Try it again at different times of the day—when you're feeling rested and when you're feeling tired, for example. Or when you're feeling serious and when you're feeling playful.
It's pretty daunting, really, if you consider how many unconscious thought clouds we generate in a day—especially the fear-based ones that don't evaporate as easily. Those are the ones to watch.
Just a thought. (Wink)
Explore
What it feels like to download my thoughts without censoring them . . .
Differences between thought clouds recorded at various times of day . . .
What the thought cloud exercise reveals about me . . .
DAY 333
REVEALING LIGHT
Awareness is like turning on a special light switch that allows us to see more clearly our true, unplugged, unfiltered, spacious selves. I like to think of this light as being on a dimmer switch: The more we turn it up, the more we can see.
Our job with clearing is to turn up the light switch, slowly, and allow any and all information (as energy) to arise without personalizing or judging.
In his book The Way to Love, Anthony de Mello makes a similar invitation:
If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is, accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you. Only you will not be in control of those changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time.
What does it feel like to turn up the light on yourself? What do you see when you let go of judgment?
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When I turn up my inner light, I see . . .
What is being revealed to me when I let go of judgment . . .
DAY 334
MIRROR EXERCISE
The steps that follow offer a simple way to raise your light of awareness. Try it for one minute sometime today when no one is around to make you feel self-conscious:
Find a quiet and private place to stand alone in front of a mirror for at least one minute. What do you notice?
Allow your squirmy stuff to come up without doing anything to fix or manage it.
Notice your inner critic piping in with any commentary about your appearance.
To the degree that you are able, watch the thoughts without giving them any importance or judging them as good or bad.
When the minute is up, notice how you feel.
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What I notice (and feel) when I stand in front of the mirror . . .
How I feel now . . .
DAY 335
MIRROR MEDITATION
Today's practice is a variation on yesterday's mirror exercise. Give yourself some time for this and see if going deeper helps to release who you are not, and reveal more of who you are.
Stand in front of a mirror.
Close your eyes, and take a deep breath in and a slow, emptying breath out. With each out breath repeat out loud, slowly, three times to yourself: “Let it go . . . just let it go . . .”
Take another deep breath in and slow, emptying breath out and say out loud “Show me your spirit, (your name here).”
Keep breathing, and allow the words to sink in. Let the thoughts and feelings come and go. Tune in to sensations: smells, sounds, images.
When you feel complete, open your eyes and notice what you look like to yourself. Do you look softer or younger than you did before you started the exercise?
After you've had a chance to reflect in your journal, repeat out loud, “I exist. I matter. It is safe for me to show my true self.”
What do you see when you open your eyes? What do you feel?
Explore
This mirror meditation reveals about me . . .
Saying “I exist. I matter,” feels . . .
Why it is safe for me to show my true self . . . (Notice the parts of you that may not yet believe it.)
DAY 336
CHECK IN—SPACIOUS REVEALING
The focus this week was to shine the light of awareness on the aspects that we love about, and judge, in ourselves; to see what might be revealed when we look at ourselves more closely in a photograph, thought cloud, or mirror.
What does it feel like to shine light on yourself? How does “turning up the light” release what no longer works for you? For example, do negative thoughts lose their charge when you name and feel them?
Explore
What it feels like to turn up the light on myself . . .
How turning up the light releases what no longer works for me . . .
Other revealing aha moments I've had this week . . .
WEEK 49
LOVING UP OUR SPACES
When you come in home here,
May all the weight of the world
Fall from your shoulders.
—John O'Donohue, “For a New Home,” To Bless the Space Between Us
DAY 337
WELCOME HOME
Honey, I'm home!
One of my favorite TV shows growing up was The Dick Van Dyke Show. I never tired of watching Rob Petrie walk in the front door, put his hat and trench coat in the closet, do a playful quickstep around the ottoman, and kiss his welcoming doll of a wife, Laura, dressed impeccably in pearls and an apron. June Cleaver, the devoted mom in Leave It to Beaver, had a similar feel-good effect. What can I say? These people made me feel welcome. Safe. Loved up.
