Show #9 Seeing Your Life Through Spiritual Lenses

TITLE:  Seeing Life Through Spiritual Lenses

BLURB:  In today’s show, Carole (with Jane’s encouragement) will be talking about using your Designing Sacred Space Journal/workbook to focus on, grow & develop 4 basic spiritual qualities.  This focused way of looking at your daily happenings, possibilities and choices, is a powerful tool to use as we begin discerning what aspects of our lives need to be amplified, which ones need to be blessed and discarded, which divine actualities are to be grown toward, as we step farther and farther into an ever-more sacred life.  So, find a quiet time, a setting that is conducive to a “time out for a Time IN”, have your Sacred Space Notebook and materials at hand, and join us as we explore some new ways to approach inner and outer world design.

TODAY’S CONTENT:

Today begins another unfolding of our Carole & Jane TalkRadioBlog show we have named: Designing Sacred Space.  With Jane’s ongoing encouragement & side-line cheers of “YOU CAN DO IT!” I will begin offering shows based on my own inner work and the exercises & understandings I use as I work with others. 

 Today’s adventure into Designing Sacred Space, is entitled:  Seeing Your Life through Spiritual Lenses …

For the last few months, I have been using a particular spiritual focus in my own journaling and as I work with others… it is a focus that is proving to be profoundly insight-filled and formative, as far as making choices and taking actions based on looking at things through the lenses of the 4 spiritual qualities we are going to talk about today.  As these qualities become more and more a part of discerning various aspects of our lives, we have found them amazingly em-Powering to work with, and we hope you will find them powerfully helpful in your life, too.

These qualities are mentioned in the Baha’i Writings as 4 qualities the Beloved loves to see within us and are as follows:

1)   enthusiasm and courage

2)   a face wreathed in smiles and a radiant countenance

3)   that they see with their own eyes and not through the eyes of another

4)   the ability to carry a task, once begun, through to completion

TODAY’S PRACTICE EXERCISE:

In order to be able to en-Joy the following experience, please find a quiet time, a setting that is conducive to a “time out for a Time IN”, and have your portable workshop of materials handy.  NOW, breathe deeply & let’s have some fun J

Today, you will need 4 of your blank notebook pages.

1)   Begin by putting one of the 4 qualities at the top of each page.

2)   We are just going to work with the first quality page today, but will be making the same basic “outline drawing” for each of the other 3 quality worksheets;

3)   We will begin with the first Quality’s page:  Enthusiasm and Courage

4)   Draw a balloon circle toward the top of your page (just leave room for smaller balloons around it, which we will add as we work on this exercise)

5)   FIRST, think of something wonderful you would like to do, have always had a deep down yearning to do or try or become (do not kill the fun with any “yes, buts”..)… Something you would LOVE to bring into being in your life..

FOR THIS FIRST LITTLE EXPERIMENT TODAY, (I might suggest you start with something tangible to put in your  BIG VISION balloon: such as Learning to sew, or de-cluttering your desk, or finally sending that graduation present you got for your nephew 4 yrs. ago…). 

6)   Put that heart-wish in your balloon

7)   Now, begin to make little square boxes at the bottom of your page & inside each of these, write in all the “yes buts” you feel would/ could / have kept you from accomplishing your dream.. These are the cement blocks that are keeping your BIG VISION Balloon tethered & dead in the air actually

8)   As these cement blocks take shape & gather meaning, you are going to begin to see each block as simply something you can break into little pieces of DOABLE efforts.  Each little piece is going to become a little “floating balloon idea” that begins to float up and away from the concrete, until that “yes but” no longer has any substance.. can no longer keep you tied down down down.

9)   Since our Heading for this Page is:  Enthusiasm and Courage, break every “yes but” tiny piece into smaller & smaller pieces, until all of a sudden, you say; “I CAN DO THAT!” and feel a sense of eagerness.  Even the tiniest piece may take courage, but at some point, the courage required is not going to paralyze you.

Does this “visual” of taking baby steps toward a larger Vision make sense to you?  Does it sound like something you would like to try?  (I might suggest you start with something tangible as your first workbook BIG VISION balloon: such as Learning to sew, or de-cluttering your desk, or finally sending that graduation present you got for your nephew 4 yrs. ago…).  Hopefully, you, as I did, find that even the smallest act, using courage and eagerness, is fabulously empowering, as if you are a LIE-DEFYING ACTION HERO in your own life!

You are making your own picture of the old adage:  “How do you eat an elephant?... one bite at a time J”  And let me tell you, once you start floating up those little “OH, YES I CAN!” balloons, you will get more and more excited about living life without elephants squishing you to death! 

