Guided Meditation • Visualization • Mindfulness

In preparation for this evening’s class on the heart center, it occured to me how the energy of compassion, forgiveness, empathy and kindness nourishes the entire body and mind.

The heart center correlates to our body’s circulatory system.  The circulatory system feeds, oxygenates and removes waste from the entire body.  Looking at the picture of our circulatory system, I imagined how the energy of compassion travels the same route, bathing our bodies in light and ease while at the same time removing negativity.  I also imagined how feelings of anger, resentment, and even hatred are destructive to the body, since this negative energy travels along the same route. 

It occurs to me how vital compassion, empathy and forgiveness are to our total health and wellbeing.  This week, please practice along with me the Loving Kindness Meditation.  Let’s bring health and healing to ourselves and our world.

Loving Kindness Meditation:

Assume a meditative posture and repeat silently to yourself
1. “May I be safe, May I be happy, May I be healthy, May I live with ease.”

2.While visualizing someone whom you feel grateful towards, such as a mentor, a friend, or a loved one, say silently to yourself:
“May you be safe, May you be happy, May you be healthy, May you live with ease.”

3.While visualizing someone whom you are indifferent towards, such as a grocery store clerk, repeat statement number 2.

4.While visualize someone with whom you are having a difficult relationship with, repeat the statement number 2.

Because our feelings about people can be complicated, this meditation can be very challenging. However, with practice it can be transformative.

For more information see: http://www.beliefnet.com/Health/2000/07/Opening-The-Heart.aspx

Wishing you a joyous Easter celebration!

Namasté,

Every breath presents us with an opportunity for renewal.  The leaves don’t regret the turning of the seasons and the birds don’t lament winters past.  Every thing in the natural world exists fully in this moment and is therefore always new.  Humans have this same ability to be renewed and live fully in the present moment for we are not separate from the phenomenal world we are integral to it. 
 
Numerologically 2008 was a year of new beginnings.  What did you initiate?  What seeds did you gather for harvest this past year?  Spend some time this week contemplating these questions, because 2009 is the year that we will be planting and nurturing these seeds.  Perhaps there was something that was initiated that you don’t want to bring to fruition this coming year.  Write those things down and burn them, release them, let them go.  You can do this; it is your birthright to be renewed and prosperous in this coming year.  Do you believe you can have that?  I know that you can.
 
May the coming hours, days, weeks, and months be a blessing to you.  Breathe deeply and live fully.
Love,
Krista

by Kris King

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down.
                —–Eckhart Tolle

I remember when I was first certain that I wanted to pursue my acting dreams while living in Springfield, IL. After driving back and forth to Chicago for auditions, it was clear to me that I needed to move to Los Angeles if I were to have a real shot at it. I sat with that knowing for at least a year before it hit me that time was not going to allow me to wait for a more favorable circumstance. At that point, it wasn’t what I needed to do that was an issue; it was how I will do it.

The major obstacle for human beings is the thinking mind. Alternatively, the human mind is the best tool ever given to you. If used in unison with the soul, the mind helps to create some of the grandest ideas, the most loving gestures, and numerous opportunities. The mind, unaccompanied, creates conflict, strife, and problems that can lead to the most erroneous behavior. In other words, when the mind plays the role of the sidekick to the superhero, the bad guys are captured and the town rejoices. However, when the mind starts acting as if it is the hero and feels that it doesn’t need any assistance, it will eventually self-destruct trying to save the town, ultimately taking the town down with it.

The problem seems to be that most people are trying to use their mind for the what as opposed to the how. To piggy back off my earlier example, when contemplating the move to Los Angeles, it was clear that I needed to move there, I just didn’t know how I was going to do it. So I explored a few different options. I thought about getting a loan. I even thought about saving up for a year or two, then moving. Until I eventually came to the obvious decision to sell my home and use the money to move and pay off some debt before I left. My mind made an assessment of what my options was, weeded out what wouldn’t work, leaving me with the best available option based on my circumstances. Two months later, I was in L.A.  

Your soul is all knowing. Your mind is all memory. If the mind is left unattended, all of your decisions will be made from past experiences. And can you blame it? The mind is trained to go into the storage room of any similar situation that you are currently in, see what you did in that situation, then act out a similar, if not an exact solution even if that solution didn’t work the last time. This is because it has no new data to work with. At least it seems this way.

(more…)

It doesn’t matter how much we think we know or what we say we believe.  What matters is whether or not are we living our deepest beliefs with integrity. 

We talk about peace, love, and compassion but so few of us live these principles.  Our compassion extends only to the people who think like we do, not to the person who abused us.  Our peace extends only to the people who believe in what what we believe, not to the non-believer.  Our love is only for those who please and validate us, not for the person who disagrees with us. 

Pride.  We used to talk about pride, now we talk about ego.  Most of us don’t really understand what the ego is, there are so many different ways of defining it, but pride we understand.  Pride and unconsciousness, (”Father forgive them they know not what they do”), is what keeps us from living in joy. Pride. It’s pride that keeps us from apologizing to our spouse or our children when we’ve been too harsh with them.  It’s pride that keeps us from telling them that we love them.  It’s pride that keeps us on the edges of our relationships–never to experience the fullness and richness of the other person’s company. 

