Pay Attention to Intention

Can I say we all love to feel something soft against our skin? It can bring back warm, comforting memories of safety, nurturing and love. What does something abrasive feel like?  For some, it may feel good.  A cleansing of sorts like a salt scrub or a loofah exfoliation? What is too rough or abrasive is of course up to our own individual preferences and so to the degree that it is too much or not enough is for others as well.  That’s an easy one.  You can directly experience by sensation, kind of a no-brainer. What about what we say to ourselves? What about what we say to others? What language do we use to communicate? There is so much discussion about political correctness and that people are too sensitive or not sensitive enough.  I’m not going to debate whether it is true to me or not and frankly I am not a fan of the mindset “I’m responsible for what I say but Im not responsible for how you interpret it.”  I don’t care for it at all as it assumes little or no responsibility for the intention of what we say.

And that is what I want to talk about here.  Paying attention to our intentions.  Before my feet hit the floor, I begin my day with setting the intention to serve for the highest and greatest good for myself and for others; it is what governs my day. Am I perfect or even excellent at it 100% of the time.  Absolutely NOT.  But upon reflection at the end of each day, I ask myself the question, were your intentions where you would want them to be?  Sometimes the answer is a resounding NO.  I was in my ego, my competitiveness, my jealousy, my own inner struggles.  NOPE, NAH-UH, ABSOLUTELY NOT.  And then I follow it up with an expression of loving kindness to myself as I would with another who confessed to have acted with the best of intentions for themselves or someone else. 

I know, and I speak for myself, that I want to show up in a way that I am aware and awake so that when I speak, it comes from a place of softness, kindness and compassion and when you are truly authentic in that place, that energy from your heart vibrates  such that will consciously or unconsciously resonate with whom you are communicating with. Pay attention to your Intention and allow yourself be in flow with all that is.

Hanging on and Letting go

We live in what I believe is a time of great transition and transformation. We are in a perpetual state of movement and constantly being challenged to make choices about how to stay connected in a vastly different way than we have before. We learn how to get our quiet in a time of an abundance of external noise.  Some of us choose to do it through yoga, meditation, long walks or other forms of exercise or self care and some of us choose to use substances or other distractions from what feels uncomfortable and most of us are involved with a bit of both, healthy and not-so self loving habits. We go to what may feel good, temporary as it may be.  It can be and is an uncomfortable time for so many of us. How to move in this world that seems to move too fast and remain authentic and true. What does the even mean?

Some people have already begun their journey into becoming more awake and living in the present moments of the good, the not-so-great and the God awful with the ability and grace to really stay in it and avoid not numbing out, to not distract ourselves with the "busy-ness" because we know that when you stay with the uncomfortableness, those feelings will dissipate a lot faster than if we hang on and let them get stuck rather than breathing into them.  It has only been in the last 3-4 years that I have learned how to truly breathe into the emotional pain and psychological torment of the noise of our incessant thoughts and mindless chatter and Im still learning. Still continuing to remind myself I have a choice, to hang on to what I think or let go into what I know.  Hanging on keeps us awake at night, robs us of our present gifts of truly enjoying life.  We are so afraid of getting quiet.  We don't want to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.  But this is the space for the juicy down and dirty muck from where we grow, just like the lotus flower that grows from the mud. Who wants to sit in a shitty diaper?  Right? But if we can stay with the uncomfortable feelings, feel the pain, the shame, the darkness, we grow in ways we never imagined. We get to live in authenticity and are become less encumbered by the external noise because deep inside, we know our truth, we have just lost our consciousness with it. We know who we, we just keep forgetting.

The writings of Echkhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer and Michael A Singer, as well as other pioneers in universal consciousness/wisdom teachings tells us the truth that we are not our feelings, our thoughts, our incessant dialogue but rather we ARE the one that observes it all. How do we become the observer? We get quiet. We make a choice to become quiet. Sometimes to just sit seems impossible and for many it is.  Its just not available to us at this time. Guess what? You don't have to. You can take yourself outside. Walk and notice what you see and feel how beautiful the colors are. Hear and check in to how it makes you feel. No need to create a story around what you are experiencing but does it bring a warmth to your heart? To your belly? Can you feel the air? Breathe deeply and share yourself with the environment. Does that bring you a sense of quiet and peace? That is yours to have always. You just have to make a choice to go there.  Yes. You can go there anytime, any place. You can do it folding laundry, errands, picking up the kids or anywhere. Just experience what you are doing, watch the internal dialogue about what you are doing. It an exhausting how much energy we pay to costly exercise of acting on our internal ramblings. Don't you think?

You are not separate from it; you are part of it right where you stand. You are not separate from any of it. You are as much a part of the birds, trees, sky and the rest of humankind.  It is our thinking that we allow to separate us but thats not the truth. We give permission for our stories to rule over our ability to be happy. We give external noise permission to silence our inner peace. Why do we hang on instead of letting go? It is because its familiar? Of course. Is it what we know? Absolutely. But what would it look like if we decided to do it differently? What what if we took a chance and let that shit go? Maybe you start with just one wound, one resentment, one negative core belief. It begins with taking the five minute walk outside and breathe into all that is. It begins with accepting that there may be a possibility you can befriend your best teacher, that's YOU.  Then, you will begin your journey into being truly awake, truly alive, and really real.

Feel free to share your thoughts either here or email me at acaretoshare@gmail.com