Parenting offers the chance to rewrite history. It gives you the chance to choose which aspect of your childhood you want to model for your children and which aspect you want to change.
Be –ing the change you wish to see in the world requires an understanding of what interferes with your own joy and what limits your consciousness.
You can use this knowledge as your guide toward mindfulness. An awareness of differing perspectives creates the space to embrace paradigm shifting to increase awareness and find connecting points.
As you practice this you will discover that you are drawn to connecting and solving problems devoid of hate and anger, proof and defensiveness.
This can be applied to every aspect of your life including from how you consume, to how your model relationships and partnerships, to how you parent.
The inner and outward congruence of joy, forgiveness, compassion, and real interest or curiosity in the other leads to real power to change not only your world and sphere of influence but the world.
Happiness is a state of mind – it reflects your inner capacity to be the best you can be.
I am grateful at this time in my life to see this gentle, mindful, compassionate, strength, and sense of empowerment in both my son and my daughter. I feel joy in my own release from the prison of proof and defensiveness that separates humans, and gratefulness in the path chosen by my children.
Look into your children’s eyes see that joy and empowerment. This is how you can change the world, by modeling your commitment to practice mindfulness and compassion in your interactions and parenting.
Just as water through its persevering flow along a crevice can create a canyon, so too can you transform your environment through this gentle, persevering pressure of mindfulness, compassion and non-violence.
First you must see it in your mind’s eye then you can create it and see it reflected all around you.
To increase your capacity for mindfulness, compassion, forgiveness, and non-violence practice Yoga, prayer, meditation, internal paradigm shifting, listening to understand before speaking to prove, through these practices, in time, your will shift your perspective and through this your words and actions. Namaste, in love and light, beth
Soul guidance is a set of 5 easy steps to shift your focus so that you can have your heart center guide your path.
Anxiety and guilt wreak havoc on the human spirit and lead to breath-holding, inflexibility, and burning off of true soul guidance.
To see your way through these two habitual ways of letting fear separate you from your true self and true path –
1st. begin with a simple review of your breath,your senses, your emotions, and your muscles. What ever you find notice it – tension, flexibility an inner grimace, tightness –
2nd connect these – emotion to breath holding, and tightness or rigidity in movement
3rd Discern which aspects of your inner sensory guidance system reveals intuition and which reveal fear -here are the most common: Fear: pit of stomach tightness-fear, anxiety in chest breath holding-fear, inflexibility in hips-fear (trauma), inability to think clearly and utilize mindfulness-fear Intuition: quiet light voice in the center of your being-intuition – may be in you heart or your mind, this has a sense of ringing clear through your spiritual, emotional physical field – it allows openness, neutrality, space, and mindfulness.
4th Now feed the intuition
5th release the fear.
Breath is the key. Breathing through to trust and have faith in your knowing requires deep full breathing drawing into you the power of the knowing. Breathing through as you release the fear, allowing it to disconnect from you, letting go as you release the lack of power.
Simple and easy
If you shift your energy slightly, you can change your life in a big way! Try it with something small first to practice your skills of letting go – then increase your intention and focus until each day you simply adjust and release and follow your inner guidance
Love the simplicity? It’s all within you, pay attention when something seems to go in crooked or doesn’t feel right or causes you to withdraw – this is a message from your sensory guidance system. Respond accordingly. Engage your critical thinking and your mindfulness, and respond to what you discover. When you feel stuck, unworthy, anxiety or fear, breathe, and go through these steps to release the fear and embrace your inner knowing.
Listen to your true voice – the sound will be sure and firm, loving and compassionate, light and quiet.
Ignore the loud fear-filled, guilt-filled, anxiety voice. Avoid defensiveness deciding your course of action.
Choose the sweet loving inner smile of love and joy – live there and everything you desire will be at your fingertips to create.
This honors you and creates an opportunity for your inner being to guide your life and results in resilient, flexible powerful action.in love and light, beth
Following these steps to increase awareness and allowing creates space to respond effectively and change your behavior.
An easy way to begin is the Stop, Look, and Listen method.
Stop multitasking or whatever action in which you are involved that may split your attention or where you feel you are being pulled along a track in an habitual thinking/behaving way; Look, or pay attention by bringing your attention to the situation at hand, pay attention to the actions of others and yourself and how relevant these are to the whole of the situation; Listen to your inner voice and the style, tone, timber of your and the other’s voice. Stop look and listen is focus, see, and hear in the present moment, the now. This is a simple unambiguous phrase that brings you into mindfulness.
