Guided Meditation • Visualization • Mindfulness

Relaxation is only the beginning of meditation, relaxation is not meditation. 

 Meditation is an opportunity for you to connect with the well-spring of peace, love, and joy within.  It is the practice where you cultivate a meaningful relationship with your authentic Self.  At its best, meditation is a practice where you learn the art of  listening with your entire self…mind, body, and spirit.  

The beginning of your practice should always be to relax the body consciously, then you wait.  You wait upon the still small voice within to “speak” to you.  It will.  It may come to you as a gentle breeze that caresses the skin, the sound of birds singing outside of your window, or as a wonderful coincidence sometime during your day.  It may speak as an inner knowing, a deep feeling of release, or as an inner sigh. 

Give yourself enough time for your practice, at least three minutes after relaxation, to wait and listen.  Accept the invitation  to go deeper into the nature of Being.

Shanti

Your boss is unreasonable, you haven’t been intimate with your spouse in weeks, your kids won’t pick their clothes up off the floor, and traffic is a nightmare. Trying to change the people and the situations in your life is normal. You want to be happy.  Unfortunately, it is a fundamental Law of our universe that you can not change people and rarely can you change a situation.  So what is left? 

You want more affection, you want respect, you want cooperation because all of these things feel good.  But if you can not change what’s going on outside of you what do you have the power to change?  Is it possible to be happy in an uncooperative and irrational world?

Happiness is only possible when you have cultivated a state of mind that is supportive, loving, and nurturing regardless of your circumstances.  You cultivate this state of mind, not by arguing with your thoughts, your spouse, or your kids, but by realizing that your senses are deceiving you.  

Through meditation you learn to redirect your attention away from ”thinking mind” and into the refuge of the body, the breath, and the present moment.  Over time two things will happen:  One, you learn to ignore most of what you are thinking and rely instead on that aspect of yourself that always knows the truth, sees clearly, and loves deeply.  And two, the content of your thoughts will begin to naturally reflect the openness of your beautiful awareness.

So what will happen to the irrational and uncooperative world?  For you it will change.  It will change because you will be different in the world.  It will change because like your thoughts it will begin to reflect back to you the openness of your loving awareness.

Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.  Feel your body in the chair.  Take three more breaths.  Smile.

 For over 15 years I’ve been practicing and teaching guided meditation, visualization, and self healing but I’ve never held a class on how others can do it for themselves and others until I had a vision about doing so last month. 

I was sitting in silence contemplating a level II meditation class for my current students when I saw myself sitting in a circle facilitating a workshop where each person gave a guided meditation.  The vision came and went in a flash but it communicated volumes to my heart. 

It has always been my practice to empower everyone I meet and work with, with the knowledge that they are the knowers in thier own lives.  Now I have the opportunity to take this practice to the next level.  Yay!

If you would like more information about this intensive workshop then please go to the calendar section of my site.

I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Love,

Krista

 

Moral relativism is what our religious, societal, and political systems are deathly afraid of.  They tell us that unless we obey the rules, the laws, and the credos of our society, society will fall into chaos.

Moral relativism is fed by the erroneous beliefs that human beings are alone (that is, non-interrelated to other beings) and essentially morally corrupted.  So, if I do what is good for me and you do what is good for you then, boom! chaos erupts. 

 If you turn on the television, read the paper, or if you’ve lost your home recently, then there is plenty of evidence to substantiate this belief. 

We are driven by fear, and the evidence of our fears. 

We are taught that we can not trust ourselves or our neighbors to do the right thing.  We are taught that people have to be told or coherced into doing what’s good or what’s right.  Then we are taught to ignore the deep sense of resentment or longing that arises for listening to the myriad voices that always seem to know better than we do.   

I find it interesting though that most people intuitively know the good when they see it and they know what’s right for them when they feel it.  I also find it interesting that on the occasion when we follow our intuitive feelings, it turns out to be the right thing.  Could it be that we are hardwired to know the good, rather than hardwired to be selfish?  

There was a time in our recent history where inter-racial marriage was illegal and considered immoral, the way same sex marriage is today.  But there were many individuals, my parents for example, who had the courage to move beyond this fearful conditioned belief.  Today we see them as pioneers, but back then they would have been at the apex of the axis of evil, or gasp! perverts.

Was is it inside of us that recognizes error as error and truth as truth?  Is it our conscience, our Source, our Soul, our Self?  And why aren’t we given the tools to explore the nature of ourselves beyond what we’ve been told?  Because then the world would change.  The current power structures couldn’t survive as they are if the majority of people were Authentically Empowered (thanks Gary Zukav).  If we were told that we were born into love rather than sin, if we were taught to trust and then develop our innate goodness and our intuition, then we wouldn’t need to be told what to believe, how to behave, and how to feel; rather we would know and we would act according to that knowing.

True, for some,  its a long way from where they are now to being authentically empowered, but it isn’t that far for you, if you’re here, reading this entry. 
 

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love is as deep.  The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite,” (Shakespeare).

What can we infer from this quote?  Perhaps that unconditioned love is boundless, energizing, and endless.  When our love depends on whether or not “you please me,” then our love is conditioned, it is finite, and ultimately it will cause us and others pain. 

Peace between family memebers, neighbors, and nations requires us to move into the unconditioned state of mind.  We must and we can love one another even if we don’t always like each other.  The ego will never learn to love, love is not its nature.  What loves in us is greater than our self limiting concepts.  What loves in us, what sees the beauty in a child or a flower or even a bug is God (or the Soul, the Self, etc…). 

God is an energy that we live in, yes we live our lives in the energy we call God, but we must acknowledge It and even invite It into our conscious awareness before It can open our eyes to the beauty that is everywhere.    We must make God an activity in our lives rather than just an occassional concept.  This is the key to loving.

