Welcome Home Ida B!

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Heather Bleasdell

Baby Ida - Day 4

Our little Ida was born on Saturday 9-10-11 @ 3:25 AM… 9.9 pounds of yumminess.  We labored at home from 3 PM until Midnight, then headed to the hospital. When we checked into our room around 1:00 AM, the labor & delivery nurse asked me if I wanted to disclose my religion. (Now imagine, this is the point were my very supportive husband cringes a little…) I say “yes, I’m a pagan,” then our super cool nurse says “Blessed Be. I’m a pagan too.” As we laughed between contractions, she told me her license plate reads YONI RN. Needless to say, if that is not an auspicious sign, I don’t know what is. It was a great start to a very good hospital birth experience. Ida was born a few hours later – another healthy whopper of a baby girl to love. Now we are a family of four. Blessed Be! xoxoxo

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Grace Under Pressure: Just Breathe

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Mary Swanson

Deep Breath by Melanie Weidner

By guest blogger Mary Swanson

If you’ve ever studied yoga, meditation or attended a birth or death, you know… It’s all about the breath. Why then, do we pay so little attention to it?

In the Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy the first rule is: ”DON’T PANIC”.

I believe this to be a very good rule of life. When we panic, we stop breathing, all of our energy is frozen and we’re leaving our bodies as quickly as we can–that is, we disassociate.

We’ve all had moments of panic, where we literally can’t breath because we’re so frightened. But what most of us don’t realize is that, as far as our bodies are concerned, we live in a state of near panic all the time. When we don’t breath fully, we’re slightly disassociating all the time.

When you start to be conscious of it, it’s really quite stunning how often we stop breathing.

In yoga, we learn to take full breaths: as you inhale, pooch your stomach out and imagine filling yourself with your breath all the way down into your stomach. On the exhale, pull your stomach in to help fully push the breath out. Slow down the process by counting to 8 on the in-breath, pause, and count to 8 on the out-breath.

Just that little exercise will help your body relax, your First Chakra to open, your nervous system to relax, and bring you in the present tense.

Asking yourself a hundred times a day: “Am I breathing?” is also a good practice for staying in the present moment. There is a great advantage to being in the ‘now’ … it’s the only way I’ve ever found to reduce my level of suffering.

We’ve all heard phrases like The Power of Now and Be Here Now but what does it mean to be in the present tense? It means not being tormented by the past or fantasizing about the future. It means reclaiming your own ability to be let go of being a victim and stepping into the driver’s seat of your own life. Now has power. Power to change what you want to change and to create what you want to create.

Many, many techniques for bringing yourself into the present moment exist. Putting a rubber band on your wrist & snapping it once in a while, setting timers to remind you to take your head out of the computer & look around, meditating on your feet, etc, etc. But there’s really nothing quite like bringing your awareness to your breath.

I’ve been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here and learning new ways to practice awareness while I’m breathing. He opens the books by talking about “being there ” for your breath. I love the words he uses: “I am here for you my darling in-breath; I am here for you my darling out-breath.”

Who ever treats their breath as “darling?” But if you think about it, your breath is the dearest thing you have.

He goes on to talk about “being there” for your feelings too. I had to laugh out loud when I said, as I breathed in, “I am here for you my darling frustration.” Just the idea of being friendly toward feelings I hate having– woke me up to how hard I am on my emotional body. SO MANY feelings are forbidden!

What if we allowed ourselves to cherish our darling feelings? What if we simply sat with them, compassionately, as we would with a darling two year-old who was having a hard day?

It feels better. It feels like someone cares. And then the present tense is an ok place to be.

Image

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Full Moon in Pisces

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Heather Bleasdell

This Monday, September 12th, the Full Moon swims into Pisces as the Sun heats up in Virgo. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the full Moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox (Friday, Sept. 23rd) is called the Full Harvest Moon and marks the peak of harvest when farmers can work late into the night gathering corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice. So what are YOU ready to gather? What seeds will you take with you through the winter?