It is a simple way to interrupt habit-reactive firing of behavior. This method slows down your reactive-linking behavior. Through present moment refocusing of your attention you can gather information and then develop a response that meets the present moment situation.
This recovery process can be applied to any habit that has gone awry. What’s really great about this set of actions and behaviors is how they help in every instance when a habit has simply overtaken your life as the driver of your behavior rather than the mechanism of your comfort or alleviation of difficulty.
Here’s how to decipher if you are dealing with a habit reaction pattern.
Check in with your senses and intuition. If you feel that the experience is familiar or a pattern then you may be participating in a habit reaction scenario. If you feel that you have trouble trusting that things can/will go well for you, then your early history of having to survive is coloring your current day choices/actions.
If you have an immediate feeling of anger, like someone has crossed a boundary and your feeling is charged in that the level of emotion (intensity) doesn’t match the situation or boundary crossing, this is a sign that you have been triggered.
In this instance, proceed in your actions with thoughtfulness.
Query yourself on whether your intense feeling is consistent with your overall experience of the person or the environment toward which you are feeling the intense reaction.
Stop, look, and listen – think caution in proceeding.
Invoke mindfulness and centered, present moment attention to the situation.
Work against the pull of the groove into the habit reaction pattern.
This is how you can engage the a more balanced attitude. Focus is the key. If you are in danger, utilizing your reaction skills to get out of the situation is paramount. If you are not in danger but rather caught in a habit reaction pattern then focus your attention on what you want rather than what you fear as the best response.
Use mindfulness to re-view the circumstances in relation to your emotion. This is the stop, look, and listen component, it will help you identify whether this is danger or not. In example, if a stranger is doing something that feels dangerous allow your survivor reactions to move at lightning pace. If however, the situation is with a loving partner, or friend – you need to view your emotion within the context of the relationship in present-time and with clarity and genuineness.
Awareness, Breathe, Wait it out, and Reveal.
The most difficult element of confronting a habit reaction pattern that is driving your behavior is the stopping part.
If your car is out of control, you need to stop its forward movement – this requires first, a recognition that you have lost control of the car, and then second, an action to gain control.
This awareness is key. Once you are aware you can begin to take back control of your thinking and behaving/actions.
Stop look and listen focuses you on increasing your awareness. Breathe, wait it out, and reveal focuses you on how and what to change. It requires a shift in how, and on what, you focus. It requires a re-view of yourself through a centered, mindful attention to yourself, your skills and limitations, what brings you joy and centers you in your best self.
Shifting perspective actually creates the power that you feel you have lost. It is a relaxation of the struggle to survive or fight and a gentle movement into the mindful, balanced living of life. Consider the simple action of relaxing in a hold, this action alone telegraphs to the holder to lighten his grip and causes laxity so that you can wiggle out of the stranglehold.
Lightening your grip, your need for habit reactive linking behavior allows you to move through situations and your environment in a mindful and relaxed way, still nimble in your attention and responses to act if necessary to a dangerous situation but not reactive, held or tight in your nature. in love and light, beth
Having worked for many years with individuals struggling with various forms of anxiety I have identified a coping mechanism I call habit reaction patterns to manage anxiety.
This is a coping strategy that starts out creating a sense of control over their internal anxiety. The individual will describe that indeed the habit reactive pattern in some way saved her from an extraordinarily stressful situation or circumstance. Unfortunately this anxiety management method produces a false sense of security and overtime the habit reaction pattern serves to drive the individual’s overall behavior and results in a diminished sense of empowerment and a lack of security.
Habits are highly desirable to create structure in a meaningful way. When a habit degrades into a habit reaction pattern it becomes undesirable . Habit reaction patterns lack present moment authenticity. These are reactive in nature, a set of unconscious, unthinking, unchallenged, automatic reactions.
The patterning pulls you into a specific way of behaving. Think of how the groove of a rut pulls you around a circle. It takes an extra exertion of energy to jump out of the rut and choose your course. The habit reaction pattern acts like the groove or furrow, it takes you into the behavior Habit like any reaction in an automatic, non-present-moment-thinking-way (unconscious).
This reaction is not responsive to the present moment situation, it happens in a non-intuitive non-mindful way. Habit reaction patterns can be triggered into reaction; where a trigger acts like the groove that pulls a person into a set of interpretations and actions (reactions) to survive, or to solve a historical problem, or quell anxiety.
