Focused Pine Cone Meditation

my meditation alter

Since the Life Extension Conference I've been practicing meditation more regularly.  The type I've been doing has been pretty active on watching the breath and staying very focused on that without exploring much mind chatter.

Today I did something different, I know that I have a few things that I'm focusing on that are challenging and I wanted to sit with them more specifically.  I was drawn to the pine cone on my alter as a symbol of nascent possibilities.  

I held the pine cone in my seated position and it felt really refreshing to have something in my hands to draw my attention.  I closed my eyes and started to explore some areas that I've found challenging -- which, though I don't want to get into here, mainly have to do with resisting being self-expressed in a couple areas.

As I drew by thoughts out from the last few days, I could see my mind drifting around and I could ask myself how these thoughts were related to the pine cone.

I thought of birth -- maybe challenges can be viewed as something that can be birthed through.  Uncomfortable, challenging, and scary -- I imagined a newborn not liking the sensations of being pushed through the canal into a completely new world.   That said, without this first challenge, nothing greater would be known. 

Babies do not resist this process, there is no scrambling to get back in.  They're soft and pliable and accept the push that is given.  When I look at my challenges a big thing that I can see is a scrambling to move away from the contraction.  I spoke yesterday about how my inner five year old just wanted to stomp on the floor and have a temper tantrum because the challenge was too confronting, too hard, and something that I've tried at many many times and not succeeded at.  It's all resistance and fight.

I wondered what challenges would be like if I did not resist them, if I let the contractions move over me.  Surely the process would be uncomfortable however worthwhile in the end.  It seems to me that if I don't face them now, that they will just keep coming up until a bigger push comes along.  The choice is to go through it or bury it for later.

Carl Jung continues to pop up for me, "That which you resist, persists."  And I can see that I've been resisting not only going through these challenges but experiencing the emotions that go along with them. 

I thought of what it would be like to go from having challenges with resistance to moments of "isn't that fascinating" with curiosity and wonder to life's contractions.  I think that going head on with the latter would be wonderful, and I know that I'm much closer to really knowing that going through the challenge is what's most important right now...maybe the step after that is to cultivate challenges into fascinating moments.

Standing Firm with Arms Stretched Out

First it is necessary to stand on your own two feet. But the minute a man finds himself in that position, the next thing he should do is reach out his arms. ~ Kristin Hunter

~~~

Today I am seeing, full force, how communicating with others about what's happening in my life offers them the space to make a contribution and expand upon what I am open to seeing.

I'd like to share two examples:

The Bee

Of course, creating butterflies means getting stung...and that's exactly what happened yesterday. A bee got under my sandal and the stinger went into my toe!

I felt a sharp pain up my leg and sat down to examine it as tears came out of my eyes. I was scared and wasn't sure what to do as I'd never been stung before. Before reaching out to anyone I took the stinger out myself and was quite aware that the pain continued. I got up, and proceeded to hobble home. In doing so, I had no idea what I would do with my toe after I got there. In that moment I had a choice: do this on my own (internet search) or ask for help.

So, I called my mom and she advised me to be with a friend so that if I had any sort of reaction that I'd be safe. I would have never thought of that myself, so I took her advice and called a friend. He lived a block away from where I was and was quite helpful! I even learned a few things about allergic reactions and bee stings because his father (who is a doctor) was over to visit.


Class Enrollment

I'm teaching a free class about understanding and tracking the monthly female cycle to young women and their moms staring in late July through August (if you're in San Diego and would like more information please email me).

I would love to create an intimate space to do this and that, to me, means having a safe community around the class. At this time I only have 2 moms & daughters enrolled and I would like to have at least 1 or more teams involved to run the class. However, I was really nervous about advertising to the general community because I want to be selective about who is in the class since some of the information could be viewed as controversial ("it's a sex class!"...which it's not)

I was speaking with my charter school colleague today and mentioned the class to her and asked if she could put out the word for me to her friends. She mentioned putting it on a San Diego yahoo list and I got very reactive about not wanting the "wrong" people in the class.

She then offered a great idea: to enroll in the class, individuals need to have a conversation with me about the class before signing up to ensure that everyone has the same vision.

Before having this conversation with my colleague, I was seriously thinking of canceling the class because I couldn't see a way to expand my network.

So, today's homework: reach out listening for contribution, even when you think that you don't need to, you'll be surprised at the results. Feel free to share your work here, I'd love to hear about it!