We are all seeking relief of some kind or another. The feelings of helplessness. An incessant itch. The ache for an intimate relationship. The feelings for safety and security. The want of abundance. The heartache of loss. The list goes on.
My moments of self-care in a day get de-prioritized as I am distracted from one thing to another. Obligations and commitments, responsibilities and expectations all play a role.
I use 15 minutes of silence today to find solace in my heart. Like the puppy dog so full of energy bouncing around, I sit with my mind using patience and wisdom and let it be where it is as I watch from my Higher Self.
Like a wisdom keeper, my Higher Self holds knowledge beyond my mind. My Higher Self holds space for me as I flit from one moment to the next struggling and cavorting through life’s tasks. My Higher Self is there, steady and true.
I hold my Oh My God points on my head, gently feeling my temples with my thumbs and my fingers resting on my forehead. I breathe and patiently wait to feel a pulse of life on my fingertips. The time it takes is the time it takes.
I use mindfulness to feel my eyes slowly blink with awareness. I am grateful for breath in my body as I deepen it with awareness in through the nose and out through the mouth, blowing it steady and gently through a straw. I fill up an imagined cup before me with my life pulsing energy and drink it back down creating a link between my energy outside to inside.
I feel my stomach puff out as I breathe in counting slowly to four, hold for the count of four, out to the count of four, and hold to the count of four. A perfect rectangle of breath as I trace it again and again. I have the power to calm my heart, calm my mind, calm my breath. Calm.
I imagine the steady pulse of my heart travel down as energy travels into my legs and into my feet. It may take a minute and I have patience, waiting to feel the pulse of life reach the ground level of my being and be one with the earth. I am fully in my body.
I am the vessel that holds my soul. I am the gift of life that beats my heart. I am the breather that gives and takes to fulfill my human needs and my spiritual needs. I Am.
My awareness helps me monitor where my mind is at, where my breath is at, where my heart is at. My awareness informs my next steps for self-care. My awareness is my mindfulness. I practice mindfulness knowing I am worth every moment of my self-care. I am grateful for my presence. I am grateful I am listening. I am grateful for my wisdom. I am grateful for my willingness as I go about my day.
“Repeating something to yourself in order to remember it is a natural memory strategy that almost everyone uses from time to time.” - Angela K. Troyer, Psychology Today
Using this technique, I now repeat three times:
God, Goddess and all that represents love and light,
grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
God, Goddess and all that represents love and light,
grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
God, Goddess and all that represents love and light,
grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Participants’ Reflections:
Thank you. I needed to hear the serenity prayer today. I've been in intense itch and pain all night from poison ivy covering my whole body and couldn’t sleep. When I got the poison ivy, I searched for energetic healing and natural remedies. I went to the doctor to verify it is poison ivy. I felt like I was doing everything in my control, but yesterday the pain and itching got so unbearable, I went on an oral steroid which I think is more poisonous than the poison ivy. I used the serenity prayer to make that decision. It's all about acceptance and not trying to bend the world to my way. It doesn't mean I am giving up on the natural remedies. I needed this reading to help me keep my sanity. Thank you.
For the last several weeks, the verse 'be still and know that I am God' has been screaming at me. In that stillness, in your reading you used the word 'calm' several times. It made me think, if I can just let go and let my Higher Power continue to guide me and be in that stillness, then that's where true peace is. Pushing things ahead never works. It's only returning to that empty space of stillness and knowing that true movement occurs. And we forget that. So thank you.
The OMG points is a technique that Donna Eden uses. You put your thumbs on your temples and your fingers on your forehead. We naturally do it when we're feeling great distress. It's touching points that are calming which is why we do it. Same as why we wring our hands, we are rubbing our palm chakras. As I hold my OMG points, I want to feel the pulsing in my body. But I don’t really feel it yet but I focus on feeling it until I get a glimmer in my fingertips. And that's when I release it. It takes the time it takes, and it's a way of calming. It feels calming. Sometimes I cover my eyes and just escape. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm not doing anything except touching the places on my physical body where energy lies that is calming. And where the fingers touch is the third eye as well.
Thank you for the reminder. It also reminds me of something I was doing instinctively. When I come out of a meditation or a prayer, I would cover my face with my hands. When I was in Guinea, I noticed after prayer, Muslims do that. They said they do it to imprint the prayer on themselves to keep what's important, to hold it close, to help it go in and embody it. The wisdom of our souls.
The experience of doing that for me takes me out of thinking also. It reminds me I am not my mind. I am not thoughts of the past and future. It brings me into the present and stillness.
I am concerned about a friend who volunteers and sees need everywhere outside herself. She is in recovery because she got a bad form of cancer. I told her she has to set some boundaries. I was thinking during the meditation that I can tell her to picture herself as one of those needy people and give attention to herself. Self-care is okay. We are one of those needy people. If we don't protect our health, we won't be there to help others. We can’t be as present to help others.
I want to thank you for that reading and the serenity prayer. It's been a powerful piece in my life when I've needed to redirect my energy onward. I felt my heart connect to you as you read it. We forget how powerful it is when we are vulnerable and willing to be felt and seen. The other thing I wanted to share is during the meditation, I sat down and my head felt heavy. At first, I wished someone would take what felt like a blanket off my head. I looked up and saw a Blue Jay and Red Cardinal just staring at me through the screen door. When I went back into the meditation, my attention had been drawn to the birds singing outside, and I started to hum. I imagined the humming cleaning me, going up the back of my head and to the side. And I imagined the sound was pushing the cloggy stuff up through my chakra with a good intention that it would transfer somewhere and not just plop on someone else. It felt like it made a difference, and when it came around to the front of my head, it stopped. It was perfectly timed with the end of the meditation and then the crystal bowl rang. I share that because I forget that I'm the one doing the housecleaning for me, and it's important for me to take care of myself too.
In terms of the serenity prayer, I know there are things I absolutely have no control over even though I wish I could change them to be different. I get confused over what I can help change or what could be in my control. It's so murky with my family member's health.
It's like what we talked about yesterday, choosing the little things that we can change. Working on the little things. Because I remember with my daughter, as much as I tried to, I couldn't change the big thing. But I could the little things, like creating quality of care for me and for her. It helps me be more present in my life.
I appreciated your reading and want to thank you. I appreciate how you expanded the concept of God in the serenity prayer. That was meaningful to me. Sometimes when I've used it, I leave off ‘God’ and I just say 'grant me the serenity… ' So it opened up a spiritual piece that wasn’t there for me before.
This has helped me. With the pain in my foot, and everything else we are going through, life gets a little overwhelming. I feel like I’ve helped myself with the things I’ve talked about here and the things I’ve done. I have a serenity prayer coin that I use in teaching Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, and I use that coin to pass between my hands. And I’m going to keep it in my pocket today when I start feeling closed in by today’s activities. I’m going to use it to help me keep my serenity.
Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for being present, feeling, seeing, hearing, knowing. We all do the best we can and we use the tools we have available to us. We pick up the tool and put it down again. It’s our choice. I believe there is no failure, there is success in everything we do. If something doesn’t work out, we just tweak it and move on to have it work out. I encourage you all to be gentle with yourselves. Hugs to everyone here.
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