The Full Moon in Pisces embodies unconditional love, feelings, expanded consciousness, dreaming, freedom, unity, imagination, and the BIG PICTURE, while the Sun shines through Virgo’s analytical, service-oriented, detailed mind. This gives us the opportunity to expand our thinking in a smart, serviceable way. Instead of being lost in the fantasy or the funk, we can use Virgo’s attention for detail to write down the “Big Ideas” and start to create action steps that are in alignment with what we are ready for in the present tense. Let the full brightness of this moon illuminate your true feelings and intuitive knowing about the current situation.

  • Keep track of your dreams this week and next. “It seems like my dreams are saying….”
  • You may be questioning EVERYTHING – get to your journal and start answering your questions!
  • Lay it Down – make an altar to your attachments, ask for help in the areas you are struggling in
  • Take ritual swim – imagine that with each stroke, you are releasing the past and moving into pregnant possibility. (If you can’t find a pool, take a ritual bath. When you drain the water, release!)

TIP + Grounded Dreaming – Combining the gifts of Virgo (grounded & detail oriented) with the Visionary Dreams of Pisces, create a Dream Card on an index card or piece of construction paper. Any size or shape will do. With the intention of creating a guiding image for bringing your big picture to earth, flip through magazines and cut out images that draw your attention. Don’t worry if they don’t fit on the card – make a bigger card. You can also cut out words or phrases. When you are done, sort through the images, letting yourself know which one needs to be on the card. It doesn’t have to make sense right away. Place the guide on your altar and ask for help from the mystery.

Autumal Equinox, Friday, September 23rd
The equinox marks the day  of equal balance between sunlight and darkness. It is also the second of three pagan harvest festivals. For our Celtic ancestors, the fall equinox was time to reflect on the past season and celebrate nature’s bounty, accepting that summer is now over. Harvest marks a time of rest after hard work, and a ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of nature. At Mabon, we leave the abundant expansion of summer behind, and begin to sort through what we are harvesting for the Fall. For More Info

Meet Our New Baby

Think Magic, Dream Big! Transform Power – the answer will be Yes!
+ Heather

Here is my Dream Card from 2010: Grounded Perspective

    pisces_gdream2010w

Image of Fish

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Crowrider: What’s Erupting? Welcoming Reactivity

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Laura Tabet

By guest blogger Laura Tabet

I’d like to make a space for reactivity – a big, welcoming invitation for it. It deserves a space.

So much of my personal and academic study has been focused on how to be responsive rather than reactive, to be consciously creative rather than unconsciously re-enacting the same repetitive story over and over. I still strongly believe in the power of waking up from reactive trance states and towards an awareness of how we are affected and the empowerment of choice. But, for this post I want to pause and just say I have a lot of new respect for reactivity.

About two weeks ago I caught some sort of virus, which expressed itself as a full-bodied case of something akin to hives. I wasn’t itchy really, rather my body was in a state of high alert panic, something like an allergic reaction – for two weeks.

The body panic translated into an intense emotional state of anxiety, panic and rigid thinking. Our physical state and our emotional state are linked together and I was like a frayed wire in a constant state of vulnerable emotionality. The everyday things that affect us, like a friend forgetting to call me back, or someone cutting me off on the road, were HUGE triggers! In fact, it seemed like everything was triggering me. The two weeks of body panic, the pile-up of triggers, plus processing my experience through the perceptual lens of panic resulted in a simultaneously chaotic and depressed state. It wasn’t pretty.

Now after two weeks of this agony I finally took an antihistamine. You might ask why I didn’t take it sooner. I’ve been asking myself the same question. But when you are in a state of reactivity you biologically lose connection with the part of your brain that helps you discern objectively and make decisions. I couldn’t see the most obvious solution to my discomfort.

