What If We Awoke And Said...

Spring calls us. There are so many invitations it extends to us to stop and be awed. And yet in our busyness, it is so easy to decline the invitation or to miss it altogether. But as I will sometimes say in my meditations, "there is no moment exactly like this moment," there is also no spring exactly like this spring... at this particular age, with these particular conditions, with these people in my life. I am reminding myself not to miss it. These particular tulips found in Princeton over the weekend, as Mike and I went for a drive and a coffee date, made me veer off the sidewalk to say hello. When my kids and I were in Florida visiting my mom last week, there were flowers everywhere. Hibiscus and Bougainvillea and Impatiens could be found on every block. Now I appreciate them, but when I lived there for a brief period of my life, I'm embarrassed to say I stopped noticing them because they were always around. That's not the case in the Northeast and so I can be easily awed every season. Why does it matter that we experience awe?

I'm not a traveler, but I am guessing people who travel are drawn to being awed again and again. To see something fresh that makes us pause, whether it is a landscape, the culture of a place, music/art/dance, architecture, food -- so many things that can strike our senses with a gasp of delight and the feeling of something much greater at work. This matters because it brings us humility and connects us to our innate appreciation for life. 

My invitation this week is to access awe in the everyday moments of our ordinary existence. My 14-17 year old self could not do that in Florida, but I have been training my adult self in this. This is what meditation does. I don't think we can be awed if we aren't present, right? We don't need to travel to have our breath taken away. We can be enraptured by something simply by slowing down, opening our eyes, and letting in a color, a shape, a sound, a movement, a touch, a word. But only we can let it in. No one can do it for us. We could travel and still fail to let in what is before us. We can be loved and fail to let it touch us. It happens all the time and that's okay, too, because when we realize it, we know the difference. Once we know the difference, we can choose. What if we awoke and said, "today, may I make myself available to be awed by what I witness."

While we can't make ourselves feel awe, rather it comes upon us, we can be awake and open to the experience of it by our presence alone. We can choose to see like a photographer sees -- the details, the angles, the shadows, the variations. It's all there for us if we want it.

Wishing everyone an awe-inspired spring week.

🌷
Jean

Hearing Ourselves

Some pieces are coming together. I read, listen, and study from a lot experts in the fields of psychology, spirituality, coaching and I love when what they share goes together and also validates an experience I have. Lately, it is the importance of listening and finding a language for what we are experiencing that keeps getting reinforced.

What I have found is that without being able to decipher my thoughts and feelings into language everything becomes muddled and often stuck. When I can hear myself, and I mean that literally, I gain clarity on what is going on inside me and around me. When we feel stuck in any way -- creatively ( ex. no inspiration), emotionally (feeling bleh), physically (inertia, lack of energy), spiritually (not feeling "connected"), we can choose to stop and take the time to listen to ourselves more deeply and find the words and images that capture what is happening. In making it explicit, we have a greater chance to move in a direction, get back into a sense of flow, and take action. 

Brené Brown's latest book and TV series, Atlas of the Heart, is essentially an encyclopedia of different emotions and feeling states. What I appreciate about it is that she helps us to expand our use of language to accurately describe what we are experiencing (moving beyond basic words that don't give much nuance or specificity). I first learned the importance of this in my 20's through the work of Marshall Rosenberg and Non-Violent Communication where he included in his book a list of emotions and feelings that awakened in me a much greater vocabulary. It was like a whole new world opened up. This was also echoed in the teachings on Mindful Listening and Speech as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was made even deeper by Philosopher, Eugene Gendlin's practice of Focusing, which requires a deep inner listening. It's now more currently echoed in Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory which explains why inner listening and communicating is crucial for us to be able to regulate our nervous system. Some of these practices are beyond my scope to explain in any detail, but I have learned something from them all about deepening our emotional intelligence and it has been life changing.

In my own process, I have found that we need both the language and the ability to say it aloud to ourselves and then maybe to others to be able to navigate this experience of living. What does hearing ourselves actually look like? I thought I would share what I do and how it helps me. I welcome you to listen to what it is you do or try these on for size.

• I talk to myself out loud. At the risk of sounding (or looking) a bit crazy, this is one of the main tools I have come to rely on to help me find my way out of places where I feel stuck. I may be home alone, in the shower, in the car and I talk through what's going on as if I am talking to an audience. When I do this, I not only gain clarity, but I tend to hear my inner wisdom respond to what's been said and I gain insight
• Write out what is going on (or draw/paint, sculpt, play). Journaling is the method I use to help unveil and release the inner jumble. With a pen and paper in hand, I have to find the words and meanings. The writing of this, A Mindful Pause, has that effect for me. Your medium may be in some other form. As long as it expresses what you are feeling, it is valuable.
• Sharing with someone who listens well. When we have someone witness our experience and listen to our process of finding our own insight, we have a great gift. Finding that person (or community) that will hold the space, without inserting themselves, is worth searching for. If this is a new idea for your relationship, you can simply ask to try on a practice where you each have 10-20 minutes to share what is alive in you. You get to take pauses, moments of silence, where you wait to see what else is there and your partner won't interrupt, but has their full attention on you. The time doesn't end until the timer stops, even if you sit in silence for a while. Often more comes that we didn't realize was there and, sometimes, our biggest insight may arise in that waiting.

My invitation this week is to give yourself the space to stop, listen, and speak aloud what is true for you in a moment when you feel stuck in the mud, uninspired, empty, or muddled in some way. Hear yourself. We are worth listening to and we have more insight than we often realize if only we can stop and use our language to get clear on what it is.

🌱🌷
Jean