Welcoming Conversations With the Universe

Our quick and overflowing thoughts are even hard for us to breakdown at times. How do we expect the universe to simply provide when we have not made a clear and open space for a conversation? When there is no flow, no even conversation, there is no room for possibilities, change, growth and anything else we are looking for to come in.

 

There needs to be an intimate dialogue with self and the universe.  You need to be able to speak clearly and with patience and to have a true conversation you need to listen.

 

To listen is a form of meditation, as the saying goes; we often listen without the intent to listen but to have a response. We are already obsessing over actions instead of meditating.

 

In moments of meditation we are present, aware, we are completely in a relationship with the present moment. Any moment we feel the need to have a reaction, please take two full, sweet, and complete breaths. The itch to have a response has dimmed down, it may even be forgotten about by now. You are back in the supportive flow of this present moment.

 

These sensations and/or reactions we think we must feed into have something much deeper to show us. “What can I learn from this feeling? “ “Why do I always think I need to instantly respond to a text message, a sentence, or something someone has done?” “Are these reactions something I will be proud of later on?” “What type of soul food is my lack of presence and moments of presence providing me?”

 

These questions to you and even to the universe can bring us back to clear presence where calmness abides.

 

Our imagination is one of our most powerful and even abused mental powers. Those repetitive thoughts we have day in and day out, those send a message to the universe about what we want. This usually isn’t the conversation we mean to have with the universe. We end up wishing for our own demise without making the connection that we have tuned in our thoughts to create the things we fear.

 

In your preferred form of meditation, if it be walking, gardening, preparing food, swimming, yoga, running or so forth please try using this format to help create an intimate, tender, and open conversation with the Universe.

 

 “I am asking for guidance about _____it will help me _____.”

 

Notice, this is guidance, not a simple answer. The ways we conceive time and how the Universe conceives time are completely different definitions. Years for us may feel like a few breaths for the universe. Please remember, it is all connected: your gifts, your circumstances, your purpose, your “imperfections,” your journey, your destiny. It is molding you into the being the Universe dearly loves and needs. Embrace it.

 

After reminding yourself of this, imagine the Universe is having a conversation with you about this. How does it feel? Is there a certain word that pops up? An image? Tension in the body? What does this space of conversation look like? Sound like? Make this experience feel personal and alive because this is your way of responding that you have trust, that you support the Universe.

 

The symbols are words from the universe are not cut and dry. You might see an image of a place, you get there expect a little literal present will be there to just answer it all. But you will arrive and notice there is a little more needed. You might have to talk to the other people that area in this space. May be you will need to sit and meditate here.

This will take practice and consistency. Being persistent will get us to only a certain point and for only a brief period of time. But consistency will get us there and we will get to stay there. Conversations with the Universe may happen without even trying over time. Symbols will have a pattern, and you will get that gut feeling that you are on your path.

Rewiring the Soul

Meditation, practice, presence it’s gotten to the point now where may be these words have lost all their value and meaning. It’s not always going to be this bright beautiful moment. Actually when we go deep, we go deep. It feels dark, frightening, and painful; there is muck to work through and things to burn within to be able to step forward into meditation, practice, and presence to come full force into our Soul.

We are completely re-wiring our thoughts, actions and reactions creating a whole new story about You.

Each time you meet someone and they want to get to know you, what are the first things you share with them? What are the stories you constantly find yourself sharing?

So for me it goes along the lines of…

I am self-employed as a chef, writer, educator, healer, yoga instructor and depending on the day of the week I work a super random side job.

Usually once people start poking around, asking more questions family things pop up.

I lost my father when I was 13 years old, my parents are literally from Portugal all of my relatives are there, I had a tough time once we moved to Middletown fitting in, and nothing about my childhood was easy or normal.

The past for me holds the hardest memories to transform into the present. I hold onto that pain, there is a part of my mind that believes this pain has defined me as a person. Without the pain, without the traumas, loss, heartbreak, without all those moments where I felt completely abandoned than who am I?

I am a self-employed chef, writer, educator, healer, yoga instructor and depending on the day of the week I work a super random side job.

This is where the practice can often place us in a moment where it feels like an A-HA that’s the purpose, THIS moment. For some people, it is in their intention, their prayer, mantra; it is in each breath they take. We can ask for assistance with healing and to understand. Of course that doesn’t mean we are granted a change or answer.

Sometimes things just change. It doesn’t have to feel like an A-HA, that’s why, Point A brought me to Point Z. We can simply get tired of hearing our story. We get so damn tired of it that we make changes on our own.