While I didn’t enjoy the last two weeks, they did offer me a lot of insight – I try to use all my own personal experiences as a means of learning and deepening my understanding of the human experience and this one taught me a lot:

  1. Without access to our objective mind, which was impinged upon by the sympathetic nervous system reaction I was having (the automatic body reaction to threat), we are at the mercy of our animal reactions, physical/emotional.
  2. Our reactions are entirely dictated by our past programming. Our experience is limited and directed by our biography, by scripts that live in the nervous system. Mostly, this means that we are at the mercy of our child consciousness, beliefs that were locked-in when we were young, like, “I’m not safe, “ “I’m unlovable,” “Nobody sees me,” etc.
  3. When we are reactive, our normal strategies and defenses for keeping it together and remaining functionally competent are useless. But this is actually a good thing. Because when our defenses are down, then……
  4. Hidden, unlived parts of us make themselves known to us. Reactivity is one of the ways the split-off parts of us, those relegated to the shadow, can make their way into our awareness.
  5. When hidden, unlived parts express themselves through reactivity these parts seem ugly, weak, hairy, smelly, disgusting and embarrassing. They’ve been locked away for a long time, and when emotional states are penned up for centuries they get funky.
  6. Therefore, we must live through the initial experience of shame, vulnerability and suffer the embarrassing tantrum of reactivity to become more of who we are.

It’s not pretty, but it’s how we reach towards wholeness.

During my two-week physical and emotional tantrum some very core insecurities and deep-seated beliefs came up to the surface. Literally. While it was very uncomfortable to experience the pain and isolation of these inner children, it was really important that I recognize the truth of their experience, their needs and to learn how to love them.

Carl Jung asserts that in order to reach wholeness we need to access what he calls our inferior function, the aspect of ourselves that stands opposite of our most dominant function. Jung broke up the personality into thinking, feeling, intuition and sensate types. Thus for a dominantly thinking individual, the feeling aspect will be underdeveloped, operate autonomously, disconnected from the system, and gain a primitive, affect-laden quality. We can always tell when we are in the territory of our inferior function when we feel sensitive, inadequate or shaky.

My core defenses reside in the mind. I have developed a strong mind that can organize and strategize through life. The dominance of the mind was what I learned in my family and I learned to disconnect from emotions and the body. My two-week panic response shut down the strong capacity of my mind and I was taken into the wild, tumultuous journey of my less developed functions.

Daniel Siegel, neuroscientist and psychologist, looks at this process through the eyes of what he calls integration – the hallmark of well-being. From his perspective we are the most creative, grounded and responsive to life when we are in a state of integration. Two types of integration he highlights are: 1) vertical integration, where the mind up top and body/emotions down below are in full communication with each other, creating a state of passionate objectivity, and 2) horizontal integration, where the right and left sides of the brain/body are in dialogue with each other, where the symbolic and narrative aspects of the brain are working together to make coherent, interconnected meaning of our experience.

Conversely, when we are not integrated the nervous system ping-pongs back and forth between states of chaos, emotionality, and fragmentation to rigidity, depression and exhaustion.

Both of these theorist present us with the need for integration and the idea that there are parts of our body, experiences, memory and self that live autonomously outside of the system, and show up in chaotic, rigid, and primitive states – reactivity. When we are reactive, we are getting in touch with one of these exiled parts. Reactivity can look like a rigid way of thinking or an emotional outburst. Either way, this is a clue that one of these disconnected aspects has been triggered and wants to be seen, included, and folded into our conscious identity.

We have to turn towards the snotty, yelling, messy-haired, wild, rigid, stuck, arms crossed, I’m-not-going-to-budge part and say, “I am that, you are also a part of me.” Can you forgive, love and welcome the broken, inadequate, underdeveloped aspects of yourself into your heart?

Exercise

I welcome you to greet your next experience of reactivity with compassion and curiosity. What is being evoked? What little one is coming up to the surface? Then start with your body. Breath calmly. Exhaling is a natural way to slow down the flight or fight response in the nervous system, it initiates the parasympathetic response, which helps to calm and soothe your nervous system.

