The True Secret to Better Self-Esteem
10 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in relationships, sacred living, self-care, women's health
Nope, it’s not gazing into your eyes in the mirror and spouting Stuart Smalley-like affirmations. (“I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me!”) It’s more about looking at yourself in the mirror — really looking at yourself — and smiling rather than grimacing. Letting the light in your eyes shine back at you, so you are seeing beyond the gray hair and smile lines and double chins (my least favorite aging attribute), to what is deep within and shines out with kindness to most everyone except yourself.
It comes from true accomplishment, from the smallest act of household organization to the largest act of bravery in standing up for someone less fortunate than you. It comes not from thinking I am wonderful, so no matter what I do is OK, but from taking moral inventory and acting as if what I do matters in the healing and repair of the world.
And it comes from allowing ourselves to truly take in and receive the gift of our offerings. It’s easy to think the smallest thing that someone else does is great and that the largest thing we’ve done is nothing much. I talk to so many women who feel, as I often do, that if I’ve done something, well, gee, can’t anyone? Doesn’t everyone? “Really, it’s no big deal that I lifted that boulder off of your kid…oh, but thank you so much for that glass of water, it’s delicious, I was so thirsty!” Sound at all familiar?
There is a difference between self-esteem and self-worth and I think they too often get mixed up. There isn’t much to be said for someone who thinks their shit doesn’t stink because someone always told them how wonderful they are; self-esteem without unselfish acts is just bravado. But self-worth that comes from even the smallest acts of kindness is a foundation to be built on and trusted. It allows us to know and show our basic humanity, and to act in ways that help us remember the world isn’t here to reflect only our joys and needs.
Most of us are a mix of both feelings: the cheeky bravado AND the self-effacing minimalist. So the true secret is this: practice holding the paradox that both exist, and see what new thing emerges. Usually we’re so busy pushing unwanted or uncomfortable feelings away that we don’t allow ourselves to rest in the gap, where the real juicy truth lives. My invitation to you? Spend some time in the gap, the space between what you know and what you don’t yet (or don’t allow yourself) to know. Take a few deep breaths and feel both places within you…find out what happens when you rest in the question. And here’s a poem to point the way:
New Year’s Meditation Celebration
29 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in body awareness, mindfulness, poetry, sacred living, self-care, spiritual inquiry
Whether you’re a resolution-oriented person or not, there’s something about this stretch of time — the dark, the quiet, the inevitable change of digit that takes getting used to as you write those first few checks in January — that evokes a feeling of introspection and reflection.
And so I invite you to join me this Saturday, December 31st, from 11 am to 12 pm est for a New Year’s Meditation Celebration. It’s my gift to you, and an opportunity for you to:
- Look back at how 2011 unfolded.
- Look forward to your intentions for 2012.
- Partake in meditations designed to solidify your presence and focus for what’s ahead.
This will be a chance to step into a circle of conscious creation, and begin the new year with more clarity, purpose and a rich sense of possibility. And it will put you in a great space for whatever festivities you’ll partake of to celebrate the transition to the year ahead.
The Time: Saturday, December 31st from 11am to 12 pm EST
The Place: From your home, via my teleconference line; 610-214-0200, Access code 543342#
The Cost: $0, though the content will be priceless!
Another View on 11/11/11
11 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in relationships, sacred living, spiritual inquiry
Today has an unusual date, one that many feel is numerologically important and profound. There are folks all around the world who are heralding it as the beginning of the end of the Mayan calendar, and perhaps the end of our time on this planet. Others see it as a time for new beginnings, the only time in history when we can write the date with only this most primary of numbers. And for some, it’s just a chance to be silly by renaming it Nigel Tufnel day after the character in the movie This Is Spinal Tap, because ‘the very dimwitted Tufnel shows off his amps and their dials that are numbered up to 11, a notch higher than typical 1-to-10 amps. They’re superior because, after all, “11 is one louder than 10,” Tufnel said.’
All that is enough reason to take note and call the day auspicious. But when I tried to go to the bank to make a deposit I found it closed because today is also Veteran’s Day, and that got me to thinking. I am one of those total peace, love and tie-dye folk who really wants to believe that no one should ever have to go to war, and that the world would be a better place without guns (or at least with much more limited access to them, like for people who need to hunt to provide food for or defend their families against bears and other large creatures).
At the same time, I am totally awed and amazed that people willingly risk life, limb and sanity to go off and fight for other people’s freedom. I am delighted that the front runner in this season of Dancing With The Stars is J. R. Martinez, a wounded veteran whose true beauty lights up the room despite the burn scars that cover half his face and totally destroyed one of his ears (and who has become an absolutely gorgeous dancer).
