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When There's Nowhere Else to Go

8/9/2015

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Source: Amy Tirion, Santorini, Greece
We are a forward moving and thinking culture.  We’ve been conditioned to have a plan in our pocket at all times; our eye on the horizon and a known path to get there. The idea of having nowhere else to go can conjure up images of a dead end, being trapped or stagnant.  Why does lack of forward movement feel unsettling or unnatural? Is it possible to gaze at the horizon with all of its promise without needing to chase it? 

My family just had a beautiful exercise in planning ahead and being completely present simultaneously. We recently returned from our first European vacation.  I wistfully observed us as a family and wished we could always operate in this balanced state of valuing each day.

One afternoon as we boarded a ferry in Greece, my younger daughter asked, “How long is the ferry ride?”

I answered, “Three hours,” expecting a moan of frustration when she learned what was between her and the next destination.

To my surprise she replied, “Oh good!  I just love to just sit and do nothing.” At that point we had nowhere else to go, yet we were still on our journey.  She has always been one of my greatest teachers.

When we arrived in Santorini, we found one of the most magical places on earth.  Do add it to your bucket list! This crescent shaped Greek island was born from a gigantic volcanic eruption that left only a massive rim jetting up from the sea. As you climb from the port to the highest tips of the towns, you ascend into the clouds.  We stepped through the gate of our hotel, and immediately were on the cliff’s edge.  We felt this dense peace, looked down at the silent sparkling sea miles below, and for a brief moment believed we were in heaven.

Heaven has varied and arguable definitions, but in Santorini, it’s undeniable. You have to catch your breath.  It’s the inhale you forgot to take when your eyes first cast out onto the expansive horizon far below against the sheer cliffs ripped into indescribable form.

You quiet to whispers.  And your brain . . . well, it rests.  There is nowhere else to go.

For two sweet days we experienced this pure peace that entered into our cells, creating expansiveness within us as infinite as our view. 

I'm back now, without the view, but with new resolve to hold my gaze. Summer has these moments for each of us: time in the sweetness of nature; in a vacation destination never seen before, or in a well-loved familiar spot to soak in the long sunlit days.  Daily life is also full of points in time when we are meant to sit still in between destinations.  May you find heaven in these moments.  May they teach you how to live in peace, being fully present, without striving or planning.  May you feel whole and know that you can rest . . . you have arrived . . . that there is no where else to go.
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Yearning

1/11/2014

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What three words described your 2013?  Quickly -- top of mind.  I'd love to know.

On New Year’s Eve, in a circle of friends and family, we took turns seeing what words bubbled up to the surface.  Challenging, exhilarating, progress, complicated, sunny, thankful, persevering were a few.

This morning my own fourth word came forward: Yearning.  Was yearning part of your year too?

Looking back, I had very specific chapters with very specific desires.  I also had an overarching fuzzy sense of yearning that I know sometimes felt restless or stagnant; other times it propelled me forward, even though I can’t name where I landed. Yearning can be intense. It produces energy inside of us that seeps into the world.

This week my yoga teacher, Sean Haleen, shared the yogic philosophy that we are constantly creating, sustaining or destroying. I started to think about which category yearning falls into.  

I believe yearning can hold any of these energies.  Looking back on your year, did you act on any desires that brought something positive into the world or brought good energy to those around you?

How much energy did you expend to protect or maintain something about yourself or something sacred to you.  Most importantly, can you see when going towards your yearnings were at the cost or destruction of others?

Let me give you a simple example. This week I had a huge yearning to clean, purge and start fresh in the new year.  I became more and more intense as I pushed my daughters to be a part of the one-day house cleansing.  It was a very real yearning that had been brewing within me.

My youngest daughter knows when this yearning surfaces and always asks that I at least let her shut her bedroom door while she cleans (so she doesn’t absorb my energy). I couldn’t help myself.  I had to check her progress.  I knocked to ask permission.  On her dresser top, she strategically piled a bunch of her stuff onto a tray.

I eyed a hammer and gently asked, "Aria do you need this hammer or can I take it downstairs?"

She barked back with a twinkle in her eye, "Yes I need my hammer to hit you over the head when I don't like your parenting style!" 

My desire to create a fresh start, was actually more destructive than productive. The only thing I was creating was stress in my daughter.

This is a natural time to start moving your yearnings forward with fresh hope and energy.  

My wish for you is to live out your yearnings in ways that feel empowering, purposeful, fun, and brave . . . to live out your yearnings in ways that mindfully feed life around you and nurture what you treasure most.

