Hello!
Please enjoy these blog posts then visit me at my new website, One Love Animal Connection where I combine my love of Spiritual Practices and the Divine with my love of animals and respect for all life.
I look forward to seeing you there!
xoxo
Rev. Karen
This practice is so easy that sometimes I forget how effective it is! Studies even prove it – people that write down their goals are one to one and one-half times more likely to achieve them. So, let’s do it!
While this practice is useful for any kind of goal or dream, I’d like to encourage its use with Divinely inspired goals, goals that are good for both you and others, goals or dreams that make your soul sing!
The whole process will probably take you less than 5 minutes, depending on how detailed you are with it. Once you have your goal or dream in mind, you want to do four things: say it, write it, read it and see it. Every Day.
1. Say it. Recite it from memory and repeat it, changing the words around if necessary until it sounds just right.
2. Write it. Once you’re happy with the wording, write it out 10 times. You might want to keep a journal so you can look back on previous dreams and how they’ve changed or materialized.
3. Read it. Read what you just wrote, out loud. Every sentence.
4. See it. Close your eyes and see what that dream looks like once achieved. Feel into it as well: what does it feel like once it’s real?
It’s okay and even encouraged to write the same goal every day for weeks, or really for as long as it takes. You may find the goal evolves a little bit every day and that’s a good thing; focusing on it daily helps us to be clear in what we really desire.
It really is that easy! Might as well start right now: what is your dream?
Do you want more joy in your life? Who doesn’t?! The good news is it’s quite simple to start allowing more joy in on a regular basis; we just have to get used to it. This is a great exercise to remember if we’re in a funk and want to get out of it. There is nothing wrong with feeling down, but eventually we’re ready to move on.
A quick note on negative and positive emotions – all are good and necessary. Negative does not mean bad; it is just relative to other emotions. It’s a scale, negative on one end and positive on the other, or terror and rage on one end and joy on the other end. The more we intentionally feel joy the more we move up the scale on a regular basis. Because most of us prefer to feel happy and joyful!
This exercise is so simple you can do it almost anywhere you are comfortable closing your eyes for a minute.
Bring to mind something that makes you very, very happy. It can be anything – a loved one, a pet, music, friends, art, mountains, food, elephants – truly anything; no one is judging you. Anything that just thinking about brings a smile to your face or makes you bust out laughing.
Once you have it in mind, set your timer for 17 seconds (“Siri, set timer 17 seconds”) and then just dive into that object of love and feel the joy; live it, feel it, surround yourself in it, swim in it and get it all over you! Feel the happiness and joy like it’s the only important thing in the world.
Once the timer goes off – how do you feel? Doesn’t it feel great to take the time to do nothing but sit and feel that joy? And it was less than a minute.
As you practice this more and more, you’ll find you instantaneously recall it throughout the day, lifting your mood more and more frequently.
Do this at least once a day every day for a week; two or three times a day is ideal. Feeling this every morning encourages good days to follow!
If you are determined to move forward into a greater life for yourself, but you are harboring grudges or resentments towards another, forgiving is essential. I know it’s not easy. I know you may not want to do it; I didn’t. I had heard people promoting the value of forgiveness for many years before I decided to take a serious stab at it.
After all, “He did it to me; why should I forgive him?” He needed to suffer, and I wasn’t going to let him off the hook, no way; he needed to pay! The problem is, he wasn’t paying for it. I was. In reality, he probably had no idea the series of events still played over and over in my head and he’d long forgotten them, so it certainly didn’t torture him at all.
I was the one paying for it, wrapping up good energy on past events that truly had no significance in my current or future life. And that’s why we need to forgive; we need that valuable, awesome energy to help us move forward, not hold us back. It doesn’t make the person’s actions okay or acceptable; it’s a matter of taking back our energy and our Power. Take your Power back and get rid of that icky energy.
There are many ways to start a forgiveness practice. What I’ll share here are three possibilities using prayer beads or malas. There is no magic number of times you need to do it; you just do it until you feel you’re done. It might take one day, two weeks or two months, but eventually the charged energy goes away when you recall the person. None of these three practices is any better than the other. Do the one that feels best for the situation.
First Option: This is particularly useful when you really wanted someone to change. Imagine the person in front of you, as if you are speaking directly to them. Speak sincerely. “Joe, I forgive you for not being the person I wanted you to be.” It allows for a space of letting them be them, and not someone they’re not. Repeat it over and over until you feel a shift.
It is also sometimes useful to combine it with the second option.
Second option: Again, imagine the person in front of you, as if you are speaking to them. Speak sincerely. “Joe. I love you, I bless you, I forgive you, I release you.” That’s it, over and over.
