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.

Closing Your Day Well – How I Close My Day

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My Bedtime Spiritual Practice

Is it important to have a spiritual practice at bedtime? I think so. I think it’s a good idea to close out the day with a clear mind and heart, so your sleep is more restful, which then makes for a better tomorrow!

So, I’m going to share what I do every night before bed. It doesn’t mean this is exactly what you should do; it’s just a way I feel good about ending my day.

These are not bedtime specific practices either; they are practices that I talk about in other blogs that have several types of practice associated with them and can be done anytime during the day.

My bedtime practice first involves recycling or reusing old pieces of paper or paper that otherwise might get tossed. It might be a used notebook with just a page or two left, an unused pad of paper or decent sized scraps of paper that are still blank. I keep these in a pile by my bedside along with pen and bins or bags.

The first thing I do is to clear out any icky stuff from the day, so my first practice is forgiveness. Who or what do I need to forgive? At this particular time, it’s not a deep practice, just an acknowledgement of ill feelings towards someone or something to allow the healing practice to start. It might be a person or group or animal or myself, and I simply write, “I forgive Mr. X for doing that thing he did that made me feel so disrespected.” I might even add an excuse for them, such as, “I know he was only trying to protect his ego.” And that’s it; I toss it in my forgiveness bag.

Once I clear those feelings out, I open to gratitude and appreciation. I write down everything I’m grateful for that day, especially the unexpected miracles of the day. I write down everything that comes to me, big or small, and then throw it into the gratitude bag.  I actually have a gift bag I use with the words “Thank you” on it that they go in!

Next are my successes of the day. This part is relatively new for me, but I’ve found it’s a great acknowledgement of my accomplishments, and it’s important to recognize when we do good. It doesn’t have to be big; it might be mowing the lawn or eating well or brushing my teeth, but if you did it and it’s good for you or someone else, recognize it!

Then I also do a “future gratitudes” practice, which is what I’ll be grateful for when my goals and dreams materialize. What do you want to be grateful for in one month? One year? Write it down now, help it along!

These go into a bag and then I’m ready for a sweet blessed sleep!

Every so often, I take these papers and do my own ceremonial fire. I offer the forgiveness papers up to be released forever, and the others to be blessed and multiplied throughout the Universe.

This isn’t a hard or time-consuming practice, but it’s another small step toward opening myself up to the greater life of my dreams. Is this a practice you can see yourself doing?

 

Two Minutes More!

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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!

Reading as a Spiritual Practice?

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If a spiritual practice is something that helps open us up to knowing ourselves better, or opens us up to receiving Divine Wisdom and Love and Truth, moving us forward to help create a better life, then Yes, of course!  The best part is you don’t have to sit down and read a whole big book at once, and in fact it’s probably better to be on a slow, contemplative journey.

There is no rule about the exact book either, as long as it is uplifting, mind opening or inspiring. If it can create just a small crack or opening in your brain that allows you to receive a new idea about life, to think a little differently, then that’s all that is necessary.  Creating a big opening is even better, but not required.

There are many effective ways to study books of wisdom, here are just a few ideas to get you started.

Morning study:

Before your days sets into full swing, take 10 or so minutes to read a few pages of inspiration or uplift. Then sit for a few minutes and contemplate the reading and how you might incorporate the lessons of it into your day.  Set a daily intention for the day of ease and wonder you will have.

Evening study:

Similar to the morning study, read just a few pages from an inspiring book and then contemplate the meaning and application of it to your life. Connect events from your day to the previous night’s reading and intention. Having good thoughts of an intentional life before bed will allow for more restful sleep.

Journaling:

You can add this any time.  After reading, write your contemplations, intentions or successes in a journal.  Writing helps to firm, and discern, our ideas and thoughts, and allows for easier callback if you had deep insights

Discussion:

I like the idea of adding discussion to any other practice but it also stands very well on its own. I like it so much that I lead book discussion groups, so if you haven’t found any have a  look on my events page.  The power of discussion is not to have a teacher tell you what a book means, but to allow you to put words to your thoughts and also be open to insights from other members.  We learn a great deal from others, and we also find community in shared experience, so a discussion group can help you go deeper quicker.

 

Some possible books might be poetry by Rumi or Hafiz; Chicken Soup for the Soul, the Bible, Science of Mind meditations, a piece by Meister Eckhart, but the options are unlimited and I would really love to hear what works for you!  Please share your journey on my facebook page.