Monthly Archives: November 2018

Your Car the Temple

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My Car is a Temple, Yes, my car is a temple for spiritual practices with my prayer beads!

I want to share these simple spiritual practices with you because I know firsthand that if life is feeling hard, and if you want deeper meaning or connection in your life, a spiritual practice can make all the difference.

This spiritual practice uses prayer beads, or malas. I always have one or two sets of prayer beads in my car. It doesn’t matter how many beads are on them – it can be 55 or 77 or 101 or 108…If there are fewer beads, you just do more circuits.

I love doing something like this in my car because I spend so much time in there; I might as well make the best of it. It certainly lightens the mood when stuck in traffic!

The four practices I may do are: Forgiveness, Blessings, Gratitude, or Affirmations. It’s completely random which one I choose; I just do whichever one feels best at the time. I get in the car, get situated, turn on the GPS and pick up my prayer beads, then ask, “What do I need to do?”

Typically, I do affirmations or blessings. But just the other day I was completely triggered by hearing about an old friend and their actions, so I knew the second I picked up the beads that forgiveness was in order!

I won’t get deep into specifics about each of these practices; they all have their own blog/video because they can be practiced so many different ways. So please be sure to see my other posts about forgiveness, gratitude, affirmations and blessings.

Back to the day of forgiveness – I picked up my beads and immediately started in “X – I forgive you and myself for being a bitch, I love you as I love myself, for God is the love I am.” Harsh, I know, but that was the only word I could seem to find for her actions.

I was only 3 or 4 beads in before the awareness of the times I was a bitch came to mind. That’s the thing about this practice, you’re fully admitting that if you see and are triggered by something in someone else, you have the trait alive in you – latent or active. And while I suspect most people wouldn’t call me one, there have been moments. And so, the work here for me is to find why I was. Where do I see that in me and what does it teach me about what kind of healing I need to do?

Recognizing it within me helps to find the place of compassion or understanding for the other person, and that’s where forgiveness starts.

In this case I was complete with this forgiveness practice within 15 beads. But that’s not always the case; it can take days or weeks for the awareness to arise and forgiveness to take over, so don’t be hard on yourself. Just keep at it.

All that work done while on a drive! No extra time out of my day, no sitting in meditation for hours.

Blessings, affirmations and gratitude practices with your prayer beads are equally as powerful, so please be sure to check out those specific blogs.

How could your life change if you started treating your car as your personal temple?

Journal for Love

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One Spiritual Practice of Journaling

You’ve undoubtedly heard of the value of journaling before now, and I’m going to confirm that there are a lot of great things that can be accomplished by journaling. However, the kind of journaling I’m going to propose here is a little different than most in that it will focus on our connection with a piece of nature that we feel deeply connected to, and that want to learn why and how to take that out into the rest of our lives.

This is one of the practices we’ll be doing on my safari in Kenya; in fact, we may even be doing it as you read this! My safaris are not standard – see animal, take picture, move on – no, my safaris are about connecting with the land, the people and the animals for a meaningful experience.

To start this practice, think of something you love and feel connected to. It doesn’t have to be living; in Kenya any of the group might be focused on an elephant, lion, the vast Masai Mara or Mt. Kilimanjaro – just look for something that moves you. Art or Music can be good focus objects, too.

Write in your journal, “What do I like about you?” and give yourself plenty of time for the answer to flow. Don’t move on until you feel complete.

Then write, “Why do I love you so much?” Again, take plenty of time to answer.

You might be surprised at how different the two answers are as you allow yourself to contemplate deeply.

Next write, “Where else in my life do I find this love?”, then “Where do I want to find this love?”

The last question – “What do I have to do to allow this love there?”

That question is critical to allowing in the love that you want. You might have to release something, you might have to shift a behavior, you might need to forgive someone, so really allow it to sink in and fully engage in each question.

Imagine, if you can feel that deep of a connection with something already, shouldn’t you also be able to feel it in other areas of your life? What’s in the way? Maybe it’s time to allow more love in.

