The Everyday Mystic

Living the life of an Everyday Mystic takes commitment, awareness and an open heart.  Commitment to a spiritual practice that works for you, awareness of the synchronicities and blessings that grace your life’s journey, and an open heart to the lessons of the Spirit.  From several sources, I’ve heard or read the following guidelines for living a spiritually integrated life, and I’d like to share them with you today:

1. Daily, engage in a spiritual practice that suits your temperament

2.  Weekly, worship with a community, meet with a group of like-minded seekers or engage in a special spiritual time

3. Monthly, seek guidance from a spiritual director or coach

4. Yearly, participate in a retreat to rejuvenate your spirit

5. Once in a lifetime, make a pilgrimage to a spiritually significant event or place

I will discuss each of these guidelines in subsequent posts this week, so check back regularly to learn more about each one.

I knew it was time to write about these guidelines as I sat in church this morning listening to a wonderful sermon.  The universe whispered in my ear that it was time to finally compose these posts!

The sermon was entitled "Come Be My Light", referring to the eponymous book of Mother Teresa’s private writings, edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk. The minister cited several of the rules for the Sisters of Charity (the order that Mother Teresa founded).  One rule was a daily mandate to meditate for 30 minutes, do the full rosary and do 30 minutes of spiritual reading.  Her rules continued with #37, which states, "The Sisters shall spend one day in every week, one week in every month, one month in every year, one year in every six years in the Motherhouse, where in contemplation and penance together with solitude she can gather in the spiritual strength, which she might have used up in the service of the poor." (page 345, Come Be My Light, Mother Teresa & Brian Kolodiejchuk.) 

No one in "regular" life can give that much time to contemplative pursuits, but the point is that Mother Teresa recognized that the soul must 1) have a daily discipline to shape it, and 2) be nourished by regular solitary retreats. In comparison, the five guidelines I cited, above, for living a spiritually integrated life seem easy. 

We’ll explore just how easy these guidelines are in the upcoming posts here at The Everyday Mystic!

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BFF - that’s the text messaging acronym for "best friends forever." Today is the day to have a conversation with yourself and ask, "Will you be my BFF?" Best friends are there to love you, encourage you, forgive you and be your cheerleader - no matter what.  That is what you deserve to receive from yourself - unconditional love of self, forever. Self-love is the foundation of inner peace, and inner peace is the pre-requisite to world peace.  We must learn to love ourselves unconditionally before we can create true peace in our outer world.

At last Saturday’s Forgiveness Workshop at Pathways Church, we wrote forgiveness letters to ourselves.  I instructed the participants to write letters that acknowledged their feelings and unmet needs in their forgiveness opportunity, and to forgive themselves for their part in the story. As facilitator, I gathered up the letters to mail and blessed each envelope - and its recipient - before sending it down the mail chute at the post office.  I’ve mailed notes to myself in the past, and I remember how sweet it was to receive it. I suppose an e-card to yourself would do in a pinch! That’s one way to be your own BFF - write yourself an appreciative or forgiving letter.

Another is to record your successes in your journal.  My business coach, Dr. Jayne Gardner, calls this "counting your wins".  Record both your internal shifts in perspective (your "inner wins") and your worldly successes (your "outer wins").  Two amazing things happen when you record your successes.  First, you begin to really appreciate yourself as you notice your own successes, both small and large.  Second, successes seem to multiply when you are looking for them. It’s almost as if you set your intention to have successes in order to record them in your journal, and so you have them.  Recording your successes is another way to be your own best friend.  Today, I re-read my journal entries for the last four months and marveled at all the successes I wrote about.  I’m proud of myself for recognizing them and for recording them. (There - I just appreciated myself!  BFF!)

A third way to be your own BFF is to teach yourself some perspective.  Our inner critic is swift to berate ourselves for any imperfection we might notice in ourselves.  If you are your own best friend, you will talk back to your inner critic and say, "In six months (or six years, or at the end of my life), am I even going to remember this incident?"  If the answer is no (and almost all the time it is), tell your critic to take a hike.  A friend says that he gives himself a day to feel bad about something, but the next morning, he wakes up with self-forgiveness in his heart.  That’s being your own best friend - silencing your inner critic with perspective and self-forgiveness.

