Which Meditation Techniques Are Right For You

Meditation Truth

(Reprinted with Permission From the Excellent library of articles on Meditation at   http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2721602)

Which Meditation Techniques Are Right For You

Posted: 18 Dec 2008 04:17 PM CST
If you’re looking for meditation instruction or want to learn some meditation techniques, whether you’re looking for meditation and relaxation techniques, or if you want what you might call spiritual meditation techniques, whether you need anxiety relief, and whether you’re looking for meditation for beginners or advanced students… no matter why you want to meditate, you might want to realize that there are different types of meditation. And not every meditation technique is right for every person.

There’s a reason why Tiger Woods doesn’t play football.

There’s a reason why you don’t want see Henry Kissinger on Dancing with the Stars.

There’s a reason why, as it’s said in ancient texts, the Buddha taught 84,000 different meditation techniques to his 84,000 different students.

There’s a reason why in Hinduism they say that each person has his own god and must discover his own way of praying to and, ultimately, becoming one with that God.

And the reason is obvious: we’re each unique.

Who you are is different than who your neighbor is.

So it’s helpful to work with the way you are, rather than fight the way you are.

In other words, if you are Christian, you may want to explore Christian meditations.  There are dozens.

If you are Jewish, there are many Jewish and Kabbalistic meditations.

If you’re Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist, there are meditations that emphasize the beliefs and ideas inherent in each of those religions.

If you don’t think of yourself as religious, you might want to take a moment to think about your own personal nature, your own psychology.  For example, are you someone who enjoys sitting still in a quiet place, or are you someone who needs to be moving in order to process information? Are you someone who is able to feel sensations in your body easily, or is your body just that thing that happens to be attached to your head?  Do you enjoy probing philosophical ideas and looking for the way things work?  Are you better at following instructions, or would you rather have the barest bit of direction and then go off on your own? Do you easily get absorbed in something that you’re reading or in your own thoughts or feelings, or does your mind easily move from object to object?

You see, none of these are a problem.  There are meditations and meditation techniques designed to work with any one of those situations… and many that I haven’t even brought up.

I have a good friend who was one of the first Western meditation teachers. And asking him to sit down and keep his attention focused in one place for an extended period of time doesn’t produce deep meditation results for him, because that’s not the way he’s built.  But practices that allow his him to move his attention throughout his body, from experience to experience, and investigate deeply what he’s experiencing and how he’s experiencing it… well, with that technique, he’s an ace.  If he had gone to a meditation school that said, “Concentration is the only kind of practice,” he would never have become a great meditation master.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a test that you can take, a meditator’s personality test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Meditation Personality Inventory, that identifies different characteristics that you have and different meditation techniques that might fit who you are.  So you may have to poke around a little bit.

This is where your discerning wisdom is important. Because some meditation teachers will say their technique is “the only one” and that you can’t go jumping from practice to practice.  “Like digging a well,” they’ll say, “you have to just keep digging until you hit water.” That’s a great metaphor, but sometimes there’s no water where you’re digging!

So the best suggestion is to find a meditation practice that gives you immediate results, and then dig there for a while.  And if it doesn’t continue to give results, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you’re trying to dig a well in the desert, or whether you haven’t dug deep enough.  My recommendation is trust yourself rather than getting answers from anyone who has a monetary interest in you agreeing with them.

In other words, if you ask your teacher, “Should I stay, or should I go?” and they say “Stay! And you need to come to the advanced workshop for $5,000,” then, personally, I would go to another meditation teacher.

It’s not uncommon, and in the Tibetan tradition for teachers to say to a student, “I can no longer help you. Here is the name of someone I’d recommend you study with instead.” If your meditation teacher isn’t willing, or able, to make that kind of suggestion then you might consider that important information.

I don’t think that meditation requires believing everything the teacher says.  It’s about becoming independent, and discovering and trusting what is genuinely authentic for you.  Be careful, if someone suggests that they know better.

From Meditation Truth
http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2721602

where there are numerous other highly entertaining and interesting articles on Meditation.

Meditation Truth

Wow

I haven’t even had time to read everything that’s here. But this promises to be the best meditation site I’ve seen in a long time!

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2721602

Read it and tell me what you find, what you like.

I’ll be back!

Love, Ann

It’s All Good

I got the oddest message from my ex-husband, Marvin, on that last post about “Every Time I Turn Around Something Goes.” (And Marvin, it would be a joy if you would post such things here on the blog as Comments.)

I say “odd” but I guess I should have expected it. It’s the same stuff he’s been telling me since we met in about 1985. Marvin lives in Florida with his new wife, Paula.

Here’s the note:

Healthiest mindset ever on the blog!
Can you implement & stick to it?
Or will we be reading about some terrible thing next month?
 
You are right about a game; one with specific rules to master.
I recommend Brian Tracy CDs.
I’m also sure you will find his process foreign, boring, etc. & that is exactly why you need them.
He can teach you business culture & language.
 
Love & blessings, Marvin”

Let’s look at this.