I’m a visual person so this image always works well for me; our soul is at the core of an onion. The first layer is absolutely nothing like the rest, it wants to peel right off, flake away and make a mess. The layers after that, each one has a unique thickness, sweetness and bite. It leaves a stickiness behind, a trail, as if we can get ourselves glued right back in, as if we never did any of the work if we wanted to choose this path instead.

One layer could be easier to cut into than another and sometimes we have to go back and keep cutting a layer because it’s just that damn thick and heavy with its story. The story is not the facts, and very often we do not like the facts that become our story. The longer we hold onto the story, really marinate in our pain, and we keep marinating then the facts drift away.

Each breath, one simple inhale that uplifts your heart, throat, and head and exhale that deserves the same sweet and smooth ride down. We can remind ourselves each time on what we are working on. Why we want to move on and that it might happen that we slip up, but we have that next breath to hop right back in.

An electrical board with wires has colors that create different actions and reactions once they are cut and fused together. Our minds are the same, but with zillions of wires we have created with every memory, fact, reaction, action and so forth.

We aren’t looking to burn it all down and start completely fresh all over again. You got some good stuff in there too ya know!

But yes, it is absolutely painful feeling the rewiring, reminding us to stay on this new path, and those reminders and pain are most likely temporary.

There will be days where you will remember someone you lost, someone you see in a crowd will look exactly like them and before you know it you are rushing to that person, your heart feels as if nothing is missing and then you realize it isn’t that person. The person you have lost, you have lost in physical presence, but is truly there in part of your heart, spirit, and soul. You can never lose that person, the experience can never be taken away from you.

You will cry. You will feel the pain all over again as if you just said your final goodbye. Your mind will flash to their body, their funeral, and you probably begin a mini grieving process all over again.

Then you remember how many weeks, months, and years ago that was. The grief will come at times, but you have made peace with understanding their soul and yours. Any energy that is created can never be completely destroyed (hey, hey Einstein). That person’s energy will always be in you, in their loved ones, in places, ether, and everything else we cannot see.

You do your practice again. You shed, peel, and cry. You are honoring yourself and you move on once those healing tears and wails are emptied out. You are better than your worst days. You are better than your fears.

They know this too they know they are temporary.

If your practice is yoga, the yoga poses are never the same every time, balance could feel easy or hard, and showing up, actually setting the time aside to focus completely on self-healing can be intimating.

If your practice is prayer, mantra, chanting, each day those words have a different way of traveling through you. It might feel like honey, it could feel like tears will sprout out, you might belt it out, or get a feeling like the words just don’t want to come out.

Your meditation, your work, it can take many forms but overall it is a practice. There is progress, repetition, effort, and results. So even those days where you might think to yourself, damn my practice is ugly today. At least you showed up. At least you stepped forward and created space for improvement. If you have the word perfection stuck in your mind, please consider seeing it all as an improvement instead. Perfection makes it sound as if you are a defect when you actually lack nothing but presence. To listen more to that inner bliss that wants you to keep coming home. Keep up with your practice. Keep those prayers, efforts, and presence close to your heart.

The layers will unravel if you are willing to go to those unknown pockets of your spirit. They are waiting for you, can you decide to stay present long enough to hangout with each bit of your soul.

If you do not like your story, you do have the choice to rewrite it. Change it. You aren't even at the peak of your story or life yet no matter your age or situation. What choices will you make to give yourself a whole new chance? Can you let yourself be a chameleon and change according to what you truly want and need in your life? 

Lessons in Forgiveness

For a huge chunk of my life I always had tutors. At a young age I was told I was “slow” with math and my speech was at a level of nearly zero skill. Out of all of the tutors I had two of them had the most positive impact on my life.

My first tutor was Susan when I was in the 1st grade. The first day my mother took me to meet her we had lunch together at Newport Creamery (the one that is now Panera Bread). Susan was older than I thought she would be, super tight banana curls that were a rich brown color, she was covered in freckles and adored Coca-Cola and ketchup more than anyone I had met before. She would invite me to her home to watch the classic Batman TV show. Susan found ways of working my math lessons into games, things where I could touch and move things around to literally get a better grasp. My English lessons felt like I was simply hanging out with a friend. Susan gave me the patience I was craving, the understanding that I wasn’t broken or hopeless. But my learning system wasn’t so cut and paste and there is nothing the matter with that. I felt forgiven, and it felt like this wave that was holding me with just enough support.

Susan passed away with cancer when I was in the third grade. Even now, I am emotional (crying and shaking) as I think and write about her.