Tied into the habit reaction pattern is a highly fine tuned trigger-detection mechanism.
This mechanism is super-sensitive to interpreting danger, hyper-vigilant, hyper-reactive.
The trigger may be linked to an earlier situation in which you felt in danger of severe harm.
The experience trips the trigger and then the habit reaction pattern fires into action – forcing you to behave in a specific way – even when you cognitively feel you do not want to or feel it is inappropriate.
When this set of feelings happen, the habit reaction pattern is now driving your behavior rather than your proactive spiritual-cognitive-behavior processes. You are no longer in the driver seat of your life. It is as if you are simply watching from behind a glass window, rather than responding to the specific, dynamic multi-level issues at hand. You feel powerless to stop yourself from reacting in the manner prescribed by the habit reaction pattern.
In order to get out of the rut, groove, or habit reaction one has to invoke two things, awareness and allowance. This allows for a sense of present moment empowerment and mindfulness.
The habit reaction pattern behavior may have been highly effective when you first developed it. In fact it may be the best thing you could have done to respond to the original anxiety conflict that set of the patterning habit. This makes it difficult for you to let it go.
You may feel like it is the thing that sets you apart in some way or gives you an edge in some way. This internal feeling creates an attachment to that style of being in the world, such that confronting the need to eradicate the ineffective habit reaction pattern may be thwarted. This sets up a difficult and challenging cycle, you continually, automatically, invoke the original survival mechanism without awareness that you are actually diminishing your power through the reactive mechanism.
The most healing thing to do is
to accurately identify how the patterning was beneficial
to accurately identify that the habit is ineffective in your present moment situation and management of anxiety
to place the behavior into your past as a once successful, but not currently successful pattern of reacting to anxiety
and disassemble the coping strategy and its automatic reactive power.
Habits are developed through a series of trial and error. A need arises, a behavior appears to resolve the identified problem and viola a habit develops. This is an excellent mechanism of comfort and structure or meaning-making in action. It is a part of how we develop, learn and integrate, structure behavior. It’s highly effective model to make sense out of the competing needs in society.
When this mechanism goes awry. The insidious quality of a habit overtaking as driver of your behavior is subtle.
First, there is a sense of invention,
then a settling-in of success in using the habit to resolve a conflict.
After a time the habit begins to drive the situation. The action becomes an automatic reaction of if this then that.
Once this internal directive becomes hardwired the habit drives the set of responses available to you in a given situation, so it becomes a reaction, like the jerking of your knee when hit by the doctor’s mallet – kick straight out. This automatic reaction creates a hardwire rut that drives your behavior.
Any awareness process can assist you in getting out of a habit reactive pattern coping strategy toward anxiety.
Mindful meditation,
the practice of Yoga,
Journaling,
are all excellent practices to increase centering, present moment focus, and balanced neutral response to anxiety.
Use the stop look and listen method to increase your awareness.Once you have developed awareness, use the breathe, wait it out, and reveal process to increase your tolerance for allowance.
These two together, awareness and allowance, create space to respond effectively to your anxiety and change your behavior from ineffective habit reactions to mindful responsiveness. You will move from a need for control and a sense of insecurity to self-confidence and a sense of inner empowerment and strength. More on this is the next few blogs, in love and light, beth.
Injuries heal through a set of layers and this occurs most fully and rapidly through these five steps. The most important step being cleaning out the deterrents to healing.
Here using a focus on physical wounds:
Evaluation of severity, depth, breadth, need for sutures, casting and bandaging.
Cleaning the wound of fragments, foreign objects, dirt, and deterrents to healing – debridement.
Careful observation and compassionate tending to the healing progress of the wound.
Re-evaluation of the development in healing, re-cleaning, debridement, re-dressing the wound.
A loving compassionate reintroduction of the use of the wounded area to avoid re-injury or trauma
The course for wound healing seems to take one of two branches. One branch leads to further, deeper injury through infection and invasion into deeper systems. The other offers a fuller evaluation at the fore to prevent a deeper infestation.
It is seductive to follow the first branch described – it is less work at the beginning and looks as if healing happens more quickly. However this route results in a quick fix. The rapid scabbing process covers a deeper problem that can result in an underlying infection and a resulting scar that stares-out at each person who passes, almost calling the passers-by to comment, and in some cases re-injuring the person.