Breathe warm, nurturing energy into every part of your body, especially the parts that are tightening or expressing in some way. Or imagine the feeling of being held when you are upset, or the feeling of someone really being present, but giving you the space to feel what you are feeling. Imagine that the tantrum, or large emotional response you are having is a part of you that wants to come to the surface, wants to make itself heard and seen so s/he can receive more love, more attention, and an invitation to be a part of your life.

Upcoming Workshop
Laura Tabet is offering a class entitled, “I Am Home” for six consecutive Tuesday nights starting in October from 7-9:30pm. This class is dedicated to living a more embodied, creative, intuitive, inspired, authentic and community-filled life. Come learn energy work, the intuitive arts, engage in creative and transformative practices such as shamanic journeying, writing poetry, guided meditation, and much, much, more. For details email Laura or call 510-484-7899.

Resources
Daniel Siegel, Mindsight
New York Association for Analytical Psychology

Images
1) Volcano, unknown 2) Love Yourself by Laura Tabet

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Starting A Personal Creativity Revolution 

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Jenafer Joy


By visiting guest blogger Jenafer Joy

“Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only”
-Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Surprisingly, it is a brave and revolutionary act to claim time for ourselves. Both pulled and supported by communities, family, partnerships, it can be a radical renegotiation to create space for our own thoughts, our own creativity. There always seems to be something else or a list of something elses with sensible and urgent priority.

Anyone who’s spent a day covered from head to toe in paint, or gotten lost in a writing, singing, making, or danced until they could barely walk, knows what it’s like to ride a tsunami wave of juicy creativity. These occasional ‘dance until dawn’ experiences will leave us feeling full for some time. But my current curiosity is in the subtler experience of creativity, in the alchemy of daily creativity as a conversation with your own intuition.What are the effects and outcome of regular creative practice used as an informative connection to your inner muse?

There is an intimate link between our creativity and our inner wild wise intuitive self. There is a natural way that images, words, movements, colors help the poetic soul speak. To give yourself a regular creative practice is to give yourself a pathway for this creative voice to be heard.

This undertaking can be daunting! Even if we willfully and courageously carve time for ourselves, when standing at the precipice of a “date with yourself”, a fluffy book or television often seems an easier, safer choice du jour. We all know that the creative voice can be outrageous and prone to life altering requests over status quo. We do not know what will arise when we say “Yes, I am willing to listen now.”

If you were to spend a month with a daily practice, what would you choose? If you were to give yourself 15 minutes every single day, what creativity would you choose for your game of telephone with the inner muse? Would you choose a poem? If so, will you be ready to make space for poems that have been too much, too little, unheard? Would you choose sketching or painting? Are you ready for Dread Repetition as those intimate symbols of your soul try this way and that way to communicate? Are you prepared for the ugly, the confusing, the unwanted? Would you choose creative movement? If so, are you ready to hear when your body wants to move ‘too’ slow? When it wants to tell you of it’s pain? When old memories tucked into this limb or that limb come calling? Will you choose Cooking? Sewing? Journaling? Collage? Gardening? Blogging? Singing? Are you able to be gentle but firm with yourself when the “I don’t want tos!” start their whining?

In the story-rich classic Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes “ To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response… In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing or being.”

What do you think? If we were not worried about the products of creativity, if we are not even worried about the experience of creativity, but using a daily practice as a way of strengthening our creative response muscles – what then?

Are you ready to join me in an experiment? To throw your hat/pen/brush/shoes into some form of regular creativity? Starting mid September I’m leading an online Creativity Camp focused on daily creative practice. You are invited of course to play with us…or to play on your own. What might be possible out of a four week experiment in daily creativity? What will you discover in only 15 minutes a day?

It is a Radical Revolutionary Act
to give time and love to your own voice,
to your own expressions.
To make room to think
your own thoughts
in a busy interconnected
and static-filled world.
If it were easy
everyone would be doing it.

