At the Smith Center

   

 

Last night I led a workshop on “The Still Small Voice Within: Exploring the Relationship between Meditation and Intuition” at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts on U Street NW.

First of all the Smith Center is a wonderful place and does good work.  Thank you all for your donations that support their work.

It was fantastic to do this experience in an art gallery.

There is an interesting mindfulness exercise whereby you look around you and notice one thing you didn’t notice before.

And then another.  And another.

This can lead to a wonderful sense of presence.

With all the amazing art on the wall, it was incredibly rich as we all sat for a few moments after meditation to take in the imagery surrounding us.

Here's more on the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts.

 

 

Image of the Week: Is This You?

One of my current goals is to catch the Coots with the sun behind them as they go into their frenzied 'escape.'  Coots, otherwise known as March Hens, don't have webbed feet.  Really cute, they give off the appearance of being incredibly dumb.  If one spooks in the least, they all freak out and frantically start running across the water while wildly flapping their wings. This little one I can seriously relate to.  You know that feeling?

The Potency of Intention

Intention. It's a critical aspect of spiritual practice.

It's the volitional aspect of your life - deciding what is most important and then remembering it again and again and making decisions that reinforce what you most want.

Without a clear intention you are like a sailboat without a rudder. Where the wind blows, that's where you go. The forces of aversion and attraction take over.

With an intention, you can more consciously weather the natural challenges that arise.

Last night we ended our evening with the question, 'What one word summarizes your intention for this next year?'

 (To listen to the talk, you can go to my iTunes podcast.)

That's a potent inquiry.

There is inestimable value in pausing and reflecting on what you most want out of this precious life.

Asking the right questions can draw you deeper to the core. Ramana Maharshi claimed two questions would lead to unveiling the true self, if you live into the inquiry:

Who am I?

What do I really want?

 

The courage to honestly reflect deeply into these questions can peel away layers and layers and reveal your true nature.

 

The following questions are from a teacher I've found most helpful in my life. David Allen is the author of Getting Things Done, a book all about, well, getting things done. He offers the following questions as a way to evaluate the year behind and the year ahead.

I hope you find them useful.

 

David's Food for Thought

Questions for Completing and Beginning the New Year

What have you actually finished, completed, and accomplished? If you haven't made a list in the last year, I would highly recommend that you give yourself a treat and review the year that just passed and look forward to the year ahead.

When I go through these kinds of questions I like to consider my answers in several areas:

Physical Emotional Mental Spiritual Financial Family Community Service Fun / creativity / recreation

Completing and remembering last year

  • Review the list of all completed projects.
  • What was your biggest triumph in 2011?
  • What was the smartest decision you made in 2011?
  • What one word best sums up and describes your 2011 experience?
  • What was the greatest lesson you learned in 2011?
  • What was the most loving service you performed in 2011?
  • What is your biggest piece of unfinished business in 2011?
  • What are you most happy about completing in 2011?
  • Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life in 2011?
  • What was the biggest risk you took in 2011?
  • What was the biggest surprise in 2011?
  • What important relationship improved the most in 2011?
  • What compliment would you like to have received in 2011?
  • What compliment would you like to have given in 2011?
  • What else do you need to do or say to be complete with 2011?

Creating the new year

  • What would you like to be your biggest triumph in 2012?
  • What advice would you like to give yourself in 2012?
  • What is the major effort you are planning to improve your financial results in 2012?
  • What would you be most happy about completing in 2012?
  • What major indulgence are you willing to experience in 2012?
  • What would you most like to change about yourself in 2012?
  • What are you looking forward to learning in 2012?
  • What do you think your biggest risk will be in 2012?
  • What about your work, are you most committed to changing and improving in 2012?
  • What is one as yet undeveloped talent you are willing to explore in 2012?
  • What brings you the most joy and how are you going to do or have more of that in 2012?
  • Who or what, other than yourself, are you most committed to loving and serving in 2012?
  • What one word would you like to have as your theme in 2012?

 

 

Eagle and Nest

My aunt and uncle were semi-professional ornithologists.  Whenever they didn't know what a bird was, they instantly labeled it 'immature.' So, with that training under my belt, Tara and I watched the sunrise behind a Bald Eagle's nest when I spied a large bird on a tree nearby.  I immediately declared it an immature Bald Eagle.

On closer look, I think it actually IS an eagle.

 

That's an eagle, isn't it?

 

 

Image(s) of the Week

I thought it might be nice to bring a bit more awareness to my passion for photography to post the Best Image of the Week. This morning it was such an image bonanza I've decided to try Best Images of the Week.

We live a mile or so above the Great Falls, where there is a Great Blue Heron Rookery.  Most of them take off during the winter, but the gnarly ones hang around.

Normally pretty shy, they focus more on conserving their energy in the cold weather.  I was able to creep to about fifteen feet of this critter this morning, resulting in the following, which I'll entitle "Great Blue Heron in Three Parts."

You'll note the tufts of down from recent preening and the fact that only one leg is exposed to the cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Retreat into the New Year

It's such a deep privilege to serve our meditation retreats and the New Year's Retreat always has a particular potency. For the participants it's a time of stepping away from the intensity of modern life to immerse into silence, sitting and walking meditation, mindful movement and contemplation.  The instructions are pretty simple:  relax and pay attention.

This year, instead of individual interviews during the week, we had group interviews of about eight participants.  For a about an hour twice during the retreat each participant gathers with a teacher and a small group to name what's challenging, what's unusual and what's opening up inside.

These sessions are also a time of 'deep listening,' to not just to share your experience but to be informed by others naming the landscape of what's arising.

Despite the social silence, this was a deeply shared experience.  We were in this together.

Retreats are incredibly busy time for us who serve them.  Each day I led three mindful movement sessions, facilitated a group interview and met with individuals.  I also gave an evening talk on the Five Hindrances, which I'll have up on my podcast soon.

Despite have a day that starts with a 5:30 wake up bell and ending at 9:30 after the final meditation, the sincerity of each participant kept my inspiration and energy level flying.

If you ever have the chance to step away from your busy life for a meditation retreat, please consider working it into your year ahead.  For me,  retreats are one of the best investments I can make.

I like to think of them as a time when 'we are alone together.'

Check out IMCW's site for the schedule for 2012 and beyond.

 

More Evidence

So many studies are pouring in on the effect of meditation and mindfulness.  Here are a few you might find interesting:  

Transcendental Meditation effective antidote to  record stress levels in school students

With record levels of student stress reported in a recent UCLA survey, can a simple stress-reducing meditation technique be a viable solution? A new study published in the Journal of Instructional Psychology found the Transcendental Meditation technique significantly decreased psychological distress in at-risk racial and ethnic minority public school students by 36 percent over 4 months compared to controls. The study also found significant decreases in trait anxiety and depressive symptoms.

 

Tuning out: How brains benefit from meditation

Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, according to a new brain imaging study by Yale researchers.

 

(Thanks, Laurel.)