That first sentence is sweet. I know it is intended as a compliment. Just for fun, I went back and read one of my blogs about being homeless, jobless and carless, just to see if that one came across in some way that would trigger this idea that the current blog is “healthier.”

I don’t get it. Sounds really healthy to me. I am pretty sure he reads most of these.

And, on the other side, how do we know that it is quote “unhealthy” unquote to cry and sob and pound our fists on the floor? Or to have “unhappy” times? It is certainly built in to the system. Show me a single human being who doesn’t and hasn’t had these times!

I realize some people make some kind of constant joy or some imagined better future into their dreamworld gotta have it, can’t have a negative thought, oooh watch out!  There went another negative thought, gotta stop having those! Can’t get enlightened with those hanging around!

What absolute crap!

These are what we call “Statistically Impossible Goals.”

That is to say, that if anyone anywhere ever managed to achieve this imagined future bliss bunny state, they would be the first (and only) human ever to do so. Something like what?  200 BILLION humans have walked the planet and we have never read an account of a single one of them who didn’t have “negative” thoughts.

Let me just counter the Jesus Freaks and Buddhist Bunnies first.

Remember when Jesus got so pissed off he ran through the temple yelling at the moneylenders and knocking vendors wares off the table?

And Buddha – everything he did was based on the idea that he had to make up some imagined better future. Don’t tell me he sat down under the Bodhi tree and got up without his “negative” thoughts. No. It’s more that he finally stopped arguing with the reality that he was going to have those times – just like everybody else!

Okay, all of that and I’ve only covered his first sentence. Let me breeze through the others. Marvin, Beloved that he is, next wrote:

“Can you implement & stick to it?
Or will we be reading about some terrible thing next month?”

I had to reply. I mentioned the “Homeless, Jobless, Carless” post, which was mostly about gratitude and bliss. I said that if he read that and thought these things were “terrible” he missed the point.

But let’s go back to “implement and stick to it.”

Implement what, first of all? I find nothing in my blog “Every Time I Turn Around Something Goes” to indicate there is anything to “implement.” It’s rather the opposite. Thinking there is something I need to “implement” is READ MY LIPS:  STRESSFUL!!!

Steven helped me with this when we were talking about “purpose” the other day. While it is intuitively obvious to me now that any idea of a “purpose” is inherently stressful, I was a little confused about how some people try to tell me it’s peaceful. I don’t know what their experience is, so I didn’t argue, but I had to wonder.

He pointed out that many people confuse “peaceful” with the adrenaline rush of excitement.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God, that was a revelation. No wonder! And no wonder so many of us are so fucking confused!

I’ve done that! That’s how so many people sold me so many seminars and tapes and books before I knew the difference between peace and adrenaline! I used to get so pumped up thinking this one was going to “fix” me, the problem, my husband, etc., that I literally could not think straight. Sure, there is a temporary high at first, but nothing changes. Well, things are always changing, but it’s not a reliable method. There is no reliable method. It’s FAR more peaceful to … hmm, A Course in Miracles quote works here, “Seek not to change the world. Seek to change your mind about the world.”

I’m doing a little questioning on ACIM, too, as I noted in the last blog. It is peppered with some ideas I still think are true and am checking, but the whole thing about how bad the ego is and how we aren’t “there” yet and stuff – well, that has obviously got to go. If I get industrious, I will sit down with the Workbook and question each of the 365 lessons sometime.

Marvin was married to me back when I thought Rebirthing BreathWork and NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) were going to not only fix me, but fix the whole rest of the world, too – just as soon as I explained it to them! His new wife was in my class. They may still believe that junk.

I’ll bet Marvin still says, “cancel, cancel” when he hears or says a quote “negative” unquote thought whatever that is. That comes from elsewhere, but along with the lie that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit (about which there is NO supporting evidence or research, NONE – see http://sashen.com/blog/59/you-give-me-21-days-and-ill-give-you-three-weeks/)  This one of the ideas I got from my NLP teacher – while all pumped up thinking she could fix me, show me how to fix myself and how to make a million dollars fixing others.

Thank God in Heaven I got over that. (Who? In where?  I don’t know that there is any such thing. It’s just an expression.)

I can’t begin to tell you how much time and energy was freed up when I started realizing, by simply questioning, that there was absolutely no truth to any of that!

Now certainly I had release and bliss and stuff happening when I did all those workshops, but it was unpredictable and unreliable – and what do intermittent rewards do?

That’s right!  They keep you coming back for more! And paying for it!

If what they are teaching was predictable, constant and reliable, people would learn it and GO AWAY AND GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES!  Oh, unless they happened to end up friends with the teacher or something, I guess.

Check into the real lives of these “teachers.”  I have had the good fortune of hanging out with someone who knows many of them personally and by extension knows people who know the story-behind-the-story on a lot of these best-selling bullshitters. Among the things I have heard there are men and women who work 80 hour weeks, never see their children, take drugs, have ex-wives or ex-husbands with very different stories about how “enlightened” they really are. And, just like everyone else, they all have money problems, relationship problems and health problems.