In Middle School, I had a tutor named Christine who was in college at Salve Regina. We had more of a classroom like environment during our sessions. By this level of math it wasn’t as easy to make things hands on. Christine would take me to her college campus to study, meet her friends and once I even was on their college radio station to share a story haha. Like Susan, there was this space of support, patience, and I felt active in forgiving myself. I could see that there was hope for me. I am and was more than these labels that were placed upon me.

I had many tutors in between Susan and Christine, and ones after Christine. But I honestly hated my sessions with the other people, and I was failing classes or borderline failing. That was extremely difficult for me to handle. I was taking hours each week to get extra help, but the work wasn’t showing thus I would get in trouble at school, at home and with a tutor.

So I am going to ask you all to forgive yourself. Forgive others, so you can forgive yourself. To understand that we see things as plan a, it should take X amount of time, being right or wrong, being smart or dumb, but none of that actually works. Can you love, honor, and accept yourself as you truly are?

Patience, forgiveness, practice, grace, acceptance; these are all words that intertwine. None of these can be bought, it can’t be earned, can’t be taken away from you because it is love without limit. As spirit, energy, being more than this temporary vessel, we are an endless surge of love.

 Once Christine gave me a notebook, on the back she wrote Pearls of Wisdom. Christine gave me a list of tools to keep me patient, to meditate, breath, wait, be silent for a little longer than I think my skin can bare. She was clever and didn’t use these words however haha. Today I am sharing my Pearls of Wisdom, my Lessons in Forgiveness.

xx

Forgiveness is letting go of any thoughts, actions and words of hurt from someone who has hurt you.

 

Forgiveness does not require you to become a “doormat.”

 

Forgiveness does not diminish the wrong done against you.      

              

Forgiveness is not denial or blocking a memory.  

             

Forgiveness does not take away the consequences the other person will face because of his or her actions.

 

Forgiveness is an act, a process, and a consistent daily practice.

 

Forgiveness can take longer than we would ever like to admit.

 

Forgiveness is powerful.

 

When one person forgives another person, feelings of relief or healing are usually not immediate...it's not a weight magically lifted.

 

Forgiving someone can be difficult, uncomfortable, and our minds come up with excuses not to forgive.

 

Forgiveness is not weakness but the most powerful thing you can do. It releases the hold that has been put on your life. It's living in the present. Refusing to forgive allows the person/ thing that was hurtful to continue to hurt you. 

 

Forgiveness does not wait for the offender to apologize or "earn" forgiveness in some way, that's just the ego.

 

Forgiveness at times comes naturally depending on the situation we have created in our minds.

 

We always need to forgive ourselves.

 

Forgiveness is a form of love. It takes a stronger love to forgive others and oneself than just simply saying sorry.

 

Replace each fearful, hurtful thought with a thought and/or word of forgiveness.

 

Forgiveness opens the heart, mind, spirit, body and energy around us for new paths to come to us. There needs to be a path or giving for anything to come our way.

 

The process of forgiving can be joyful, scary, exciting, difficult for me personally it is a roller coaster of emotions from the past, present, and the imagined future.

 

Part of forgiveness is acceptance. If we can’t forgive whole-heartedly, we need to accept so we can move on.

 

Forgiveness is taking responsibility for your own emotions, and evaluating them so you can take action to move forward with YOUR own life.

 

Forgiveness takes all different shapes, forms, emotions, and actions. Grace and forgiveness go hand-in-hand.

 

Surrender and forgiveness are not the same. Forgiveness is more of getting out of ones own way, to acknowledge that the world isn’t all about me.

 

When we forgive, that is when the lesson is truly earned and accepted.

 

Redefining Faith

Faith in all of its forms is not about everything turning out okay. It is about being okay no matter how things turn out. At times when we get caught in the current of emotions, how faith works gets blurred. We turn our prayers into demands instead of realizing it is a time to listen. Just like meditation is a time to listen.

Yes, there is a conversation going on of the sorts with energy, life force, spirit, and something that might just feel unexplainable except that you have no doubt that it is faith. But like with any conversation, there is a time to speak up, there is a time to give thanks, and there is a time to listen. 

Questions, stress, sensations, all of these will make some sort of appearance during this time of listening. We listen to fears, emotions, what feels like all of these little personalities that make you, YOU. Those thoughts are not you you are far more than these fleeting things. When these sensations come up, let them float up to the surface. You are water, the thoughts are oil, and they have no choice but to rise up. The more we try to shove thoughts back down without letting them float, the more force is gather for each time they arise.

Examine them give yourself time to realize about 100% of these worries can not come true unless you want them to.

