More on the Energy from Letting Go of Baggage

Letting go of emotional and mental baggage releases energy into our system.

This energy is experienced in a number of ways (usually a combination of several)

as feelings (uncomfortable or disturbing and both 'good' and 'bad')

as physical sensations or compulsions,

as mental thoughts/ruminations/obsessions

as an eruption of instincts (like fight, flight, fear)

This energy, however it manifests can trigger similar responses to our initial reaction to the original experience.

This original experience was in some way overwhelming or overpowering.

It threatened our balance and/or our existence.

This threat (whether real or perceived) is why it became part of our baggage.  

Otherwise it would have been just a memory, not a hidden formula for running our life.

We were not able to process it, resolve it or understand it then.

We can now. 

Letting go 

Resolving

Healing

Becoming our True Self

Is now possible—Is now probable

Now, by picking up and using the Tools , is how we put this released energy to good use.

Support tools for letting go what no longer serves us, AND for learning to serve in Truth:1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough )3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed

Self Reflection:  Take time to list the ways each of these tools has serves your life and supports you in serving in the world. 

Tools of Serve Truth, Part Five: The Gift of 'Do-Overs'

Support tools for letting go what no longer serves us AND for learning to serve in Truth:

1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)

2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough August 24 )

3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)

4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)

5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed)

Mulligans and gimmes. Re-takes and do-overs.  Can I begin again when I have had a miss-take?  

The Path of Truth is a learning path, not a path to perfection, but ongoing  practice. 

Practice requires a willingness to have error,  trials, failed attempts and blunders.

Learned grace is what comes from our willingness to keep going without any 

guarantee of getting it right-ever.  

Every year, every season, every cycle, every day is an invitation to begin again.  

In Truth, every breath is a renewal of life.  

We all have had times where we take a deep breath and with that breath take hold of the impulse to meet a challenge, move forward, start, begin.  

The gift for all who choose to embrace the Cycles of Truth is the invitation with each breath to begin again.  This gift comes with  compassion, acceptance, tolerance for ours and others wrong steps and love for the beauty of imperfection.  

Self Reflection:  Is there a place in my life where I could use a do-over? If so, what do I need to be humble enough to receive this gift?

Tools to Serve Truth Part Four: Receiving Help

Support tools for letting go what no longer serves us AND for learning to serve in Truth:

1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)

2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough)

3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)

4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)

5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed)

In Our Willingness to Receive Help
We Experience
Humility
Vulnerability
Connection
Letting go control
Emotions
New Options
Others touching us
Being seen
Seeing Others
Grace from ourselves
Grace from others
Letting others in
Truth becoming broader
Service

Self Reflection: How do I allow myself to receive help?  What small step can I take to open to receiving more help?

Tools to Serve Truth, Part Three: Contemplation

Support tools for letting go what no longer serves us AND for learning to serve in Truth:

1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)

2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough )

3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)

4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)

5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed)

Carolyn writes: For me contemplation is the commitment and willingness to hear, experience, integrate, become aware and come to know the subtler, inter-connected elements of everything that makes me, me—and me part of everything.   I don’t have a clear understanding of the technical differences between meditation and contemplation.  My understanding of meditation is only of the beginning level of sitting and clearing my mind in an effort to empty it of thought.  After years of trying, it still feels like a struggle. 

Contemplation seems more forgiving of the constant movement of my body and my mind. Contemplation is more noticing and allowing and listening with my whole body.  When I sit in contemplation, a kind of knowing comes to me from a place where it seems all wisdom is held.  I see this place of wisdom as one of the infinite facets of GOD.  

Many years ago I took a series of meditation classes in an effort to calm and clear my mind.  I remember being told to keep imagining a blank white canvas on which GOD could reveal GOD to me.  My canvas was never white.  It always appeared thick with layers of paint in many colors, shapes and texture.   I finally stopped struggling and gave into my colored canvas.  This is how I came to embrace ‘my’ form of contemplation. 

Sitting with my multicolored, multi-textured, multi-layered canvas, became a way for Wisdom to make herself known to me.  I would be with what I saw on my inner canvas and ‘wonder’ about it. My ‘wondering’ became a way to loosen the grip of my fears, beliefs and perceptions.