The health problems are a fun one. One of my favorite questions in The Work, which Steven asks sometimes is: “What if (fill in health/relationship/money problem here) was required for you to be enlightened or happy? How would you see it then?”

The funny thing is:  it seems to BE REQUIRED!

How do I know?

Show me one, just one, person who hasn’t had money/relationship/health problems. You won’t find them. I could offer to give a million dollars if you find one, and rest secure in the knowledge that it is Statisticaly Improbable (read: IMPOSSIBLE) that such a one exists.

Oh sure, we make up stories about all the gurus. But check. Really check. Really do the homework. And you will find they had just as much “misery” and just as many “terrible” things in their lives as anyone else.

Alright, where was I?

Oh yes:

“You are right about a game; one with specific rules to master.
I recommend Brian Tracey CDs.
I’m also sure you will find his process foreign, boring, etc. & that is exactly why you need them.
He can teach you business culture & language.”

First, let me tell you that while my ex-husband was never bad with money, he was constantly stressed about it and still is, as best I can tell. He was always telling me how I should and shouldn’t handle money. In fact, I happen to know that one of the most stressful things in his life last time I checked was how his current wife, who is quite well-off by any standard, how she spends money. If he could only RELAX! She’s fine. She has money to spend. HE could relax about it and . . . well, that’s his business.

I went and looked for this “Brian Tracy” web site. I had heard of him. His photo alone was enough to get me to click off that site, and fast, but I looked around. I’ve never seen such density of clickable stuff to make the site owner money in one place before. Nothing wrong with that. But clearly he has Marvin sending him money for things, too. I wrote Marvin this morning that I’d listen to one BT CD if he wanted to send one, on the condition that I could keep a barf bucket at the ready, just in case I could contain myself no longer.

So, briefly:

“specific rules to master”    STRESSFUL

“foreign, boring, etc. & that is exactly why you need them.” 

Is that how he sold them to you?  Thanks, but no thanks.

Alright. *sigh* I told Steven I wanted to read the blog about one paragraph in his blog http://sashen.com/blog/62/you-can-have-anything-you-want-not/

“I can only hope that in the end you can enjoy the truly magical thing about the universe, that it’s WAY beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone control.”

I saw the look on his face, and immediately said, “Well, I guess I could write it,” he grinned and pointed back at me in that “you got it” kind of way.

Well, this isn’t that blog. But maybe next time.

Love, Ann

Shampoo Series – Oh Yes! or Oh No!

(If you reached this blog through a Tag and did not find what you were looking for, please comment and let me know.) 

Which way do you think you’d be more effective in dealing with something?  Peaceful or stressful?

Katie and other practitioners of The Work of Byron Katie ask this question a lot.

Somehow we got it wired up that we’ll succeed if we tense up, ready to spring into action with thoughts like “Oh no!” instead of relaxing with acceptance of what is and thoughts like “Oh yes.” I’d say 99.9% of the time this isn’t the key to success. It’s more likely to be a fight, flight or freeze reaction, rather than a clear, relaxed response.  

Most of the time it’s pretty obvious that a tense response blocks out information. It’s immediate tunnel vision. That is what a fight, flight or freeze response is supposed to do – focus us in case of an emergency.  What emergency?!

Katie says, “When you argue with reality, you lose – but only always.”

The car broke down.  Oh no!

My boyfriend broke up with me. How awful!

I have a headache. That’s terrible! 

Our culture calls this sympathy. It’s not. It’s commiserating.

To co-miserate means “to join in misery.” Why? Why have extra miserable tunnel-visioned people?

“To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must refuse to understand.”  
 
A Course in Miracles
Text, Chapter 16, 1st sentence, Page 330
 

Or, as Katie puts it:

“You move totally away from reality when you believe there is a legitimate reason to suffer.”

Byron Katie, “Loving What Is” page 288

 

We are taught that we aren’t being a good friend if we don’t join our friends in their suffering. Why debilitate both of us? Why cut ourselves off from our peace? Our knowing? Our power? Our present?

Denying with that “no” or “terrible” or “awful” won’t get the car fixed; it won’t get me on a bus. It won’t help me realize that I only want a relationship with someone who wants me and that there are other fish in the sea. It won’t lead me to take something for the headache or to stop eating or drinking things that may cause headaches.  And it definitely won’t help me see the variety of choices I have available.

A lot of my friends tell me that I’ve got a lot of “courage.” That may be true. I prefer to frame it as perspective. I can’t think of too many things that it would be useful for me to deny.

When we’re relaxed with an “oh yes,” letting the truth of the situation in, we are far more likely to see a broader vision, more choices, and more peace. In fact, it seems to me that I actually have the resources to find more choices in the peace of “oh yes.”

Is there a time for tension, springing into action, and focus?

