Be a Being, Not a Doing/Thinking/Having/Wanting

Spring is springing, birds are singing, I am centered, simply being!

Happy March!

We are well into the new year now. How are you doing with your new year commitments? Are you doing one action every day that will support your day and life being more fulfilling to you? Don’t stop now—you’ve traveled to far! Today is your day to achieve your whole self!

What is one thing you can do to support yourself staying on track each day? A few minutes of meditation!

In one of the online Monday Morning Meditations (Mmm!)* last month, we emphasized how the practice of simply being reminds us of who we really are: Human Beings, instead of human doings/thinkings/havings/wantings. Indeed, we are even Being beyond our humanness—we are spiritual beings! Our Beingness is the only part of us that remains when we set aside our thinking, doing, having, wanting in our time of meditation.

We step away from our tasks of the day and week. We set aside our doings for the day, set aside our thoughts, our wants, our shoulds, our belongings, our everything on the outside. What is left? Our quiet, powerful Presence, our ever-present, unchanging Being.

Being present in Beingness is simple, but our mind/body system isn’t used to it. The mind has been so accustomed to thinking/solving/doing/wanting, that simply being is at first (and for a while!) a difficult task—like putting magnets together at the same pole: Our mind wants to repel that silence! It doesn’t know what to do with it!

To help that wild and wonderful mind, we must gently and relentlessly persist in sweeping away the myriad of thoughts and impulses that arise when we sit and look at our insides.

Every day for a few minutes—I recommend starting with five minutes—sit somewhere comfortable. You can add candles, music, pictures, whatever helps you settle in. Close your eyes and find a place in your body where you feel the most calm and grounded (solid). It may be a different body area every time you meditate—that’s okay! Let your attention rest on that area, noticing its calmness.

Next, notice your breath for a few moments. Make sure it is moving from your belly versus your chest, called diaphragmatic breath, or belly breath. This breath is naturally calmer, deeper, and soothing to the body. Just let your breath move at its natural pace; no need to control it.

Then from your calm, grounded place, simply BE. Watch all the thoughts that come and go, seeming to disrupt your peaceful presence. Notice that they go as quickly as they arise. Just let them, and BE.

You may spend the entire five minutes with a busy mind, but as long as you are tuned in to that calm place, you will notice your quiet beingness emerge more and more over time. You are retraining your mind/body system, so it takes time and practice! Be patient, be gentle, be willing to find your Self simply being.

Here is the link for the guided Mmm! “I Am Simply Being” to help you with your practice: I Am Simply Being (Guided Meditation)

Enjoy, and have a wonderful month!

*You can find information on Monday Morning Meditation (Mmm!) at CenterForDynamicHealing.com. You are welcome to join me live every Monday for a 30-minute meditation to begin your week from your center. 9:00 am Central Time. Subscribe to the Center for Dynamic Healing YouTube channel so that you’ll be notified of new meditations as they are posted.

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If I Had a Hammer, I’d Use Love Instead

Love Encourages Change

Each new year brings new energy and a renewed desire for change! How are your New Year’s Resolutions going at this point in our new year?

Often when we have something we want to change in ourselves, the first response we have is excitement and zeal for our changes! But when change doesn’t come as easily as we wanted it to, anger, frustration, and apathy can seep in. We then try to go about our desired change with a hammer over our heads (if we don’t give up on it altogether)!

How many of us do well while getting bossed around, criticized and rejected? It might work for a little while—or a long while, if we are over-tolerant—but after a time, we stop trying so hard, or try to get away from the hammer, thus avoiding the project at hand altogether.

We are better at changing when we have encouragement, acceptance and a caring eye guiding us in the new behavior.

Who is the best person to do that for you? Maybe you have a supportive friend, or an encouraging therapist or group you attend. But you are with you all the time! You are the one who will walk with you through all of the ups and downs of life—which includes those internal conversations!

Here are a few ways to encourage yourself through any change you want to make:

• Love first: Ask yourself, “What is there to love about the situation as it is?”
• Take one change at a time. Too many changes too fast wear us out! This is why so many New Year’s resolutions are abandoned.
• Visualize yourself already changed. What does that look like? See yourself happy and enjoying the results of your efforts! Spend five minutes each day with this exercise. Take notes on how it feels. You will likely come up with new steps toward your goal!
• Use lovingkindness. Imagine what you would say to your best friend who was going through a change. Is your self-talk matching what you would say to someone else? If not, write down encourage statements, affirmations or mantras, and place them around your home, car and work.
• Exemplify patience. Remember these kindnesses when you are working with others during changes. Patience with others helps us have more patience with ourselves.

