Remembering

Memorial Day is a time of remembering, so I thought I would write about memory itself.

I have a particular psychological disorder that affects perception and memory. On the spectrum of this disorder, I am for all intents and purposes minimally impacted, but there are ways that my peculiar way of storing memories impacts my daily existence.

Inner Voice or Outer Voice

In meditation we get quiet with ourselves.

When we are quiet, we can access messages that are not usually accessible. Some may call it our "conscience" or our "intuition", some may simply think it's another layer of our own thoughts.

It's all in the Mind

In the normal modern consciousness, we are often caught up in the next moment, the next day, the next week. We’re always planning and preparing, thinking through the future, criticizing our past, reminiscing, acting in habit while our mind wanders elsewhere. A mindfulness meditation is the opposite and cure for the act of living outside the moment. A mindfulness meditation involves being completely in the current moment, acting with deliberation and clear consciousness, bringing the mind back time and again to the present and what is actually going on. This is a tool we should all have in our consciousness arsenal. There are times to plan, and times to focus on the present moment. It is possible to find a place in every moment where you are completely aware of your surroundings and your place within them, and of nothing else. We should each take some daily action without being focused on what we’re about to do, or going over what we’ve already done. The act of being fully present to what you’re doing helps relax us and calm the mind. This quiet time for our mind can bring us to profound peace with the world and with whatever is going on right now in our lives. Please join us this Monday evening at 5pm EST for Let’s Heal the World Together and we’ll discuss our experiences with mindfulness meditations.

Taking care of our Mother

On Mother's Day we celebrate our individual mothers, the beautiful wonderful women who perhaps brought us or our parents or grandparents into theworld, who scrubbed the crayons off our childhood bedroom walls, who soaked the gum out of our hair and who cried as we walked down the aisle -- whether for kindergarten graduation, college graduation, as the bride or bride's maid, or carrying the casket of a friend who went off to war and didn't come home. Perhaps we were celebrating the beautiful woman who brought our child into the world or nurtures our children. With the weight of life's roller coaster on each of our shoulders, there's one Mother to us all who bears the weight of every one of us, both in resource and in spirit. Our Mother Earth. I know we have "Earth Day" but that's a planetary garbage awareness day, a day for reusable shopping bags and ecopreneur shows, and quickly being commoditized. We need a day to honor our spiritual global Mother, and by extension the connection we share with each other, regardless of our species. And it would be nice if that day didn't require reusable bags and trade shows. Do something simple to give back to Our Mother. A simple healing or prayer, as her blood is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, sending her love, giving her a giant hug, welcoming and loving all her creatures, donating to the World Wildlife Fund, thinking peaceful thoughts, walking barefoot, or whatever you can think of and join us on Let's Heal the World Together on Monday evening at 5pm EST to talk about our connection through Mother Earth.