Of course there is, but it is a brief, limited occasional thing. This response is great if a mountain lion is heading my way. Most of our daily challenges are not remotely like the mountain lion, but we respond with “oh no” and freeze our thinking and our resources. It’s no wonder we stay stuck in our same old relationships, same old jobs, same old life and wonder why nothing changes.

There is no mountain lion.

The previous blog talks a lot about trauma. Many of us are stuck in old  responses, including myself. That’s trauma. We may react to something n totally inappropriate ways out of habit due to some stuck thinking or stuck feelings that we internalized and have never questioned.

All of the Shampoo Methods are about questioning these and finding what is.

I’ve heard people express the fear that if they just accept everything with the “oh yes,” or another open, positive response, that they will succumb to inertia and never get up off the couch.

Is that true?

Far from it. When we do act, it will be more peaceful and more intuitive. We can sit on the couch until something moves us and the next thing we know, we’re fixing lunch or going to the store or calling a friend.

“A healed mind does not plan.” 

A Course in Miracles

A healed mind does not have to plan. Instead of blocking the creative impulses, we just do what’s next.

Love, Ann

A Home, A Job, A Dream – Trauma and Healing and Gratitude

Today, I could write about 5 blogs.

If you followed a Tag and didn’t find what you were looking for, please write a comment, so I know what you were looking for when you got here.

I woke up about 5 am, maybe earlier. I got out of bed about 5:30 am. This is beginning to be a lot of 5’s – a lot of change, the numerologist in me says.

One thing about living with cats is that you often remember your dreams. Why? The cat wakes you up in the middle of them. That’s why. Maybe it is  feature, not a bug.

Because there is so much, I’m will tell you what I’m going to tell you, tell you and then tell you what I told you. It’s an old formula for writing and speaking that can be very useful. While I may be no good at planning or cleaning, I am phenomenal at organizing. It helps me feel safe, so I got really good at it.

Several things play a part in today’s blog.

I’m going to tell you about home: my childhood home, the home I am working in for a temp job and the home I dream to live and work in.

I’m going to tell you about jobs. My first job was working for my father, beginning when I was about 12. This week, and maybe next, I am working in a house, donated to a mental health center and staffed by psychiatrists, counselors, nurses with office support staff to manage all the paperwork. Then there is my dream job.

I’m going to tell you my dreams, both waking and sleeping dreams. 

This is what an astrologer would call a Chiron story, a story of a wounded healer. Chiron is an asteroid only recently included in astrology.  Chiron is one of the centaurs, half human, half horse, just like my Sun, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Midheaven, which are all in Sagittarius – the sign of the centaur. You know the picture. We carry a bow and arrow and are known both for flinging them wildly and for hitting distant targets. I guess Centaurs have very good eyes. We see deep into people and situations. Other people call us psychic, but really, it’s just about looking rather than looking away. If you want to know more about Chiron and centaurs, check Wikipedia or read Eric Francis at www.planetwaves.net.

Back to the story . . .  

Let’s start with the dreams the cat helped me to remember this morning.

Last night before I went to sleep, I read the first 3 chapters of Peter A. Levine’s book, Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body. I’ve known about Peter’s work for about 7 years. Some of the women I interned with during my master’s program were studying his work at a different school than mine. It sounded good to me, and I bought a copy of his book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. I know I read some of it. Somewhere during the past 4 years of moving from home to home, I gave it away unfinished. Every now and then, I think I’ll try again.

The first dream the cat helped me to remember is, of course, not completely clear. I remember that someone wanted me to go out with him. It seemed like it was Michael, a former friend’s ex-husband. Okay, I remember thinking about him  yesterday. That makes some sense. I also remember being in an office building. It was kind of vacant and the time was early evening, I think. I was meeting my former roommate or at least he was there. Again, I emailed with him yesterday because he’s bringing me a bill of sale so I can register the car he so generously gave me. The last part of the dream, I was asking a chiropractor, actually, he’s the husband of a chiropractor I saw for many years. He rarely practices, but he is trained. I was asking him if I could pay his lowest price for a single adjustment. Single adjustments usually cost much more. He is a Network Chiropractor. I see a Flow Chiropractor now. But clearly the dream was about men, support and healing.

The second dream the cat helped me remember was about my childhood home. I was driving by and realized that the original red brick was back (some insensitive boob has actually painted the rich red brick, and it is now a creamy yellow – yuck). There were bushes sitting in pots ready to be planted. They were ligustrum, gardenia and something I used to call a bee bush, no idea what it really is, but the bees liked the white flowers. The old gardenias were dried and frazzled, but still alive and someone had removed them and placed them in pots. I suppose the nursery planned to bring them back to life.

Mema, my maternal grandmother, was there. She said that Mother still had the house and was refurbishing it. In the dream, I wondered what the rent would be and wondered about living there. I wondered if I could create my intentional healing community there.

I read both these dreams as stories of healing, healing trauma and sexual abuse, which is what this blog is mostly all about.

From my reading last night, here is a list from Peter Levine’s Healing Trauma.

Oh, first, let me say what trauma is.