Just keep saying to yourself:  “Make a beginning and all will come right.  Intention brings attainment.”  Quoted from the Baha’i Writings

Now I want to tell you a story about an amazing example of how “one step at a time” can take you on a journey beyond imagining, it can become so far reaching.  Years ago, I had a young, pre-teen boy in a class I was teaching at a summer school.  The boy was very troubled and so angry that he was always on the edge of doing something seriously damaging to himself or another student.  One day, I asked him what was really going on inside of him & he said that his grandmother (who raised him) had just died and he was so angry he didn’t know how to handle his feelings.  I asked him what he needed & he said, “Somebody to be sort of a mother sometimes”.  From then on, we formed a friendship when we would see each other at school. 

Years later, I met a woman in her late 30s, who came over to me & said that she was this young boy’s birth mother.  She said that when she was 14, she was raped and had given birth to him.  Her own mother & dad raised him & she simply lost her way. She had gotten into drugs and ended up living on the streets for a few years.  However, within the last few years, she had married a good person, found out that she was pregnant and decided that she wanted to give birth to a healthy baby from a place of her own wellness & to do that she would have to immediately straighten up her own life. 

The only thing she could think of “to get her life ‘right’” was to stay “right” in everything she did.  She said that when she walked to the bus to go to work each morning, she would walk on the right side of the sidewalk; then sit on the “right side” of the bus; walk into the factory & stay to the right side of the hallways as she went into work, etc.  She said that her continual behavior, allowed her, 3 yrs. earlier, to give birth to her wonderful little girl, and that, not only that, she was now in college, majoring in music so that she could someday work with young girls as lost as she had been…. Young girls who could experience the music still alive inside of themselves, discover the ability to make & be “in harmony” and follow the sanity of a musical score, as a way to begin to rediscover themselves, still alive, able to be part of something wonderful with other people.  I LOVE this story of one woman “making a beginning and having everything come right…. That her intention had truly become attainment”

So, I am now hoping that you have drawn & gotten a glimmer of how this process of Letting Spirit decorate your sky with balloons, big ones and little ones, & that you will find this “busting-up-concrete-blocks and making-balloons-out-of-the-pieces” process is also powerful for all of the other Quality building pages.  In the next few shows, we will take each quality and expand on examples and en-Couragements about how using these qualities to change your life, as they have made enormous differences in the lives of others. 

In closing, again, let me list these amazingly potent & powerfully impacting attributes which will bless all of us, as we grow within them.  May we

1)   Feel enthusiastic and courageous

2)   Have our faces wreathed in smiles and a radiance about our countenances

3)   See with our own eyes and not through the eyes of another

4)   Develop the ability to carry a task, once begun, through to completion

Blessings and ONLY-LOVE,

Show #6 THE BALANCE WITHIN US "cliff notes" by Constance

Discovering the Balance Within

The show begins with Jane and Carole expressing their gratitude and thanks to their listeners. Carole expresses that she feels “overwhelming love” rushing through her and emphasizes that while this forum of communication may seem like a one-way experience, that the specific bodies of information that are shared are geared to individual listeners and that what comes through her and is expressed in the show is a product and a process of how Love wants to touch  hearts and lives.

Jane explains how today’s show comes out of her own experience of extreme stress related to the high level of activity she has felt compelled to maintain in her life and the “big question” that is then raised of how to attain to wellbeing and to find balance in the midst of this high-speed, high-intensity lifestyle that can feel like such a struggle. She alludes to the significance of our PERCEPTIONS of our state of being and asks the question, “What if I don’t have to struggle?”

Carole affirms that Jane is describing a near-universal condition in our life-in-the-fast-lane, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps culture. She emphasizes that our high-stress state of being comes out of our living with the best of intentions as we make extraordinary efforts to bring more love into the world, to make life better for those around us, and to generally make the world a better place. We are angels-in-training, but we act out of our limited world understandings.

And so our super-human efforts coming out of our limited world-view leads us to feel overwhelmed, exhausted and always with a sense of “It is never enough” or “I am never enough”. Our “To Do” lists simply get longer and longer and there never seems to be a moment or the perspective to take a breath and celebrate our “Have Done” list. There seems never a moment to stop and evaluate what is REALLY IMPORTANT and to celebrate the beauty of Being rather than the incessant drive for Doing.

