Category: Working With Change


Moments or Experiences?

Filed under: Consciousness Shift, Working With Change by Gaye Abbott — 2 Comments
July 22, 2012

Dear Richard -

Your last post made me reflect on how I am presently living my life Richard.  With all that is going on globally right now in every single facet of life attention often goes to worrying about what the next change will be and how we will adapt, cope, or be effected.

Meanwhile, the moments of our lives are going by at a rather rapid rate unless we consciously slow them down a bit.

How do we do that and focus not on the experience as a whole, but the moments that make up that experience?  It seems that is where the juiciness rests and the ability to be resilient within the changes.

The focus of the yoga class I attended today was on Emaho – the Tibetan invocation for auspiciousness.  This is an expression of joy, wonder and amazement to be found in the moment.  When was the last time that you said to yourself, or felt, “I am THRILLED to be right here, right now”?

We forget, plain and simple.  I know that I do.  Being in the moment – right here and now – seems to stretch that moment teasing us into the flow of breathing into our life, instead of avoiding or holding on tightly for fear of change.  Perhaps resilience is an ability to be fully present in the moment as much as possible where action can be taken, decisions made, wonder and amazement can be felt, and love given and received.

When I consider what I should put in my “toolbox for change” Emaho is definitely in there!  Just a moment ago I left this post and was distracted by the need to look in the frig to see what there was to eat when I all of a sudden came to a blank place about what to write next.  Instead of just resting and breathing in the moment I became uncomfortable and certainly not trusting that if I just waited for a bit the next bit of content would arise on it’s own.

I have to admit that I have a wonderful bowl of yummy food at my elbow right now tempting me to avoid this particular moment of writing flow, but I have vowed that it will not have its way with me!  How many times in our daily life are we distracted and leave our bodies, our relationships and our deepest desires in the lurch?

Perhaps this time of great change on so many levels is meant to bring us back “home” to the most important thing of all – the moment of being right here, right now.  The fact that we are simply breathing is phenomenal!  Have you ever considered that?  The pain and the joy of living tempt us to engage beyond the moment and make of it more than it is.  The only thing for certain is that everything always changes….nothing stays the same – ever!

That being said we have a choice.  String our life with experiences, or be completely in the moment to moment of those experiences with all of our senses and awareness present.  It takes courage to live life that way! …and the pay off is extraordinary!

With great love in the moment,

Gaye

P.S.  I know that I have used the picture at the top of this post before…but I find it so delightful and a testament to being completely in the moment.  It is one of my all time favorites!

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WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.BreathingSpaces.net
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:

http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

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The Dance of Light and Dark – Navigating Change

Filed under: Consciousness Shift, Game of Life, Working With Change by Gaye Abbott — Leave a comment
June 6, 2012

 

 

Today Richard and I received an e-mail from one of our community members which very eloquently requested guidance on being present to the vast changes and shifts happening all around and within us.  Our reader writes:

“The reality is, as you are undoubtedly aware, very turbulent and the earth and we are going through a lot of changes. So a grounded consciousness is required to navigate through it. There is a transfer of wealth taking place before our eyes so we may as well be on the receiving end of that too. So what I would like to have is more guidance from your experience. … The integration of spirit and the nuts and bolts are essential to expand the creative mind.”

There is widespread global agreement that we can no longer rely on systems and beliefs that have contributed to the devastation of planet, economics, social justice, and overall well being.  As this community member states “the integration of spirit and the nuts and bolts” is essential to re-balancing what has gone completely out of balance.  This also is about what Richard and I feel are the feminine and masculine energies coming back into alignment with each other on all levels.

I will leave the financial and economic wealth advising to Richard, but here is my contribution to the whole from a feminine perspective.  A day ago I read a story that struck me powerfully as a wake up call to pay attention to life moments and all that happens around us.  This story revolved around relationship, death and choices.  Very simplified this is what is always in front of us.

On a deeply spiritual level this is where our wealth and power to ride the waves of change rests…in the moments and the opportunities to integrate the heart with creative mind, engaging in the building of whole systems and relationships that contribute to the well being of all life. Accepting that death is a part of the living experience so that new life can evolve and awareness can be born.

Is it the smallest of events in our lives and the moment to moment choices we make that have contributed to the larger shifts that are upon us?  The beauty and the darkness dance together asking us to choose in every single moment.  In that very choosing and active engaging we ground ourselves over and over again.