Today forget everyone
and let it be you.

Jenafer Joy is a storycarrier, irreverent personal-revolutionary, community wrangler and ridiculously-blissy newlywed. You can find her teaching with the rowdy crowd at Cosmic Cowgirls.

Credits: Paintings & Collage by Jenafer Joy, slideshow music “All I want is You” by Tristan Prettyman, Photo of Jenafer by Debbie Baxter

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New Moon in Virgo

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Heather Bleasdell

C’mon Every BODY get Happy!

8379On Sunday, August 28th, the New Moon joins the Sun in Virgo – the healer, doctor, nurse, teacher, assistant, therapist and scientist. Virgo is symbolized by the virgin – being in and of yourself – and rules the areas of work, health & well-being, body wisdom, analyzing and organizing, flushing out the details and service. There is a strong pull to get organized at this time of year as we start moving into Fall. With all the harvesting and planning, school starting and Summer activities drawing to a close, you may have noticed yourself re-evaluating the different parts of your life and starting to consider your many options. This is where earthy Virgo-energy can help us make the grounded Course Corrections we seek in order to align with our present-tense goals & commitments. As you review, be gentle and forgiving with yourself. Course corrections take time, especially when we are talking about the physical body… and this is the perfect time to take your own physical health to the next level. As always, honor the process.

  • Schedule a doctor’s appointment
  • Shift your diet to align with your healthy intentions
  • Honor Mercury – take deep breaths, walk in windy places, lighten up.
  • Clean out the medicine cabinet
  • Enlist a coach or get an “exercise buddy” to help you achieve your fitness goals
  • Write your New Moon Wishes

TIP + Authentic Service – Virgo is the sign of Service. The planet associated with Virgo is Mercury ruling day-to-day expression & communication. Curious Mercury asks, “What are YOU a voice for?” Take a moment to answer that question right now… in the present tense. Close your eyes and listen to that deep voice inside. (Resist the temptation to do it later – do it now!) Without judging the information you hear/sense, ask yourself one more question – “what is one small step I can take to be of service in this area ?” Commit to taking that step. If it feels too big, ask yourself for an even smaller step until you feel the step is realistic & doable this week or TODAY. Don’t be fooled by the internal dialogue that says later… you can live your best life right now.

FYI The planet Mercury has gone direct – full steam ahead!

Keep it real,
+ heather

Judy Garland – Come On Get Happy!
Image

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New Moon in Virgo Wishes

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Heather Bleasdell

From Jan Spiller

The Virgo New Moon is on Sunday, August 28th. The New Moon each month is a Power Day, a day favorable for new beginnings. Thus, things wished for on the day of the New Moon, if written down on paper, take root in the energies of the month and, through the process of natural unfoldment, begin coming true. This is the day to take pen in hand and compile a wish list (ten wishes maximum) of things you would like to have happen in your life.

Because this month’s New Moon will occur in the sign of VIRGO, in addition to your regular wishes you may want to include wishes concerning one or more of the following categories that are ruled by Virgo: creating systems, order, health, diet, routine, exercise, systematic approaches, service, job, and pets.

Sample wishes: “I intend to easily find myself creating a routine in my life that gives me ample time for both work and play;” “I want to easily find myself exercising at the gym a minimum of _______ days a week, a minimum of ______ minutes each time;” “I intend to easily attract, recognize and begin working in the right happy job for me;” “I want total wisdom to enter into my work situation, showing me how I can use the current situation to my best advantage;” “I intend to easily find myself saying the right words to my co-workers that lead to mutual respect, support, cooperation, and enjoyment of one another; “ “I want to attract those remedies and healers that restore my body to perfect health; “ “I intend to easily find myself attracted to eating those foods that are naturally low-fat, low-calorie, and healthful for my body.

