MARIA’S MINDFULNESS PLAN

We all know we will face daily triggers that can pull us from love into fear, so I thought I would share a system that I strive to use regularly to maintain a mindfulness that mirrors the wisdom of love.

Distracted, depressed, blaming out, bashing in, anxious, angry, listless, or lonely, however, your experience is far less than ideal, you likely do not want it to linger long. Fear has wiggled and wormed its way into your thinking, and you feel disconnected from yourself, others, and your source. There are unlimited ways to reconnect, and I hope you use your sense of play and pretend to create some for yourself. Here is what I like to use myself and maybe some of my strategies will resonate with you.

It just so happens that I could easily make it rhyme, which helps it to be much more memorable.

1. Link Pinkies

2. Move Energy

3. Give Empathy

4. Let It Be

5. Embrace Humanity

6. Accept we’re all fumbly

1. Link Pinkies

When you were a child, did you ever make a pinky swear, that super serious ritual of making a powerful pact? Have you ever made such a promise to yourself? Although right now I can say confidently that I know my truth is love, sometimes I forget, especially after I react in ways that don’t reflect that love. So I make a personal pinky promise to myself to never forget that my true nature is love. When in the grip of unpleasantness I can gently remind myself, “Maria, I know you feel so very hurt and disappointed in yourself and I want to tell you that no matter what you could do it could never take away your truth, you are love.” Or simply “My truth is love,” or any variation suitable to the present moment. It is a simple place to start and I find symbolic and physical reminders act as a helpful lead for my brain to follow. It can also be used as a mantra to repeat to remind yourself of your inherent goodness. It also acts as a first scrape to carve out some space to give yourself some re-connection and self-love.

What I am describing is a process that works for me, that is very mutable and adaptable to the circumstances that I am currently in at the time. I do not always follow the plan in order and do not always use all the steps. I am explaining the steps in the order they came to me when I created them.

2. Move energy

Everything is made of energy, and because we are part of the energetic matrix that comprises the Universe and made of its elements, we have the ability to utilize it to our advantage. On earth, we have two opposing energies, fear, and love. When I am in situations where I feel some kind of undesirable state, too much fear has built up inside of me, and through thinking fear-based thoughts I am attracting more. Not only do I want to both influx my system with loving energy, I also want to purge myself of fearful energy. Depending on the situation I begin with either one.

To bring loving energy into our being we connect ourselves with a strong source of love and light. I prefer nebulas or the Sun, however, it is important to pick something that you believe in and feel a connection. Remember it is your birthright to request energy from the Universe whose elements were formed in stars over the course of billions of years and now reside inside of you. It’s also within your power to use your mind’s powerful imagination to visualize a tube rising from your crown chakra (top of your head) and connecting you to your source of choice. I like to think of myself as “tapping” a nebula, to unleash the flow. Then focus on a stream of pure loving energy as a golden or white light streaming lightspeed fast from your source through the top of your head and filling you with peace and healing. Continuously affirming your belief and giving gratitude to your source, amplify the effect. This energetic source “the light” is always there and always available, you can surrender to it.

You can begin by filling yourself with light and then dealing with the fear, allowing the light to shake loose all that is ready to be released. You can also recycle fear at any time, whenever you feel it has built up too much inside of you. Imagine, thus creating, a green spinning vortex at the base of your spine that sucks up all the fear and toxins in your body and then sends them down a tube that tunnels through the earth to its core and recycles all that fear into pure raw energy. Sometimes, I’ll move my hips in a counterclockwise circular motion as a kinesthetic enhancer. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form, so your intense fearful energy can be renewed and repurposed to potentially help a new plant burst through the soil.

3. Give Empathy

After I have done all that I am hopefully calmer and feel more connected and what I have just described can happen in a matter of seconds. Sometimes, just the pinkie swear and a mantra bring me back to love. Often though, I need an empathetic prescription for the present, and preventative maintenance for the future, to fully nurture a loving state of mind. You could also call this applying the wisdom of love. I recommend reading my post “Empathy, Love in Action” for a really detailed description of this process. Empathy has the power to transform our fear into love, by being very present to our feelings and discovering the underlying unmet need that they are reminding us about. Feelings are our soul’s song to awaken us to the values we desire. While they can be destructive if we express them unchecked, they are also powerful tools if we recognize their potential to help us. This is probably easiest to explain with an example.