The second route is more intensive at the front-end, however, once through the difficult evaluation and debridement process, and with proper attention to the complete healing process, this route results in an almost imperceptible scar.
Wound healing takes this same branched course for physical and psychological scars.
For psychological wounds forgiveness is an intricate component of the healing process. The forgiveness has to be sincere, real, felt deeply, and thoroughly experienced. From that whole-space, forgiveness can create an inner healing that results in an imperceptible scar.
and 2. are interrelated for psychological injuries. This is to say the process of evaluation of the injury, and the debridement work together – debridement is the process of removing foreign material and dead tissue from a physical wound to prevent infection and promote healing – debridement, then, with respect to a psychological wound requires mindfully releasing anger, vengefulness, and hate – and utilizes compassion, lovingkindness, and forgiveness.
A short-cut through the forgiveness stage results in an incomplete healing, a superficial covering. This is when an individual chooses to transect the process without looking mindfully at the wounding experience. This is a false covering-over, which allows for infection – underneath a festering will develop at an unconscious or conscious level which will interfere with a full healing of the wound. This may result in deeper injury to spirit, mind and body or ultimately burst open in rage, shame and vengefulness, creating a crater of a scar that is seen in all your relationships.
If you use the tangible concept of a physical wound to guide you,
you can see the first thing required is to clean the wound…get out the dirt, the left over shards so that the wound is ready to create a healing scab. This washing process can sting, be painful, sharp, or uncomfortable.
From a psychological wound perspective the first step is the same,
clean out the wound, remove shards, that are going to impede healing or increase a chance for infection – this requires compassionate understanding and forgiveness, mindfulness, and paradigm shifting. Wounds are often a result of a lack of understanding, a lack of restraint, or a placement of trust toward an untrustworthy person. Going within to do the inner work required for this can be hurtful, sharp, or uncomfortable just like washing out a cut stings.
Forgiveness is tricky when you perceive that forgiveness makes the action that was harmful “okay”. The trick to forgiveness is shifting paradigmatic perceptions and righting your own power in a given situation. Forgiveness is letting go of the power the wounding has over you while simultaneously identifying what was harmful and what to avoid in the future – including the relationship or event in which the wounding occurred.
A common style of dealing with hurts is to remove yourself from the profound feelings that are attached to the pain you endured. This keeps you stuck in the past. This disallows forgiveness or creates unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness leads to a diminishing of your personal power, a rigid world-view, and a truncated personality in relationship. It leads to the opposite of mindfulness and the opposite of empowerment.
In order to forgive, that pain must be felt
and then a resolution, an understanding, a paradigm shift needs to take place to allow the unlinking of the pain of the event; the event and the actor; and the outcome of the event
so that it can be put into proper perspective and into your past,
freeing you to move on into the present moment of your life – a new stance in the world, strengthened via the complete healing of the wound.
To forgive another a deeply painful act, betrayal, or action is difficult. To see, and accept responsibility for, how you have hurt another is also difficult.
Choosing to face this difficult task will allow for a real shift to take place, a full and complete healing that leaves an imperceptible scar, the mindful/spirit-filled inner search (evaluation and debridement) is paramount. This action can result in transforming events, healing your wound and transforming your relationships.
How do you forgive someone for that act which in your mind changed you forever, that betrayed your trust or your sense of innocence?
Finding forgiveness requires grace. It requires a willingness to let go of the thing that may define your stance in the world. It is fraught with deep feeling and an inner journey to your center. Certainly paradigm shifting, figure/ground perspective, and the attitude of gratitude are helpful activities. This set of actions is required to fully heal a psychological wound.
Mindfulness allows you to see a way to unlink the act and the person; the act and the circumstances surrounding the act; and the intention and the action. And from this space forgiveness is possible and profoundly healing.
Severe wounds are difficult betrayals and experiences to transcend, difficult to get to forgiveness even with these unlinkings, increased awareness and increased perspective. The process of debridement is most useful in this situation.
Healing your psychological wounds requires loving attention and compassion first toward yourself and then toward the cause of the wound. Not unlike the treatment of a physical wound what matters is the healing of the injury and then release of anger, and vengefulness toward the cause of the wound.