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From Mexico with Love: In the Studio with Frida

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Emily K. Grieves


By guest blogger Emily K. Grieves

I walked into my studio this morning not knowing what to write about. Marco just started school this week, and I have these precious hours in the morning again after he totes off to class in his little red uniform under the weight of his backpack. There are many things I could write about, and have thought about – what it is like to live in a foreign country and never really belong, but be in love with it anyway. I could write endlessly about living in a foreign country that gets a lot of bad press, that has a lot of real problems, that is unparalleled in cultural richness and diversity, that walks a tight balance between extreme poverty and extreme wealth with very little rest in the middle. This country is all about duality, as I have mentioned so many times before, about love/hate relationships, about fascination and fear, about being relentlessly attracted and viscerally repelled by it. I think those of us who are called to live here are kind of like mosquitoes buzzing up to a big blue light hanging from the eaves, you know, the kind that you hear on a summer night going bzzt, bzzt, bzzt, as the faithful fall charred into the breeze. But then again, I also thought I could write about the land itself, that I just recently saw spread itself out before me like a market basket of colors as we went on a road trip to Tula, Queretaro, Dolores Hidalgo and Guanajuato, a string of well-kept historical jewels hanging over the aching heart of Mexico. Or I could talk about the land here in Teo, how I climbed the hill up behind town and sifted my fingers through the moist soil of the rainy season, with thousands of little sprouts shooting up and thousands of ancient pottery shards prodding up corners into the sunlight.

So in any case I walked into the studio still thinking about what I would write, how I would write about all that: the land, the beauty, the duality. And I noticed a little postcard I bought years ago of Frida Kahlo had floated from its perch onto the ground. I’ve always kept it propped somewhere in my creative space, but I never really pay any attention to it, kind of like the infinite saint images I have tucked into every nook and cranny – they’re these silent guardians with whom I do not converse on a daily basis, but they’re always there watching. I picked up the photo of Frida and thought in many ways she is like one of those saint images. Certainly her very personal image (especially since the bulk of her work was symbolic self-portaiture) has taken on iconographic proportions. You find her image stamped on market bags, votive candles, Days of the Dead altars, and religious niches as if she were the Virgin of Guadalupe’s sister. I myself have followed the pilgrim’s path to her Casa Azul in Coyoacan numerous times to stand in silent awe of her paintbrushes and worn tubes of oil paint tucked into a glass vitrine, to be in the presence of her lacy tablecloth and solid green pottery plates laid out on the dining room table, to gaze upon the whimsical little pots nailed into the walls of her kitchen in the design up a fluttering dove.

And yet I look at the beauty of her very humanity on my dusty fallen postcard, one of my favorite photos of her where her eyes are shining, turned up, her face is filled with some kind of inner strength seeping to the surface, or perhaps reflecting pride and grounded will and decisiveness, firm and tender love, beaming onto her from some external source. She is as if illuminated. She is lit within and without. And yet it is her very humanness that allows her to be so illuminated. We could never be vessels for so much light if we were not first willing to wade our way through this hard muddy muck that is human life. Having seen first hand her home, having cooked the dishes from the cookbook Guadalupe Rivera Marin (Diego’s daughter) put together of Frida’s recipes, having admired the fine handiwork of her woven rebozos and dresses and filigree earrings, having seen all the movies and read all the books about her turbulent shitty beautiful human life, knowing that she is the very role model of duality, I was so struck by this image of her illumination.

I propped the photo up again right in front of me, just like one of those saint images, to look out over my work table and my half-assed in-process paintings and bare canvases. But unlike the saints, she feels recent and close to me. I know she was a woman who lived not that long ago, not that far away, who actually came out to Teotihuacan to visit the pyramids, to visit my father-in-law’s grandmother, to buy original pottery pieces from her, to pick some tuna fruit off the nopal cactus and suck the bright green meat out of its prickly hull, swallowing the seeds and all. I imagined how she might have wrestled with her thoughts and feelings in front of her easel, how she might have cursed her body but painted anyway, how she might have blessed her happy moments and raged against the bad ones, how she lived a life, an artistic prolific illuminated life, but a human life nonetheless. I imagined how she might have had to put her paintbrush down to go fix the rice and mole for that wayward hated and beloved man of hers, Diego. I imagined that while I idealize her, idolize her, romanticize her, desire her illumination, she was a woman just like me, and so I said to myself, looking at her eyes, that if she could sit down and paint every day, then I sure can as well. Frida was my saint today, looking over my painting and my writing and my creative real human life.