Sometimes I think it is easier for us to accept God’s unconditional love than it is to accept our own unconditional love. We get sucked into thinking that the Divine is more loving, more powerful, more wonderful than we are so we can mentally understand that loving me is easy for God.  However, if we carry the Divine spark within us, we can and must love ourselves.  Loving ourselves is the path to peace.

So, look yourself in the mirror today and ask that gorgeous face of yours, "Will you be my BFF?"

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I’m in Charleston, SC this week for a conference.  As I was walking the streets of this lovely and historic town this afternoon, I came to a Jewish synagogue, called Congregation Beth Elohim, that has a beautiful garden.  The gate was open to the garden, so I walked in, thinking I would simply see another one of the beautiful secret gardens for which this city is well known.  It was a nice garden, but what caught my attention was the inscription that was chiseled in the stone over the entrance to the stately sanctuary.  It was a wonderful English translation of the heart prayer of Judaism, the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4), that I had never heard before. Most of us who come from a Judeo-Christian background recognize the Sh’ma even though Christians may not know its common Hebrew name. We know it as, "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one." Listen with your heart to the different language that I discovered this afternoon:

"Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God is the sole eternal being."

I’ve always had trouble with "The Lord our God is one", because I interpreted it as a way of turning the Israelites against the religions and deities of their neighbors, who had many gods and goddesses.  To me, the Sh’ma represents the ancient Hebrew patriarch’s systematic obliteration of Goddess-worship - in ancient, earth-based religions, a Goddess was often accompanied by gods (usually Her son) or She went by many names. To say that "The Lord our God (notice the male implication) is one" declares not only that monotheism is the ticket but that the Hebrew God is the only way - the Lord God’s way or the highway, so to speak. I take a dim view of the ascendancy of any religion over another, so this assertion goes against the grain for me.  And, as Kristin (me) the teenager would often assert, what about the Christian Trinity - isn’t that a polytheistic view of divinity?  What’s so wrong with polytheism, I would ask my Sunday School teachers.  They did their best to describe it in a way I could grasp, but I don’t remember being satisfied by the answers.

So, back to the present and the inscription at Congregation Beth Elohim.  God is the sole eternal being.  I can really get that. The concept of a "being" is much less discrete than a "god", so my mental image of the Divine is more formless when we describe it as a being.  Being can be a state of consciousness, which I also like as a description of the Divine.  Solely eternal - yes, I can buy that - God is the alpha and omega, the ground of our being, the Source, the Infinite Intelligence, the eternal.  I like it!

I’ll just add that I believe that we, too, are part of the eternal being.  A Course in Miracles tells us that "God is incomplete without you." We share in the eternal being-ness of the Divine, and we are all one.  One with each other and one with the Divine.

I am so glad I diverted my walk into that synagogue’s garden.  Thank you, Congregation Beth Elohim, for a new perspective on this ancient wisdom.

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This week, I’ve been sharing ways that we can connect to Divine Wisdom.  We’ve discussed the four ways that we perceive spirit in our lives and I shared a meditation that helps me converse with God.  Today, I’d like to share some of the wisdom I’ve heard in the past week.  I think that each one of us can benefit from these messages.

Here is what the Divine told me this week:

"Remain in the energy of allowing, not the energy of fear, especially with money.  Fear sets up a wall around you through which money cannot flow to you.  Open your heart, body and soul and just allow blessings in."

"Peace within ourselves is the pre-requisite to external peace.  Teach forgiveness."

"You do well hearing me in your meditations, but listen to me during the day.  Take your journal and write what I tell you.  In this way, you will learn to listen to me during the day. In this way, you will know what to do."

"You’ve had strong feelings today.  But I tell you the envy you feel is out of place.  Beloved, you are exactly where I want you to be.  I have a plan for you and how could you be anywhere else?  Why can’t you accept it for what it is, which is perfect?"

I share these pearls of wisdom as my gift to you today.

Interested in the power of forgiveness?  Come to my Forgiveness Workshop this Saturday, April 19, 2008.

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Want to become an Everyday Mystic?  Want a direct connection to Divine energy?  Today, I’ll share a meditation that can help you plug into Divine Wisdom.

First, let me say that you don’t have to go on a week-long silent retreat to become a meditator.  It has been shown that meditating for as little as 5-10 minutes a day can produce some of the benefits of meditation that include stress reduction, improved concentration and higher emotional equanimity. Most people can spare 5-10 minutes each day.  Turn off the TV and meditate!

