joy

PBP2012: G is for Grace

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One word that you will hear a lot in religious and spiritual circles is “grace”.   If you look up the word grace you’ll find a multitude of definitions ranging from how we move to blessings bestowed from the divine.  I feel that grace transcends definition.  It is more like a state of being rather than something that can be lock into words.  In our practice we connect not just to ourselves but to the world around us.  When we extend compassion to those that hurt us we are moving into a state of grace.  When we love the shadows in our past, we are loving ourselves gracefully. One of my teachers always taught me about the importance of leaving situations gracefully.  When we do we do not take with us any of the anger or resentment.  You could almost say that grace is a form of compassion.  It goes to the core of our being, and becomes a deep extension of our soul’s light and energy.  We can see aspects of grace in a ballerina’s movement, can we extend the same into how we connect with those around us and even to ourselves?  To move with mercy.  To look at one another and to see the soul reflected back.  Practicing being in a state of grace is important for bringing the soul into alignment.  The soul is perfect divine light.  When we look at one another typically we only see the shell, the third dimensional self.  If we were to look at the world through the soul’s eyes?  To see only the shining light of God Herself that rests in everything.  When we engage in our spiritual practice and path work it is important for us to see where we might be holding on to limiting emotions.  Where are we holding our anger, resentment, guilt?  Breathing into those areas of our life that need love, embracing the depths of our darkness, and loving ourselves fully.  In yoga we talk about Ahimsa.  The action of living a non-violent life.  In Wicca the rede “and harm ye none” is one of the core statements.  The thing we forget to do is turn this internal.  Many of us are in a constant state of judging ourselves.  We have to take our practice “within” so that we won’t be “without”.  This can be difficult to do, but it is an important part of the journey.  We can’t just strive to see God Herself in the world around us, but we must also see her in our reflection in the mirror.  When we show mercy to ourselves, we are in turn showing mercy to the divine within us.  Grace then becomes the extension of mercy out into this sometimes chaotic world.  We each get to choose how we embrace grace and mercy.  How do you extend these concepts into your practice?  Into your life? and into the relationships that you carry?

Michael Brazell CFT CSN MAT PAT

www.deviantyogi.com

www.michaelbrazell.com

michael@michaelbrazell.com

Taking Inventory of Our Lessons

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Taking Inventory of Our Lessons

So, as we move into our store inventory I try to find some way to connect this into my spiritual world. There is a monotony and inventory is not fun by any means. To make these non-fun things a little more life bearable I try to connect some spiritual meaning to them. I try to find joy in the mundane, and in everything there is application to the spiritual on some level.  One of the biggest questions I get asked in my practice as an intuitive consultant is: “How do I let things go?”. The answer is simple: You cant. We are human, and we all have the need to hold on to everything in our lives. We become attached to memories–both good and bad, but more often the bad ones hold the highest energy. We tend to hold onto negative experiences in the hopes that we will never have to go through them again. Well, law of attraction says “THat which I focus on, I will constantly call into my experience.”  When we attach ourselves to anchors we will only drown. They keep us locked in negative and dangerous patterns. Many of us repeat negative relationships, find ourselves in similar unhappy work situations, or even stuck in negative habits. So, if we can’t let things  go–how do we move forward? We must transition the energy to something that is positive.  In ever experience, we learn something about ourselves. If we are unconscious to what we are learning, it means that we didn’t quite get the lesson. We understand the experience, but not the lesson. We have to go deeper. We have to extend gratitude into every life situation. Take a moment and let your mind drift back to a past experience that you might not want to repeat. There was something about that experience that you overcame, or learned to do for yourself. When you acknowledge the lesson you are more able to move forward from that point in time. You begin to see where your growth has been initiated.   Some of us are what I like to call “experiential learners”. What this means is that in order to fully engage life we have to “experience everything”. To understand joy, we really must go into our sorrow, to feel connection we must have periods of disconnection, to feel spiritual we have to first be angry at the divine. The previous are just a few things that I have noticed about my own experience, and how you go through your lessons might be different. The danger is that sometimes we continue to hold onto those negative vibrations because we feel we must have the balance, or we get comfortable with those low swings. We have to learn to live in the highest vibrations. When we hold on to only the negative we create a pattern. An example is the people who think that something bad is on the way because life is suddenly going great–of course it will, that is your affirmation! We must break ourselves out of these patterns of upswing and low swing. This isn’t to say that life wont have its sticky moments, but you will see that they last for shorter durations and that you are able to move through them with greater ease.

Here is a small process to take inventory of your lessons:

1) Get a notebook and at the top of the page write down a past experience that you want to focus on.
2) Write a small description of the experience. What you felt while you were in that space, how long you were in the experience, and who you feel the lesson bringer was. If this was a relationship it could be the person you shared the relationship with, it was a work situation it could be a boss, or a coworker that caused some struggle.
3) Start a list identifying what you learned about yourself in that place of difficulty. Did you learn that you anger easily. Did you learn that you had inner strength that was realized after you decided to leave an abusive partner, etc.
4) How do those lessons apply in your life now. Are you repeating old patterns? Are you a different person now due to those past experiences?

When we ae able to take account of all parts of self we begin a deeper process of
integration. We pull back any power we have given away to people, situations and circumstances. This is a new and exciting year. It is time to release all the anchors and move freely into what is coming. We are all who we are because of what we have gone through, what we do with those experiences will either propel us forward or bind us. It’s time for you to set sail.

Mahayogi Das CFT CSN MAT PAT
http://www.michaelbrazell.com
http://www.deviantyogi.com
michael@michaelbrazell.com