The full moon lunar eclipse in May puts a huge cosmic push into expression and creativity that are birthed from a place of truth. It’s time for us to show up fully in the light, placing our most inward feelings into manifestation in the world.
With the moon in Scorpio, there will also be no hiding place for what is deceitful or inauthentic. As we see feelings expressed into life, we may get some surprises when it comes to existing structures and relationships in our personal lives. We are to take these are wise guidance, as we make choices going forward.
Meanwhile, the sun in Taurus shines a light into our hearts and what leading a life founded on what feels easeful, loving and like home to us, truly is. Certain things have been building inside at an intimate level and now is the time to release them into lifer, supported by the energy of the cosmos. This is a loving energy which puts a glow around all you have been working towards and hoping for in terms of your daily health and lifestyle and your individual offerings.
Allow yourself to move with this universal energy and be an open channel for spiritual and creative downloads. This is an exciting and pivotal time for conscious and spiritually-connected humans.
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The full moon is a time of powerful illumination and energetic charge. Certain stories in our lives seem to climax at these times, while others begin. If we want to be in a receiving state to soak up the energy and direct it to where in our life it is needed, then meditating during full moon is a gift. It allows us to harness, assimilate and benefit from these cosmic energies in positive ways.
Whatever you might have been looking to clear and release, whatever visions and dreams you still have waiting inside of you to manifest, wherever within you there are things asking for compassion and acceptance, and those blessings you wish for your loved ones and the wider world, this is a powerful and magical time to bring them into your meditation.
I will guide you gently and deeply into your own deep experience, to fill your being with this cosmic light and allow it to support the healing of what needs to be healed and the expansion of what is ready to grow.
These are the words of the maid Aibileen Clark, in Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help” to her little charge Mae Mobley. Every day Aibileen tells the toddler Mae these same words and gets her to repeat them back to her.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Words are powerful. And the truth is more powerful still.
So it makes sense that words which reflect the deepest inviolable truth can deliver radical transformation.
Do you ever wake up in the morning fizzing with a low level charge of anxiety, wondering if you will be enough for the day ahead or whether you have been enough, ever.
Maybe that thought, that internal tremor of self doubt, quietly charges your day, so subtly you don’t notice it. Maybe it builds on itself, and escalates, creating a pressure cooker in your inner environment. And causes you to question yourself, limit yourself, push yourself – or to silence yourself and retreat from spaces in which you are desperate to dance with all your free expression.
Maybe this happens so subtly you don’t even notice it. Maybe you’ve just got used to living under its rule or with the struggle of having to press on past it in order to live the life you want to live. Maybe you do notice it, but it feels too overpowering to subdue.
If this rings true to you, please know you are not alone in this experience. You are in good company. Everyone has it. Everyone has times when they forget who they really are and need to be reminded. And Aibileen was wise to that. She knew as confident and carefree as the little girl in her care was, that she would one day be challenged by a conflicting viewpoint that might threaten to take her out of her innate free spirit. She also knew how quickly an external viewpoint can feel like an internal knowing.
Which it is not.
It just feels like knowing.
Especially if you have heard certain words over and over again, or told them to yourself regularly. They can start to feel like unquestionable reality.They can become encoded in you but they are not you.
How can we break the code and rewire things back to where they truly are?
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Aibileen cast these words around Mae Mobley like a spell of protection. A sacred reminder. A reminder so incandescent with the truth that any time Mae might stumble or wobble on her path and lose herself, the cell-memory of these very words would bring her home to herself.
This is the thing about words. And Aibeleen Clark knew this. They are not just symbols. They are not mere sounds. Words sparkle with energy and create powerful vibrations in our cells.
How quickly they can become a part of our being. Change the course of our day.
And here’s the good news, the great news. The amazing, liberating, life changing thing about words you need to know.
If words are so powerful as to seduce us into believing things that are false and misleading, and the truth is more powerful still, think about how powerful words which are true can be.
