aren’t completely satisfied with? Is there someone you are holding something against?

When I asked myself these questions the answers surprised me. The people in my life with whom a small sliver of dissatisfaction sometimes remains, people who I might want to do something for me or act differently, are generally not unfriendly acquaintances. Rather, they are those I love, and have the deepest connections to.

A grudge is the continued non-forgiveness of another human being, whether it is for something they did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say, or for their inability to make you feel whole and happy. Allowing yourself to look clearly at your non-forgiveness, without self-judgment, is the first and vital step to releasing yourself from the negative consequences of unconsciously wanting others to be different.

When I remind myself that fear and resentment, in whatever forms they appear, prevent my life’s purpose from unfolding, a choice is presented. In this instance I can make a new decision and choose to love being in the moment I am in. Reminding myself that this decision causes a chain reaction of miracles makes this choice all the easier.

The brilliance of this Super Soul Sunday video with Marianne Williamson is that she not only defines miracles and how they occur, but it is also made clear that allowing every individual to be on their own life path is essential to their highest potential as well as to yours. It is so easy to resent where people are at on their journeys, even more so in situations where they disagree with or harbor resentment towards you. But dealing with the consequences of your own resentment is not easy. Knowing that your inability to completely accept other people can prevent you from moving forward towards the miraculous makes the choice to love a more accessible reality.

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Inspiration

What Could Trust Do For You?

TrustGive yourself the gift of a day of trust.  When life feels tumultuous I designate minutes, hours, or even a day where my only objective is to surrender, trust, and accept.  If an unexpected obstacle arises it is often at this moment when the day turns from one of trust back into moments of worry and attempts to “fix” the situation that I find unacceptable through thinking in unproductive circles.  

This too, is okay.  It is merely one more chance to embark on another minute, hour, or day of trust.  Suspending disbelief and allowing yourself to feel that the universe, God, life energy itself is providing for all your needs, just as it had in your first nine months in your mother’s womb, offers the opportunity to experience the true effects and purpose for the practice of trust.

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Inspiration

My Big Fear

WyomingWhat do you consider your greatest burden?  What keeps you from feeling free to enjoy life?

Some people worry, some stress.  Some people have experienced trauma that never leaves their minds.  Some people don’t want to be where they are right now, while others don’t like who they are.  

Since I was a little girl the most dominant thought pattern disrupting my natural ease has been fear.  While a fear of death outweighs other fears, it doesn’t really matter what I’m afraid of.  The content of each fearful inkling doesn’t matter because after all of these years listening to a thought pattern fueled by fear I have found that anything can be used to feed its momentum. This is also why fear is my greatest teacher.

Whatever your most intrusive burden may be, it provides you with two paths.  It has the power to drive you deeper into unconsciousness and pain, or drive you out into light and understanding.  Fear is such an easily accessible fuel for my thoughts that I can either focus on the energetic train of one thought after another spurred by the initial feeling of fear, or I can use the fear to force me into becoming completely present.

The less focused I am on the reality of my immediate experience, the easier it is for old thought patterns to gain new life.  Now when a fearful thought enters my mind, no matter how benign it may seem at first, I use it to force me into focusing on my surroundings.  I visually examine whatever my gaze falls upon and make it the center of my attention.  I listen closely to the sounds around me.  Fearful thoughts still come, but they are balanced and increasingly overpowered by the intensity of presence which they trigger.

What thoughts cause you to suffer?  Even if those thoughts are justified and grounded in reality, if they cause suffering they can become your presence trigger, they can wake you up.  While joy, peace, and love are equally effective teachers of being, if you work with what you’ve got you can transform any substance into pure gold.

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Inspiration

4 Steps For Manifesting A New Reality While Staying Rooted In The Present

Swami SatchidanandaStep One: Allow yourself to fully feel that which arises in the present moment, whether comfortable or uncomfortable.

Step Two: When that which arose has completely passed through you, place your attention on thoughts that serve you. Think the thoughts you would think if your dreams had already come to pass.

Step Three: Allow those thoughts to awaken the feelings that would be present if your dreams were currently your outer reality.

Step Four: Bring your attention to the exact space of now that you are in and allow those beautiful dreams to permeate your present world.

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Inspiration

How Children Are Secretly Changing Adults

At Bop and Mimi'sIf you could impart one lesson to a child, what would it be?

I’ve observed an amazing phenomenon the past four years while working in an elementary school.  Adults become better people around kids.  We are more honest, forgiving, kind, and gentle when we have children observing our behavior all day.

Kids are extremely focused on the notion of “fairness.”  If an adult doesn’t abide by the rules they have set for a child, you bet that kid is going to call them out.  In the classroom adults do not swear or yell at each other, we want to model healthy relationships and problem solving. But when someone cuts us off during the morning commute we act in a way that would land any child in the principle’s office.

So think about that lesson you would really want to teach a child.  For me, I would want to help a child understand how to accept situations that don’t go exactly their way, and how to go back to enjoying themselves afterwards.

Take that lesson you want to pass on, and first teach it to yourself.  Kids learn by example after all.  Learn how to model that behavior which you would want to see others enact.  Not only will you be helping yourself, but you may also be helping a child you don’t even realize is paying attention.

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Inspiration

What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do

PHOTO BY PETER SPEROAs the years pass what I want to be has become clearer to me.  I want to be consciousness, love, peace, joy, and utterly present.  What continues to elude me is what I want to do.  Not knowing my outer purpose has caused me to engage in a lot of efforting to “figure it out,” which comes along with the residual anxiety from thinking I should know what I want to do when I don’t yet know.  This mental non-acceptance of what is, not only causes suffering, but is also a sure ticket to becoming out of alignment with the present moment.

The other night I received a profound message from a colleague who wasn’t even trying to offer advice.  She told me that all through her twenties she kept trying to do what she thought she was supposed to do; she tried to “make it happen.”  But eventually everything came together, her outer purpose became clear as day and was not what she initially worked for all those years.  For her, this new understanding would have come one way or another, and the years spent thinking she was supposed to have it all figured out would have been much better spent just enjoying herself.  Not only would her purpose have presented itself eventually anyway, she said it probably would have become apparent much sooner had she not been attempting to “make it happen” the way she thought it was supposed to.

In the gift of her story I heard echoes of Tolle, “Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.”  Enjoy the “right now”, no matter how messy that “right now” appears, and how elusive future security may seem to the thinking mind. A seed of joy now will be realized in even greater abundance in the future.  A seed of presence now, will grow into your life’s outer purpose.

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Inspiration

The Best Advice For Helping A Suffering Friend

How can you alleviate the suffering of those around you?  When I find that someone is suffering I immediately want to help, I want to “fix” their problems.  But if you’ve ever had someone jump in with advice when you were telling them of your suffering, you know that their advice, while sincere, didn’t diminish your pain.   In the video below Thich Nhat Hanh shares the best advice I’ve ever heard for how to help those around you who are in pain.

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Inspiration

How To Accomplish Everything In 1 Minute

PHOTO BY PETER SPEROToday’s post is dedicated to my incredible grandmother, Mimi, or this her 82nd birthday.  I love you Mimi, thank you for your guidance, wisdom, and love!

What is the background static of your life?  When I’m really paying attention I can sense the background static of my life as a multitude of unfinished tasks.  My background static is the thought that I will be at peace when I have completed my goals.

This morning as I was getting dressed I heard the voice in my head going over the things that I still needed to do.  I also realized that along with that thought was the physical feeling of being tense and uneasy.  Part of this background static was the unexamined assumption that feeling tense and uneasy until “everything was finished” would help me to meet those demands.

I then decided to take a minute for everything to be completed.  Meaning, that for a minute I decided to suspend my disbelief and truly feel as if everything I had been going over in my mind was finished, and there was absolutely nothing more to do.  The feeling associated with this thought was complete peace.  That experience helped me to remember the true benefit of paying attention to the actual experience of the present moment, without making it a means to an end but rather an end in itself.

As long as we are alive there will be things to do, goals to be accomplished, tasks that need tending to.  To wait to be at peace until “everything is finished” is to avoid that peace, and life itself, until your journey here on earth has already come to an end.

That there is always more to do is not a problem.  The problem is the psychological feeling that there is always more to do.

In order to leave behind this unhelpful perception take one minute every hour to consciously be still and imagine everything you have ever needed to do, or will ever need to do, has already been done.  Take that one minute to experience being on the other side of the endless “to-do” list. That one minute can easily become two minutes, and eventually you end up solely in the perfect present and witness life as it unfolds before your watchful eyes.

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