On page 8, Levine says that after 30 years, it is still a challenge for him to define trauma. He says, “What I do know is that we become traumatized when our ability to respond to a perceived threat is in some way overwhelmed. This inability to adequately respond can impact us in obvious ways, as well as ways that are subtle.”

On page 20, Levine says, “The symptoms of trauma can be stable, that is, ever-present. They can also be unstable, meaning that they can come and go and be triggered by stress. Or they can remain hidden for decades and suddenly surface. Usually, symptoms do not occur individually, but come in groups. They often grow increasingly complex over time, becoming less and less connected with the original trauma experience.”

There are a lot of good lists in Levine’s book. It’s short and comes with a CD of guided exercises for re-visiting trauma and healing the body memories and associated symptoms. 

So, back to the lists I mentioned. You’ll find a list of “Obvious Causes of Trauma” and “Less Obvious Causes of Trauma” on pages 14 and 15. Levine suggests we pay attention to our bodies as we read these and notice any uneasiness or discomfort. I’ll let you get the book and do that.

He categorizes symptoms this way:

1. Hyperarousal
2. Constriction
3. Dissociation and denial
4. Feelings of helplessness, immobility and freezing

Now, here’s that list found on pages 18 – 20:

Symptoms: A Lengthy List 

• Hypervigilence (being “on guard” at all times)
• Intrusive imagery or flashbacks
• Extreme sensitivity to light and sound
• Hyperactivity
• Exaggerated emotional and startle responses
• Nightmares and night terrors
• Abrupt mood swings (rage reactions or temper tantrums, frequent anger, or crying)
• Shame and lack of self-worth
• Reduced ability to deal with stress (easily and frequently stressed out)
• Difficulty sleeping

Then he says some symptoms “can show up later, even years later.” He mentions that we are not meant to diagnose with these lists, just “get a feel for how trauma symptoms behave.”

• Panic attacks, anxiety and phobias
• Mental “blankness” or spaced-out feelings
• Avoidance behavior ( avoiding places, activities, movements, memories or people)
• Attraction to dangerous situations
• Addictive behaviors (overeating, drinking, smoking, etc.)
• Exaggerated or diminished sexual activity
• Amnesia and forgetfulness
• Inability to love, nurture, or bond with other individuals
• Fear of dying or having a shortened life
• Self-mutilation (severe abuse, self-inflicted cuting, etc.)
• Loss of sustaining beliefs (spiritual, religious, interpersonal)

Then he gives another list and says these “generally take longer to develop” (page 19). “In most cases, they may have been preceded by some of the earlier symptoms.”

• Excessive shyness
• Diminished emotional responses
• Inability to make commitments
• Chronic fatigue or very low physical energy
• Immune system problems and certain endocrine problems such as thyroid malfunction and environmental sensitivities
• Psychosomatic illnesses, particularly headaches, migraines, neck and back problems
• Chronic pain
• Fibromyalgia
• Asthma
• Skin disorders
• Digestive proglems (spastic colon)
• Severe premenstrual syndrome
• Depressionand feelings of impending doom
• Feelings of detachment, alienation and isolation (“living dead” feelings)
• Reduced ability to formulate plans

I imagine we have all experienced enough trauma, even mild trauma, that reading these lists make us feel a little edgy.

So, take a deep breath . . . several.

When you’re ready, continue.

There is one last symptom on page 20. Levine calls it “The Compulsion to Repeat.” It is well worth reading the story he tells there. It is an amazingly specific example.

Now, what does all of this have to do with this blog? Or with “A Home, A Job, A Dream.” I think you are beginning to see. Some of you, especially those with similar experiences to mine, see very clearly. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you are still reading.

Trauma is a clear case of “reality is kinder than our thinking.”

Remember, it doesn’t matter if the threat is real or what is really going on. Thunder can traumatize a baby, says Levine, but there is no real danger. It is the perception that brings on these trauma symptoms. I’m not saying they are not real. Trust me, they are. I’ll get into some of my own symptoms as we go, and I’ve mentioned a lot of them in previous blogs.

But what Katie says is true, “The worst that can happen is a thought.”

Once we re-think the situation, and I feel Levine is right, we need to include the body in this re-thinking, once we re-think a situation, change our perception of it, healing happens.

A Course in Miracles  says “projection makes perception.” (Text, page 445) We project our thoughts onto people and situations, and believe this to be reality. It’s not. ACIM says we live in a dream world, not in reality. The 365 daily meditations in the workbook and the Text and Manual for Teachers are support in changing our perceptions and waking up to reality.

I call The Work of Byron Katie, A Course in Miracles in 4 questions and a Turn Around. It is much faster. I’m not necessarily saying it’s better, though. Time is a godsend when we are healing and taking a year or more to do A Course in Miracles can be very beneficial.

Steven Sashen gives a great and simple example of reality being kinder than his thinking in his Anti-Guru blog.

http://sashen.com/blog/34/rearranging-furniture-in-imaginary-houses/

Read his version. Basically, one element of his therapy for years was the idea that his parents took $42 from him as a child. The truth was much kinder than his thinking.