Carole then tells a beautiful story about the Buddha in which he denies various honorific titles but defines himself simply by saying “I am Awake”. She talks of how, from our world-perception and experience of overwhelm, we might question what we are to awaken to…more sorrow, more anguish, more pain, an even greater sensitivity to our involvement in a world that is so toxic as to be nearly unbearable? NO! She emphasizes the profound truth that Spirit has designed us to be a receptor and a reflector of love and of JOY! She then shares a quote from the Baha’i writings:

“Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded. We seem better able to cope with the world and to find our sphere of usefulness. But when sadness visits us we become weak, our strength leaves us, our comprehension is dim and our intelligence veiled. The actualities of life seem to elude our grasp, the eyes of our spirits fail to discover the sacred mysteries, and we become even as dead beings.”

–‘Abdu’l- Baha, Paris Talks, p110

She emphasizes the importance of attaining to this reality of joy and gives us various exercises as “Ahhhh-building skills” to help us make this critical shift.

Carole then goes on to point out that another toxic aspect of our tendency to this “I can’t do enough” and “I am not enough” mentality is the inevitable development of a sense of historic guilt. We perceive ourselves as falling short and failing again and again, and over time we accumulate a long “I didn’t do it” list and the guilt that accompanies it.  She points out and elucidates that this is a generational phenomenon and that each generation can learn from what we do or what we don’t do and that this creates  “ the big forgiveness, the big well-wishing, the big release” that we can give ourselves and also give our parents and on up and down the line. This allows us to transmute our guilt into an aspect of blessing.  Here again Carole introduces exercises to help us overcome this sense of guilt that we experience.

At this point Carole introduces another quote from the Baha’i Writings:

“Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time.”

― Abdu'l-Baha, Daily Lessons Received at Akka, p42

She points out that while we perceive time in this worldly realm to be linear, the true reality is that of a profound liquidity to time. Changing our perception about time allows us to shift into the reality and the feeling that accompanies it (no stress!) of a knowing that there is ALWAYS time, particularly as we flow through time in the grace-filled service of Love. There are a variety of ways to “stretch” time and Carole offers us some stories and exercises that help us with this shift of perception.

Next we are introduced to the Navaho word Yo-Zho, which translates as “Beauty-Balance.”  Carole speaks of the wonderment and power of looking out at the world through this Beauty-Balance lens, and how in just a moment, and in the midst of an array of seemingly hum-drum all-in-a-day life experiences it can dramatically alter our perception and bring much joy in the process.

The “Little Tyrant” and the “Wild Child” are then introduced to us from the work of Martha Beck as a wonderful conceptual construct to help us understand the dissonance within us and to help us create harmony out of that dissonance. Carole explains that our Little Tyrant cajoles us from within to pursue actions and behaviors that bring us more and more into the standards of social acceptability and acting the reasonable, rational, logical, well-disciplined and generally “good” (or even “goody-goody”) person. The Little Tyrant pushes us in these directions often against our own deep desires and as such may speak to us in words that are lambasting, dictatorial, critical, belittling, etc.

Our Wild Child, on the other hand, is the voice within us that encourages us to “blow off” the dictates of the Little Tyrant and to follow our own whims, fancies, and heart’s desires no matter how seemingly illogical, impractical, and socially unacceptable.  The existence of both of these beings within us duking it out for the upper hand in eliciting our attention and support clearly creates grounds for much internal conflict and confusion.

Resolution comes only with the understanding that BOTH of these Beings are authentic and have an important positive role to play. The Little Tyrant is actually there to help and protect us. (S)he potentially points us in directions that save us from physical danger or financial disaster. And certainly, and perhaps most significantly, (s)he protects us from social ridicule, and criticism which, after all, are an assault on our being.

When we realize the gift of both our Little Tyrant and our Wild Child beings, we can use them to help us to find balance and harmony, and to make “right choices” in our lives. These little beings that seem so out-of -sync and dis-harmonious are actually a perfect manifestation of the ultimate harmony expressed in the concept of yin-yang! Carole uses a variety of exercises during the show to help us to see our Little Tyrant and our Wild Child clearly, and then to use them to help create balance in our lives. 

Jane closes today’s show by reading two quotes in honor of the passing of Maya Angelou:

“What is the fear of living? It’s being pre-eminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself; for the time you take up, the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you are here to do, then just do some good.”

“One is not necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. “

-Maya Angelou

show # 7 The Perfection of Stillness

The Perfection of Stillness

The show begins with Jane describing that today’s topic came about as a result of Carole and Jane’s need to take a week off from airing, and the subsequent realization of the rightness, in doing so, of honoring a need for stillness as a part of our divine design.