A little love goes a long way to melt raw materials and create a masterpiece. Take a best friend with you throughout 2023…YOU! 

Pure Air In, Everything Else Out

Welcome to Monday Morning Meditation!

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPZRbreVv-QYhu5NlWsq3Q

Today’s meditation inspired by this discourse by Mooji: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcBujwXvGC8

One of the purposes of a meditation practice is to learn to be in charge of your mind, instead of your mind being in charge of you. Thought thinking is going in the mind all day long, 24/7, whether we are aware of it or not. When we are not aware of it, those unconscious thoughts lead our emotions, behaviors, and other thoughts in all sorts of directions that we may or may not want for ourselves.

There is a popular phrase out there that states, “Energy follows thought”—meaning that where our thoughts go, we follow. For further understanding of this, I add, “and thought follows attention”. When we are conscious of our thoughts, paying attention to them, they can also lead us in directions that can be more or less desirable.

For example, this morning, I had the song “Amie” by Pure Prairie League pass through my mind. Suddenly, all of my internal focus was on this song and the parts of it I recalled, and the mild frustration around the parts that I did not. So what did that attention to that thought process ignite in me? Picking up my phone, searching for “Amie” on my Spotify app, and listening to the whole song to satisfy some random, restless thought! Did I need to listen to that song? Of course not; but I allowed the thoughts to control my behavior.

In my defense, I knew I was going to be talking and writing about this today, so I allowed myself to follow through with the urge. I could have just as consciously and with just as much effort (probably a lot less effort, actually) noted the song going through my head, and simply allowed it to pass through without grabbing on to it. But, hey, it’s a great song! No harm done!

Energy follows thought, and thought follows attention.

Energy follows thought, and thought follows attention.

Energy follows thought, consciously or unconsciously. Our attention adds energy to thoughts more consciously, although we still may not be fully aware that we are adding energy to our thoughts by indulging them.

If you don’t believe me, watch your thoughts today, and by the end of the day, you will see for yourself how thoughts and attention to them drag you around frequently during the day. If you have a worry, the more you think about that worry, the stronger it can feel.

Energy follows thought, and thought follows attention.

Here’s the key: Awareness rules them all: thoughts, attention, and energy. However, awareness has to be turned on; it has to be given the authority within you. My spiritual mentor, Jane Elizabeth Hart, calls this, “developing the Observer Self”. The Observer Self is that part of us that is awareness itself. It is what sees the thoughts and emotions within us, but is not caught up in those thoughts or emotions; it simply watches.

Observer Self practice can help stop us from being controlled unconsciously by the random energies flying through the mind. We can have an earworm like “Amie” wisp through our minds and not have to jump on our phones to listen to the whole song (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and can instead redirect ourselves to something more important in the moment.

The mind is very strong, but it is also easily manipulated!

The Observer Self helps us stop ourselves from being manipulated by random thoughts.

Visualizations in meditation help the practice of the Observer Self, and being in charge of our thoughts and energy. Today, we are using a visualization that is great when there is a lot of busyness going on in your mind. We are using the acquiescent nature of the mind to strengthen our focus, presence, and inner autonomy.  

I learned this visualization from a beautiful spiritual teacher from Portugal named Mooji. I am so happy to share the video where he is teaching this technique. It is quite wonderful.

“Simple Guidance for Anyone Struggling with the Mind”

And here is an article and video by my spiritual mentor, Jane Elizabeth, talking about the Observer Self:

Tips on Being Your Observer Self

My Spiritual Mentor, Jane Elizabeth Hart, talking about the Observer Self.
For more from Jane and the Center for Enlightenment, go to https://www.CenterForEnlightenment.com.

Please enjoy this video meditation on this topic. Thank you for reading and watching! May you practice being in your Observer Self every day!

The Responsibility of Being Your Authentic Self

Video supplement:

You are your Divine Self. That Higher Self lives through you as your personality self. It is your responsibility to cooperate with and support that Divine/Higher/Authentic Self to have room in your mind, heart, and through your actions.