Healing is me-first. Not narcissistic or selfish but inner directed, looking inward to promote inner healing and release of the power of the wound over your future life choices. This is true for physical and psychological wounds. Allowing an injury to define you sets power where it does not belong. Set your empowerment within, release the material that interferes with your full and complete healing so that the injury itself becomes imperceptible.in love and light, beth
Having a long history in the study of human behavior I am intimately aware of the strong urge and pull toward following the group. Simply observing toddlers in preschool, young children in elementary school or witnessing the popular movement of music, clothing, and behavior of high school and young adulthood results in the observation that the in-group in society telegraphs to the human psyche how to be, what to think, who to follow and what will keep you in the clique.
This is built into the developmental structure of humans.
This draw to follow the group mind and to be inculcated into belief systems is the basis of societal strength. Unfortunately it can become the downfall of society over time and can become a tool to control people without their overt knowledge.
In the 1960’s psychologists studied university students to discover if an individual will follow the group and conform under various conditions. It was called the Asch Experiment (Wikipedia). And what they found was that when students were presented with a group of peers who offered the incorrect response they conformed to answer with the incorrect answer 75% of the time for at least one answer.
Also in the 1960’s psychologists studied whether a person would act against his or her own inner sense that something was wrong when told by an authority person or person in a position of power that it was necessary to act in this way against that subject’s inner sense that something was wrong. This was called the Milgram Experiment (Wikipedia). This study’s results provided serious information that seemingly “good people” with reasonable skills to evaluate the serious negative effects of an act would still follow through with causing harm to another person when told by an authority person (person in a position of power) that it was necessary and deferred responses to the effects of their actions.
The best way to avoid this is to use critical thinking in all of your decision-making. Critical thinking questions the basis of your belief systems and the underpinnings of powerful people’s opinions and positions. Rather then saying I agree with that icon, hero, politician, or cool person, critical thinking encourages an inner dialogue that questions why do I agree and what does that statement, philosophy, or belief system mean down and up-stream. This increases an individual’s chance to be congruent in his beliefs and it increases the specific individual freedom and empowerment that person can experience in his life course and development.
What is popular is not always what is best for a society. How those in power get their message out is a through subtle coercion. All groups have rules of inclusion and exclusion. The human goal is to feel included, liked, accepted and specifically to be part of the cool in-group.
A great tool is to pay attention when you feel you are being pulled along a flow toward something as if it is the only answer and that feeling is a pressure from the outside, cool in-group, not from an internal sense of knowing from within. This is a cue that you are caught up in something that may have propaganda in it.
When individuals become overly stressed or lack critical thinking they accept propaganda as truth, swallowing it whole. This is a shortcut due to stress or due to an unearned trust toward the group or those in power, thinking thay are indeed going to direct the society to the society as a whole‘s best interest.
Sociological theory and psychological theory, both, have shown that under various conditions those in power want to maintain that power. Power is the means to make money. The place wherein there is little critical thinking with respect to how groups are using propaganda to promote their money-making opportunities is through marketing, media, and what is cool.
The best response to your environment is to use your own critical thinking skills to evaluate the truth of what is being said. Examine how you know it is true, without accepting whole what someone says whom you perceive as a guru, leader, hero, or cool person.
There is power in being famous, this is related to the latent pull to follow the leader of the group. Following what a famous person says or does gives your psyche the sense that you are somehow connected to them, which feeds that hidden inner pull to conform and align with the group.
This is precisely the process that allows for odd or different children to be bullied in school. The cool person or the person perceived to have power, is followed, rather than an individual standing up and saying that it is wrong, or simply standing with the odd or different child. The latent quiet allowing of maltreatment for fear that the maltreatment may be directed at yourself is a way the in-group wields control.
There is a small set of individuals who choose to go outside of the norm. Sometimes this is someone who is following his inner sense of what is right. This small set of individuals can stem the flow of the propaganda. There is risk to this individual as he is often attacked. The first response of a powerful in-group toward this individual is to focus a spotlight on this set of individuals, to discredit them, and to divide and conquer the opportunity for like-minded people to collaborate or simply dialogue about other ways to behave.
Your critical thinking skills can best guide you. And the more you use these and model to your child their use, the more your child will use these. It is in this way that bullying, subtle power coercion, control through group-mind, and propaganda will be extinguished.
Innovation is a natural by-product of critical thinking. It comes as a result of questioning:
is that statement true?
how do I know the belief or statement is true from my own experience?
and what is the other side’s argument and how is it true?
what might be the reward for the person in power to deny the truth?
what is wrong with a statement or belief?
or what needs to be changed in a situation or environment?