Leon VanderPol writes: “It is all there in black and white, the dance of the light and the dark. While the puppet masters scheme for a world in which power is centralized in the hands of a few, a force of great magnitude shines brightly as it calls out to each and everyone of us to make a choice—to become truly engaged.”

What if the navigation system for this time that we are in is one in which we are absolutely present to the daily events and choices of our individual lives.  From that place we assist each other within relationship to work towards the good of the whole organism which we call Earth…one minute dot in the entire vastness of expanded life outside of our planet.  The wealth we seek is NOW in the choices that we make.

It is important to understand and have a feel for the shifts and transitions that we are in the midst of.  Yet,  if we take our attention off of the opportunities, choices, and decisions that present from moment to moment and become consumed and overwhelmed by the challenges that face each of us and our very existence….. we are lost.

So much is going on in any one moment.  What will we choose to engage with?

“I come to a tree so rich with autumn’s golds and reds it makes for a mild ache.  I lie down under it, close my eyes and let my mind wander.  I think of all that is happening elsewhere, as I lie here.  Nearby I can hear the sounds of a road crew.  Somewhere else monkeys chatter in trees.  A male seahorse becomes pregnant.  A diamond forms, a bee dances out directions, a windshield shatters.  Somewhere a mother spreads p-nut butter for her son’s lunch, a lover sighs, a knitter binds off the edge of a sleeve.  Clouds gather to make rain, corn ripens on the stalk, a cancer cell divides, a little league team scores.  Somewhere blossoms open, a man pushes a knife in deeper, a painter darkens her blue.  A cashier pours new dimes into an outstretched hand, rainbows form and fade, plates in the earth shift and settle.  A woman opens a velvet box, male spiders pluck gently on the females’ webs, falcons fall from the sky.  Abstracts are real and time is a lie, it cannot be measured when one moment can expand to hold everything.  You can want to live and end up choosing death; and you can want to die and end up living.  What keeps us here, really?  A thread that breaks in a breeze.  And yet a thread that cannot be broken. “

Eizabeth Berg from Never Change, pg 214

WEBSITE:  www.ResonanceWithLife.com

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.BreathingSpaces.net
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath Preview and Reviews can be found here:

http://resonancewithlife.com/daily-breath-book/

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Where Our Attention Goes, Energy Flows

Filed under: Be The Change, Consciousness Shift, Working With Change by Gaye Abbott — Leave a comment
March 5, 2012

Dear Richard,

Sustainable sources of wealth for our families and communities.  That is what stuck with me after reading your last post Richard.   We have a broad perspective on wealth at ResonanceWithLife, however it feels important to me to take a look at how our culture defines wealth and our part in the creation of that.  Where do we individually, and as communities, put our attention?

Recently I was given a very strong lesson in this universal principle – where we put our attention the energy always flows – and oftentimes makes it even stronger than it would normally be than if we put our attention in other places . The universal tendency is to place attention on what is NOT working.  That could be pain, emotional upheavals, stress at work, interpersonal connections -  most anything.  I thought I was immune being a particularly positive person…but turns out that I certainly am not!

It is easy to see this very strong biological imprint in action that rests deeply within our cellular make up.  This survival instinct has us always on the look out for anything that seems to imbalance or threaten our life as we know it.  Thus, we tend to put attention on the negative things as they seem to be what is threatening us – even if they really aren’t!

For example in a recent yoga class we were asked to consciously shift our attention from our “screaming hamstring muscles” in a particular forward bend.  Instead we were asked to think of someone we love and put our attention there.  Immediately when our attention was taken off of the pain, the discomfort actually lessened, and in my case I realized that my range of motion also increased.

Yet another lesson in this universal principle occurred recently within a powerful change in my own daily life.  Focusing on all of the negative factors put me in a place of extreme STRESS.  I wasn’t happy and the stress was building.  Physical health and life energy were being compromised as my new set of circumstances brought daily challenges which I was perceiving as negative.  I felt trapped.  An entrapment of my own making as it turns out.

Then something happened to cause me to reflect on how I was thinking and where I was putting my attention.  The learning curve that I was in brought with it stress, that was certain.  But, where was I putting my attention?!  On how much the life that I had been leading was being affected – loss of freedom and creative time, tasks that were being given to me that I either didn’t know how to do or didn’t have time to do, interpersonal conflicts that were arising all around me…and it went on.