Here are some steps you can take to support your Authentic Self:

1. Define your Authentic Self
   • Who are you? Who do you want to be in this lifetime? How do you want to show up in the world?
   • What are your desires, your values? What is important to you?
2. Meditate for five minutes (or more!) every day. Spend time getting to know your Higher Self! 
3. Observe yourself.
   • Do your thoughts, words, emotions, and actions line up with how you want to be?
   • Are your decisions supporting you in becoming more of your Authentic Self?
4. Heal what needs to be healed as is revealed to you.
   • Look within. Observe with compassion any triggers or missteps that come along.
   • Ask yourself, “If I were coming from my Authentic Self rather than my personality self, how would I see this situation differently?”

You are in charge of how much of your Authentic Self gets to dance in your world! Do you want it to be a little here and there, or a whole lot? Every day is a new opportunity to discover more of your Authentic Self!

My love to you all!

Lynn Barrette, LCSW – Lynn (“Mikki” Michael) Barrette was the Y.O.U. International President from 1988-1989, Midwest Y.O.U. Regional Representative from 1987-1988, and worked at the Association of Unity Churches (now Unity Worldwide Ministries) from 1992-1993. She served in many roles in Unity churches in Florida, New Mexico, Kansas, Michigan, and Illinois.

Lynn is a licensed clinical therapist and spiritual counselor, and leads classes, webinars, and workshops on spiritual psychology. Her heart’s desire is to support others in being more attuned to their Higher Self. Her private practice, Center for Dynamic Healing, has offices in Illinois and Florida. Visit her website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel for more information and support for your soul!

Created for the Youth of Unity (Y.O.U.) Authenticity Faire, October 15-17, 2021

Are You a Pirate?

There is a fun song on the internet called “You Are a Pirate“. The words are:

Do what you want ‘cause a pirate is free

You are a pirate

Yar-har-fiddle-de-dee

Being a pirate is alright with me

Do what you want ‘cause a pirate is free

You are a pirate.

Repeat continuously, loop-style, ad nauseum.

The song originally comes from a children’s television program in which the town villain disguises himself as a pirate to lure the children away from their good behavior. He makes being a pirate sound fun with his happy pirate song and promises of freedom from discipline and rules. The children, of course, enthusiastically take their places as his crew mates. Who doesn’t want freedom?

On the spiritual path, one of the skills we learn is distinguishing between short-sighted egoic impulses and the true promptings of our soul. We start learning this by more closely observing the thoughts and feelings that arise and incite us to act. When our ego pulls us toward personality freedom, often it can excite us and feel good on a short-term basis. Ego pulls don’t take into consideration the needs of those around us or long-term consequences of our actions. We can liken this to the pirate from the song, and the children who happily followed along.

Soul freedom leads us toward greater responsibility for what is ours to do this lifetime. It also aligns us with our higher potential. Hmm…Not as enticing at first, is it?

Paramahansa Yogananda, the great Indian mystic, once said, “The mind is so powerful, it can make you taste salt and think it is sugar, and when you eat sugar, it can make you think you taste salt.” Our ego pulls are the salt that tastes sweet at first, but then we feel disappointed when we discover it wasn’t what was in our best interest. Our soul promptings taste a bit salty at first, but as we stick with them, how sweet it is! Everything flows better when we are aligned with our soul responsibilities!

How much time and energy do you spend following the piratey impulsiveness of your personality self? How long does that satisfy you?

The children who followed the pirate to his false “freedom” (and were subsequently captured) quickly learned that the rules they ran from actually provided structure so they could play more freely! Likewise, our intuition is there to help us learn the best structure and steps to take to free our souls from ego-captivity, allowing greater energy to flow into a more joyful expression of who we truly are!

Using Emotions for Awareness and Healing – A Three Step Process

When it comes to working with emotions, I hear from a lot of people, “I don’t want to feel _________” (insert tricky emotion here). While we certainly don’t want to get stuck in an emotional experience, emotions are there to help us resolve whatever might need to be resolved within us.

Neuroscience tells us, “Name it to tame it”. When we can label our emotion, it instantly becomes more manageable than when it stays at a somatic (body sensation) experience.

In psychology, Carl Jung taught us that making the unconscious conscious is our way to healing. This is certainly true in our spiritual expression as well.

In this video, I teach you a three step process that I’ve been using for over two decades, and frequently use with my clients and in classes that I facilitate.