Critical thinking is mindfulness.
The force through which someone states a thing is not truth. Truth is. And truth can be felt as an internal alignment – not in the agreement to the belief – but in an integration of the truth of all the positions and how that truth lines up. It is an internal heart sense and has a lightness to it not a loud booming voice. The latter is just a technique of coercion. The more punch and loudness in the argument the less critical thinking.
Critical thinking allows for the truth of all the sides to be accepted and incorporated into the solution or belief system.
Subjectivity is loud, forceful, emotional, and pulls to accept, it blocks mindfulness and the critical evaluation of all sides.
Objectivity is quiet, light, and non-emotional, it has an opening to reveal the truth of all sides.
Discover your truth through critical thinking and mindfulness. Model this behavior and thinking style for your children. This will result in bringing to light propaganda so that real solutions can be found to the difficult problems facing you.in love and light, beth
Thank you to the sweet and loyal followers to this blog! You are each a treasure in my life! It has been such a lovely collaboration, to write and create a space for support and learning regarding self-development, mindfulness, paradigm shifting, mindful parenting, and an evolution of consciousness.
A number of people have asked for a book on relationship/partnering that offers useful, insightful guidance. So it is almost here.
Here is a preview: Turning ME to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness; Shifting competition and narcissism (ME) to collaboration and connection (WE). It delineates quick and easy tools for developing profoundly successful relationships in work, home, and love.
Intertwined within these strategies are ways of re-setting, re-focusing and re-aligning your internal compass to create a new space for collaboration and connection while allowing space for your personal self to grow along with your relationship/partnership. It focuses on an integrated spirit, mind, body approach dealing with communication, context, paradigmatic beliefs, and form. And, it offers ways to shift out of various forms of thinking/seeing/communicating and contexts that are unhelpful, do a disservice to you in relationship, or interfere with connecting and collaboration.
When you look at the letters M and W you can see that within their form you find a closing off (M) or an opening up, connecting quality. This is a synchronous image. The general characteristic feeling of the words ME and WE and the behaviors of dependence, independence and interdependence are represented in this synchronous view of the letters. This offers an imprint image to show you how to shift your perspective. Me is singular, self-oriented, and individualistic, even narcissistic or competitive (consider the statement standing on my own two feet); while, We is plural, inclusive of other’s needs, open to information, and collaborative (consider the statement We can get through this together, each pitching in).
ME is an important developmental station in development. It is a required station. You can’t get to WE without developing ME, first. In childhood, your first developmental relationship is Dependent in nature. Then in young adulthood you develop a sense of Independence. Partnering requires that you have developed a sense of Interdependence.
Unfortunately some people get stuck at ME unable to continue their development to incorporate a sense of WE, or interdependence. This requires a wholly formed sense of Me that is not rigid or intractable but rather is solid and firm with an openness and flexibility. Negotiation is a WE interaction. Compromise is a ME interaction. There are different forms of how WE can relate in groups and some of these do not fit outside of certain developmental stages or are related to habits that don’t serve you. Co-dependence is a skewed perspective of WE, it is not a true WE experience. This is a situation where the core ME has not efficiently developed – so it’s really two incomplete MEs with a tenuous thread between them.
Shifting ME to WE is a paradigm shift like an inversion in Yoga, a head stand that allows an evolution of consciousness development.
This book has a lot of innovative, new information not previously published. Although there are a few expansions on blogs previously seen on this site, the majority of the information is a new vision about relationship incorporating information on how we view and look at partnering in relation to security, belief systems, support, connection, exchange patterns, and paradigmatic belief structures (like romantic love).
It is a lovely companion to my first book, Turning NO to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness. For those of you who have read that book, thank you for all of your supportive comments. A few of you have left comments on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com about that book, thanks, these are great support for others to see the benefits of the book. Anyone who has read the book can leave a comment and the site appreciates them, as do I. Another way you can show support is to like my page for the book on Facebook.
So the arrival date for Turning ME to WE: The Art of Partnering with Mindfulness is just around the corner. Thanks for your support and I hope this new book meets your needs and offers the information you desire – I think it will. in love and light, beth
Hello and Welcome! Creating a new vision requires you have a sense of what you want. This is a challenge if you have spent a lot of your life either swallowing whole what you determined other’s wanted for you or reacting against the image you perceive they wanted for you by doing/being the opposite. Both lifestyles are without an internal connection to yourself. Visioning is an active rather than passive (swallowing whole) or reactive (oppositional) process.