Combined it is even more powerful: “Joe, I forgive you for not being the person I wanted you to be. I love you, I bless you, I release you.”
The third option is my personal favorite as it helps me recognize that the faults I see in others are also my own, which helps me come around quickly to compassion or understanding for that person. Again, imagine talking directly to them. “Joe, I forgive you and myself for being ignorant (Choose appropriate quality). I love you as I love myself, for God is the love I am.” This also turns the situation over to the Divine Source that allows love to flow to and from all without judgement.
I’d challenge you to just try one for a week if there is someone that really triggers you. You don’t have to fully forgive them, but just see if it frees anything up in you to be open to starting the process.
Are you willing to be open to moving toward your greater life?
If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know how to get an answer on a pressing issue, or you are looking for some clarity, you might want to try automatic writing. I find it especially useful when I need a little direction, and some people use automatic writing as a regular practice. Whether frequent or occasional, automatic writing helps the flow of insights come to us in a way that our subconscious can’t filter out.
And it’s easy! It’s as simple as a pen and paper or a computer keyboard. My experience is that my flow from the Divine is interrupted less with a pen and paper, but if a computer is best for you, then you do whichever way is most comfortable.
The key with automatic writing is to never stop writing. The pen is always on the paper, or the fingers are constantly moving on the keys, no breaks.
If you’re new to this practice, start with 10 minutes. If you have a smartphone or home assistant, take a few deep breaths, then tell it to “set alarm for 10 minutes,” and go!
It’s best to know the leading question or phrase that you’ll start with, particularly if you do have a pressing question you want an answer to. When the timer starts, write out your question first, for example, “What is the next best action for me to take in my business?” and then never lift the pen up until the timer goes off. Don’t worry about punctuation, don’t dot your i’s or cross your T’s, no judgement of what you are writing, and don’t worry about how neat it is.
During the process, there should be no critical thought going on. Once you start with the opening sentence, just let it flow, no matter how ridiculous it might sound. Removing all thought about it really allows your Divine Wisdom to show up, so let it.
When you’re finished, take some more deep breaths, and if you need to, step away from your writing for a few minutes. Don’t step away too long, as you’ll want to reread and make notes on some of it before you lose the train of thought in the parts that are too illegible to read. Reading back over it, you’ll likely get some additional insights you didn’t even realize you wrote down!
This is really a good way to hear your deep Truth, so I recommend doing this frequently, especially when you’re in need of guidance.
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.
Does the thought of sitting down for 20 minutes of meditation overwhelm you or keep you from even starting? If so, this might be just the trick you need to get started. That’s the very reason I started this practice, because I just couldn’t bear the thought of getting up any earlier in the morning, and I wasn’t sure that even if I did that I wouldn’t fall back asleep being still and quiet for that long, that early!
I call this my “Two Minutes More” meditation because that’s exactly what it is. Before I get into the details of it, let me ask you – is there a time in the morning, as you’re bustling about getting ready for the day and before you head out the door, that you sit down? Do you sit to eat breakfast? Drink Coffee? Put on your shoes? Watch news or read the paper? Put on makeup? Or any other reason? If so, this may be for you. This won’t work for everyone, but if you fit the “sit” qualifications, why not give it a try?
This practice evolved the way it did because I knew as I sat at my makeup table, when the dog or cats would start to pester me to be fed or let out, I would just tell them they’d have to wait until I was done and so they became used to leaving me alone. But when I would try to sit somewhere else to meditate they would disregard any boundaries and pester me nonstop. So I just extended my makeup time a little more, fooled them!
So, Two Minutes More was born. When you’ve finished with your sitting activity, instead of rushing up and around right away, sit for just two more minutes. If you have a smartphone, tell it to set a time for 2 minutes, close your eyes, straighten up a bit, and take a deep breath. Really feel the air moving into your lungs, feel your lungs expand, then feel them relax as you slowly exhale. Then also check your feet- are you feeling grounded to the earth? Feel the bottom of your feet and maybe even feel them sink through all of the materials between you and the core of the earth. Be grounded in your day to help you stay stable and unshakeable.
The two minutes will pass very quickly, so if at some point you want to increase it to three, five, seven minutes it’s easy to do. The other beauty of this practice is you don’t need to get up any earlier, the alarm can stay the same because you can always squeeze 2 minutes in!
One gentleman told me he literally does not sit down from the time he gets up until he leaves the house, so this won’t work for everyone. And if that’s the case, is there another time throughout the day you can try it? Maybe before you start the car or after you turn it off? First sit down on the bus? The coffee shop or your office?
I hope you’re able to give this a try. Starting to establish a spiritual practice starts the shift in your life to allow more great things in, and this is a simple one to start!