Workshops
Emily has two upcoming journeys to Teotihuacan with Lee McCormick. Join us for “Through the Looking Glass” Sept. 9-15, 2011, and a special journey through the 11/11/11 portal Nov. 9-15, 2011. See www.spiritrecovery.com for more details.

Image: by Emily

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Grace Under Pressure: Expectations

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Mary Swanson

By guest blogger Mary Swanson

We all walk around with expectations. We expect things of ourselves and of others. We expect ourselves to behave, think, achieve, feel and even be met by others in certain ways. Some of these expectations are conscious but most are unconscious. We often don’t know what we expect, we just know that when expectations aren’t met: we’re disappointed.

One of the fundamental aspects of healing work, whether we’re talking about healing your body, your feelings, your relationships, or your life is to question your unconscious assumptions.

Unconscious expectations can create great suffering when they’re not met. Yet we all go around being hurt by things not working out the way we expected them to. And we’re all really good at blaming others for that hurt.

Thich Nat Hanh says, “Nirvana is the annihilation of all expectations.” By becoming aware of, and letting go of our expectations we enter an existence of grace, peace, joy.

Expectations can be positive or negative. We can expect to win first prize and be disappointed when we don’t. We can expect to loose and be anxious when we win.

Expectations are built on past experiences. What we experience physically, what beliefs we take on as our own, combine to form expectations. For example, a child’s father may make time to listen but the mother doesn’t want to be there & is distracted all the time. That child may grow with an unconscious expectation that men are good listeners and if the world doesn’t meet that expectation, the child is disappointed. Conversely, the child may expect women to not be able to pay attention and miss all the women who can pay attention.

A big part of mindfulness training, meditation and energy work is becoming conscious of our own expectations. We discover them by observing what causes us suffering and then being truthful with ourselves about our own expectations. What did we really expect to happen?

For a long time now, when doing energy work with clients, I’ve noticed that the cellular/emotional body works on precedent. What the body experiences leads to certain expectations (or beliefs). It is difficult for the physical body to expect something different than what has already happened to it.

Spirit is Fast and Matter is Slow

We can think all kinds of hopeful and positive things but if the physical body doesn’t know how to expect it, it will be difficult to perceive it even if it is actually, physically happening to us.

There’s a story about Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest that I often think about. As the story goes, the first time experienced wooden sailing ships they couldn’t actually see anything until the sailors came on shore… then they could see them.

Once their sensory input matched their expectation, they could “see.”

Which all brings me to this fascinating new book, Incognito: the Secret Lives of The Brain by David Eagleman. I love reading science books that talk about what I’ve been experiencing while I’m in trance, working with energy.

This book explains discoveries scientists are making in experiments with consciousness, thought, awareness & perception. It’s wonderful reading for anyone who’s interested in consciousness. Reality isn’t as nailed down as we thought.

“In the traditionally taught view of perception, data from the sensorium pours into the brain, works its way up the sensory hierarchy, and makes itself seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt — “perceived.” But a closer examination of the data suggests this is incorrect. ” (p. 44)

“As early as the 1940′s, thinkers began to toy with the idea that perception works not by building up bits of captured data, but instead by matching expectations to incoming sensory data.” (p.48)

“What all this tells us is that perceptions reflects the active comparison of sensory inputs with internal predictions. If the sensory input is just a little bit different than the expectation, we notice the difference and adjust our expectation. But if the sensory input is vastly different, it’s not so easy to adjust.” p. 49

In other words: You often experience what you expect to experience and don’t experience what is not part of your expectation.