Self-Reflection: I sit in contemplation and I wonder…about whatever becomes to my awareness; and then I listen with all of my senses, and then, I come to know with all my senses.  In sitting this way, I come to know at ever subtler levels what is more Truth.

Tools Part Two: Praying

Support tools for letting go what no longer serves us AND for learning to serve in Truth:

1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)

2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough)

3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)

4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)

5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed)

To Pray is being present in the moment, giving voice, and listening with all of our senses.

Begin with gratitude, no matter how tiny the gratitude may be.  It may be only a gratitude of having the willingness to try and pray.  How we pray and why we pray is a very individual process.  There is no wrong or right way, and if there are‘rules’, there are just two: to begin each time of praying with ‘thank you’ and to ask to be heard (followed by asking).

Praying is an active process. Actually, it is an interactive process involving asking and then listening. We do not need to know with whom or what we are interacting.  Our belief in any form of God or Spirit is not even necessary for prayer to be effective.  Our beliefs do not 

make the receiver of our intercessions more or less able to hear for what we are praying.   

The universe receives our words, even when we dare not speak them out loud, though out loud is better.  Hearing ourselves speak our request out loud seems to make it easier to listen and hear the response coming to us.

Then, we listen with our ears, our eyes, our heart, our voice, even with our senses of taste and smell.  This listening can take a while, but it will come.

If you need a starter way to pray try the ‘running out the door prayer' from the post during the waxing moon for August.

"As I go out the door I notice whatever it is Creation presents to me from nature: a tree, bird, animal, the morning star or the moon. 

I notice and I say: 'Good morning, thank you for listening; thank you for hearing, thanking you for being.  Your being allows my being. I ask (insert a request for a definitive support for your day).' Then I say again.  'Thank you, thank you.  A million, million times thank you.'” 

Then, even if you can not stop long enough to listen at that moment, you will find your senses are listening for answers, as you move through your day.

Self Reflection: How is prayer a part of my life? I remind myself that to Serve Truth is a form of prayer.

Tools Part One: Where Two or More are Gathered

From Yesterday's blog post:

Support tools for letting go what no longer serves us AND for learning to serve in Truth:

1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)

2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough)

3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)

4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)

5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed)

When we make a decision we often think we are making choices from our adult, matured, logical self.  But, we usually have a committee in our head all vying for a deciding vote. This committee is an accumulation of voices from our past experiences, other people's opinions, our fears, our dreams and...the list of members is a long one.

Even with a lot of personal growth and spiritual work, with therapy and a commitment to live in truth, these inner voices can take over as decision makers without our conscious awareness of where the decision comes from--until after we begin to experience the a feeling of  'buyer's remorse'. The solution is to create a conscious, purposeful committee  inviting Divine Direction for our decisions.

Self Reflection: I  gather around me friends and colleagues**, just a few, wise ones who know a bit more than me about any number of things.  Each has a gift and knowledge in their own way. They are willing to sit and consider the decisions, the choices, the paths before me.  We sit, three or more of us together and make a space for Divine to sit with us. I name the intention for the gathering. We ask questions, name the possibilities, I share fears, hopes, risks, givens.  Then I speak my vision for the outcome. My committee may help me with clarity for my vision.  We then sit in quiet for a bit and each speaks the thoughts that have come to them.  I sit a little longer, and then I know what to do.

**this gathering works best if it does not include any one who has a vested interest of any kind in the decision.   

P.S.  This sitting exercise can take as little as 10-15 minutes. It should take no longer than half an hour. It is not a discussion group!.  If you'd like  more information on setting up this kind of gathering for yourself, contact Carolyn, I would love to share my experience and how to.  

The Vital Tools to Serve and Live Truth; Introduction

The waning moon is the part of the month where we are guided to let go of what no longer serves us. We are also guided to put ourselves more fully out into the world.  

The letting go part brings us ever closer to being our true self, our real self.   Letting go frees up internal space.  Some of us feel this newly freed space as our heart opening or softening; we find ourselves being kinder toward our fellow humans.  Some will find the letting go process brings renewed energy to life, and renewed hope for visions. Some will find they can sleep better, more peacefully.  Some will feel the impulse to become more visible in the world, as the rhythmic practice of letting go and releasing brings our inner vision to the surface. Some of us will start forward and then freeze in uncertainty as new-old fears surface as warnings, inviting us to go back to our old ways. 

