Have you had good intentions to practice Yoga or Meditation regularly, only to realise you haven’t been doing it for a week, or you got ill and it interrupted the flow, or life threw you a curve ball and you got out of the habit?
Did you then beat yourself up mentally, drag yourself down with your own judgements, let the guilt and shame of not achieving your own expectations stop you from immediately beginning again?
It’s a worthy, albeit uncomfortable, self enquiry to sit and observe your relationship with perceived failure and to burn up those deep grooves of guilt tripping and shaming yourself.
One of the lessons I am most Grateful for from my time on the Ishaya mountain, was the invitation to play with letting Now be the only moment that matters and to realise that Now is the only moment you can choose to begin again. In this realisation you celebrate that you noticed and can now make a choice instead of shaming yourself, because in that moment you cannot change the fact that you were functioning unconsciously for a day, a week, a year!
Setting an intention is important yes, having the intention to commit 100% to that intention is a beautiful and necessary thing, but to use the intention as a bar to beat yourself up with is unnecessary, pointless and self violent. It perpetuates those patterns of guilt and shame that you are trying to dissolve by closing your eyes to Meditate in the first place.
There is a gentler way.
When you notice you have swerved from the path you had intended, simply put your hand on your Heart and begin again.
Committing 100% is long term game. It’s committing to the choice to keep coming back to your Self, to your Beloved, to your Meditation cushion, to your Yoga mat, to your healthy lifestyle choices, to being more Loving to yourself and others.
You’re not in control of when you become unconscious. With practice you may stay alert and on point for longer periods and yet, even then when your mind has convinced you that you are an “Advanced Meditator”, and you are “there”, you be assured that at some point there will be an act of humbling, to remind you that you are in a Human body and that God/Goddess/The Universe/Source/Your Higher Self may rewrite the script to help you see your own self imposed limitations, that there is no “there”, that there is only the awareness of Now and in this conscious moment awaits the invitation to choose to align with your Soul and its fullest expression.
In Shamanic terms there are 7 layers of emotion that are suppressed from enthusiasm, to pain, to anger, to fear, to grief, to apathy, to unconsciousness. Once you become aware you are “in’ one of these suppressed states, you can learn to move through the layers of emotion by welcoming each state with enthusiasm.
Our theme tonight is therefore the cultivation of enthusiasm! Inviting enthusiasm (especially when we aren’t feeling it!) into our practice and practicing being enthusiastic about welcoming that which we have suppressed instead of denying it, so that anytime we find ourselves in unconsciousness, it becomes easier to begin again.
Here’s the registration link for tonights Meditation Cafe Monday 22nd January at 7.30pm if you’d like to join us:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtcu2qrjIrH9GElxvoV3gy8wMsjpK_GQkz
Meditation Cafe is free by default. If you’d like to “Buy Me A Coffee” in the Cafe to express your Gratitude, or make a donation, you can do so here:
http://paypal.me/thebendywitch
If you’d like to receive these registration links weekly, straight to you inbox, please subscribe to this blog. Alternatively you can always find the weekly registration links on the page The Silent Revolution.
The Bendy Witch 
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