AND…”this gives us a way to understand a bigger concept: awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations.” In other words, normally, we are only aware of our physical reality when it differs from our expectations! The rest of the time we just assume things are what we expect them to be!

So how can we expect the right partner, success, fame, health, etc., if we have little previous experience of it?

We can ask ourselves: What would it feel like in my body if ________ (fill in the blank) were true?

This begins to introduce a new possibility to the senses and if you’re good at observing your own energy, you’ll notice feelings, thoughts, memories of the old expectation showing up. You can move that energy out and increase the experience of the new idea.

If you’re not used to working with energy, you can actually put yourself in a new physical experience, (“trying it on for size”) and pay attention to what thoughts and feelings surface in your consciousness.

And then do a reality check: would it really be absurd to try a new style of clothes, go out on a blind date, have money in a savings account, sing in front of an audience, etc. etc. etc.?

We can help shift our unconscious expectation by giving the body & it’s senses an experience of what we’re trying to move towards, WHILE STAYING CONSCIOUS OF WHAT OLD EXPECTATIONS ARE BEING CHANGED.

It’s the “staying conscious” part that’s hard to do. Plenty of us have tried something new only to collapse in an anxious state of “that was too much or that didn’t feel good or I utterly sucked at that.”

It takes time for unconscious expectations to change. How nice that here on the Pleasure Planet we have choices about sensory input that can help us to change our expectations. And we have conscious awareness that can help us question our expectations. And we have the ability to change our Reality.

Expect a Miracle, indeed.

Sensory Input + Expectation = Reality

–
Note from Heather- remember this episode of School House Rock?
Image: Expectation, Stoclet Frieze, c.1909 (detail) by Gustav Klimt

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Full Moon Aquarius

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Heather Bleasdell

Happy Harvest Time!

What are you ready to pour yourself into?

Today, Saturday, August 13th the Full Moon will be in Aquarius as the Sun continues brightly through Leo. It is also the Lunar Lammas – First Harvest – marking the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox. Colored by the energy of Aquarius – the inventor, revolutionary, progressive, extroverted free thinker – the Aquarius Full Moon is an excellent time to raise your own vibration, and by doing so, raise the vibration of of everyone around you. How? Entertain possibilities, break the rules, find the third way of doing something. Put your imagination to work and stop worrying about what other people will think.

  • Forget trying to “get it together” and Get Together! – invite friends over. Full Moons are celebratory.
  • Brainstorm next steps in an area that feels stuck
  • Thaw out a Frozen Area of your life by creating a win-win
  • Change your Mind about something

TIP + PANIC BUTTON – Aquarius is symbolized by the Water Bearer (new life) and is an Air sign, so think Wave Energy. In sessions this past week, we looked at the energy of Panic and how each person has a unique wiring and relationship to their personal panic button. For most, the roots of our wiring lie within our birth families. Let yourself recall the last time you felt that wave of adrenaline surge? What was the source – fears around finances, family relations, changes in plans, time-lines or expectations? Now, notice how your reaction is mirrored in birth family’s Rules of Reaction around fear? With the energy of a full moon in Aquarius, we have the opportunity to break the rules. Governed by both Saturn (tradition) and Uranus (innovation), the energy available right now offers us security through our willingness to make progressive change. So next time the panic energy surges (because it always does), choose to ride the wave energy with your breath instead of your bite, and dare to stay in the present moment. Is there really cause for alarm? Trust that you have already survived. Make your own Prayer Candle.

Keep it loose, Mercury continues retrograding through Leo until it goes direct around August 26th. Read more

Schedule an Intuitive Consulting Session before I take Maternity Leave on Sept. 1 – Oct. 31. Only 3 weeks left! Book your session NOW.

Take a leap, time to reap!
+ heather

Image

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Posted in art & magic, cross-quarter holiday, full moon | Leave a comment