Jane references Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s book, What We Ache For, and points us to her chapter on “A Necessary Silence.” She reads us a beautiful quote that captures the need, as well as the challenge, of embracing stillness as an important aspect of our lives. The author identifies stillness as the “place” from which our creativity flows. She goes on to point out, however, that this reality tends to be little acknowledged by our culture, which equates our success in life with “doing” rather than “being.”  She then tells us that we may also find it challenging to pursue stillness, in that we may find that it is elusive and ultimately not something that is in our control.

Throughout today’s talk this “being out of control” aspect of stillness is discussed, one very important aspect of which is that we often find ourselves thrown into a state of anxiety or fear over anything we feel we can’t control. Carole then speaks of the need for us to develop a comfort zone that allows us to relax into what really amounts to “giving it over to God” and letting Him take care of things. She points out some of the many systems, including vast universal forces (such as gravity), and also many our own body systems (including the breath), which operate continuously and completely outside of our control to maintain life and to keep us in a state of wellness and balance.

The breath is acknowledged as an important portal into stillness. Jane emphasizes how even the seemingly simple act of beginning to use the breath as a way to relax and access stillness can create great fear, anxiety and resistance. She tells the story of a woman in one of her movement classes who’s doctor told her she “didn’t know how to breathe” and who comes, through simple exercises, to discover and to relax into her ability to do so very effectively!

Carole speaks of the importance of the idea of “practicing” in that all of our lives we have simply practiced new life skills and experiences in a natural and relaxed process that leads us into comfort and competence. We get to practice life in the womb and to become comfortable with the experience that all our needs will be met. As babies we get to practice crying and the discovery that we will be comforted. We practice walking and soon find we can do it without falling down. We practice, and as we learn that we can rely on our expectations of the experience, we become increasingly comfortable with the process.

In approaching calm and stillness it is very important that we “practice” breathing. Breathing may be considered the “back door” into calming ourselves down in that it is impossible to breathe deeply and still remain in a fight or flight mode.  When we practice shifting energy gears and breathing in a slow, easy, relaxed manner it tells our sympathetic nervous system that everything is all right. It also calls up our cellular memories of other experiences of calm that we have had in our lives so that we can “lean into” these experiences and deepen our state of relaxation still further.

Carole points out that we are all well-practiced with being anxious and fearful and of trying to tend to a To-Do list that is overwhelming. She lovingly invites us to learn to experience stillness by practicing, and we can begin with various simple tools and exercises, many of which she presents to us here. 

As a prelude to working with the actual exercises Carole emphasizes that working with these tools (shifting the energy) requires a level of focus that cannot be attained in a chaotic or cluttered mental or physical space. She therefore recommends giving the show our full attention so that it is not considered just one element of a multi-tasking conglomeration of experience (such as listening to the show while driving a car), but rather that it be the primary focus of the moment as it is experienced. She also recommends that an uncluttered and hopefully appealing physical space be created for this work, and emphasizes that this can be as simple as unfolding a TV tray which is kept readily available for the purpose. Once the physical and mental clutter is cleared, the tools and exercises can be approached.

Exercise 1. FULL CUP vs. EMPTY CUP

Open a pad with a blank left and right page laid side-by-side. On each page draw a cup. Now, focus on your left-hand cup and FILL it with the stuff that, in fact, fills your life to over-flowing (e.g. dirty dishes, crying children, over-grown lawn, all the items on your never-ending To-Do list, etc). Also fill it with all the things you feel guilty about and that keep your mind spinning on a “gerbil wheel” (things you did and wish you hadn’t, things you didn’t do and wish you had, etc.)

Notice how it feels as you fill this cup. Take note of your breathing and of muscle tension in your body. How does your stomach feel? Scan your entire body and witness your own physical response to your overflowing cup.

Now turn your attention to the cup on the right. This cup IS TO REMAIN EMPTY! Really focus on this empty cup. Take careful note: it is empty of worry, empty of stress, empty of guilt, empty of the be-jillion things you think you are responsible for. How does staying in the energy space of this cup make you feel? Tune into your body and listen to its messages.

More thoughts about the full cup/empty cup exercise:

Carole draws an analogy to the full cup, likening it to a child with a loose tooth that she is incessantly wiggling with her tongue. Behaviorists have shown that, as inconsequential as it may seem, the distraction of a loose tooth actually keeps a child from focusing and learning effectively.

 Carole also points out that the full cup can, as a part of it’s content, hold many positive items such as happy memories or anticipated future events. That does not, however, change the fact that the cup is full, which holds us distracted and “stuck in our heads.” We are often stuck in the past or the future, which distracts us from “now,” and our moment of “empty cup now” is the portal we seek into stillness and calm.