Steven is a great example of the Chiron archetype. After years of what you might call financial trauma, he woke up. The seminal event had more to do with relationships, and it generalized to everything. Reality was much kinder than his thinking, and he lived to tell the tale. I wish the book were out. Write and ask him for it. (steven@sashen.com)

And ask when he’s going to teach his next seminar, too. He only teaches on request.

The next seminar will hopefully be on the Instant Advanced Meditation or IAM.

http://www.advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?af=570391

If Katie’s Work is ACIM in 4 questions and a Turn Around, Steven’s IAM is a kinder reality now. It really is instantaneous.

Again, instantaneous is not necessarily “better.” Sometimes a full Worksheet in Katie’s way is exactly what I needed. Sometimes A Course in Miracles. Sometimes IAM. 

I’ve learned a lot from Steven.

So on with my story.  

I’ve told you about last night’s dreams, which include my childhood home. Let me tell you about a job.

Right now, I’m working a temp job at a place that houses counselors, nurses and psychiatrists who see the mentally and developmentally challenged members of our community. There is also an office manager, a person who helps these clients manage their money, and a couple of other business support staff.

Maybe I work temp jobs because I was traumatized by working for my father and going down on him both at the office and at home. I always knew some day I’d grow up and be able to work some other job. But there’s that compulsion to repeat that Levine mentions. I even had sex with co-workers at my very next job, working for an attorney when I was 16 and just out of high school.

I’ve been blessed to be supported by boyfriends and husbands for several periods in my life. This has allowed me to go to school, write, teach and work towards doing something with my background that might be healing for others and continue my own healing in the process.

That’s the job I really want. Well, more truthfully, that’s the job I really have.

So, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’ll bet you can put some pieces together and understand how it is that I have tried many major leaps to see how they would go in my attempts to create my dream home, which is my dream job. I moved to Georgia one year to see if I could build my dream there. My dream is how I came to go to Ireland last September. It is what I dreamed of doing with Audrey’s home. It is why I jumped in feet first to see if Paul was the partner I dreamed of who would work with me and complement my talents of writing, teaching and counseling, with his talents in storytelling, sales and money management.

When something looks like the Next Step toward my dream, I take it.

A Home, A Job and A Dream – Healing Trauma

It is my dream to live in an intentional community where I work with like-minded others teaching, writing and counseling.

Maybe I’ll post the latest version of that as a Cowgirl Interlude.

I would love to find others who share that dream with me, living and working together.

In fact, let me put that as a request.

If you feel moved to live and work with others who have experienced life paths of trauma, healing trauma and sharing with others about how to heal trauma, especially the perceived threat of sexual abuse, comment on this blog. I will reply to all serious inquiries.

We need funding, a location, a business manager, an editor, a book publisher, a computer geek or three, as well as teachers, healers, counselors and writers.

So that is my story of my childhood home and jobs, my current home and jobs, and how they relate to my waking and sleeping dreams.

It’s almost time to go to the temp job, so I’ll post this and I may edit it some over the next few days.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Love and many blessings, Ann

Shampoo Series – Spiritual Enlightenment – What If?

What if . . .

Think of the things you complain about, dread and dislike in your life. Make a list.

Now, what if your happiness, your peace, your “spiritual enlightenment,” depended on having exactly those things in your life?

We have this idea that if we achieve these concepts of happiness, peace and spiritual enlightenment everything will be some kind of “All Bliss, All the Time.”

Well, check.

I was at the Gathering for the Work of Byron Katie, when someone said that she couldn’t follow her spiritual calling unless she had the freedom to move out of state, something she cannot do with her child, by divorce decree.

Steven looked at her and asked, “Nelson Mandela was in prison for how long?”

We all laughed.

“And the Christian saints and martyrs? They were free to move and travel about all the time, right?”

Er…

I added, “and Ghandi got around really well while he was fasting.”

No, he could barely lay on his pallet sometimes he was so weak from fasting from what I have heard.

For myself, incest in my childhood, the exciting and exhilarating journey from grief to gratitude, were all part of following my spiritual calling. The story is in this blog.

So, the next time you have a complaint or some stress you think is keeping you from . . . anything . . . check. It might be merely the next step in following your spiritual calling.

Love, Ann

5 Minutes to Deep Peace on Thursday 9/13

You will be entertained at the very least and enlightenment is an option.

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310

Thursday, 9/13, there is a teleconference call where you can learn more about this. There will be sample meditations and a chance at a free gift worth $400.

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310 

Trust me. You want to try this. The IAM Meditations are the product of the fertile mind of Steven Sashen who is also responsible for much of the Shampoo Method we talk about here every day.

It’s completely safe. I’d trust this guy with my life.

This feeling, this is what we have all been looking for our whole lives. It’s like coming home.

Love, Ann  

Shampoo Series – Broken or Just Not Yet Blooming?

