Virtual Pause

One of the basic needs of being human is to have safety and security. We all deserve that and should have it for ourselves and help others have it – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

But sometimes our identity is tied up into what we believe will give us safety and security, and make us whole, when really these are just false programs of happiness at play. When we are gripping onto these things tightly, we are either hiding – playing small and staying silent or striving – exerting ourselves in ways that aren’t aligned with who we really are. All to try and gain some sense of safety and security.

In this episode we will identify a time where we experienced chaos and look at the boundary lines we have created for ourselves. We will determine if our sense of worth is tied into the safety and security of these boundary lines, and then let them go, trusting in the boundary lines set out for us by our creator.

Listening portion:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;

You make my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

Surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

Even at night my heart instructs me.

I keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With the Lord at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

The heart is our organ of perception. As human beings, we naturally look to something or someone for our identity and sense of self-worth. And when we look to others for who we are, we create chaos, as we move towards that which brings us praise and away from that which we are told we are not good at or shouldn’t be. The perception of others dictates our way in the world.

These things are deep within us. Rock upon rock of our stone fortress has been built around our hearts for years. Our true self is hidden. Our worthiness feels nonexistent. Let’s get out of that stone wall and connect our true selves, our worthiness, to God.

Listen

“‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.  I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you…”

Ezekiel 36: 24-27, NIV, the Bible

The Pause, or any contemplative practices that integrate body, mind, heart, and spirit, can transcend circumstances over time. In other words, the peace that you feel during a Pause can actually occur in other circumstances of chaos.

Today we will visualize ourselves at the top of the summit, with unobstructed views of miles of beauty. We will let go of our need for control and surrender, our need for acceptance and receive authentic divine love, and our need for security and trust.

Listening:

Maybe I Am Traveling (from The Book of Hours)

Maybe I am traveling, like some secret ore,

I don't have much wisdom about misery.

Ranier Maria Rilke

We have a choice – to show up with our false self or our true self, every moment of the day. Yet without even realizing it, we easily slip into our false self masks, and our true self gets covered up.

In today’s episode we will notice our tendencies – notice how our false self is showing up and how it behaves. It may be striving, grasping, running, numbing, hiding – just to name a few. But it is all for the purposes of feeling a sense of false self-protection.

We will identify a mask in our current lives, and dig into its root, so we can let go and accept reality as it is, which is when movement towards wholeness and healing can take place.

For our listening portion today:

“Let Something Essential Happen to Me”

O God,

let something essential happen to me,

something more than interesting,

or entertaining,

or thoughtful.

O God,

let something essential happen to me,

something awesome,

something real.

Speak to my condition, Lord,

and change me somewhere inside where it matters . . .

Let something essential happen in me

which is my real self, God.

—Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace, 2004

We make our new years resolutions and if you are like me, you mess up by January 3rd – missing the mark, not doing what we intended to do or being who we intended to be.

When we experience pain or frustration because of our own mistakes or someone else’s, it is easy to run into isolation and hide in the dark. Instead, we can go into solitude and connect with our creator, receiving love for our darkness and light, our achievements and our failures.

In this episode we will attempt to dig into why we hold onto our own self-judgments when we fail, let go of our tight grip, and receive acceptance and love for all that we are.

For our Listening portion today:

“We with our unveiled faces will gradually reflect like mirrors the brightness of God. All will grow brighter and brighter as we are gradually turned into the image that we reflect.”

2 Corinthians 3:18

*Throughout this episode, I quote a meditation from Richard Rohr titled “A Mutually Loving Gaze”, January 3rd, 2022

https://cac.org/a-mutually-loving-gaze-2022-01-03/

When we experience stress or even what seems to be small moments of trauma, our bodies take it in. Our stress hormone increases, and we can find ourselves not sleeping, feeling jumpy at the slightest thing, mentally foggy, over-emotional or checked out, and just not present. We believe our faith should be enough to overcome these things. Yet when our faith is not embodied by our entire beings, then we relegate our faith to the limits of our mental and intellectual understanding.

In this episode we will identify an experience of stress and notice how it shows up as tension in our bodies, shortened or shallow breath, and what emotions it creates. Then we will release the effects that the stress has on us by settling our bodies, tuning into the present moment, inhaling and exhaling to bring our stress hormone down, letting go, and listening to our souls as we connect to our source.

Our Listening portion today is from Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Episode 37: The Great Gap

In this season as we prepare for Christmas, I often feel a sense of melancholy. Yes, there are so many things to do and fun to be had, but I get a very melancholy feeling inside when I stop the busyness, even for a moment.

I realized that what Christmas represents - from the Christian faith and also even from a secular perspective- is joy, peace, and love. Yet often the world doesn’t feel that way, even after Christmas has arrived. Instead, the gap between what is and what should be feels like the Grand Canyon.

In today’s episode we will let go of the things we hold onto, or that occupy our time or our minds, that keep us from being present in the moment, with its dark and light, that keep us from receiving the love of the divine versus clamoring for the acceptance and approval of others, and that keep us from trusting in our path versus trying to find security in a path that wasn’t meant for us.

Our listening portion today will be from Thomas Merton:

Inner silence depends on a continual seeking, a continual crying in the night, a repeated benign over the abyss…For He is found when He is sought, and when He is no longer sought, He escapes us.

-Thomas Merton

Episode 36: Confidence

Confidence in our abilities often comes from the way the world perceives us and gives us feedback. That confidence is coming from our false self. Confidence from our true selves is when we are unfettered, unhindered by the world’s voices, and move throughout life as love. We love our neighbor as ourselves, or love our neighbor from a place of our true self, or God indwelling. Being confident doesn’t stem from our ability to believe in ourselves. It comes from our ability to shed what the false self told us who we were to begin with.

In this episode we will identify a characteristic in us that has allowed us to be successful. We will then determine if this characteristic feeds a need for control and power, approval and acceptance, or safety and security, which tells us it is a layer of our false self. We will let it go so that we can move forward from a place of our true selves – the center of stillness in us, our diamond light.

The man who cannot simply close his eyes

Knowing there is image after image

Far inside him, waiting quietly until night

To rise all around him in the dark it’s all finished for him, he’s just like an old man.

-Maria Ranier Rilke, translated by David Whyte

Our first two episodes in this series of Mining Our Diamond Light addressed the walls we build or allow to be built around our true selves, which covers up our diamond light. The first part focused on not building any more walls, the second focused on knocking those walls down. In this episode, we will look at the walls we either create or fortify to block someone else’s experience of living out of their true self. We will first let go of any walls that we notice around our own hearts, and then identify a place where we created an obstacle for another, and let it go.

Our listening portion today is from Howard Thurman:

(Our) concern with the imperative for social action is not merely…to feed the hungry, not merely to relieve human suffering and human misery. If this were all, in and of itself, it would be important surely. But…the basic consideration has to do with the removal of all that prevents God from coming to…(fullness) in the life of the individual. Whatever there is that blocks this, calls for action.