One-dimensional, white TV–fiction aside, coming home should feel good. We should all feel loved up in our homes. The problem is, we forget that our home can be a sanctuary. Maybe not “in pearls”—maybe a far cry from pearls, in fact—but nevertheless alive and dynamic.
We forget that the container we call home holds a space for us all day and night (not to mention all our stuff). When we focus on what's wrong with them—“the sink keeps clogging”; “the windows are filthy”; “there is not enough closet space”—we forget what is actually right with them. We forget that we're blessed to even have a home.
What is it about your home that you are most grateful for? This week, you'll have a chance to find out and “love her up”!
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What I love about my home is . . .
What I am most grateful for about my home . . .
DAY 338
BATHE YOUR HOME IN LOVE
When my friend Nancy and her husband were building their house in Mexico, they wrote down a blessing on a piece of paper, placed it in a jar, and buried it in the ground before the cement trucks arrived to pour the foundation. It felt like a powerful way to set an intention and honor the place that would long outlast their time there.
You don't need to build a house and bury an invocation to honor your home. An appreciative blessing of any form is potent no matter what age, stage, or condition your place is in.
What is it about your home that you love? Take a moment today to write a letter and tell her. Tell her what you love about her and the specific ways she supports you every day.
As you write, imagine the words washing over (purifying, cleansing) your entire home and property inside and out.
Bathe her in love.
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Dear Home, what I want to say to you is . . .
What it feels like to bathe my home in love . . .
DAY 339
HOMES ARE LIKE US
I've alluded many times to our spaces and houses being “alive,” and just as people can become ill, our houses can get sick too. Since we can't give a house ibuprofen or an antacid, how do we help our home get better?
Our homes and workplaces are extensions of us. Through doorways and hallways
, they circulate energy (chi)—or they don't, depending on how cluttered, congested, and gummed up they are. They expand and contract depending on the weather. They are affected by the land they sit on, neighboring properties, and yes, even the residue of memories left behind by previous occupants. Like people, our homes get stressed out, out of balance, even sick. But they also respond well to love.
How healthy is your home? What is one thing you can do today to nourish her? (PS The appreciative blessings you wrote in your letter to her yesterday are excellent medicine.)
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On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being super healthy, my home is . . .
One thing I can do today to love her up . . .
DAY 340
LIGHTEN UP YOUR LIVING SPACE
Today's exercise is a great way to sparkle up a home, workplace, car—any space you occupy. This is an abbreviated version of the meditation I use with my clients at the end of a space clearing consultation to help them integrate the session.
Toward the end of this process, there will be an opportunity to place a “discerning field” around your space.
Close your eyes, and take an easy breath in and out.
Put your hand on your heart and ask to connect with the purest form of unconditional love and golden light radiating from the Divine or your concept of a higher power.
When you feel connected, invite this love and light energy to gently infuse and envelop your home (apartment, workplace, car . . .) until the space feels completely loved up.
Ask that this love and golden light energy act as a “discerning field,” and that it hold for the highest good of all concerned for as long as is required. This invisible layer acts to filter out any negative influences that no longer serve your home, family, coworkers, and/or other occupants, visible and invisible. Note: the discerning field will not filter out that which is needed for your soul to evolve.
When you feel complete, open your eyes and notice what your space looks and feels like now.
Does your space look or feel brighter, or different, than when you began? How do you feel?
Note: Don't worry if you don't see or experience shifts right away. It may take a few days for the energies in your space to integrate to these higher frequencies. Look for subtle changes in ambient light continuing into the week.
Explore
What it feels like to energetically “love up” my space . . .
I've noticed these shifts since starting this practice . . .
DAY 341
LIGHTEN UP YOUR PERSONAL SPACE
It is easy to adapt yesterday's meditation to lighten the body's physical and energetic spaces as well. Placing a discerning field around yourself is an excellent way to establish clear, clean energetic boundaries with others. Once you get the hang of it, it works quickly to restore balance when you feel contracted, unsupported, small, or jangled.
Note: With any kind of energy work, be gentle with yourself. If at any point you feel inordinately tired, stop. Drink plenty of water, and practice extreme self-care. Give yourself time to grow the spacious muscle you need to do this powerful work.