I started this blog over a month ago and I still feel like I’m fumbling with concepts that have to be experienced to be understood.  I have trouble thinking anyone can read this blog and “get” what I’m talking about.

I was thinking about Paul, about how we don’t seem to “meet” in most of my worldview and concepts. I mistakenly gave the impression that I felt he was “broken.” I was driving along one day, thinking about that, and wondering what would be a better way to say it, and I decided that it was closer to say he just wasn’t in full bloom. Maybe.

Then last night at a Gathering for the Work of Byron Katie, Sashen talked about cause & effect in terms of a rosebud.

What Sashen was saying is that we do these “non-technique techniques” and think that we caused something, when actually, if we threw the rosebud in a closet, it would still bloom.

Most likely, when we came back to find the rosebud in full bloom, we would think that our “technique” did it, when actually, the rose would have bloomed had we done nothing at all.

I used to think no one could have these “blooming experiences” with words. I was wrong. I’ve had some really amazing experiences from “just words” since then.  

“Which words?” you may be thinking.

The ones I write about here – The Work of Byron Katie, Instant Advanced Meditations (IAM) by Steven Sashen, and Jason Shulman’s book Kabbalistic Healing are my best examples.

But Steven is right. These are not “techniques” the way we usually think of them. And furthermore, when we use them to get some predictable outcome they don’t “work.”

Counselors & healers seem to think people are “broken.”

That’s part of why I have never worked as a counselor in an agency. The DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Volume IV) is just a big storybook about how people can be “broken.”

I don’t buy it and I certainly can’t sell it.

Of course, what I do buy can still be used as a way to “help,” “heal,” or “fix” things.

The minute we do that they don’t “work.”

It seems to be when I just play around with them to see what happens, some of the most amazing things “happen.”

Sashen, Katie and Shulman, and come to think of it, David Deida’s “opening as,” and Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now are all word-based things that seem to create some kind of “experience.”

I used to call those experiences “healing.”

But that would imply I was sick.

Was I?

I don’t think so. I was just doing what humans do.

Hopefully, Steven’s monthly IAM Chit-Chat tomorrow call will shed some more light on this . . . and how to talk and write about it.

Love, Ann

PS – I know Paul and some of his friends read this blog. Would you mind dropping me a comment or an email to say whether this is clear to you or not?  Thanks!

Oh Goddess! It’s Beltane. Don’t! Stop! Don’t stop!

The Moon is in Sagittarius, too, which conjuncts 5 points in my chart. Wow.

So far, I’ve sent at least 50 people off to make bouncy bouncy in honor of Beltane, not to mention all the email lists I’ve posted to. I’ve tentatively offered my body to 3 or 4 people and I’m wondering whether this will be a solo or duo or um… group holy day for me. There’s a poly Beltane celebration that I might go to. I would be participating in group tantric breathing

I don’t know yet. And Eric Francis www.planetwaves.net and Jonathan Cainer www.cainer.com are both telling Sagitarians to trust. We seem like the trusting types, don’t we? But we’ve had some serious Pluto knocks for over a decade now and we just aren’t sure what is going on. I’ve had some Neptune and Uranus transits, too, still do, so God only knows. Isn’t that always the case?

Anyway, what I thought I’d do today is post some poetry and song lyrics in the spirit of the day. How’s that?

Okay. Nine Inch Nails, anyone?

Closer

You let me violate you, you let me desecrate you
You let me penetrate you, you let me complicate you
Help me I broke apart my insides, help me Ive got no
Soul to tell
Help me the only thing that works for me, help me get
Away from myself
I want to f**k you like an animal
I want to feel you from the inside
I want to f**k you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to god
You can have my isolation, you can have the hate that
It brings
You can have my absence of faith, you can have my
Everything
Help me tear down my reason, help me its your sex i
Can smell
Help me you make me perfect, help me become somebody
Else
I want to f**k you like an animal
I want to feel you from the inside
I want to f**k you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to god
Through every forest, above the trees
Within my stomach, scraped off my knees
I drink the honey inside your hive
You are the reason I stay alive

and how about . . .

 WITH NO SIN

         – TingZen, Impossible Objects
Licking your soul
Protective hairs lying flat
Your hands held back in ecstacy
A sensual arch in your back
A yearning for everything
A world held with no sin
Our innocence is blessed
A gift that comes when least expected

With no sin
We lie in innocence
With no sin
We bask in blessedness
With no sin
We lie in innocence
With no sin

When science and art
No longer split apart
Then we can accept these gifts
That are meant for us
The long road coalescing
In a constellation bright
With reason and the unexpected

The final outcome
Greater than all the dreams
Sin absorbed in maturity
Innocence is redeemed

Love, Ann

“Cha robh dithis riamh a’ fadadh teine nach do las eatarra.”

“Two do not kindle a fire between them, but it ignites itself.”

Beltane Celebration

“I wanted refuge, not chaos.

I wanted peace, not passion.

I was trapped in my little room of sanctity, in my meditative stillness and solitude.