The heart of what I do is listen in silence.  That’s all - just listen.  You can close your eyes and listen anytime.  But most of us need to clear out our emotional and mental clutter before we can hear from our highest selves or Divine essence. 

And, know that you can hear, see, know or feel God.  Only when I started to believe that I could do this - that I was worthy of hearing - did the Divine come to me. This is your birthright.  Know that it is given to you.

Here’s the process I do in my meditation.

1.  I have a meditation corner in a large closet where I’ve placed my meditation bench (you could use a cushion or a chair), a candle and a journal or binder.  In my meditation corner, I sit, close my eyes and relax my body. After settling in, I start observing my breath, counting breaths from 1 to 10 and then starting over again.  The purpose of this step is to center myself, to calm myself completely and to fully bring my attention to the present moment.  Sometimes if my mind is especially active or rebellious, I’ll focus on my heartbeat as a way to slow down and center.  You may need to put your fingers on your neck to feel the heartbeat, but after a while you can simply feel and hear it.  I try to breathe in rhythm with my heart. Once I am able to focus on at least three rounds of ten breaths, I proceed to the next step.

2.  Next is a grounding exercise that I learned from my coach, Tina Ferguson (www.tinaferguson.com).  Imagine gathering up a ball of your energy in the area of your solar plexus or third chakra. The ball is about the size of a softball or a grapefruit. Consolidate your present emotions, experiences or thoughts into that ball.  Then, send the ball down through your legs and into the earth - all the way to the molten center of Mother Earth.  There, imagine that all your negative energy - all the stuff from your day - is burned off in a burst of flame. Now take the resulting ball of pure red energy  and pull it back up through your legs, up through your torso and all your chakras, right up and out of the top of your head.  Keep the ball rising until it reaches the heavenly or spiritual realm.  Hang out with your ball of energy in that realm until you feel a connection.  Sometimes I’ll feel tingling on the top of my head and I know I’ve made connection  Then, bring the ball, which is now white, back down into your body, through the top of your head.  Have it rest in the area of your heart.

3. Now you are ready to listen.  Ask a question, and wait. The old hymn tells us what to do:

"Silently now I wait for Thee /

Ready, my God, Thy will to see /

Open my eyes, illumine me / 

Spirit Divine."

Silently wait for God to show up.  Do you see something?  Hear something?  Feel or know something?  Just wait patiently - it reminds me of the axiom "just suit up and show up".  If nothing shows up, thank the spirits for just being with you and tell them that you’ll be back soon.  If something does come to you, write it down after you come out of your meditation so you don’t forget it.

It’s so simple but so profound.  Try it!

Tomorrow I’ll share some of the wisdom that I’ve heard lately in my meditations.

Interested in the power of forgiveness?  Come to my Forgiveness Workshop this Saturday, April 19, 2008.

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A mystic is one who has a direct experience of the Divine.  We are all born with the ability to be mystics and to connect with Source.  Each of us has a God-given talent in at least one mystical connection method.  Sadly, most of us lose our natural mystical abilities as we grow up, due to lack of encouragement, lack of awareness or downright fear or punishment from our parents and teachers.  I was over 50 years old before I recognized my talents in this area.  Yikes! That sounds old, but it’s not - I am simply on my own timetable, just as you are.

The good news is that anyone can develop their ability to connect with the Divine, at any age.  You are probably doing so already but may not know it!

Today we’ll talk about the four ways we might receive Divine wisdom or guidance.  Each of us has talents in one or more of these areas, which are:

1. Hearing

2. Seeing

3. Knowing

4. Feeling

Hearing is being able to hear divine guidance, as if you are having a conversation. Some people write what they hear or allow the pen to be moved by spirit; others simply hear it in their heads.  Seeing is the ability to perceive mental images that convey the Divine message.  Knowing is the ability to perceive thoughts or a knowingness that simply come to you without you knowing how or why you know it.  Feeling is the ability to physically feel the energy of another person or to receive guidance through sensations felt in the body.

Contrary to popular belief, none of these are terribly woo-woo abilities.  Nor are they the sign of mental illness!  It can be as simple as perceiving a sense of Infinite Intelligence when you are in nature.

My talents lie in hearing and knowing.  I can carry on a conversation with heavenly spirits when I am in meditation.  I talk to God and God replies. During my daily activities, oftentimes a knowingness just "comes to me".  Or, I’ll experience a synchronistic event that I’ll recognize as Divine intervention.  For instance, I received the title of my first book, Spectacular Support Centers, after hearing a radio show about how soothing the "S" sound is to our ears.