Close your eyes, and take an easy breath in and out.
Place your hand on your heart and ask to connect with the purest form of unconditional love and golden light radiating from the Divine or your concept of a higher power.
When you've connected to your heart space, invite this love and golden light to gently infuse you with sparkling, healing energy until your entire physical body (cells, blood, organs, limbs, skin, hair—everything) feels completely cleansed and purified.
Once you've filled up your physical tank (so to speak), beam this clear, sparkly energy outwards, beyond your physical body, to infuse the subtle layers of your personal energy field, until it too feels completely cleansed, purified, and filled up (loved up).
Ask that this divine golden light and love act as a discerning field filter around your entire being—physical and energetic—for as long as is required.
When you feel complete, open your eyes and notice how you feel, beginning with your breathing.
What does it feel like to love yourself up this way? What does the world look like from this expanded place?
Explore
What it feels like to expand energetically . . .
What it feels like to allow heart energy to nourish me and lighten my load . . .
DAY 342
PLEDGE TO HONOR AND SUPPORT
Take a minute to consider one small way that you can honor, support, or bless your home every day for the next week and write it down in your journal.
When you feel ready, stand at the main entrance of your home and “expand out” using yesterday's lighten up process. Declare your intentions out loud beginning with this statement:
This week I promise to honor and support you by . . .
Notice any squirmy resistance you might feel around making a commitment in this way.
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What I promise to do this week that will honor and support my home . . .
Ways that honoring my home honors me . . .
DAY 343
CHECK IN—LOVING UP OUR SPACES
The focus this week was to raise the vibration of our physical and energetic living spaces by inviting higher frequencies of light, love, and gratitude.
What are some of the shifts that you've noticed since you consciously began blessing and loving up the spaces you occupy? Have you noticed any subtle changes in the quality of ambient light in your home, for example? Do you feel more expanded in general? Is it easier to set and maintain clearer boundaries with others?
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Some of the shifts I'm noticing from consciously loving up my home and my self are . . .
What has worked best for me this week to bring more light into my home and life . . .
What can help me remember to connect with home in a more sacred way . . .
WEEK 50
DREAMING BIG
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
DAY 344
ANSWERING THE CALL
I am continually amazed by what can happen when we dream big: put one foot in front of the other, throw in massive amounts of chutzpah, and answer the call of a deep yearning in the face of not knowing.
I watched this play out in my own family two years ago.
For my husband it was a dream to walk the entire Camino to Santiago de Compostela. For years hed talked about making the five-hundred-mile pilgrimage from France to the northwestern coast of Spain. He planned long and hard for it; saved money; told his clients he would not be reachable; packed (and repacked) his bag to get it down to a mere eighteen pounds; and, at the age of fifty-seven, made it happen. It took him five weeks to complete the journey.
For our then twenty-one-year-old daughter it was a calling to study in Paris and become fluent in French. Through sheer grit and determination she managed to squeak in enough language credits to get herself accepted into Sciences Po, one of the most selective and rigorous political science institutions in the world. Her dream to take high-level classes in French was audacious, especially given that just a year earlier her command of the language was zero!
What callings are bubbling up (or bursting forth) in your life? What life dreams are you ready to step into once and for all? What is your purpose here on the planet?
There are infinite ways to get unstuck and connect you to the stirrings of your soul. All you need is to start somewhere. And keep going.
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What is stirring in my soul . . .
One of my life dreams is to . . .
I believe that I am on this planet to . . .
DAY 345
DIVE IN
This message Anne Lamott posted to her Facebook page made me gulp:
Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir o
r novel written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.
Truth is, for most of my adult life I have held myself back from diving into delicious warm pools and oceans because of the “mess” that it would make of my hair. My hair! Unless my curly locks were in need of a wash anyway, I always chose looking good over feeling good.
What is keeping you from “diving into” that big, juicy life that is calling you forward?
Use your journal today to expand your awareness of a deep yearning (and “jiggle” loose what might be holding you back).
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One thing about me that I love and want to cultivate more of in my life is . . .
A deep yearning I have . . .
Ways that I hold myself back from embracing life with gusto . . .
A Year to Clear Page 24