This wasn’t true freedom. Nor was it love.

As Mykonos pointed out, I wasn’t penetrating the world

with my love and opening “her” into bliss.

Rather, I was pulling back. I was obsessed with myself.”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

 

Beltane, depending on whom you ask, is yesterday, today or even Saturday.

What is Beltane?

It is the holy day (holiday) of fertility . . . Holy Daze of Fertility, Batman!

Plain and simple.

Agriculural communities celebrated Spring and fertility, supposedly having mass orgies & dancing around Beltane fires in order to insure good crops (and probably because sex is just plain fun.) Rumor has it that couples handfasted for “a year and a day” at this time. I’d consider that. In fact, that was kind of what I have been looking for since December. On the other hand, maybe not. I am of at least two minds on that one.

Might as well be. We are not necessarily meant to be sane around this time of year.

Spring Fever? Rutting passions? You know.

May 1, the Full Moon or an astrological degree, that according to one site, is when the Pleiades is on the horizon, which seems to be Saturday and the markers I’ve found for the timing.

Good grief. See what happens when popes muck about with good agrarian timing?

I decided that Beltane is all week, through Sunday!

In fact, if I keep enjoying it as much as I have so far, I may just declare the whole month or even the whole year Beltane. Why not? It’s all pretty arbitrary.

I did Steven Sashen’s Goal-Free Goal Setting meditation last night on the “goal” of having someone intimate to talk to. I found someone a couple of months ago that totally lit that fire and then dropped out. I’m still smoldering. More than that, really.

He left me aching and hungry. I went into sexual abstinence, thinking that Qi Gong classes would support me in this. They did not. Not needing to do their 100 days, I decided not to spend half the summer in abstinence. I noticed that Beltane was coming up.

Beltane has many traditions, some may be New Age fluff, some may be vaguely real. Tom Robbins makes use of some of the Beltane ideas in one of my favorite books of all time, Jitterbug Perfume. Highly recommended reading. See Amazon for excerpts.

Here are some Beltane links for you, if you’re interested:

http://www.cyberwitch.com/wychwood/Temple/beltane.htm

 and http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7280/beltane.html

from  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7280/ which has all the holy days.

You’ll find it on Wikipedia, too. 

So, here I am, ravenous as usual, and wondering what to do with myself (or with anyone else.)

“You know what it’s like to take the Great One

so far into you that there’s nothing left to do

but give it all up to the Lord, don’t you?

Maybe you’ve never done it.

But you know what it would be like.

You can feel it. You know you want it.

You want to be fucked into God, don’t you?

Do you know what I mean, ma?”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

This is what happens when I read David Deida. I stayed up reading almost half of Wild Nights last night. I had an orgasm, found myself thinking of someone I miss, cried, put the vibrator down and the phone rang.

First, Joy called. We’re arranging for me to visit her.

30 seconds later Sean called. He was going to go, but backed out, and is helping me make the trip.

30 seconds after that Taylor called. I hadn’t talked with him in a couple of weeks.

Nice to get what we ask for, isn’t it?

I tied up my conversation with Joy. I called Sean back. I told Taylor we could talk today at a more human hour. I was already an hour past my bedtime (sundown).

Now I’ve been up since sunrise (around 5:15 am), working out some of the details of several projects I need to get on with now that I’m done with some required bill paying activities that will hopefully leave me free for a month to do these other projects like teach, start a goddess center, work on the book this blog is writing and other fun stuff like that there.

Orgasms.

I have not yet had any orgasms this morning.

Why?

Well, I don’t know. I have this tendency to jump out of bed, do some busywork and email, then when all that is off my mind, at least an hour later, go back to the sheets for a while. My bath water is hot. Maybe I’ll play in there.

I think I’ll just leave you wondering.

Love, Ann

“What this world needs more of is loving:  friendly and unashamed.”

– Robert A. Heinlein
To Sail Beyond The Sunset

 

 “He is afraid to fuck. He is afraid to dance with the lady, ma.

He wants to stand back and watch, like a scientist.

He’s afraid to leave his room, to lose his purity

that he has worked so hard to attain.

He’s afraid to lose his precious stillness.

He’s afraid of the wildness of woman.

Everything has to be all tidy for him.

He wants the pussy, but he doesn’t want the slop.

He wants the tit, but not the tooth.

Oh, he is a good man, alright. Look at the light in his eyes.

The light has guided his entire life.

This boy might just make it.

But not until he learns to embrace the lady, ma.”

…

“And I’m not talking about him

wiggling his pecker in her pussy, you know?

I’m talking about the heart.”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

 

Ancient Holy Days

by Astrological Degree

0 degrees Aries  – Vernal Equinox
15 degrees Taurus – Beltane
0 degrees Cancer – Summer Solstice
15 degrees – Leo – Lammas
0 degrees Libra – Autumnal Equinox
15 degrees Scorpio Samhain
0 degrees Capricorn Winter Solstice
15 degrees Aquarius – Imbolc