In doing a little research on the Web, I found the following on The Huffington Post:
“Believe it or not, November 11th was not made a holiday in order to celebrate war, support troops, or cheer the 11th year of occupying Afghanistan. This day was made a holiday in order to celebrate an armistice that ended what was up until that point, in 1918, one of the worst things our species had thus far done to itself, namely World War I.”
Writer Kurt Vonnegut, a WWII POW later wrote:
“…November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy all the people of all nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veteran’s Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veteran’s Day is not… Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”
Whatever 11/11/11 actually does or does not mean in the grand history of our planet, those are words worth remembering and fighting for — even for a peacenik like me.
Fun with words
04 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
I just played around on a site called “Wordle” to create this word cloud on mindfulness. A fun visual map of the endless journey of meditative practice…
Strong at the Broken Places
26 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in mindfulness, relationships, sacred living, self-care, spiritual inquiry
It’s that tender and fragile time of year, as the season of fullness and harvest
wanes and the season of turning in begins. This week marks the official end of
summer with the autumnal equinox last Friday and the beginning of the Jewish
New Year this Wednesday night – an auspicious time of change and opportunity
for renewal we all can access.
A lot of people I’ve been speaking with lately are feeling a shift. Relationship
patterns are changing or breaking apart, worries feel bigger, and the political
climate is about as bizarre as anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. While
everywhere we look people are rallying to have us follow them on Facebook and
Twitter, where is all of this following and ‘connecting’ really getting us?
I’m often told that this is the way to go to get more people on this list, to find and
build my tribe – yet a big part of me balks at going along with the crowd and
often all of those posts only make me end up feeling, well, more crowded!
(How many Tweets and long lost friends can a person really keep up with anyway?!?!?)
What I and it seems many of us are longing for now is a true sense of
community, of belonging and connection that can only be met up to a point on
any social media site. It’s a longing for deeper connection with That which
both creates and sustains us endlessly. It’s a longing to make a difference, in
even the smallest of ways, and to know that our time here on Earth matters
beyond trivial pursuits.
The Deeper Reality
There is a story from Jewish lore that tells of a group of people who quietly
live their lives in pursuit of the healing of the planet. It goes something like this:
What if the entire universe depended on you for its existence? What if you had the power to be a major force for positive change in the lives of those around you? Have you ever felt that there was a different “you” inside your skin, one that had a greater role to play in the world than you do within the confines of your everyday lives?
This is the legend of the Lamed-Vav (pronouned Lah-med Vav). The name derives from two Hebrew alphabetic characters, Lamed and Vav. In Hebrew, as in Latin, alphabetic letters also have a numerical value. The combined value of these two letters is 36.
The Jewish Talmud tells us that there are 36 hidden righteous people who live ordinary and obscure lives, but the existence of the universe depends on each and every one of them. If a single one of the Lamed-Vav did not exist, God would, in effect, lose interest in the world and all of what we consider to be reality would immediately disappear.
Your Healer’s Path
So here is my question to you: what if you were one of the Lamed-Vav and
didn’t know it? What would you be doing differently? How would you be
speaking to yourself and to others? What gifts would you be sharing that you
are currently keeping hidden, perhaps even to yourself?
This is what I am pondering as I head into the holiest weeks of my ancestral
tribe. I’d love to hear what you are pondering, either through your own inner
journey or sparked by this question. Come and talk about it on the blog, and
let’s go deeper into building our tribe of the heart.
Since this issue is so alive for me and many others right now, I’m inspired and
excited to invite you to take part in a class that will offer support, clarity and
community.
Strong at the Broken Places: Heal Your Heart and Claim Your Ground
If this strikes a chord with you or sounds like someone you know, then
please join me on Monday October 10th at 7:30 pm EST for this f*ree 90
minute teleclass on the (perhaps reluctant) healer’s path. This call is for you if:
* You believe that you have something of value to offer the world, but fear it’s too small to matter.
* You’re tired of holding your tongue and your truth to avoid upsetting others.
* You have a hunger to use your own trials to help others through theirs.
* You are just plain weary and wanting some support to keep moving forward in the face of some big challenges.
I will be providing some deep teaching from ancient pathways along with a
guided meditation to ground you in your own connection with Source, and some
tools to take with you and incorporate into your daily life. There will also be
time for Q&A and an individual mini-session with one participant that will
support every person on the call (since on the Ultimate level, we are more the
same than not).
To register and receive the call-in info, send me an email– sharon@heartofselfcare.com — with “free call” in the subject line. And until then, let me know what this evokes in you by scrolling back up and clicking “Leave a Comment” right below the date.
Unplugging in the Sensual Garden
23 Aug 2011 1 Comment
I’ve just returned from four days of camping, hiking and relaxing in and around Ithaca, NY. You may have seen someone wearing a t-shirt that says “Ithaca is Gorges” and now I really get it. Below is just one of many amazing shots I got at one of the local parks:
It was hard to walk more than 10 feet without lifting the camera to take a shot! It was enchanting and mesmerizing, and after a while I couldn’t even take another photo — just drank in the sound, the energy, the motion and the sense of history that was held in the rocks and the water that split them in two.