Blessing in 2014!
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Seeking Versus Shedding

5/5/2013

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Have you ever had an intense seeking inside of you that you can’t put into words?  A restlessness that makes your mind grasp for answers? Even your body holds anticipation?  Sometimes we know exactly what we are seeking in life . . . a new this or a change in that. However,  I’m talking about a deeper query, one without a clear and focused path.  It feels like more of a wave that you just have to ride.

Last month I found myself "surfing the Mavericks".  It’s been an intense journey of seeking that came unexpectedly and was hard to navigate.  It’s over now.  I am catching my breath and seeing my ride with clarity that wasn’t there for me when just my nose was above the water.

I wonder if you might be riding the same wave.  Are you seeking answers that aren’t ready to take shape?

I asked for help to calm the swell within my mind, body and spirit, calling on my beautiful circle of wisdom.  You know the combination:  doctors, healers, coaches, friends, family, teachers, mentors.  Ultimately the greatest clarity came from the Universe delivering two blessings.

The first blessing came to me while driving to the airport.  I love the belief of animal totems. They bring us messages of what we need and help us connect with our innate beings.   I have always felt a connection to hawks and have many stories of hawks visiting me.  While I was driving, a hawk flew up out of the field carrying a large two-foot snake in its talons. I knew this was a powerful message I needed to receive but I didn’t understand its meaning until I returned from my trip.

I had received an invitation to take the last seat on a plane and fly down to San Diego to hear and meet Ekhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer.  It felt like a high end pilgrimage to hear three modern day Western disciples.  

Ekhart’s words pierced through my seeking, “The need to understand your life is a mental construct. If you are looking for enlightenment like something that will arrive, you will never receive it, because it cannot be grasped. Let go and find a sense of not knowing.  This is your awakening . . .”

I realized my deep seeking has actually been a shedding.  Instead of grasping for something in front of me  I was actually letting go of a part of myself that no longer served a purpose.   And what has emerged is still taking shape. It feels wonderful.

Shedding may feel like a combination of yearning, heaviness, agitation, overwhelm, inspiration, or confusion.  It may be an unexplained push towards change. It may have an undertow of a lack of trust or intuition.  Shedding can penetrate your thoughts, emotions, spirit and physical condition.

Shedding is the work of change. It’s hard work work but holds a different energy. It’s an energy of letting go of a part of yourself versus trying to effort through “self develop”.  If I would have recognized my seeking as shedding from the start,   it would have lightened my journey.

My daughter just came home from school this week with a gift for me she made in ceramics.  “I don’t really like it Mom but you can have it if you want it.”  How did she know?

Are you seeking clarity using your old lens?  Maybe it’s time to shed some of your beliefs or thought patterns.  Maybe it’s time to shed the need for clarity. The skin I shed may not be yours.  The next time you feel uncomfortable in your own skin, try letting it go.

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Feeling Safe

11/5/2012

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What makes you feel safe? 

A roof over your head?

A leader you trust?

Money in the bank?   A strong military?

Your faith?

A clean bill of health?

A stable job?

How about organic food . . .  a flu vaccine . . . seat belts . . . contraception  . . . a home security system . . .  not watching the news?

Living in America?

Feeling loved?

We all felt the intense uncertainty of this week as our Nation prepared to ride out Hurricane Sandy.  Its awful aftermath served to shift the fear many of us hold around the Presidential election to real matters of life, death, survival, and coming together in profound and necessary ways.

Ultimately, I think feeling safe is about knowing you are not alone.  

When all the scaffolding we create in life falls or blows or floats away, we are left with the one innate force that guided us from the moment we entered this world as infants.  It’s what stopped our tears.

Knowing you are not alone can take many forms.  You can find security in a family, a friendship, a pet, a partnership, a community.  You can find connection with a greater life force.  

Perhaps the most intimate and often the most fleeting sense of not being alone is finding that connection within your Self.   Can you feel safe within your Self?  How do you get there?  It can feel like searching for a light in the darkness.  But within your powerfully rooted center there is a space that is safe.  It can hold you. It knows you.  It can guide you and soothe you.  In that place, when you are able to be with yourself and trust … you are not alone.
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Disappointment

8/17/2012

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What is your relationship with disappointment?  I've had a ring of disappointments enter my radar this month; of my friends, my family, my own.  They each have a familiar beginning and middle: hope, effort, anticipation, disappointment.

