BEing Your Self
Your BEing is ever present – but do know your true Self?
The Oak Tree and the Boulder
At a point of internal crisis in myself with my fears and worries, two friends from nature – an oak tree and a boulder – grounded me and brought me back to my Divine Self. It was a particularly intense day at the 5-day silent retreat. A lot of fear arose...To Do More, You Need to “Be” More
In order to do more in your life, you need to fill yourself abundantly by “being” more. Here’s how.
Most of my adult life, I have had a compulsion to do. It’s this nagging feeling that I’m not doing enough and need to keep doing more. Then I tend to overcommit myself, get overwhelmed, and have to clear the plate again to find my balance.
I’ve worked on the roots of this issue for some time. I have embraced doing less and enjoy that! My sense of self is less defined by doing, and more by who I truly am.
But what about when I actually want to do more – not just the compulsive fear of not being enough driving me, but a deep inspiration and desire to share more with the world? How do I make sure I don’t overcommit and spin myself into that excessively-busy, overscheduled and burned out experience?
Feeling Anxious or Down? Try Presence!
Many of us – especially through the pandemic – struggle with upsetting emotions and don’t know what to do about it. Normally, we might reach out to a friend or spend time with a family member to feel supported. But even before we were bound to our...Nothing and the Freedom of Being
It’s in nothing, not in doing something, that we find true freedom. The freedom of Being.
As I write this blog, I’m ending week 7. You may think I’m referring to the corona virus shelter-in-place, but I’m actually referring to something else: my journey through hyperthyroidism, which has incidentally overlapped, for better or worse, with the global pandemic.
A Deeper Level of Self-Care
It’s the beginning of the year, and I have been looking at the fact that, in my mad scramble to get my book finished, I have not been so good at self-care the last couple of months. Meditation has been sporadic, yoga practice minimal, trips to the gym only 1-2 times per week, rather than my ideal 3-4. Only been on one hike. Getting to bed too late.
I’ve been pretty disappointed in myself, but also embraced and accepted that part of my deadlines to meet involved putting a lot of condensed time into editing and preparing for the book launch.
Still, it’s been gnawing at me, and I knew that it was an excuse. My soul longs to be back on track. Ever since I was sick over Thanksgiving, it’s been hard to get back up on the horse, build up my conditioning again, and return to the habits that keep me feeling healthy, whole, and energized. I need to get self-care back into my regimen.
Then, I read Angela Lauria’s blog (she’s The Author Incubator – the program that pulled this book out of me!) She’s dropping self-care. What? I knew there was more to the story, so I read on.
Sing Your Song
Every morning, shortly after I wake, I do my “sit-spot” practice outside in our front yard. This is a practice of simply sitting and being present with everything in nature. It’s a beautiful way to begin my day with the freshness of the morning air, the sun beginning to peek through the leaves, the squirrels racing up and down the oak trees, and most of all, the birdsong.
I relish hearing the variety of birds in our neighborhood. On those beautiful, bright, sunny mornings it is pure delight to sit by our grassy patch and hear a bird calling from the tall redwood tree 5 houses down to the right, and to hear the high-pitched clicking sound of a hummingbird as it zooms in for a drink from our Mexican sage.
This morning, however, was quite different than the others for the last couple of months. It was dense with cloud-cover, and rain was expected. For California in June, this is rare. With ordinary eyes, one might wake up, see the dismal looking skies, and decide to just pull the covers over the head and go back to sleep. A dreary, cloudy day.
Speaking From the Heart
This summer, my daughter and I shared an extraordinary week-long camping experience. There’s not a lot of words yet for what I feel. I can only offer feelings from my heart. The heart speaks in non-verbal ways – how to communicate that in a blog?
Be Like A Bird
I love to sit in my backyard – just taking in whatever I see, hear, and feel. This practice is called the “sit-spot” – a technique used by naturalists to immerse themselves in the experience of a chosen location in nature, to get to know the flora and fauna in a much more intimate way.
My eyes captured a bird, hopping on the ground. It was clearly an insect eater – small, with a long, pointed beak. I wanted it to come closer, but it slipped through the lattice work of the fence to my neighbor’s yard. I decided that if I wanted to know this bird better, why not be like a bird?
