Today at 9 am Pacific Time. One more chance to join me in the Thinking Peace, Eating Peace webinar: Steps and Jewels you need for the journey home to peace.
We start at 9:00 am Pacific Time, and this is exactly the same time slot as the 3 month program which starts next week on Tuesday, November 17th.
We’re warming up for a great time of insights and practicing freedom around where we get stuck in our thoughts and our feelings that fuel feeling bad about eating (or living).
Join me today by clicking HERE (no opt-in required, 90 minute presentation).
***********
Yesterday, it was very dark, and rainy, and drippy. White whispy clouds hung low, hovering in the tree tops across the water in my neighborhood.
I had the thought….It’s still early November and we haven’t even hit the solstice yet.
Dark times ahead. Literally.
Sometimes in the distant past, this created some depressed feelings within me.
I smelled them for a second yesterday.
Uh oh….what’s that smell?
Depression, it whispered. Darkness.
I suddenly had the thought “this is going to be a terrible winter, I can’t stand it.”
A sinking feeling of sadness. Anxiety.
The word “anxiety” is as old as Latin when the roots of it meant choked, squeezed…..or to distress or trouble something.
It wasn’t used in psychological terms until 1904, only about 110 years ago.
Often, when people feel a foreboding, or sensitivity to encroaching darkness, or pictures in their head and the feeling of heaviness or adrenaline…..anxiety.
I jumped on my bike.
Well, OK, it was exactly “jumping” on my bike. It took me 45 minutes to leave the house, after getting my ipod charged and finishing replying to emails.
With my down coat, drizzling rain, wool skull cap, gloves, and headphones in, I hit the trail.
At first, I was freezing.
But as always, the body warmed up, the blood started pumping, the air felt so fresh and good in my nostrils and lungs, on my face.
And I listened to one of my favorite wise men, Michael Singer, speak about the nut-case mind….
….and how we’ll believe things so easily, take a thought so seriously, feel very grave about a vision or idea.
Haha. Gosh. Sounds kind of familiar somehow.
The mind goes wild, faster than a locomotive trying to order both ourselves, and the world, around, or avoid dangerous things.
OK OK!
I CONFESS!
My own dreary thoughts had kinda gotten under my skin a little. Reminding me about dark winters and having ideas like “what a boring world” and “what’s the point” and “this isn’t good”.
With just a little reminder, I was laughing.
Actually laughing, noticing how genius I was to ride my bike on such a Seattle Monday with zero people on the trail but me.
A heron swam in the river, geese flew high above in a V-formation, the rain stopped entirely, the wind blew threw the gorgeous taller-than-tall poplar trees lining the river.
The light was so incredible, I was in awe.
I took photos (the one above is one of them!)
Remembering that you don’t have to believe everything you think is so amazing, so enlightening, so freeing….
….the world seemed dazzling.
And what changed?
Only a person’s perception, apparently, riding along on a bicycle in some section of the big wide reality, not believing their thoughts in doom and gloom.
And then, the sharing of it here.
If I can do it, you can too.
Truly. You don’t have to have some massive assistance, or conscious-altering lightning bolt hit you.
You don’t need anything but the other side of that whisper that was full of warning about such things as darkness and discouragement….
….Just a few questions:
- Is it true?
- Are you sure?
- How does that feel, what do you notice, what happens when you’re thinking that?
- How about when you’re NOT thinking that? What’s that like?
- What if this is exciting, awesome, loving, delicious, safe, temporary, wonderful?
And maybe a little encouragement, that wasn’t anything you could have planned, dropping in at just the right moment.
Or not.
“Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering.” ~ Tao Te Ching #48
Much love, Grace
P.S. Peace Talk’s latest episode from yesterday is HERE.