As powerful as it is possible for anything to be.
That expression “Speak the truth and the truth will set you free” is spot on.
And underneath all those layers of inherited or imposed self doubt and self judgement you know without a shred of doubt all you need to know.
That you are special. That you matter. That your unique soul deserves to shine.
You are more than enough. You are perfect. And your goodness flows through you like liquid gold.
“You is good. You is kind. You is important.”
Whenever you need a reminder, find the words you already know.
Listen to your soul, to what your instincts and individuality tell you and start to notice the voices that challenge that so you can create uncontaminated space around your truth.
Breathe, tune into yourself. Listen to your soul and interpret what it tells you.
Cast those words like a spell of protection around you every day.
Every time you give yourself a benevolent, gentle reminder of what deep down you already know for sure – you are creating the ultimate medicine. Actual inner medicine that is redemptive and healing.
You have your own words, but let me tell you this.
You are more than enough.
You spill over with goodness.
You are valuable.
You are important to the world.
You can relax. You’ve got this.
In your deepest personal space, you already know.
In this way, in every moment, you can welcome yourself home.
This is so simple and yet so powerful and I’d love for you to try it.
It only takes three breaths.
It can be done at any time, anywhere.
The Take Three Breaths meditation is for any moment in life where you feel the need to pause and check in with yourself.
You might be at a crowded, noisy airport, office or your own home. You might be stuck in traffic. Or you might be in the middle of a challenging conversation and need to centre yourself.
You can make it a special, regular moment of sanctuary just for you to enjoy – maybe sitting in a favourite spot in your home or outside or gazing at the sky or water if you love to do that.
It is lovely to take a Three Breaths moment with yourself at the very start and very end of every day.
The call to meditate is the call to notice and deeply feel how life’s energies are flowing in our beings right now.
Our primary relationship is with ourselves. As in any relationship, there is a craving within us to spend more time with ourselves. As with a lover, we feel the urge to connect, to discover and simply to “be with”.
Try it now.
Each breath is a full cycle of an inhale and an exhale.
You might have your eyes open or closed.
Take three conscious deep breaths and as you do so, let your loving attention move straight into your heart space.
Our breath enjoys a fullness there.
Take your time with each breath. Luxuriate. You might find yourself softly smiling as you meet yourself again.
You may have a sense of gazing or feeling or diving within. You may have a sense of being at an inner meeting with your eternal self, your unique essence. Or you may simply feel the peaceful, groundedness of the moment.
This three breath technique is both a union and a reunion.
It can become a delicious, supportive, self-connecting practice we can bring into our lives, several times a day, every day.
This simple and super feel-good practice has all kinds of benefits which reach beyond that moment and infuse our lives. It builds an emotional confidence. Your unique being feels nurtured, heard and seen. You know you are there for yourself.
I’d love you to try the gift of Take Three Breaths and let me know what you find.
At times of new moons, we are extra-supported in moving forward in our lives in ways which feel truer to our individual selves and nature.
However, does this ring true for you?
Does it tend to happen that, whenever you feel in a space of manifesting new creations and forging new pathways which you know are going to bring you closer to what you makes you feel peaceful, happy, healthy and most alive… “The Voices” come up? The gatecrashers at the party. The critics, the queriers, the nay-sayers, the fear-mongers, the ridiculours and the saboteurs? The ones you feel with every bone in your body don’t belong here and yet someohow make themselves feel so comfortable and welcome. Maybe they are saying
“this will never work”
or
“you don’t deserve this”:
or
“Feel that dose of tension and fear and insecurity we have brought with us as your party gift? Clue: this is a warning about what will happen if you make these changes.”
I’ve got good news.
This is meant to happen.
It happens to everyone.
It is a sign things are really shifting – when you can see the beings inside you who have, in the past, created the very obstacles in you that you wish to address now as you make plans to shift and grow and move forward.