Today, I suggest that you observe yourself.  See if any messages or communications come to you through hearing, seeing, knowing or feeling.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a meditation that I use to connect to Divine wisdom.

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Many of us have lost one or more of our parents. Losing a parent prematurely can be a devastating experience for a young person.  Even when parents pass away after a long and full life, it can be a hard transition for their offspring. My thoughts and prayers are with you if you are grieving the loss of a parent. That can be a very difficult time.

I think it is especially poignant to lose your Mom.  I say this perhaps because my dear Dad is still alive and I haven’t had to deal with his passing.  But there is an undeniable bond with the Mother, with whom you shared a body for nine months.  Losing your mother affects us on a very basic, primordial level.

Today, a good friend asked me how I was doing as the second anniversary of my Mother’s death approaches.  I admit that I had a hard time when my Mother passed away.  But today, I told my friend about a miracle of perspective that my daughter gave me.  Just a few weeks ago, she told me about a book she was reading in which a mother, upon her death, bequeaths her spiritual powers to her daughter.  As soon as my daughter told me that story, I saw that the same thing happened to me.  My Mother bequeathed her spiritual power to me and to all of her family at her death.

Suddenly, several things made sense.  Only months after her death, I began to receive Divine messages in my meditations. I met my spirit guides. I talked to Mom in my meditations. Six months after Mom died, I finished my first book, one that I had considered writing for over six years and had never gotten around to (www.spectacularsupportcenters.com).  A year after her death, I began to lay out plans to gradually slow down my business, KR Consulting, and start something new. At that point I had no idea what that something new was going to look like.  At eighteen months, I started The Everyday Mystic blog and a sabbatical that you can read about in my welcome post and in my post called Fallow Fields Reap Rewards.  So many blessings have come my way since Mom passed away.  I sense that her death created a spiritual opening for me, allowing me to do things both spiritual and temporal that the Divine had been preparing me for.  Now I sense that in some incomprehensible way she passed on her direct connection to the Divine to me. Mom was the original Everyday Mystic.

What a gift.  Thank you, Mom.  I get tingles up my arms as I humbly accept her bequest.

I’m interested to hear what spiritual gifts or blessings your Mother bequeathed to you.

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Just like anything else that you want to do well, being an Everyday Mystic takes time and practice.  I recently read a Harvard Business Review article on the topic of achieving mastery of any skill, be it playing a musical instrument or managing people.  The article cited research that shows that it takes ten years - ten years! - of consistent practice to achieve mastery of an advanced skill.

I know many people who I consider to have achieved mastery in spiritual skills.  I have said for years that I wish to be among them.  Sure, I have meditated and written in a journal for years, I’ve tried to live lovingly, forgivingly and mindfully, I’ve tried to be a good wife/mother/friend — but I haven’t REALLY dedicated myself to achieve mastery of the spiritual skills that I desire.  I’ve dabbled.  Or so it seems.

Others have done it, and they are not just Zen masters like the Dalai Lama or my dear Roshi Joan Halifax (www.upaya.org).  Two friends of mine tell me that the way they developed their ability to "hear" wisdom from the Divine was to meditate for several hours a day - for months! One is a psychic and gives readings to business people and another is a medical intuitive. I have several other friends who either live at a Zen center or have committed themselves to an hour of prayer time each day.

It’s time for me to dedicate myself to deepening my spirituality.  I wish to be able to tap into the wisdom that I know is available to all of us, if only we listen with open hearts. I am declaring my intention in this blog: To meditate and journal every day, to know that I can receive divine guidance and to open myself to the wisdom that I know is within my grasp.

Secondly, I declare an intention that it won’t take me ten years to achieve some level of mastery. The dabbling I’ve done will count for a lot.

And, I want you! Just like Uncle Sam, I’m asking you, my readers, to enlist with me in this project and be my accountability partner.  I promise to report back to you once a week (among my other blog posts) with how I’m doing - what I’ve discovered, the techniques I’m using and any progress I’ve made.   You don’t have to do it with me, but allow me to tell you how it’s going.

And, as always, your comments and encouragements are precious to me. 

Thank you for this opportunity to document my spiritual journey. I hope that by sharing my struggles and my path that your journey is made easier.

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"Come, come, whoever you are,

wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.