Every month we have a repeat of this invitation to release and let go, and to move out and live more.  The ‘mess’ of our life is the place we contemplate to begin to know, see and act on what to let go and what to nourish.  The tools mentioned in yesterday’s post are the essential tools for the waning moon phase. 

In each of the next five posts I will write about these tools of Serve Truth so they may be put to practical use for our lives.

Self Reflection: What Serve Truth's invitation this cycle for me to release and let go, and to move out and live more of me?

Rhythm of Truth Cycles, Moon Cycles, Our Cycles: A Mandala for Being

10" x 10" mandala made with found objects: sheet music, Scrabble tiles, money plant seed pods, chocolate kisses, rice crackers. copyright 2016 Lisa Kay

Rhythm of Truth
Lisa Kay
August 2016

Ring around the mandala,
Layers, expand/contract.
Receive the spark!
Open space for sweet, abundant, creation.
Nourish the spirit.
Transmute the heavy into light.
Balance energy in/out/ left to right, up/down,
Around.

Self Reflection: What is my own individual Rhythm and Cycle? How do I allow it to honor and support me?

Before the Clean Up, Be Willing to See the Truth of the Mess

Earlier contemplation posts suggested taking time for reviewing recent experiences and behaviors.  Patterns in my behavior appear when I practice this kind of review.

As I stand and look over what I have judged as a mess of my life, I CAN spot

-a few tiny but luminous victories 

-some positive results from modest efforts

-a couple of ideas worth sharing (like this post?)

-a certain memory I shall keep and hold dear

-and yes, a couple of behaviors where I’d like do-over

Thankfully, THE Service Master arrives bringing tools:

1) Gathering with a few others to review the scene before any action (just be sure they aren’t enablers)

2) Praying (remember the running out the door prayer-that is enough)

3) Contemplating  (which means watching and listening and hearing)

4) Receiving help (as gracefully as currently possible)

5) Taking a ‘do-over’ and humbly beginning again (as many times as needed)

Self Reflection: What are the tools I am needing/willing to use? Do I need outside help?

Calling A Spiritual Service Master

Confession: The bottom line is that these one minute meditations are written for the benefit of my own self.  It’s likely others can relate to my life experiences, and I hope some can benefit from, and receive some healing (or a good laugh) by, my sharing.

It seems that in this waning moon, what is being called for in my life is attention to my own container of truth. The service to Truth I feel I am being called to is service to my own self, and what is really Truth. I need to be calling the Spiritual Service Master instead of looking at the mess I have created in my life, bitching and moaning that it should be different, and wailing, “Not Again!” 

Self-Reflection:  Am I willing to have the Spiritual Service Master come and clean up my mess for me?  What else would I need to be willing to call for that kind of help in my life?

The Benefits of Transmuting Baggage

When we start to let go and release our baggage, the next experience we are likely to have is that memories will begin to bubble up from our sub-conscious and unconscious.

The revealing of memories from our past is a required step toward living more fully in the Truth of our life, rather than living an image of our life.

Note that memories are revealed; they are NOT meant to be relived. 

Self Reflection: As I release each memory, I reclaim the energy held in the memory and take it back into myself.

This transmuted* energy  purifies through my heart and first is energy to strengthen and heal myself, then energy to share in serving others. Letting go opens the way for me to transmute my old way of being and doing.  

*To transmute is to completely change in form, appearance or nature-especially to a higher form. 

I have the ability to shift my emotional energy to a creative force rather than a destructive force.

Consciousness and Conscience: The Way of Serving Truth

"At root one searches for God by only one way, i.e. in following the truth with all the sincerity of one's conscience."   (Thomas Merton, from The Courage for Truth, Letters to Writers pg 209- in a letter to Victoria Ocampo) 

We enter the 14 Days of the Waning Moon Phase

Stop now and take a moment to ask:

What was my starting point in this cycle?

What has been added to make my life full in this cycle?

What are my victories, my efforts, no matter how tiny they might seem, that add to the ultimate and 

       inevitable illumination of my life?

What would I wish to keep?

What would I to wish share?

What would I not have added, if given the chance for a do-over (these are called regrets)?

Let these words rest with you again. The wisdom you receive from this reflection will serve you to step out with consciousness (and conscience) in Service to Truth.