When this happens, you can welcome it. You can make these seeming enemies your allies.
As adults, within each of us are the Old Tribe Rules and The New Tribe Rules. When we are children, it is wired into our sense of survival that our brains imprint and encode what our tribe tells us is true about life. “Don’t expect to much, you will only be disappointed.” “Don’t shout, don’t be too loud.” “Be brave, don’t cry.” “You may want to be an artist, but artists don’t do well in life – get a real job.” “Be careful.” “What a silly idea.”
And so on.
These are the Old Tribe rules.
As adults, we get the glorious and also challenging opportunity to create a new tribe with new rules that allow us to be fully ourselves – from small changes to new changes.
We need time and some self attention to allow our brains to relax into the new ways so they can encode them, just as we did the old rules.
This is where meditation comes into its own. When we are children, all of this encoding is unconscious. It happens automatically and surrupticiously. It creates literal physiological neural pathways. We just imbibe what the members of our trive tell us and show to us, over and over again until it travels in our bloodstreams.
As meditators, we are conscious and awake. Meditation is a state of relaxed alertness. It is the perfect space for healing the wounds we were caused by old programming and to form new neural pathways. Science has evidenced this again and again. So you can trust this process of being awake and holding space within you to get a good understanding of the voices that are coming up – where they really come from, what they really want for you. Originally, however it was manifested, they were there to protect you from something.
So one thing you can do, is to reframe them by seeing them as old protectors who leap up to help you because they are from the old tribe and that is what they know.
You can do this by saying, every time you feel that tension in the background, ” Thank you for trying to protect me but I don’t need that protection now. That was how the old tribe did it. In my tribe (or my family) we do things this way.”
You can be very specific:
“In my tribe, we encourage and support each other.”
“in my tribe, we know there is space for everyone to do their own thing and no one is a threat.”
“In my tribe, it is not selfish to care about ourselves.”
Or use the word family –
“in my family, we don’t tell each other to shut up.”
You can even add…
“…in fact, I am not even going to tell you (the Voices, the feelings of tension) to shut up.”
I have used this enlightened technique for years. I still do. Let me tell you, it is very powerful and joyeous athe more you practice it, the more you can be at peace to forge your own destiny, no matter what wants to “speak up.”
Meditation gives us space, it gives us choices, it shows us things tnhat give us powerful understanding of ourselves and our lives. The trick it medtate effortlessly – which means creating the space where you can honour and allow everything that comes up for healing – rather than use even a smidgeon of effort to resist, block or silence any part of yourself.
I will soon be recording a guided meditation for Creating Space For Yourself.
Your meditation practice can and should evolve. We know that we are in a dynamic flow of life. Both our outer and inner worlds are defined by motion in every sense. The universe is not static, creation is not static, we are not static – we as humans are active, creative, evolving, transitioning, changing.
Women especially experience profound changes in their hormonal patterns and physical beings at different times of life. This means that no one technique will work for us forever. We need to be constantly exploring and developing meditations for ourselves that keep us in healthy, in balance and full of mojo whatever stage of experience we are in. We need to be athletes – sensitive to how we need to prepare and live in order to move with strength, flexibility and artistry enjoy the sport in our individual life. In this sense, meditation is a place we can go to in order to receive nourishment and personal training uniquely matched to our own spirit, and to all the ways in which we we want to express and create and receive in the dynamic flow of our own rich lives.
Some people think that doing our inner work is naval gazing or selfish. For meditators, this can be a big force of resistance we need to work on melting so we can open up fully and dive more deeply in the meditative space which is so healing.