This is not a caravan of despair.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve broken

your vow a thousand times, still

come, and yet again, come.

Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks in "The Soul of Rumi"

My friend, Nancy, brought this and two other Rumi poems to our prayer circle last night.  This well-known poem struck me anew in its simplicity that belies a deep truth.

What struck me about this wisdom is the expansive, forgiving nature of the Divine, who tells us that it doesn’t matter that you’ve broken your vow a thousand times.  Come back to me and start anew, it seems to say.

I have been living too much in fear lately - I have broken my vow to live in love and acceptance at least a thousand times, just in the last week!  You see, I am eager to get my new business off the ground (you, as reader, are a part of my support group in this effort and I thank you for that).  At the same time, I am grieving leaving the comfort, income and satisfaction that I used to derive from my old business.  Not that I’m turning away completely from KR Consulting (www.krconsulting.com), but I am turning toward wherever The Everday Mystic will take me.

I lived in fear, judgment and comparisons for most of last week.  Fear of the new, fear of not bringing in income for awhile until this new endeavor takes off, judgment of myself and comparisons between me and other "more successful" people.  Judgment of myself that a spiritual person shouldn’t be stuck in these dense, dark emotions. I not only joined a caravan of despair, I was the lead camel-driver and my camel’s saddlebags were heavy-laden with despair!

And then I read Rumi.  Ahhhhh.  Rumi reminds me that the Divine does not judge me, but beckons me to "come, and yet again, come" - come back to love, back to the Divine lap in which I sit, comforted and secure.  Come back to love, in which all things are possible.  Come back to myself - my true self - that loves me, cheers for my success and believes in me.  Come, and yet again, come.

Don’t we all break our vow to live in love a thousand times? Rumi reminds us we are not  part of a caravan of despair, and to come back to the Divine essence.  We can start anew - once, twice, a thousand times - and it is OK.  The Divine Creator allows us to come, and yet again, come back to love as many times as we need to.

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Our hectic lifestyle often leaves little time for contemplation.  I know when I was working a full-time executive job and raising two young kids, days could go by between opportunities for me to meditate, pray or have time by myself.  There are seasons in a life when schedules are full of obligations.  Still, there are ways to sneak in mindfulness moments during busy days.  The benefit of incorporating sacred moments into a full schedule is the sense of calm and peace you will receive despite the demands on your time.

Here are ten quick and easy ways to find time for mindfulness moments everyday:

1.  During the commute, turn off your radio, MP3 player and/or cell phone and instead do one or more of the following: Pray. Sing. Feel the steering wheel in your hands. Smile. Think of five things you are grateful for.

2.  When you get to work, take a few moments in your car to do a brief breathing meditation, observing and counting your breaths from one to ten.  Or, on your walk to your office, walk slowly and coordinate your breathing with your steps.  For example, you might inhale for 2 steps and exhale for 3 steps.  Set a positive intention for the day.

3.  Do the same when you arrive home at night - sit for a moment in the car and do a quick breathing meditation or prayer. Set a positive intention for the evening’s activities.

4.  When the phone rings, take a moment to silently bless the caller.  Then take a deep breath and answer the phone.

5. Take a mindful bathroom break.  Pay attention to the breath while using the toilet.  Breathe deeply and attentively.  Perform a hand-washing ritual in which you consciously wash off the energy of the past moments and clean your hands in preparation for the coming meetings or tasks.  Set a positive intention for the next segment of your day. 

6.  A friend of mine sets her computer to ring mindfulness chimes on the quarter hour.  It reminds her to stop and breath for just moment. You could do the same with a chime on your watch, set to sound on the hour.

7.  Say a silent prayer of thanksgiving before eating lunch.

8.  Take a moment periodically throughout the day to close your eyes, breathe and visualize being in your "happy place".  For me, it’s the beach in Santa Barbara, California.  Use all five senses to imagine that you are there.  This is a great stress reliever, and it only takes a moment to go there in your mind.

9. Before going to sleep, pray. I had a friend who said, "Kristin, I kneel down beside my bed each night and thank the Lord for five things that happened that day. And I pray for those who need God’s love." Set a positive intention for your dreams that night.

10. Upon waking, take several deep breaths.  Say a prayer of gratitude for the new day.  Set a positive intention for the coming day.

So, even if you don’t have time for a formal daily meditation or prayer practice, you can still squeeze sacred moments into a crazy day.  You’ll be glad you did!

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