Love deeply and with abandon!

Krista

Over the years I have learned that the ultimate stress reliever is practicing faith.  We are stressed because we can not forgive the past and we are stressed because we are worried about the future.  We lack faith. Faith in what?  Faith in yourself, and faith that life is gorgeous and good and that It is on everyone’s side.
 
Meditation teachers often talk about, “practicing presence” or “practicing mindfulness.”  The practice of presence or mindfulness means to practice faith.  How can we practice presence, being here now, being in the present moment if we don’t have faith that life will take care of Itself? 
 
Faith is not a set of beliefs, faith is knowing, and the only way we come into this sense of “knowing” is through practicing faith. We practice faith by affirming always that there is more to us than any given situation.  We study, we walk, we contemplate, we smile, we breathe, we meditate, we cry, we give, this is our practice.
 
Faith is not for God/Source/Universe/Spirit/Whatever, the practice of faith is for us. We practice faith so that we will come into a remembrance of our divine natures, thereby healing everything. 
 
If you are unhappy or stressed ask yourself, “Where is my faith? Is my faith a set of out dated beliefs?  Is my faith in villainy and negativity stronger than my faith in Spirit?”  Ask yourself these questions, and wait for the answers to bubble up from within you.
 
My wish for you is that you find and express joy.
 
With Love,
Krista

A new 8 week Meditation Series begins Wednesday September 30th, 2009

The class is called: “Connecting with the Still Small Voice Within”

From 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm

at the Redondo Beach Center for Spiritual Living, 907 Knob Hill Ave., Redondo Beach, CA 90277

Cost is $7 per class or $45 for all eight weeks

To register please visit:  http://www.redondocrs.org or call 310-540-5080

Stay tuned because I want to add an optional journaling and study portion to this class. 

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Mindfulness Practice #1:  When feeling stressed or challenged this week, start breathing deeply.

1. When we are feeling stressed or when we are in the midst of a conflict, it is normal for us to hold our breath. When this happens start to breathe deeply and slowly directing the breath into the belly. Do this while keeping the distribution of weight even between your right and left foot or your right and left cheek if you are sitting down.

2. Do not worry about whose right or wrong in that moment, just breathe and feel the body/mind coming back into balance.  **Act from the intention of wanting balance.  When we act from the need to be right, we create conflict.  When we act from the intention of wanting understanding, we listen, and we create harmony.

3. Deep breathing feels like a cool glass of water on a hot summer’s day.  It is good for you and its stress reducing effects are immediate.  So simple and yet so profound. 

“Live your passion and you’ll always have money in your pocket!”  That’s what I told my youngest daughter the other night while I was tucking her into bed.

Passion is a strange conversation to have with an almost seven year old at bedtime, but she’s searching for a way to express her unique, and I think audacious, point of view about life.  “We’ll go see Jerry at the Gymnastics studio on Saturday and take a cheerleading class,” I said.  She is really excited.

Passion is a gift. Passion tells us why we’re here and what we’ve come to share and to express with the people around us.  Passion doesn’t have to be about something big.  We can be passionate about flowers, or sunny days, or reptiles.  What’s most important is that we are able to express that passion with enthusiasm and then share it with others.  Passion is a great, good thing.

If you don’t know what your passion is then ask yourself, “If I had 20 million dollars, what would I buy and how would I live?”  Take your time and really let the answer come from within, let the answer fill your heart, let it create an energy within you.

But what if the answer both exhilarates you and makes you sad?  What if your answer is to buy a sail boat and sail around the world…but you remember the kids, and being the president of the PTA, and making sure mother takes her medications, etc…What if sailing around the world is too impractical?  Well, what about just taking sailing lessons and taking your mother and your kids with you.  Yes you can find a creative way to make your passion work for you right now. 

How much is your passion worth to you?  If you are always finding excuses why you can’t live your passion then maybe being happy, I mean really happy, isn’t worth that much to you.  Or, maybe that “thing” you dream about is just a fantasy and not a passion.  If that’s true, then ask yourself again, meditate on it, contemplate what would bring you the most joy in this moment, and invite passion into your life today!

With Love,
Krista 

Hello and Happy New Year!

What! How can we think of a happy new year when bad news is all around us? Recession, people losing their jobs and their homes, tax returns are delayed because California is broke, the Taliban is back in charge in Afghanistan, and so on. But communities are not things in and of themselves.  A community is a collection of individuals and the energy or mindset of the community is determined by the individual consciousness of everyone in it. 
 
Our thoughts are sneaky.  We may believe that we are thinking positively, that we are in charge of our thoughts, but the truth is, is that our thoughts are in charge of us most of the time.  For example, how often do you think about what you do not want, or how much you dislike your work, or your neighbor, or how much debt you have?  How often do you complain, criticize, judge, become defensive, or compare yourself to others?  How often does it happen that when you see a beautiful or wealthy person you think that their beauty is fake and their wealth undeserved?
 
To find peace in our body/mind and community we must rest our conscious awareness in the truth:   that because we are alive, and there is breath in our bodies, we have the awesome power of choice. 

Watch your thoughts closely this week, notice the thoughts that make you feel anxious, stressed, and fearful.  If necessary, take a mental health break and go on a news fast for the week.  Put off talking to your friend that likes to complain about everything for a few days.

When you change the way you think and feel about your life, the conditions of your life will follow.  We have been deluded into believing that in order to be happy, to realize health, wealth and wellbeing the conditions of our lives must change first, not so.  But only you can change the way you think and feel about your life.  This isn’t about “the power of positive thinking,” this is about affirming the truth that you are the beloved of the Universe, that you possess the awesome power of thought, and that you have the free will to choose and to create freely in your experience.

Know the truth and the truth will set you free!