It starts within. The trouble with focusing inward is there is no guide, no perfect step by step process that promises success. It is a feel/know experience.
If you were one of the lucky people, who were modeled this activity by your parents (or grandparents) then you are in luck; you are familiar with what it feels like to trust your intuition and go with the internal flow. Everyone else has to learn how to let go, release, allow, trust and go within to get acquainted with self. In order to develop a connection to self, to your inner guidance you need to develop your allowing muscles.
These processes develop your allowing muscle. Practicing some form of meditation, prayer, Toning, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or Yoga allows for you to develop the integrated structure of breath and spirit to that mind/body movement, and the aha experiences of see/feel/knowing. School, and general socialization patterning develops your working, focusing, and making things happen muscles – these are only mind/body integrated. This integration patterning is useful in many ways, but is limited to movement within already formed structures, and already formed visions.
Visioning requires integration of spirit, and breathing to develop the allowing muscles. These guide you through your heart center and allow your mind/body to integrate with spirit thereby strengthening you as a vehicle of profound creation.
Being a vehicle of profound creation means allowing your pure self to blossom and develop into your full potential and joy. This active process moves your through all aspects of your life and relationships such that you can create precisely what you want and what you create integrates with your community for success.
Start today.
Breathe.
Check into your heart center, are you happy?
Do you bring the same joy to washing the floor as buying that new _____ (fill in the blank)?
With every action have an internal dialogue of self-love and mindful connection. The attitude of gratitude is great for getting you into that heart center.
Look underneath whatever ill feeling you have, tip the issue on its head you will find something for which you are grateful. Use that as your single point of focus and joy will erupt through you and be transmitted through your actions.
~ie: I hate washing the floor…shift to I am grateful to have this home, to have the ability, strength and opportunity to be able to wash the floor…whatever is underneath the chore...
~ie: I hate fighting with my child… shift to I am grateful to have the child, what may be going on underneath these fights – from there you can look for ways to align with your child to be on the same side against the problem…. whatever is underneath the conflict – you will find something to be grateful for…
~ie: I hate that everyone always pulls on me… shift to I am grateful to have so many people who love and depend on me… from there you can look to see how to shift the degree of dependency so that you can have more space for yourself…
Gratitude, Joy, and connection these are the feeling experiences that bring you into your center and integrate the allowing muscles, listening to your inner sense of pure love, joy, and gratitude, so that you can vision anew how and who you want to be in the world. This will affect every one of your interactions and actions.
Obligation is a mind/body integrated muscle, it isolates and separates you. Action through love, and joy includes spirit into that muscle to allow your actions to uncover a new vision and connection with yourself and your community. in gratitude, joy, and love, beth
Hello and Welcome! When on a quest for change, consider having the attitude of adventure. This allows you to be open to the many possibilities that can unfold, spontaneous and flexible in your responses, and attentive in the present moment.
Adventure is a mixture of heart-pounding excitement, gentle strength, cautious speed, energy, and breath. The most effective tools are honoring your self, loving yourself, and forgiving yourself. This is true with any kind of growth and is a great way to stay centered when going through change.
Self first, not in a selfish way but rather, in an honoring way. Whatever is starts at home. Forgiveness, love, change, creation, letting go, and acceptance. These are all actions that have the strongest effect within. It is through the process of forgiving yourself, you can forgive others, the process of loving yourself that you can fully develop a loving relationship with another. It is in the process of accepting yourself precisely where you are that you can then shift, let go, and change.
This is how boundaries work. Boundaries create a definition. This is me and this is you – through knowing and defining, you can then drop into a sense of oneness, but it is in definition first, you create the space for a true acceptance of one. This definition is dynamic. As time moves, and we shift, we change, and the definition changes. So flowing through the process of change begins with this idea of gentleness, self-love which can be increased and accessed through breath and strength, a sense of knowing where the edges are, feeling them, acknowledging them, and then using them to guide your movement, your process. This too is accessed and increased through breath.
What is, is. Acceptance of this is the first step to changing and transforming; flexibly moving what is – into what you define or desire it is. Acceptance is a gentle and strong emotion and action. It is flexible and flowing in nature, like bamboo in wind.