A Practice to Connect with All Life

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Wouldn’t it be great if there was a spiritual practice in which you got to connect with the animals or the trees or the mountains of the world? There is! In fact, there are several. This is one that I will be leading my safari group through while I’m in Kenya in November.

My safaris are not simply “see animal, take picture, move on.” No, on my safaris we take time to connect with the land, connect with the animals, connect with the people. It’s a completely different experience than most safaris.

The great thing is, you can experience some of this anywhere you are, so I wanted to teach you just one way to connect with life as my group will. This is the short version, but it’s a great intro to the process.

What do you want to connect with? It can truly be any part of nature: a river, a mountain, a flower, an ocean, an animal – even your own pets. The object of connection doesn’t necessarily have to be in your field of vision, but it does help if it is.

Watching the connected video may make it easier to go through this process, but I’ll also write it in case you’re unable to watch the video.

Once you have your object of connection, close your eyes and take a couple of deep grounding breaths. Begin to feel your skin. What does it feel like from the inside? Take a few minutes with that, and then actually take one hand and run it over your skin – is it soft? Rough? Smooth? Cold? Dry? Warm? Take a few minutes with this. Then open your eyes and look at your object. Imagine touching its outer cover, whether it’s a skin, fur, bark, snow, leaves – what does it feel like?

After a few minutes, come back inside yourself. Can you feel the blood pumping through your veins and your heart? What does it feel like? Turning to your connection object, imagine feeling its circulatory system, whether it’s blood, water, or some other form of life. There is some kind of life force energy moving through all natural objects; can you feel it?

Back to yourself again, what emotions do you feel inside you right now? Happy, Peace, Tranquil, Joy, Excitement? Then connecting again with your object, can you feel what emotions it might be exuding? Even if you don’t believe the object has emotions, pretend it did – what would they be?

As a bonus, ask the object if it has a message for you.

I would love to hear of your experience with this, especially any messages you received.

Enjoy your connection with life; it’s truly magical!

You: The Novel

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What if you could write your life as you want it to be? Well, maybe you can! This is one of the practices I will be leading my safari group through while in Kenya this month. It’s a fun practice to do for anything, though. My safaris are not simply “see animal, take picture, move on.” No, on my safaris we take time to connect with the land, connect with the animals, connect with the people. It’s a completely different experience than most safaris.

Here is the practice:

You are the author of your life, so you’re going to sit down and write it out as if you’re writing a novel. This can be applied to any area of your life and for any period of time. You might want to script out the next meeting with your boss, or your next trip, or your next five years, it’s up to you – you hold the pen!

As you’re writing, pay attention to what you want to experience and how you want to feel. Don’t get caught in details, but rather the feelings and emotions.

For example, I might be writing right now, “As we head out on safari and the Jeep turns a corner, we see these fabulous, majestic, amazing animals. I am flabbergasted, I’m amazed and I am just so grateful. Before I know it, almost before I can catch my breath again, I see one of these other amazing animals walk right in front of us! I never thought I would be so close to these animals in the wild; I never thought these dreams could come true as fabulous as they are today! I feel like the luckiest person alive, no I am the luckiest person alive to be able to experience this right here and now, and I can’t believe how many more miracles have happened today on top of everything that we experienced yesterday!”

Concentrate on the feeling and experience.

If your boss called you into the office, it might go something like this – “As I sit down at the desk across from Mr. Jones, he seems to be looking at me differently. I thought he was going to ask me in here to tell me how bad I was doing but the words that are coming out of his mouth are all praise! He loves my last project! He’s talking about promoting me! I feel honored, I feel recognized and I feel appreciated.”

What do you suppose might happen if you scripted your life every day? Are you open to the idea that in one week, or one year, your life may have changed for the better? Is there any harm in trying it?

I’d love for you to try it for a week or two and let me know what happens. Just remember to put the emphasis on the feelings and the experience, after all, that’s what really matters: how you feel.

Create the life of your dreams!  Please let me know how writing your life works out.