One possible aspect of this exercise is, after filling our cup and understanding the implications of that fullness, to turn the page over, or even of tearing the page up (!), thus symbolically eliminating all the anxiety it evokes, and then focusing consciously on cultivating our empty cup. Also, for those who need a more moderate approach, another possibility is to only turn the full cup depiction over for set and limited periods of scheduled time and then “worrying your brains out,” but only until “time’s up!” and you turn the page over again and go back to your empty cup!

Empty cup time is meant to refresh us, and from this place we can move on to other tools and ideas. The empty cup exercise helps us to move into “clear space” and away from clutter, stress, and overwhelm. Carole now introduces us to another tool in the form of a Hawaiian Blessing that is another helpful way to clear energy. It might be used, for instance, in a mental or other hospital, clearing the energy in a room before a new patient occupies it. Or it might be used by a speaker who enters an empty auditorium to clear it of the energy of all that has gone on there previously. We might also use this blessing to clear energy in a “sticky relationship” or even to clear energy around aspects of ourselves and around difficult aspects of our life history (difficult story pieces). Clearing Energy in this way can bring us to a clean, fresh place with no past and no future. This is a place and a moment full of possibility!

Here is the Blessing in its 4 aspects:

1. I apologize. (Heaven apologizes, there is apology in creation, there is the desire that you feel solaced, apology flows through me…)

2. Please forgive me. (There is forgiveness, I am a part of the flow of forgiveness, I am a part of the circle of being forgiven, part of the outpouring of forgiving that is clearing and cleaning everything in its path.)

3. I love you. (Creation loves you, I am a part of love and love flows toward me through me, the circle of loving is infinite and forever)

4. Thank you. (as creation is grateful for me and my heart returns the gratitude.)

Now we are in a place of simply being a part of the reality of blessing! And in this clear space of feeling blessed and able to have an experience with our divine design Carole tells a wonderful, life affirming story from her own experience that also serves as a prelude to the next exercise.

She shares that in the early years of her husband’s work as district librarian of their community, there was a dirt parking lot associated with one of the libraries. It would tend to get muddy and cars would get stuck in it and thus it was highly impractical and inconvenient. The wonder of that space, however, was that it was entirely covered with a field of delicate violets. Carole was saddened, but knew that it was necessary to pave the area; to bring in heavy equipment, dig a foundation and lay down concrete to create a “proper” parking lot.

But THEN, she says, an amazing thing happened. In a year’s time (she tells this story with lots of “I swear” and “Honest to gosh-es etc) the vines pushed up and busted that concrete into GRAVEL.

And so this profound demonstration of the life-force of these delicate-looking flowers is a story we can hold in our hearts. It is a story of the pushing up against impossible odds and this sort of strength is, in fact, an aspect that is built into our divine designs

Exercise 2. The Power within Violets, The Power Within Us 

Open up another blank 2-page spread. Think about yourself and the pavement of your life. On each page draw a squiggly figure representing yourself with a line of “pavement” running across the page just above “you”. On the left page of paper, just above the “pavement” write two phrases spanning the page: “No, you can’t,” and “What I came to believe I couldn’t do.” You may, if you choose (this page is ultimately NOT to be your focus), draw and write in details from your life that have presented you with this negative reality. Give some attention to how this page makes you feel in your body. This will give you some indication of how, in your life, your body and your energy react to a LIE. This is pure distortion. You can do with this page as you wish once it has shown you the fallacy of your “limitations.” You may turn it over, or better yet you may choose to TEAR IT UP.

Now, on the right-hand page, just above the pavement line write the two phrases: “Oh Yeah?!” and “Evidences to the Contrary,” You may choose to draw your stick figure self with hands on hips and “get a little attitude going!”  Now go for it: draw and write all the affirming things you’ve done and confirming experiences you have had! This list, of course, will go on and on and can use as much paper as you need to get the job done! You can refer to this page whenever and as often as you need, of course, But it is important to know that all the affirming truths about yourself that you just wrote down are also carried in your memory banks for you to call up at any time, AND they are stored within your very body at the cellular level.

Jane contributes a variation to this exercise (taken from the work of Martha Beck) pointing out that during times when our confidence in ourselves is particularly lacking and we might find it hard to acknowledge and write down our own positive qualities, it can be helpful to call on a group of trusted friends and to ask them to provide you with affirmations about yourself that they have gleaned through their relationship with you. These qualities can stand-alone but can also  “prime the pump” of your own recognition of even more of your positive attributes and all should be added to your “Evidences to the Contrary” page.