The steps are three questions to ask yourself when you become aware of an emotion:

1. What is the emotion I’m feeling?
2. What is the story this emotion is telling me?
3. What new perspective could I take that would be calming to me?

Here is a link to the handout: http://www.dynamiccounseling.info/handouts.html

If you would like more information on Explorer’s Odyssey: Up a Spiritual Creek without a Paddle, contact me here: http://www.dynamiccounseling.info/contact.html

Thanks for watching!

Lynn Barrette, LCSW
http://www.dynamiccounseling.info
https://www.facebook.com/dynamiccounseling/

Increase Body Awareness, Increase Intuitive Sense

Did you know that your body awareness has a great deal to do with your intuition?

Intuition is a higher expression of our emotional sensation and perception. While emotions are mixed in with our contradictory human issues, our intuition is free and clear, always speaking to us!

To increase our awareness of both our emotional and intuitive bodies, we can practice being aware of our physical bodies.

Here are a few ways to increase body awareness:

1. Physical movement: yoga, martial arts, walking, exercise of any kind

2. Mindfulness body scan

3. Diaphragmatic Breathing (Belly Breath)

Work with one or two of these daily to increase your body awareness as well as intuition!

Thanks for watching!

Lynn Barrette, LCSW
http://www.dynamiccounseling.info
https://lynnbarrette.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/dynamiccounseling/
Links to Body Scan and Breath exercises:
http://mindfulness-solution.com/DownloadMeditations.html

For more on Soul Evolution and intuition:
Center for Enlightenment
http://www.cfenlightenment.org
http://www.soulevolutionist.com

Five Tools for Inner Housecleaning

Spring cleaning is not just for Spring, or for your house! Here are five tools for your inner housecleaning that you can use daily, as needed, and enjoy the fresh air that peace of mind brings!

1. Meditate. For five minutes a day (at a consistent time and location), observe the thoughts that go through your mind. Don’t push them away, judge them, or feel ashamed; just notice what they are saying to you and let them pass.

2. Journal. Write about the time during the day when you felt frustrated, hurt, sad or angry. What were you feeling and thinking? Get to know your reactions and look for a pattern in them. Writing about your feelings can help you understand when to back off, and when to stand up for yourself.

3. Forgive. Jane Elizabeth Hart’s Seven Steps for Successful Life Transitions is an excellent forgiveness method. Unforgiveness balls you up in body, mind, and expression; while forgiveness frees you to experience more overall joy.

4. Use difficult people to learn about your hidden issues. Take that guy at the office that grinds you like fingers down a chalkboard. Get your journal and list all the qualities and behaviors about him that bug you. Ask yourself who this person represents to you. You can learn a lot about what is blocking you from your potential by embracing those you find difficult to be around. Forgive them even if you don’t know what it is that you don’t like. The health benefits of this action alone will be worth your effort.

5. Trust yourself above all others. There is no teacher, master, therapist, guru, or life coach out there who is any good unless they are telling you to listen to your own inner promptings. As you watch your own thinking and journal out your feelings, you will begin to understand more about who you are. This is a wonderful and scary thing! Trust that your inner wisdom will reveal itself and support you as you work to resolve fear and false beliefs.

Life Isn’t Solved by a Facebook Post

Did you grow up with platitudes that don’t seem to work in everyday life? Can you recognize them as you scroll through Facebook?

A platitude is a statement, usually with a moral message, that is used so frequently that it loses it’s true meaning.

Even though my family was part of a positive spiritual community, I still grew up with several platitudes that I eventually had to unlearn.

Anytime we receive advice from others, or see an inspiring message on social media, we need to still run it through our intuition: Is this right for me? Will it help me resolve and move forward from my present circumstance?

What platitudes have you evaluated and found to work only in certain circumstances?

Thanks for watching!
Lynn

P.S. You might also enjoy Discernment versus Judgment!

http://www.dynamiccounseling.info
https://www.facebook.com/dynamiccounseling/

Discernment versus Judgment

I hear from many people who worry overmuch that they are thinking or saying something judgmental, when in reality they are making a clear and healthy discernment regarding a person or situation.

In this video, I help define discernment–which is healthy and helps us make wise decisions–versus judging, which generates negative feelings and energy for everyone.

The questions to ask yourself when you are worried that you are feeling judgmental are:

1. What is happening?
2. What is my experience of what is happening?
3. What can I do about it?

Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences!