Tag Archives: spirituality

Inspiration

“In the moment of seeing, of noticing that your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, you are present.” – Tolle

Wind Tunnel

The first day of teaching for a new year of the after school program always leaves me thinking, “what just happened?”  Now sitting on a comfortable couch at home, I see the pull to hang on to the day.  To stay in the stress, to worry about what it will be like tomorrow.  But when I think about how I felt about the new year of programming this morning, before it at all began, I know I wasn’t worried at all.  I didn’t feel stressed about the prospect of the next class.

Even though the day has a magnetic pull, I can see that feeling like I did this morning would be a much more enjoyable way of being.  I can also see that feeling present and without worry didn’t effect the reality of the experience as it actually occurred.

Worry or not, the outcome is always the same.  The moment always comes to pass.  This is the moment where I have the opportunity to choose again.  Instead of succumbing to the attraction of holding on, I can choose to put down the thoughts of past and future, and return to the only place I will ever be, the present.

How do you feel when the day is done?  If you ever find yourself reliving the day over again in your head, create an experiment out of putting the day down, and allowing yourself to just be where you are.  After all, the only way to see if it feels better than a previous way of being, is to experience it.

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Inspiration

“There are no dark nights of the soul; there are only dark nights of the ego.” – Robert Holden

Shift Happens!

I saw this posted on Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Facebook page, and loved the clever way the words pointed towards the truth! When I experience pain, there is that still small voice at the back of my consciousness reminding me that suffering is created by the ego.  My true self is still whole; nothing can be given or taken away from being.  When in pain reminding myself that my attachment to the situation is causing the suffering, and that the situation already is how it is regardless of my reaction, a small space opens up around the pain that allows healing to work its way through.  To paraphrase Tolle, suffering is ego created but is ultimately ego destructive.  To say it another way, no matter what you are going through a world of greater peace and joy is perpetually blooming in the midst of the ashes.

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Inspiration

How can you tell if you’ve actually “let it go?”

skylineHow do you respond when someone tells you to, “let it go?”  I have been told, in many different contexts, to let something go, and often my response has been, “I will, but…” Which is to say, that I haven’t actually been letting go.  I’ve been learning that a true act of letting go contains far greater power than any reason not to ever could.

By letting go, you align yourself with the power of the universe.  You surrender to that unending stream of energy always flowing towards your highest potential.  So why don’t we let go more often?  Simply put, the thinking mind.  The mind needs thorough convincing to let go of anything.  To let go of a thought, an attachment, a grudge, or a question, the mind requires a foolproof argument to relinquish its firm grasp.  The thinking mind loses control over your life when you surrender and let go.  It doesn’t know a higher power will take the reigns; all the thinking mind sees is a life out of control, without any safety net.  Since the thinking mind is so bent on holding on, it is necessary to go beyond it to experience true surrender.  This means instead of convincing your mind to let go, you only need to convince your true self a more wondrous world is waiting for you on the other side of surrender.

How do you know if you’ve really let go?  When someone close to you has upset you and you decide to be the more conscious being and let it go, and think to yourself “Yes! I’ve let it go!” that is not surrender.  That is the thinking mind holding onto the concept of being more spiritually aware than others, and the idea of letting go.  You will know you’ve truly relinquished something when you feel a deep sense of peace, aliveness, and even joy that has nothing to do with your outer circumstance.

When you are having a disagreement with your partner, and no clear resolution has been found, but you feel completely at ease, you have surrendered.  This opens you up to being a vessel for solutions.  The universe has space to work through you to solve any problem you are experiencing, any dysfunction in the relationship.  Another sign that you have surrendered is that your compassion grows.  You can listen to your partner more deeply, without the voice in your head whispering internal judgments.  You can even understand a point of view you initially disagreed with.  Surrender offers unlimited potential for growth, expansion, peace, and love.

For me, writing this is a personal message to assist myself in surrender.  Although I am writing thoughts, they help to point me beyond my thinking mind to my true knowing.  There are many things in my life I can surrender to, like my work situation, my ideas about how my outer life should look, my opinions, and my ideas about how my loved ones should act.  And the only way to discover the miraculous consequences of surrender is to try it out.  What in your life can you let go of today?

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Inspiration

“Anything that is usually a means to an end, make it into an end in itself.” – Eckhart Tolle

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and find that you cannot stop thinking?  Or perhaps you are already awake, just going about your day, and notice your mind won’t stop running in circles?  As humans, we are of one mind.  We all think.  This short video, with Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra, offers enlightening, practical ways to take momentum away from the thinking mind:

http://youtu.be/q5J4HbmVfvA

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Inspiration

“The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.” – Eckhart Tolle

Night SkyWhat thoughts take you out of the present moment?  For me, when I experience thoughts of fear I find it easy to lose focus on what I’m doing, my attention completely taken up by the train of thought.  I was listening to Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth today and the following passage spoke so truly that it brought me right out of my thinking mind and into the present moment experience.  May it do the same for you:

The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say, what is or what happens.  If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with the present moment. (Tolle)

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Inspiration

Football as Spiritual Practice

Bears FootballThere was a buzz in the air of Chicago Sunday morning.  Football season had begun.  Yesterday was a great day for Bears fans. We won our game, and the Packers lost theirs.  Personally, I have never felt compelled by football.  That was until yesterday.

My boyfriend was so overjoyed all day, and I as I watched the multitude of fans on TV cheering from the stands I saw football in a new way.  Football has no utilitarian purpose.  It isn’t a necessity for survival. (Although I know some who would disagree.)  Football is a game.  And people love watching games.  They are full of joy.  While some describe it as an escape, I would venture to say that football is as real as any other aspect of life.  Humans brush their teeth, we eat food, we build ourselves shelters.  Games, art, creativity, and playing around are integral aspects to the human experience.  Our minds tell us that joy is not as important as survival.  This is because the mind doesn’t experience joy; you experience joy.  Meanwhile, survival thoughts are very real to the thinking mind, which thinks it has to control its environment to survive, that it has to fight and work hard.

Those thoughts are all very productive at providing momentum for the thinking mind.  Joy is not.  Often in moments of joy our minds become still, with all of our attention placed on the present moment experience.  These moments make being alive feel “worth it.”  Has the voice in your head ever questioned you when you decided to relax and do something purely for enjoyment?  Perhaps you sat down to read a book or listen to music, and your mind said something like, “You shouldn’t be doing this right now.  You have so much to do.”  Even though our thoughts are convinced those “other things” are more important than an experience of joy, we don’t have to buy into it.

I’m going to do an experiment, and I invite you to join in with me if it speaks to you.  Be alert the next time you do something just for yourself, with no end goal or purpose besides enjoyment.   If the voice in your head attempts to sabotage that joy, see what happens if you don’t take it seriously.  Maybe even smile or laugh at the thoughts trying to convince you there isn’t enough time for enjoyment.  After all, you cannot waste time.  Past and future exist for us right now as thoughts in our heads.  The only moment you’ll ever have to actually live through and experience is the present moment, right now.  And you have all the now in the world.

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Peace

Experiencing Your Life, and 15 Seconds of Peace #2

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Today I remember that everything is, and cannot be otherwise.  When you’re not attached to a thought in your mind about how your life “should” be, you are free to see and experience life as it really is with peace and equanimity.  What is more, life opens up for you when you are open to life.

This means that when you allow your present moment to be as it is, without demanding it conform to your ideas about it, it begins to flow with ease.  There are already solutions to any obstacle you may experience.  When you allow your present moment to be as it is, you offer space for those solutions to arise.  I try to remind myself in moments of stress, that if I let go the power of the universe will run its course, gently carrying me in alignment with my true purpose.

I am so excited to present the second “15 Seconds of Peace” video/music, created by my father, Peter Spero.  For me, this small glimpse of stillness helps reset the busy mind back to its natural state of peace.  I hope it speaks to you right where you are today:

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Peace

15 Seconds of Peace

World Inside The World

My brilliant and loving father, Peter Spero, created both the footage and music for this short peaceful getaway entitled “15 Seconds of Peace #1.”  My parents and grandparents have always appreciated the beauty of nature.  What is so fascinating about the natural world, is that it too is alive; yet without the separation created by the thinking mind, it is one with life.  Trees, plants, animals, they live and die in complete alignment and peace of being.  They never project themselves outside of the present moment.

We too can experience the peace of nature by relinquishing the rapt attention on our thoughts, and being one with the moment we are living in.  I hope that today this video gives you an experience of the infinite peace available to us all in the present:

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Inspiration

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think”

Don’t Believe Everything You Think

Have you ever seen or heard something that seemed like it was meant just for you?  Last night I parked behind a car with the bumper sticker, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”  What a wonderful message from the universe!  Peace has room to grow in your life once you stop taking your thoughts so seriously.

I have been more stressed out recently, from work and moving, than I usually ever am.  But once I stop believing in all of the worry thoughts, I have more space for peace and joy to rise.  The practice is moment to moment.  When I find myself pacing around a room, with my shoulders up to my ears, I have a new opportunity to take a deep breath and let go of my attachment to my thoughts.  When I start thinking of everything I have to do, and feel the heat of stress rising in my belly, I take a deep breath, and surrender to the present moment once more.  When I hear the din from the train and am about to freak out about moving to a place where I’ll have to hear it everyday, I take a deep breath, and remind myself how grateful I am to be so close to transportation.

In a new apartment, no matter how perfect and wonderful it is, it’s easy to see all of the little things that are wrong with it. What situations in your life provoke the voice of complaint? The easiest way to combat the voice of complaint is gratitude.  Whenever I hear the voice in my head complaining, I try to replace it with a list of the things I am grateful for.  I am grateful for my bedroom.  I am grateful to have a shower.  I am grateful for the stove.  I am grateful to be under a roof.  The list is infinite, and the best part is that it replaces the voice of the ego attempting to sabotage the peace of presence.

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Inspiration

How To Move With Equanimity

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I am sleeping in a new home tonight for the first time in five years.  Just yesterday I was struggling with the idea of how it would happen. The most helpful tool for staying in the moment, even when stressed, was reminding myself that whether I worried or not, it would happen just the same.  And wouldn’t you know, it happened.

Retaining equanimity does not mean that you don’t experience emotion.  Equanimity is allowing yourself to experience life in all of its manifestations, allowing life to be as it truly is.  In this way you become one with life, and are carried in the infinite flow of its energy.

As I experienced the ups and downs of my reactions through this transition, I was reminded by Swami Satchidananda, in an email from Weekly Words of Wisdom, how to ride the wave:

Reaching samadhi doesn’t means that you go into a trance or withdraw from life. If that were so, you can find a whole bunch of rocks sitting on a mountainside and you can say they are in samadhi. Samadhi means you retain your equanimity, you still function in the world without losing your equanimity. You become like a good surfer: well balanced as you surf the waves. A good yogi will always be balanced and surf in the world, facing both ups and downs alike. You will never get hurt, depressed by a depression in a wave or excited by a crest of a wave going upward. You will still remain balanced. That means you are perfectly healthy. Nothing and nobody can make you sick or can shake you.

God bless you. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. (Swami Satchidananda)

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