It was also a time of no cell phone, no computer, no TV except for a little bit on our last luxury hotel night. And it was a perfect time to be reading Lama Surya Das’s new book Buddha Standard Time. In it he talks about how we can live in this hectic, plugged-in world and still find ways to connect with our natural rhythms, a big focus of my writing and coaching.
Spending time in natural settings is one of the best ways to re-attune with inner rhythms and your connection to the world around you. If you haven’t had a chance to get away yet this summer, or if that getaway time was filled with family, friends and activities, I invite you to step outside sometime today. If you don’t have a yard or quiet space at home, find a local park, stream or patch of grass. Take your shoes off and feel the ground. Turn your phone off and gaze at the sky or any tree or shrub that catches your attention. Be with just that for a few minutes — breathe it in, develop a relationship with it for this period of time. Look down and see what insects might be crawling around, doing their little bug thing. Smell the air and let the fragrance inhabit your body. Move in ways that you usually don’t — slower, more mindfully, as if you have all the time in the world.
Just because vacation time is over, don’t think you can’t take the time to be attuned to anything but your schedule. Make moments of refuge in your busiest day, and feel the power of how taking some time back helps expand the time ahead of you. And if getting outside feels impossible right now, then I invite you to step into this gorgeous landscape from the arboretum at the Cornell Plantations, another big part of my recent sensory vacation:
Why Meditate?
15 Aug 2011 2 Comments
in mindfulness, sacred living, self-care, spiritual inquiry
I have been swimming in the waters of holistic living and spiritual exploration for so long that I can take certain things for granted. In a funny way, I figure if I know something then it is common knowledge, something I simply picked up from the ethers of human awareness. Ummm, actually no. And things I think are self-evident are not always so.
Take meditation, for example. Yes, there has been a lot of positive press about it over the past couple of decades, and yes it is often linked with concepts like serenity, self-awareness, clarity and wisdom. But along with that are many misconceptions about what it is, what it isn’t, and why it actually helps.
One point of confusion is that there are many forms of meditation. There are guided meditations and visualizations for healing and pain relief. There are metaphysical meditations that focus on angelic realms and out-of-body experiences. There are shamanic meditations that bring you into altered states to gain information from plant and animal spirits. And there is mindfulness meditation, which is what I want to address in this post.
My own relationship to meditation has been fraught with challenges, stops and starts, frustrations and wide swaths of time spent avoiding the cushion at all costs. Sometimes I find myself switching forms depending on the whim of the moment, whatever feels easiest or most comforting. Other times I’m just too damn lazy, or have convinced myself that I’m meditating any time I’m fully immersed in what I’m doing at any moment — washing dishes, folding laundry, reading a book. True to a point, but I also know very well that there is much to be gained in developing a consistent practice, and that discipline is what my often laissez-faire approach to life is crying for to create balance and clarity.
So what keeps me struggling? Because it is simple but not easy. Because it shows me exactly how wild and erratic my mind truly can be. Because I’d rather read stories of other people’s mental acrobatics and inner battles than experience my own. Because, as any meditator will tell you, actually getting your tush on the cushion is 90% of the battle.
Meditation is not about clearing your mind of all thoughts, although you may get there from time to time, and more so with practice. Meditation is not a magic state that most people sit and just pop into at will within thirty seconds of sitting on the beautiful new cushion that they carefully chose for this very purpose. Meditation is the act of harnessing your awareness to a specific point of focus, usually the breath, and continuing to point your mind towards that point of focus over and over and over and over again for a specific period of time. Simple, but not easy, as anyone who has tried it can attest to.
So why meditate? Why, if it is so difficult and frustrating, if it is a mirror that shows all of our mental warts and wrinkles, would we want to do it at all?
Because, as the Buddha skillfully pointed out, all life contains suffering, our attachment to wishing it was different makes the suffering worse, and there is a path to freedom from suffering. And that path is paved by developing awareness of what our minds do and training our awareness in various ways so we can learn to abide in the spaciousness that rests beneath the busyness. It’s like the relationship of waves to the ocean — on the surface there may be turbulence and rough passage, but beneath that is depth and cool stillness.
Meditation helps us find the depth and cool stillness that resides within each of us beneath the turbulence of our thoughts, desires and grasping to control outcomes. Meditation gives us a base from which we can learn skillful ways of working with our most stubborn, negative, arrogant and disturbing thoughts. When we learn to ride the waves and not fall off our board, weaving through the tunnels and riding in with the foam, we gain confidence. We gain compassion for those who fall more often and with less humor. We gain clarity about our abilities and our strength, and learn to know when it’s OK to go back in and when we need to just wait out a storm.