 

If you are feeling stressed, burdened, these are signals that you are not present.

                                                                                                                    

Here is to now.

 

Where else do you have to be?

 

Well, you are not there.

 

You are here. Be here.

 

We are here. We can listen. We can be available to understanding the current of our lives. Which active choice will you make?

When that oil has been burned out, evaporated, properly scattered away there is an opening. We all visualize and possibly feel this a little differently. For me it feels like an opening of a material that is meant to support me. Part of receiving support is being available to it, to accept the embrace. It creates a sense of going deeper, a gentle sinking down and relaxing.

In your meditation, prayer, yoga, whatever your daily practice of presence and devotion is it does not matter how far you go, but how you go. There does need to be a level of effort to create a change instead of just simply “doing it.” You have to be all there.

The Power Of Patience

More elements of life than we imagine need the time, space, energy, love and compassion to grow.

Rome wasn't built in a day, we did not learn how to run before we learned how to take a step and rushing almost always leads to error. 

If you have found yourself on a new path, be more patient than you could ever imagine being able to be. This patience will seem like an out of body experience. Meditative, consistent, creative and mentally draining if slowing down does not come naturally.

Recently the mystical people in my life have picked up right away that there is this patience within me that feels limitless to those who have that A++ personality type. I've been asked to share how to grow more patience.

Are you interested? Are you ready to get out of your own way?

When we are patient, we are present and when we are present, we are patient.

Before any time you feel or want to have a reaction please wait two breaths. Is it really necessary? By that second breath we realize there needs to be more silence, more waiting, and the practice of getting out of our own way.

Your spirit will feel lighter.

When we stay with these sensations, and watch them, instead of feeding on the anxious fearful thoughts, we can let ego-feeding emotions pass. They pass without creating a ripple effect or causing everything in its path to be destroyed. This is finding the path of least resistance.

Imagine you are at the beach, you are in the water, and a huge wave is coming your way. Would you stand there? Would you dive into the wave? When we stand there, letting the wave push us, we get pushed hard. We stumble, fall, and yes we end up making a fool of ourselves. But when we see that wave, and decide to go into it, we feel one with nature. It feels smooth, exhilarating, fun, and even therapeutic. It wasn't that wave getting in our way, but we were getting in our own way.

Our thoughts work in the same way. Our patience works in the same way.

Life doesn't owe us a thing. The universe, all of its magic, power, and beauty does not use time the way that we are use to time working. We think in seconds, hours, weeks, months, years, decades, that we have worked for x amount of time thus x result must happen.

Stop the expectations. Keep doing what you love since every cell in your being would have it no other way. Give yourself the patience you give to those you love. Your spirit is like a toddler. It wants to know that no matter what you will love it. The bad, ugly, weird, beautiful, sad, strong and healing parts. Instead of that heavy feeling of needing to be fixed can you give yourself and others support.

Give yourself two long sweet breaths. Take a patient slow inhale, let your lungs fill from bottom to top. Inhale into your lower belly and let this breath travel up into your torso, chest and throat. Follow this path slowly back down with your exhale, connecting with just how limitless you are. There is breath, energy, patience, and bliss in every bit of your being.

 

 

The Search Is Over

We live our lives with the need to always want more. There is an obsession with being busy; it is a badge we wear with pride. The more things, matters, busyness we have the more comfortable we think we are. There is an endless search to feel full, complete, right.

But this does not make us happy, most likely we want even more when we get more. Satiation is not reached, we are still holding onto those old thoughts, memories, luggage. We get in our own way of being able to swing ourselves forward into the present moment.

Our thoughts drown us, diluting the truth, distracting us. 

Meditation, yoga, presence all have the same goal of quieting the mind. The silence, the gap between thoughts and sensations, is the truth. We need less, less distraction, less separation, less expectations, less things that give us a false sense of Happiness.

There is one truth, one reality, one present moment, one breath at a time. When we stop the illusion of needing is when we realize we have everything. We are complete as we are, we are happiness, we are truth, we are love.

The search is over. Sip in the love, share it, let it expand and pour over us.

You are enough. You are beautiful. You are smart. You are supported in more ways than you realize. The rain, the storm, it can't last forever.

The search is over.

Welcome

Hi friends,

 A warm thankful to those who have consistently showed support and the much needed push I have needed to start a blog all about meditation and yoga findings. My food website at times has reflected my thoughts on how yoga, meditation, and healing in all the forms it naturally takes in our lives. I am honored to share this space where I can give these thoughts a home.

  Many thanks,

         Jess