The end to these stories tends to be very private. After disappointment, there is a final chapter of processing and healing required to close the loop.

The Olympics was an amazing example of intense disappointment mixed with storybook victory.  I watched with such respect for these athletes.  I would love to read their last chapters to learn more about their relationship with disappointment. I know it's different from mine.

Athletes like gymnast Jordan Jovtchev from Bulgaria in his 6th Olympic games, train their whole life to “succeed” or to “fail”, staring disappointment squarely and publicly in the face, over and over.

I’m in a different camp.  I seem to work around potential life disappointments, living safely and predictably. Whenever I attempt to avoid disappointments, I ultimately create them, in the form of regret.  

So how do we create a healthy relationship with disappointment?

Buddhism has a basic belief that disappointment is caused by attachment to expectations - the root of human suffering.  

But how do we manifest a full life and detach ourselves from it at the same time?

How do we find the motivation to fuel our hard work without having expectations about the outcome?

Is life supposed to be just a wait-and-see exercise with pleasant surprises sprinkled in?

How do we let go of expectations without feeling stagnant or unfocused?

Maybe a healthy relationship with life and its disappointments means facing this emotion directly, regularly, and consciously.
  • Loosening the grip of our dreams and desires without losing sight of them, so we can better appreciate the journey while still steering our life.
     
  • Being more comfortable putting ourselves out there and then letting go, trusting the unfolding of life.

If we want to go for a medal in any area of our lives, we need to practice being vulnerable and strengthening our core sense of “wholeness” regardless of the outcome.

The spirit of Sunday's Closing Ceremonies embodied the Last Chapter we all want to write. It's about celebrating our best efforts, embracing those who land "ahead" and "behind" us, having mutual respect for our collective journey and honoring all of our courage along the way.
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Overwhelm

1/16/2012

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When it hits, it has a power of its own.  I was hit with overwhelm today.  I was walking on the beach. It caught me off guard like a rogue wave and brought me to tears.

There is plenty in life that can trigger overwhelm.  Whether it’s figuring out your life plan or the day’s to dos.  Usually it’s a combination of both, the sense of smallness against the largeness of the moment . . . and trying to control something that hasn’t even arrived.

For me it was a silly combination of not enough sleep, the state of education in the Bay Area, and a dying christmas tree.

As my inhales continued to tighten, I received an amazing gift.  I approached some sand carvings . . . Someone had created a labyrinth in the sand and written next to it, “It’s not the destination.  It’s the journey.”

Overwhelm is birthed in worry.  Worry is about the future. Pure mindfulness is being completely and purposefully steeped in the present. Tonight I have new resolve to keep trying. I believe in its power. We all have tasted it in fleeting moments.
 
What is your next moment of trying to be in the present? Maybe brushing your teeth, wiping down a counter, taking down a Christmas tree, feeding a pet, a kiss good night, feeling the comfort of bed.
 
May your journey be rich in the Now._

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Let 11/11/11 be Meaningful

11/11/2011

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_11-11-11 is almost over.  It has been a meaningful day in many spiritual, astrological, historical and even scientific contexts.  Today marked a new beginning of a greater consciousness.

I personally felt differently today and I know why.  Last night my family was given the rare opportunity to look through a telescope. We studied the craters of the full moon and saw Jupiter, counting four of its moons and seeing its bands.  

I feel differently because I was given the gift of seeing for the first time something that has been reflecting down at me my whole life.

Although I don’t fully understand the depths of 11-11-11, I want to be open to expanding the way I see and think.  I invite you to join me.  How might you evolve your relationship with ~

Mother Earth


    Money

        Time

            Others

                Divinity

                    Yourself

May we all be open to seeing and then moving toward the changes we need to make collectively and in ourselves in order to grow, thrive, and recognize our connectedness, our Oneness.
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    Amy Tirion
    About Me
    Advocate for Stillness, Seeker of Inspiration, Playful Mom, Lover of Creativity, Still Learning, Believer in Women,  Founder of Delight for the Soul

    Check Out My New Book Knowing Beautiful:
    A New Bedtime Story for Women

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    Becoming
    This blog is an invitation to stop.  Breathe.  And tap into the part of you that craves more space, inspiration, and nurturing.  It captures the writings from my Delight for the Soul Newsletter.  They are personal moments of reflection, inspiration, and questioning that focus on Being rather than Doing.  It's a direction we are all invited to go in, as we live deeply and do less.  The more we focus on being, the more delighted we become . . . and the more becoming we are.


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