Meditation is a great adventure. Even a “bad” meditation, where you spend the entire time realizing that you can’t stay focused on your breath for even 5 seconds without thoughts crashing in, is a “good” meditation because you took your seat. It’s called a practice because you have to keep doing it to gain any benefit. Sometimes the benefit is simply in knowing that you made the effort. And over time, with skilled instruction, you deepen the benefits by deepening your ability to both ride the waves and plumb the depths.
The gift of downshifting
21 Jul 2011 2 Comments
in body awareness, mindfulness, self-care
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about speed, slowness and what it really takes to get where you’re going in life. And it’s been heightened by a deliberate shift to driving slower on the highway, actually setting my cruise control to the speed limit (rather than the 5 miles over that I used to go, which still had people whizzing by me). A few months back someone told me of her amazing savings from going 55 mph, and with gas prices still hovering close to $4 per gallon it seemed worth a try.
Well, not only am I getting about 3-5 miles more per gallon simply by driving 5 mph slower — enough of a good reason for me! — I find I am still getting everywhere in about the same amount of time and in a much more relaxed manner. I used to be one of those people who was just set on making the best time I could, especially on my 150 mile weekly round trip to my NJ workplace. I loved passing those ‘slow pokes’ and shifting lanes to be somewhere ahead of them but behind the ‘maniacs’ going 80 and up. Now I enjoy watching everyone else vie for speed and dart in and out as I hang comfortably in the right lane. I feel I have greater control of my car and am actually more alert, my shoulders are less tense and I arrive without feeling I’ve just been on a racetrack!
I’m also finding it to be a great analogy for how I do life in other ways. So many of us tend to run around at breakneck speed, thinking it will help us get where we’re going faster (which is assumed to mean better), and that the more we get done in a day, or an hour, will automatically translate to more success, more money, more happiness. But I think it’s really the other way around — by driving the speed limit, or finding my own natural speed limits around how much time I spend online, or on the phone, or pursuing any unconscious behavior, I gain so much.
I’m more composed. I’m more aware and present to what is right in front of me. I am more relaxed when I do get on the phone because I’m making sure I don’t answer in a Pavlovian way. And, when I control the amount of time I spend checking e-mail or doing ‘research’ online, I gain an enormous amount of mental and physical energy for the things I do want to focus on. Like writing more blog posts 
.
Go ahead, give it a try. Drive a little slower; check e-mail half as frequently as you usually do; let calls go to voicemail if you’re deep in a book or creative project, or pick up and tell the person you’re thrilled that they called and you’ll call back in half an hour. Purposefully shift gears from 5th speed to 4th or 3rd, and let me know how you’re enjoying the ride.
Ready to Rule My World
14 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in sacred living, self-care, spiritual inquiry, Uncategorized
This is inspired by a challenge posted on Alexis Neely‘s blog last winter called “How to Rule Your World.” I hope it gets you thinking about how you can rule your own world (the true gift of sacred self-care).
Ruling my world means I am peaceful whether I think my husband is right or not.
Ruling my world means that my heart can break and heal in the same moment every time my mother’s health deteriorates a notch.
Ruling my world means that I stand tall and speak loudly for human rights and needs — clean water and food, shelter, safety and peace, basic education, for all sentient beings (especially humans).
Ruling my world means that I don’t need to impose my ideas on others, but am available and willing to share information that they request or find helpful. It also means offering more freely and being willing to hear “no” if it doesn’t resonate with them.
Ruling my world means that I play bigger than I ever have before and allow my dreams to inspire my actions.
Ruling my world means that I stay connected to That Which Creates Everything so I don’t forget that I am not the creator but a conduit. And it’s my job to keep the channel clear so the best signals come through.
Ruling my world helps me move past lethargy into action more consistently, and not taking myself so seriously that I hide in my cave and wonder when the change will come.
Ruling my world is an ongoing event that grows easier with practice but only ends when I do.
What does it mean to you to rule your world? Will you step with me into sovereignty?
Love and blessings, Sharon~*
Lifelong intentions for each new year
10 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in mindfulness, sacred living, self-care, spiritual inquiry
I was looking through some older journals this morning, and found that I’d written much over the past couple of years about wanting to weave my understandings from Kabbalah and non-dualistic teachings more fully into my wellness and self-care work. In this entry from 2008, I pulled myself back from being what I called a distraction factory and here is what came out:
“I want to teach about splitting and making whole, about the shattering and rectification that arise constantly throughout creation. I want to declare “hineni” (Here I Am, the ultimate spiritual declaration of readiness) and help others to do the same. I want to help repair as many threads as possible so that the world may become whole cloth one day. I want to declare myself a soul weaver who uses the Tree of Life as her loom.”
Those feel like words worth living by. As The Great Creator said after each act on those first six days, Ki Tov…It Is Good.
What is your declaration of good intent? For this year? For your life?