Humility.  Humility is pride’s opposite.  True humility is an act of courage because it is often misconstrued and misunderstood as weakness.  To be humble is to stand in a place of power, to recognize the shortcomings of our pridefulness and then let go.  It takes humility plus courage to live the deepest and fullest expression of Life.  

Action. To speak of humility, to speak of compassion, to speak of love, is not the same as being humility, as being compassion, and being love.  This is true spirituality.

Why do we love negativity?

Why do we believe that real life is found in  the dark place of our lives?

Why is it so hard for us to forgive…the past, ourselves, the driver who cut us off on our way to church?

Why do we insist and persist on dwelling on these ridiculous transgressions?

What is it about me that does not allow me to forgive myself?

Do you know?

Affirmation: Life is Light. Light is my nature. Peace is who I am.

Forgiveness is as easy and refreshing as… 

drinking a cool glass of water on a warm summer’s day.

Hello everyone,

Well there’s been a lot going on, all good.  I plan on making some changes to the blog.  Soon there will be a free 20 minute guided angel meditation, as well as videos on simple everyday mindfulness, online classes, and so much more.  I haven’t shared this all yet with my web guy Mark, so let’s just keep it between us. 

Also, I’ve just discovered something called art journaling.  I love to journal and I have been journaling on and off for about ten years.  While I was in Santa Fe, I literally stumbled on something called, “The Diarist’s Workshop.”  Incredible stuff!  Well, over the past two weeks or more I’ve been up late researching art journaling and adding it to the mix with my everyday journaling.  I’ve also started taking an online art class.  I love the way the Life always has something new and delightful in store for us, we just have to learn to expect our good to arive more often.  Anyway, it’s not to late to sign up for the art class or to start your own series of art journalings.  If you want to see what I’m up to, go to http://www.flickr.com.  My screen name is Krista1970.  Check it out, leave a comment.  Let me know what you think…but be nice.

Bye for now.

Krista

p.s.

I will be posting new class updates shortly. 

This month I’ve been working with, “Meditation in the Silence,” by E.V. Ingraham. Below is an excerpt from the book regarding communing with our Source through the practice of sitting in silence. I’ve also included a lesson and mindfulness practice that complements Ingraham’s.

The Practice of the Silence

1. Be comfortably seated so that your mind will be as free as possible from any thought of the body.

2. Remember that this period of silence is a period of prayer, a period of conscious communion with your Source.

3. Be interested in discovering the nature of Source and what Source wishes to reveal to you.

4. Become very still, and listen with your whole being to catch whatever degree of Presence may be revealed to you.

5. Acknowledge that The Presence is in you and that Its infinite wisdom is unfolding in you, Its Life is expressing in you, and Its inexhaustible substance is being formed in you continually.

6. Do not make the period of silence too long in the beginning—perhaps only two or three minutes. Let it be only as long as your interest seems to hold you.

7. Only by practice does one become a musician, and it is by practice that you develop the new consciousness of spiritual things…so don’t be discouraged if your experiences are not as you anticipate them to be.

8. On closing your time of silence, assume an attitude of thanksgiving.

From, “Meditation in the Silence,” (by E.V. Ingraham, pp. 42-43)

Lesson and Practice: Practicing Attention and Appreciation.
To know God (Source, Universe, Soul, Self, etc…), you must first be interested in knowing God, you must give your attention to It. This week practice knowing God in all things, in all places, and in all peoples everywhere through the giving of your attention. (more…)

Every moment of everyday our internal guidance system, i.e. our intuition, is at work directing each of us towards experiencing and expressing our highest good.

Unfortunately, most of us second guess our intuitive impulses, mulling the various outcomes around in our heads for hours or even days in search of the right answer.

We mistrust our intuition, not because we don’t feel it, but because we have forgotten that everything we need for our desire to manifest is contained within the desire.

Instead we debate all of the pros and cons and loose time, energy and focus. More importantly we loose touch with the initial flame of our desire thus extinguishing it with our deliberation.

The habit of “second guessing” arises from our preoccupation with the outcome. Part of being here is to experience what happens along the way when we follow the spark of our desires.

Try This: When cooking dinner or getting dressed for work, follow your initial desire. In other words, if you have the desire to put cinnamon in the chili, try it. If you have the desire to wear a red tie or blouse to work, then do it.

Throughout your day, notice how often you stop to “deliberate” even the smallest desire and ask yourself, “Am I second guessing?” Then go back to the initial feeling of desire (if you can remember it) and follow it through. But Be Forewarned! There is a difference between being compulsive and being intuitive. I trust you’ll know the difference.

You never know when a small spark of desire to wear a red tie will turn into and even greater inspiration, or if simply wearing it makes you feel good that day.

Say this with me: “I hear, I trust, and I respond to my internal guidance system. It serves me well.”

P.S. Read, “The Alchemist,” by Paul Coelho. Find out what happens to a young man when he follows the spark of his desires.