As we come more and more into clear space Carole encourages us to keep a journal to fill with the stuff that enriches our souls; references for books, stories, poems, quotes, exercises (such as those presented here), drawings, etc etc . She offers us several quotes to inspire us as we come into the place of  “I am an achiever” as evidenced by the outcome of our work in the previous exercise, The Power of Violets. Here are the quotes:

1. “Make a beginning and all will come right. Intention brings attainment” ~’Abdu’l-Baha, The Baha’i Writings

2. Whatever you can do, or dream you can’t, begin it! Boldness has genius, power, and magic within it.” ~John Wolfgang Goethe

3. “Be the Change you wish to see” ~Ghandi

Carole encourages us to be our own role model and to attune to let the energy of our own divine design inspire and direct us!

At this point Carole recommends the book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, by Gail McMeekin as an inspirational example of the stories and experiences of women who have followed their dreams and shaped their lives according to their divine designs. If they can do it we can too, and the book offers many tips and ideas to help us on our journey!

Exercise 3. Fertile Quotes

 One possibility to explore when including quotes in your journaling is to start with and write down thought-provoking, inspirational quotes, or even simple phrases, and then to use these as a stepping-off place for the addition of your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences that bubble up as you consider the quote. Carole provides a few brief quotations from the Baha’i Writings to get us started on this rich and fertile journey of self-exploration:

1. Enthusiasm is courage…

2. A face wreathed in smiles…

3.They that see with their own eyes and not through the eyes of others…

4. The ability to carry a task, once begun, to completion….

Carole ends today’s show, most appropriately with the Hawaiian Blessing:

I apologize

Please forgive me

I love you

Thank you

Amazon references to books mentioned in today’s show:

What We Ache For, by Oriah  Mountain Dreamer http://www.amazon.com/What-We-Ache-Creativity-Unfolding/dp/0060011963/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403392310&sr=1-1&keywords=what+we+ache+for

The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, by Gail McMeekin http://www.amazon.com/The-Secrets-Highly-Creative-Women/dp/157324533X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403495553&sr=8-1&keywords=the+12+steps+of+highly+Creative+women

show #5 The Gift of Children Among Us by Constance

This writing is an effort to summarize the verbal wisdom released by Carole and Jane in their weekly radio show. Please know that these shows are SO rich that we can only hope to offer an aroma of the spiritually hearty “stew” which must be tasted and, perhaps feasted upon, to enjoy the full potential nourishment. Only listening to the shows can provide the full nutritional value, but it is hoped that these brief “cliff notes” will help to enrich the experience AND to spark further written interactions among listeners/readers on the blog.

The Gift of Children Among Us

Carole begins by clarifying that each show is an inspired “heart-happening” and that there is always room with each subsequent recording for elucidation, clarification, and, at times, corrections of material presented along the way. She wishes at this time to clarify that Laurel Birch’s artistic works were done primarily in Thailand and not in Taiwan as previously stated. She also repeated the beautiful poem, which got “rushed” due to time constraints at the end of the last show and is set to writing here because it is so profound and so central to the theme of these shows:

The Sacred Romance

We are faced with a decision which grows more urgent with each passing day.

Will we leave our small stories behind and venture forth to follow our Beloved into the sacred romance?

The choice to become a pilgrim of the heart can happen any day and we can begin our journey from any place….

Carole has spoken of intelligence systems built into our design to allow us to tune into and understand the divine realities that makes sense to our hearts and to tune out the confusing, distorted, discordant realities of world-driven systems. She has referenced three such systems of intelligence in previous shows and today she elaborates on the gift of the meditative faculty which allows us to connect with our heart-knowing (what really makes sense to us) and to translate that knowing to a cognitive level of understanding. The meditative faculty allows us to go to our calm place of being “the witness” in which we can view cacophonous world events, but sort through and translate those events to find our heart-truths. She speaks of the writing of Martha Beck (e.g. The Four-Day Win) who talks about the scientific discovery (through brain mapping) that this “translator” seems to be largely associated with the left frontal lobe of the brain.

Carole speaks at some length of the fascinating work of Candace Pert, a neuroscientist and pharmacologist who discovered that there is a biochemical basis for the mind-body connection in the form of polypeptide configurations that are found throughout the various organs of the body and which, when stimulated, release cathartic memories. She then discovered that the polypeptide configurations of the heart are not associated with world memories such as found associated with other organs, but are rather connected to deep spiritual realities. Thus there is actually a physical, biochemical basis for our heart-knowing which can be accessed through the meditative faculty!

