What Really Matters?

July 24, 2015 Going Deep Self-Examination At Depth by Madisyn Taylor To reach the depth we wish to access, we must dive below layers to the deepest parts of ourselves. There are times when life urges us to seek more. Small changes to our comfort zone may fail to alleviate any sense of stagnancy or frustration, and we may need to examine our lives and ourselves more deeply to find the right place to start. Everything we need for success and joy lies within. But so often, life’s debris accumulates, building layers around our core that makes it difficult to access the truth that resides within. To reach the depth we wish to access, we must dive below these layers to the deepest parts of ourselves. The first layer can be found in our minds. Our to-do lists and busy work are usually less important than we think, so we must look past them to examine the thoughts that matter most to us. The next layer can be found in our hearts, where past hurts and disappointments can sometimes cover up our vulnerabilities, as well as the truth of who and what really stirs the love within us. We can choose to go even deeper – to our center. If we can go beyond anything has affected us to the point that it blocks us at the gut level, we can reconnect with our power, our raw instincts, our organic yeses. Here, at the core, lies our truth. Our core is our foundation that supports us and what we’d like to build our authentic life upon.  When we examine ourselves to these depths, we are able to find what we wish to bring to the surface and what we wish to let go. When we remember what lies beneath our layers, we can look at what was floating on the surface, causing blocks and pains, and understand the purpose that they served. Oftentimes, it is the built up debris that causes us to go deeper, so we can search for the truth. Go deep, live life from your truth within, and watch your innate beauty manifest outward. • • • I have been able to do this as the result of one of the many gifts that Gregory's Dementia /Alzheimer's has given me. What I have discovered living at my deepest self, my truth within, my center is to be able to love my Gregory just as he is today without holding on to the past, to be able to still bring him joy in small ways at a level that makes sense to him, not necessarily that makes sense to me, and to share the JOY I know with as many people as who will accept it: family, friends, acquaintances, Lieberman staff and residents, people I pass on the street. I am optimistic, upbeat, calm, and always smiling inside and I will make sure that shows through on the outside.

Quest Physics

The physics of the quest, a force in nature governed by laws as real as the force of gravity, goes like this:

If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting

And set out on a truth seeking journey, either externally or internally

If you are truly willing to accept everything you experience on that journey as a clue

And if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher

And if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some honest realities about yourself

The truth will not be withheld from you

Atraversiamo - Let's cross over!


Taken from Eat Pray Love

Namaste

Meditation

Session 4. The purpose of today's meditation was to bring one closer to one's Essential Nature and to be better able to distinguish it from one's Essential Self. The Essential Nature is the underlying nature of all existence of which each one of us is a part. The Essential Self is what makes each one of us a unique person along with our interpretation of who we are and our self perceptions of the world we live in.

I recently have been reading about this same topic in The Fifth Agreement by Don Miguel Ruiz. He talks about how we, as humans, come to make sense of our world. "We put words together from nowhere; we make them up. Humans invent every sound, every letter, every graphic symbol. We hear a sound like "A" and say, 'This is the symbol for that sound.' We draw a symbol to represent the sound, we put the symbol and the sound together, (use them to create words) and we give it (them) a meaning (s.) Every word in our mind has a meaning, but it's not real, it's not truth. It an agreement with ourselves, and with everybody else who learns the same symbology."

This varies from language to language, from culture to culture, from belief system to belief system. The way we describe ourselves is not the truth, it is an agreement on the understanding of our symbolic language. The truth, or Essential Nature of each one of us is what exists from the day we were born and before we complicated it with our "Agreements."

Besides our creation and agreement with others on language use, we also learn from others as they assign values like good and bad, fat and skinny, beautiful and ugly, etc. These agreements are not truth (Essential Nature) but we come to accept them anyway from the important people in our lives like our parents, siblings, family, friends, teachers, religious leaders based on their agreements (Essential Selves.)

So to bring us back to the session, it was a difficult one for me. For some reason I became frustrated and fearful. I was unable to look closely at my Essential Nature and the Self kept getting in the way. I felt sad, very alone, somewhat depressed, focused on my lacks and faults, and on the continuing and increasing difficulties in being supportive of Gregory. I was quite far from being able to get past that to embrace the true me, with whom at times I am able to visit, but not this time.

Towards the end of the session I became anxious and as suggested early on in the beginning sessions, I visited my Internal Resource where I could feel safe and protected. I hope to write about that later but suffice it to say it exists in my visualization of an old forest, with a small house nestled among the trees, and at the edge forest - the ocean.

It did calm me down but after the session I carried the heaviness with me out to the car where I cried for a while and then went to Pannino's for an Italian Beef Sandwich with lucious hot French Fries. I'll feel better tomorrow.

Meditation

I am taking a class at the Heartwood Center in Evanston with Corinne Peterson.
http://www.corinnepeterson.com/yoga-therapy/ and have been posting any insights I gain during the Sunday sessions. Today was session three.

This session we focused on JOY which interestingly enough I posted about last session as well. Corinne talked us through a way to focus on bringing JOY to the forefront of our thinking when we need it.

So far, through the mindful meditation and awareness of body and breath, I have developed for myself the concept that I exist within the boundaries of my physical body and the rest of the world is outside of my boundaries.

I can fill my boundaries with emotions, beliefs, and thoughts that I want to let in. I can invite the "difficult" in to look at, deal with, come to grips with, but then I can invite it out and close the door behind it.

Just because there are difficulties in my life does not mean that I have to allow them to "fill" me and my "body space" and drain me of happiness and joy.

So when Corinne suggested using color to activate the JOY that exists within, I defined my physical boundary space with a bright golden neon outline. When I want or need to focus on the JOY WITHIN, that is all I have to do is flip on the switch and the neon outline of my physical boundary will glow brightly.

Another realization arrived when I was at the most relaxed point of our meditation, "The mind gets in the way. If one can turn it off and JUST BE, one is probably the closest that one can be to truth and to peace. The rest is noise.

On going into the session, I had intended my "intent" to deal with my anger over interactions with Gregory that "get strange." I did get a message here too. It was brief and to the point. "Don't try to deal with the anger, just replace it with love, and more love!