Part of self-love is self knowing and acceptance; accepting responsibility for limitations, and obstructions you have created through fear or protection, to take care of yourself.
Once you allow yourself to see your story, how you came to be who you are, then you can decide to write and create changes in your character so that your actions and being are more in sync with your internal, congruent self. This happens most easily through a lovingly kind attitude toward yourself and your habit or limitations.
Smile, Laugh – First smiling at yourself and your creation, maybe even laughing at your self with love and tenderness; this energy allows you to shake loose the fear or protective energy and instigates a breaking-open, crackling, and letting go of restriction.
As the part of you that is not a true representation of what is within falls away you may experience a sense of vulnerability of not being covered – breathe into this and set your attention and intention into your heart center – from there you will experience a lightening, a sensation of life bubbling up – maybe a happy, giggling, burpy laugh or smile – a recognition of your true self – seen.
What an adventure in joy; risky, a sense of danger and a sheer experience of loving bliss – all at once. By simply applying an attitude of adventure to your quest for change and development you may get precisely what you desire.
in giggling, burpy joy, I wish for you a lovely adventure, beth
Hello. I have been involved in a lot of mediation recently. I think mediation is an art. It requires an ability to listen and see with discernment. It is part intellectual and part intuitive. A funny equation of knowing, feeling, and being present with another to hear the subtle messages of tone, shifts in energy, and word choice.
I enjoy it as long as I can keep my right/wrong brain out of the equation.
It requires you stay in that mindful, open, compassionate place that seems often unavailable in contract negotiation, couples counseling, and problem solving. The more I am willing to see everything, accept everything as truth to the speaker, and understand that in most situations all participants just want to be heard, cared for, treated with love, and be understood, the more I find healing, clarification, and solutions.
This place of being within requires you stand in your heart center. From that space you can hear and see with mindful, compassionate, lovingkindness.
I find it an interesting spelling oddity that mediation and meditation have a single letter that shifts their meaning. The letter t. It’s like a clue about how to get where you need to go, because the letter t is a wonderful picture of the Yoga standing mountain pose, Tadasana – standing feet together, eyes lightly gazing, with your arms and hands held in a prayer position at your heart.
When mediation is done from this heart centered, focused, humbling place then the mediator is creating an opportunity for meditation. Present moment acceptance and clarification of what each party wants from heart center, clarification of what each person means from heart center, and a centered present moment place from which to move forward.
A beautiful example of this image is represented in this picture by Rabbi Chava Bahle, her post at Yenyoga blog, Tadasana, mountain pose arriving in the present moment, gives a beautiful account of the simplicity and profound benefit of Tadasana, the mountain pose in Yoga. See the t. Perfect picture of light focus in the present moment from the heart.
Love, compassion, acceptance, allowing, and forgiveness are heart center emotions. Centering your attention in the present moment, receiving information through the filter of your heart, increases harmony, understanding, and Soul-utions focused resolutions in mediation.
Mediation is not just an action in the law or business, not just an action in couples counseling, it is present in parent-child relationships, friendships, and work partnerships. It is an action present in all interactive-relating between humans, even between species. Our willingness to come from this centered place, this heart space increases our capacity to understand and act in ways that uplevel consciousness, increase our interconnectedness, and increase our overall harmony in living.
Since this is a daily part of living, you can begin to practice at any time.
Increase your awareness in interactions to the tone, quality, and word choice of others – pay attention to your own word choices, and tone. Don’t just think but feel into these various qualities and practice a light attention. Practice hearing intention not just content. Shift yourself into a t, into Tadasana, standing mountain pose, allow yourself to hear, see, understand, through the filter of your heart.
Do this and you will find the most amazing gifts waiting for you. Amazing threads of understanding, depths of connection, inner peace, and clarity you have been missing out on in your interactions and relationships. The more you can be present in the now with open eyes and ears and centered in your heart, the more your life will evolve into fullness.
One letter difference, t, connects worlds exponentially….in love and light, Namaste, beth
quality. This is a synchronous image. The general characteristic feeling of the words ME and WE and the behaviors of dependence, independence and interdependence are represented in this synchronous view of the letters. This offers an imprint image to show you how to shift your perspective. Me is singular, self-oriented, and individualistic, even narcissistic or competitive (consider the statement standing on my own two feet); while, We is plural, inclusive of other’s needs, open to information, and collaborative (consider the statement We can get through this together, each pitching in).
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