From this point Carole and Jane go on to discuss the various aspects of helping our children attune to their own heart truths. She emphasizes that “ our children” may be the little human beings who are chronologically defined as such, or they may just as significantly be the “inner children” who reside within our grown-up selves. Our inner children (associated with “old story pieces”) also need guidance in coming to understand what truly makes sense to them, such that their truths can be integrated into their adult being. 

Adults tend to have a more highly developed set of tools to discover the realities of our own heart-truths and to assist children in finding their place of calm centeredness. The beauty of all this is that when adults (always with divine assistance!) help to guide children to their heart-center, they often assist themselves and their own inner children to a greater place of centeredness.

Situations that don’t make sense to our hearts are often very emotionally upsetting to our children, who may then “shut down” or respond strongly with behaviors that are viewed from an adult perspective as socially unacceptable (crying, tantrum-throwing, etc). It is important for adults to be sensitive to children’s feelings at such times and not to squelch them, but rather to make efforts to assist them to get to the heart of the matter (literally).

While a tantrum-throwing child may be a trying experience for an adult, it is important that such difficult behaviors be viewed as the beginnings of a blessing. Whatever it is that is “hitting the fan” for that child is a relevant issue, albeit one that the child is unable to bring into language, and helping the child to work through the issue can bring to the surface crucial understandings for both the adult and the child that might otherwise remain submerged. The struggling child might even be understood using the metaphor of the “canary in a coal mine.” Such children help us to become aware of the “invisible” toxins in the environment that impact us all, and to carry ourselves (and our canaries) into more healthful and wholesome conditions.

Finding the melody line of our heart’s knowing in the midst of the cacophony of world distortion can be a very uncomfortable process. Carole points out that it important that we be an “eager learner” when a divine lesson is coming to light so that we can open ourselves and be able to integrate the new spiritual understandings associated with the lesson. In this way we can leave our “small stories” behind and, with a whole new set of lenses, view a reality that is vast and divinely perfect.

From this point Carole begins to give multiple examples and tells many powerful stories that demonstrate these ideas. She also weaves a variety of exercises among these stories to provide us with tools for helping children find their way back to that which makes sense.

Carole speaks of “remembrance” in explaining the original source of the heart truths that we all carry. She says, “ We came from the realm of love becoming manifest. We begin to gather form and come into this world as a soul on its forever journey having physical presence for awhile. So we have a remembrance of what is our most familiar home where we come from.”

The show ends with Carole telling several lovely “essence child” stories to further elucidate the concepts presented throughout.

THANK YOU, Constance!!

Thank you, Constance, for writing through some of our hr. long "content laden" early shows... ohmygosh, I was so geeked by the time each show finally would begin, that I felt like I was "downloading" bucket loads of information with no idea how long each outpouring was taking, not really understanding how the whole radioblog system works, and being amazed at the gushing of words & thoughts that were being propelled by enormous waves of loving which seemed to push out every word... 

in other words, when Jane would say that our hour was up, I had no idea what had been said!  And yet, every time we began to try to record a show, there would be a "countdown" before we went "live" and I would just prayerfully hold on for dear life.  For these last couple of months, I have been  wondering how in the world we could change the "giddy up" energy around the way we were doing the show.  If it felt like "too much" for me, how in the world could anyone else be able to absorb anything we were hoping to offer??

Thank you sooooooo much for putting some kind of order to the outpourings, dearest friend... my husband, Bob, says that your writing has helped him understand what all had been said!

Thankfully, learning more about the techie possibilities of recording the show (that the show can be recorded FIRST and then "uploaded" to the radio blog!), has made an enormous difference in my feeling that everything can, at least, slow down enough for ME to understand what all is being shared!!  I also have just discovered that shows can be all different lengths, so we can just share a "droplet" instead of a whole bucket load of conversation, or, if there is a topic that is just toooo juicy not to expand upon, there can be time for that, too.  But knowing that each show can offer just ONE topic idea etc. has made my heart SO HAPPY.. so happy for myself and soooo happy for anyone who might tune in for a listen..

Before I post your blogs, Constance, I want to thank my beloved heart-forever-friend, Jane, for her en-Couragement and continual "YOU CAN DO IT" coaching and prompting.  She has been urging me for years before she finally just had us START a show one morning!  And then, what an amazing co-hort, as she would temper and "hold steady", during our first 7 shows of "divine improv"... keeping us from getting totally overwhelmed with the LOVE pouring through us, into the world, while we were on air.  This shorter, more concise show format, will allow both of us to feel easier throughout the experience, and I am sure it will then make it easier for anyone listening to enjoy the shows more, also.