The thing is, wall human beings desire to be healthy and in balance, at home in their own skins and able to show up in the world , feeling full in all the ways we are called to and long to, as individuals. Our work as meditators can involve melting, dissolving, shifting and moving skilfully, moment to moment in our lives and in our meditation skills, as if negotiating a path in which there will be all kinds of “Shoulds” “should nots”, shame, guilt, feelings of being selfish or unworthy and undeserving of the time and space we crave. Lets get this straight – lets remind ourselves – working within ourselves mindfully, heartfully, sensefully and sou-fully is HOW we are being called to live. It is in our wiring – the fields of science, psychology, neuroscience, biomechanics, anthropology, sociology and the arts all back this up. We are called to live from within, to exoplore within, to heal within….for the greater good of healing for the world.
Think about it like this – when you feel at home in yourself, happy, healthy, balanced and in love with life – do you feel more able to able to give? More able to forgive? More able to respond to others? Able to uplift? To create and live in vibrations which are healthy, happiness and harmonious for the whole world? That is why inner work and meditation are the least selfish practices on the planet.
People often ask me what “brand” of meditation I teach. Like what “brand” of laundry powder do you use; what “brand” of jeans is on trend right now.
I guess that is part of our culture, to think of brands, trends and buzzwords. What is my “brand” of meditation called? It is called meditation. It requires no books, no guru, no strict practices and no control. All it asks of you is to be you. Which is the most sacred of all practices. And while brands and trends are subject to outside factors and come and go, meditation like this has always existed and will keep evolving forever. And you are wired to do it, you already know how to do it – though you may have forgotten. How does the drum of your own beating heart express itself to you? Let’s start there, That is the meditation I teach. The one that arises from your own unique essence. Both your classroom and your teacher are within, and while trends come and go, the desire and ability to turn inward, self-nurture and self renew are eternal.
The question of style or brand then turns back to you: “what does it feel like when you are meditating in your own way?”
But if I had a brand, my tag line might be: “Meditation. Where will you go today?”
There is a fabulous scene in the 1999 film “American Beauty” in which Annette Bening’s character Carolyn Burnham – an estate agent who feeds herself all day with positivity mantras from the self- help industry to mask her total lack of self esteem – has a brief, private meltdown after failing to make a sale.
Alone in an empty house, she starts to cry and as she cries, she berates herself for her “weakness”, physically slapping herself and screaming at herself over and over again, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!”
Within seconds, she stops crying, dries her tears, smooths her clothes and walks back into her world where appearance and image are everything and fearful walls have been built around that image to protect it from anything as chaotic as real feeling and emotion.
Bening’s character is modelling the “inner shut up” – the dominatrix that demands you suck it up, push it down, pull yourself out of it…do whatever it takes to make sure your inner experiences go unregarded and your real self, completely disrespected. Using the double poison of self repression and happy-clappy, manufactured positivity, she ironically casts a spell of bitter unhappiness on herself and all the others in her life.
How would you react if I suggested to you that every day it is likely you are investing a lot of energy in repressing and silencing yourself?
That the exhaustion and fragmentation you feel at the end of the day comes not from what you have experienced that day, but from what you haven’t allowed yourself to feel?
It is so easy to push ourselves and our feelings and reactions aside unconsciously, to overlook ourselves or, even worse, deliberately slap ourselves when we begin to feel our own self-expression rising up within us. There are all kinds of reasons why we do this: we often encode values at a very long age – values we have been given by schools, churches or critical parenting. We may have a deep fear of being seen to be “weak” by those around us; fear of being our real selves and thinking it better to project an image of someone stronger, better, more successful.
The trouble is, it backfires. No one likes to be hit. No one likes to be told to shut up. Imagine someone in your life were doing that to you all day, every day. How would you feel?
Pretty downtrodden, sad, lost and wounded, I would think.
Also, that which goes down, must come up. And sometimes it comes up at times and in ways we wish it wouldn’t – when we lash out at loved ones, snap at our kids, when our bodies get sick from all the slap-wounds and all the blocked energy of repressed feelings.