Yesterday, I was thinking discouraging thoughts about all that I want to accomplish, and how much harder it will be after 2 weeks of having a cold, and now another one is coming on. This is adding to the fact that I recently found I have a foot sprain (I waited over a month to have it checked out), and after a week of exercises and icing it, is still hurting. My head is reeling with disappointment and frustration about not being able to take a walk and dance.  And now to top it off, I have a sinus headache and am likely looking at another week or so of mending too much mucus. Ah, what I have here is a perfect opportunity to utilize my own mindfulness plan :) So I am at the empathy stage; I give myself a second to name what I am feeling. What comes up is annoyance, discouragement, and sadness. My soul is sending me these messages to remind me that my needs for health, well-being, and vitality are not currently showing up in my life in their fullest capacity. Then I take time to honor these values. How much added quality and enjoyment of life I have when I am feeling energized, healthy, and light on my feet..amazing! I realized too that to experience health, well-being, and vitality, I can choose to contribute to them through my words/actions and make strategies. I mourn how I feel, allow myself to feel sad that right now I don’t feel great, and then once I give that feeling space to be heard, and acknowledge the needs they are spotlighting, I can decide that these values are so important to me that I am going to be proactive and get them back in my life. So I made a plan to make my ginger/garlic/cayenne/lemon concoction which always helps me feel better and to give myself Reiki healing energy when I am relaxing. I am still a little sad but also much more hopeful and empowered to contribute to feeling better!

4. Let It Be

Next is to remind me that whatever I am experiencing, however undesirable, will pass. As the song goes, I try to “let it be” and not fight the experience which will only escalate the fear-fueled feeling. It’s embracing and accepting that whatever is showing up right now in your life has a reason and a purpose. In my example from this week, I am reminded of the need to nurture and care for my body, give myself some attention, and strengthen my belief in the power of healing. I am not going to lie, this is certainly not always easy and hopefully, you will have enough experience to know that when you resisted what was happening, or fought it with anger, it likely did not end well. Hopefully, this hindsight will make this option all the more appealing, because now maybe you’ll have the opportunity to experience something new; an escape from your habitual shadow response that has been inhibiting your inner peace.

5. Embrace Humanity

6. Accept we are all fumbly

The last two steps help me to avoid guilt and blame by reminding me that we have all been poisoned with fearful conditioning. We have all inherited a history of verbal and physical violence and it is a challenge for us all to overcome its influence. I started with a reminder that my truth is love. Well, I believe everyone’s truth is love; we just go through lapses of varying lengths of forgetfulness.

I believe I am a spiritual being having a physical human experience to discover the truth of who I am in an experiential way. I can choose to see fear for what it is; energy and an opposing force to love.  Fear creates obstacles to love, creating opportunities to know Love even deeper. And it has nothing on Love, for love is the ultimate truth; fear is only an illusion. Fear f^#ks us all up! No one is immune. We are all 'singing our songs,' yearning for the same human values, like freedom, love, safety, and health.  Everything we say/think/do can be seen as a 'song of desire,' that yearns to experience the values of life. To ingrain this concept into my brain, I draw an S (song) being encompassed within a V (value) on my arm as a way to remind myself to accept (not judge) others.  My acceptance is a willingness to listen to another's song that sings of a Shared Human Value of Life, which I also desire.  For example, I'll remember how much I value my own autonomy to make my own choices in life, and to demonstrate how much I value autonomy; I can honor it in others. Autonomy acts like a big blanket value, because for those of us with many freedoms, we have the privilege of a lot of choices, and everything we do/say is a choice.

As I said, this is a strategy I created over years of searching. I am not perfect at implementing it, but I can honestly say it does work for me when I allow it to do its magic.

I hope this may help and inspire you to make your own mindfulness plan that suits you. One last suggestion is to add silliness; spirituality need not be so serious.