I have no idea how our shows will evolve, I just know that the divine LOVING wanting to pour through us in order to be offered into the world, will keep on happening in some way or another!!  We are just eager to be part of that LOVING !!

SOOOO, without further written "chatter", I want to post your first 2 "cliff note-esque" blogs, Constance.... with my forever blessings for de-coding the bucketfuls of LOVE gushing, into understandable nibblets... You have a GIFT for writing, dearest friend!

XXXXXOOOO,
Carole

7/24/14 show #8: Enchantment Building 101

Carole & Jane are offering a new show format in addition to their hour long, content -laden discussion shows.  Their new show format is in short segments, each one offering one idea, within a singular topic, a bit of en-Couragement, and a practical exercise you can try for yourself.  It is our hope that this shortened version of our broadly sweeping previously given shows, will enable each one of us to better experience our divinely designed self within our far-reaching journey, one little bit at a time.

In addition, here is our first complete "show" material in written form:

TODAY’S TOPIC & PRACTICE EXERCISE: 

There are 3 beginning steps to consider when you want to make your Sacred Space tangible—PLEASE do them in any order –whatever  makes sense to YOUR HEART:

11)    Creating a portable inner workshop of materials:  keep all together in designated place;  your “sacred school bag”;  loose l. notebook with lined & blank pages/ pencils/ eraser/ pens/ colored markers or pencils/ scissors /

22)   A dedicated “time out for a Time In”.  deciding to step out of your 24/7 world for a time when you are not “available”… sign on door, in your car, on a park bench etc.  Now BREATH:  deep breath says I AM OK if I can breathe deeply;  2) time is fluid, so I HAVE ENOUGH TIME;  there IS a Place and Time in this world where I can BE… in just one moment at a time, one breath at a time, one understanding at a time… I can rest, I can be refreshed by each breath of newness coming in, healed with each breath being released.. In this wonderful moment, NOW, Everything is manageable, quiet, comforting, reassuring, just right.

33)   Making an actual, physical sacred PLACE where you can go whenever you are needing spiritual refreshment, reflection, quiet personal inner-time

(all of these creations will be ongoing.. today is just a beginning.)

If you live alone (or note) and don’t  have a cleared & lovely room with a door (even a lock, if you need extra clarity about your taking private time);  or a nice corner with a chair, surrounded by a screen, etc. I have a couple of little examples of how some people created unexpected personal space: 

One woman, in a house full of kids etc. only had the space under the stairs that she could make into her own space….. so within this 4X6’ space, she put down a shag rug, some cushions, hung a lamp, make a little table for her most special things & then hug a 4’ wide curtain across the opening.

Another woman had her bed in the living room in her family’s apartment, so her “private space” solution was to hang a bed sheet curtain from the ceiling surrounding her bed area & when the curtain was closed, everyone knew she had her ear plugs in & was not to be disturbed .. in this unlikely Place, she was able to do all of her meditative, journaling, quiet time work in peace (of course, she finally worked out how to do much of it when the family was asleep, but still!!)

One woman, in her cluttered house, could only BEGIN with a box where she began collecting her sacred things (photos, fav. Quotes, fabric & paint swatches, little items that kept giving her time to be in beauty and cleanliness and gracious living (a lovely cup & saucer), sea shells, little mementos of   etc… slowly, her box became too small for her, so she cleared out a corner and began expanding her sacred space… until, in time, years, in fact, her entire home became her sanctuary

SO NOW when you have allotted yourself a little PLACE, you can begin to gather & collect ONLY those things which delight YOUR heart, calm and speak to your Spirit—those things which ONLY carry wonder-filled memories… it is DELICIOUS to look at your material things  through the “lens” of finding ONLY those things that REMIND YOU OF YOUUUUR ESSENCE SELF, your deepest, most at PEACE self.  If you have nothing in your life which touches you with LOVE, then NOW is the moment you begin LOOKING for your own heart’s treasures.

CLOSING:

So, in closing, this show was about HOW TO BEGIN BUILDING YOUR BLESSING FILLED LIFE within your own Sacred Space.

Over time, you will be making your Sacred Space tangible with :

1)    A portable Sacred Space Design bag with working book and materials

2)    A designated Time set aside for inner exploration and experience

3)    A Place, one Place, in this world that is all yours….

I want to close with this quote from the “Baha’i’ Writings”:

“Make a beginning and all will come right.  Intention brings attainment.”

(If you like our shorter show format and a written blog version, please let us know, either on the DesigningSacredSpace, radioblogtalk.com site or here, on our Designing SacredSpace blogspot.com site.) 

Blessings and ONLY-LOVE,

Carole