Every time we say to ourselves “I am wrong to think this”, “I shouldn’t indulge in this feeling”, “I can’t think about this now”, “I need to get over this and get on with it”, we are giving ourselves the slap down. And it is true, there are times in life when it is necessary and appropriate to park things. If you are a doctor about to perform brain surgery, you want to keep your mind focussed on the task. If you are driving a car, you don’t want to be drifting off into warm, fuzzy daydreams, you want to have your eye on the road.
But at some point, there has to be time to catch up with yourself fully, to play the full inner drama, to relish in every emotional connection you have made to life.
This is how we human beings have been designed for healing. We are meant to digest, process, experience, feel and heal.
This is where meditation is our biggest support, our therapeutic space, our perfect “me time”, our birthright healing space.
The danger is, that we may have got so used to avoiding and shifting away from our thoughts and feelings, that we bring this unconscious attitude into meditation. We may feel automatic shame or guilt when we have thoughts we think we are “not supposed to have” while meditating. When intense feelings and emotions rise up, we may try to escape them by deliberately turning our attention away from them onto something else – be it the sound of Om or a vision of emptiness. Meditation can be used as medication – as an anaesthetic – just like any other drug or disinfectant.
All those myths about “mind chatter”, “monkey minds” and “inner stillness” can dangerously impede the natural rhythm and flow of meditation. The inner shut up can actually stop us from meditating and subvert meditation itself into a place for control and discipline – the inner slap.
Your meditation thrives in the sacred space of your most tender, most open and curious and compassionate attention.
It can take a little patience and self- tolerance to cultivate an inner embrace and welcome all of yourself in meditation, but let me tell you, it is worth everything. Imagine being liberated from that constant inner put down. Imagine being able to live your life in a relaxed, easeful flow, experiencing the most intense things in life and the most ordinary, with an expansive and life-affirming field of awareness. Imagine being IN your body and soul, not parted from them. Imagine being IN your life, not separate from it.
I take my “catch up time” in a series of brief pauses throughout the day. As a busy working mother, this is has great efficacy and potency for keeping in touch with myself, and feeling healthy and inspired. As soon as I wake up, I spend five minutes allowing whatever is calling my attention to come forward. I have a “bring it on” attitude. Fragments of dreams mix with the motor of the to-do-list and hum in and out of concerns, tensions, anticipation and desires. It is like tuning up an engine before you start the car. I also bring in my own spiritual practices – prayers and protections for me and my loved ones. During the day, I can take breaks to pause and feel the touch of life on me. Anything from a moment’s trance or daydream to simply enjoying the touch of sunlight on my skin, the sound of bird calls or a song I like, the taste of my favourite tea.
If you feel you only have time to “come together with yourself” – to meditate – once in your day, my top tip is to make it at that time you transition from your action phase into your resting-and-unwinding phase. For many people, this means when you enter your home (or your commuter train or your walk to your house) after your day at work. Sit or lie somewhere alone, or take a walk, and begin to feel your whole being relax. As tension unwinds from you, you will feel it, so let it be felt fully. Remnants of unfinished conversations, moments of success and triumph, concerns, insights, plans – let them all come out to play and dance, process, communicate, meet and dissolve. Your nervous system loves this. It is in this way, your exquisitely wired inner healing system does its work. And let me tell you, it is worth the sacrifice your loved ones may need to make to wait five or ten minutes to tell you about THEIR days, for you to spend time catching up with yours. That way, everyone is happy and no one gets asked to shut up.
For more on meditations to suit the rhythm of your day, I recommend Dr Lorin Roche’s wonderful little book “Meditation 24-7”
You can download glorious, short guided meditations from this book, here: https://radiance-sutras.bandcamp.com/album/meditation-24-7
If you are interested in learning more about a delicious practice in which you can reunite with yourself at the deepest soul-level and which is massively practical for modern lives as well as deeply spiritual, my next Instinctive Meditation Workshop is in Brisbane on 29th August. More info here https://www.facebook.com/events/1023100621043196/
Thank you to my mentor Dr Lorin Roche for alerting me to this scene from American Beauty and the great discussion which followed.