After reflection I decided that I would try a little experiment to see if changing where I put my attention would make a difference.  An intention was set for the next day.  Attention went on everything that I was doing right on this learning curve, and taken off of any mistakes or inability to perform in the way that I thought that I should.  This attention also included words being used to describe experiences during the day.

You might be able to guess the result of this experiment.  The day went smoothly.  Interpersonal connections were easier.  Everyone seemed to be happier in my environment….and I was a lot less stressed!!

So….given that our economies are under tremendous pressure and changes right now, I ask the question where should we be putting out attention?  On fear of loss and drastic financial change?  Or ways that we truly can create sustainable sources of wealth for ourselves and our communities NOW, based on a deep planetary interconnection with all of life?

Where your attention goes, energy flows!

With Love,

Gaye

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Wide Open Mindful – Resting Within Change

Filed under: Game of Life, Natural Wealth, Working With Change by Gaye Abbott — Leave a comment
November 23, 2011

Dear Richard,

Recently it became very clear to me once again (it seems we have to keep teaching ourselves these same lesson over and over!) that there will never, ever be another day just like the one I am experiencing now.  Not even close.  Change is what happens every single moment of our lives.  We work so hard to keep things “the same”, yet that is absolutely impossible.

What if you had finished an appointment having had your hair cut and had an hour to wait until a friend of yours arrived to share lunch in the same location.  Mind might have you going off to do errands, getting on some electronic device, going to a regular walking path about a mile away, or wondering what the heck you were going to do with that time.

In fact, you had gotten in the car and were about to drive away and lose your precious parking spot, were in fact half way out of it, and then stopped completely as you took a breath and realized that perhaps there might be a different opportunity right here where you were.  Magically,  directly ahead of you, a well worn dirt path past a baseball diamond appeared.

Locking your car and putting on walking shoes the journey begins.  A short little dip in the path lands you on a most amazing walking path shaded by trees and along a waterway.  It feels as if you have just stepped down into an imaginary world so different from the business of the city just above.

This in fact did happen to me recently.  A path much less frequented than the one that I would have driven a mile or so away to walk upon – and filled with the magic of herons, mallards, squirrels, birdsong, a multitude of trees, and smiling faces of all ages.

Walking an unknown path often means that you wake up to what is around you, seeing and experiencing things in a different manner.   In reality we always walk a different path every single moment of our lives adapting, changing and creatively maneuvering each step along the way.  Yet, if we don’t pay attention, we miss huge segments of our lives completely!

A young female mallard that I watched closely on this particular walk reminded me of this change.  Seated on a rock wall with my legs dangling, reaching towards the lake not far below, I watched this particular female attempt to negotiate with the wind that was blowing across the water.  Her small community of other ducks had found a place to stand on rocks basking in the sun with their heads turned backwards into their feathers to rest.

Yet, this duck decided that the wind was much too cold for her so she kept attempting to shelter behind a rock while floating on the water.  As soon as she would get her head settled back into her feathers to sleep the wind and tide would take her out of her shelter and in direct contact with the wind as well as her sleeping companions.

Abruptly taking her head out from sleep position she would paddle back to the same place that she was in before.  I watched this happen over and over and over again.  Does it sound familiar to you?!  Finally after 15 minutes of this she realized that this just wasn’t going to work as the perpetual movement of tide and wind were very much in control of whether she was going to rest in a sheltered place.

I, of course, saw several places that she could rest in without being blown about, and proceeded to tell her so suggesting that she ground herself someplace to rest.  Applause on my part broke out as I watched her settle herself on top of a nearby rock, take her head back into her feathers, and sleep.  Now this was in the wind, but instead of being moved about by the ever changing currents she found that there was a way to rest within the elements.

What I learned from this young female duck is that adapting to the ever present changes in order to take a restful time out is part of living with the constant ebb and flow of each moment.  Doing the same thing over and over again and not achieving what you really want has a useful lesson in it.

Allow the shifts and changes to teach you about possibilities.  Imagine into another way.  The day you wake up to this coming morning will never be repeated in just the same way as it is today.  What an amazing adventure!

With Love,

Gaye

OTHER BLOGS BY GAYE ABBOTT:

www.BreathingSpaces.net
www.WildlyFreeWoman.com

WEBSITE:  Natural Wealth

www.IgniteWealthNow.com

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