Meditation In Daily Life

Gazing: Practicing Wholeness

Hello Beautiful Souls,

During my recent retreat, I revived a practice from my time in Thailand, Gazing. Gazing is quite simple to describe. You simply look into the eyes of another for the duration of the practice. Breathe and notice what arrises. That’s it.

Sounds simple, right?

It is. And it’s one of the most profound practices that I know of, mainly because at first it’s INCREDIBLY confronting. And once you get past that, things get deep fast.

Since I was on retreat alone, I did this in a mirror, gazing into my own eyes. This is a bit easier, and after years of doing it, not nearly as confronting as gazing with another, yet the depth is still here.

For me this is where the body, the mind, the emotions, and all of the rest of me show up and begin melting together.

I literally begin to SEE (if we can call what happens seeing) that I am more than body, more than mind, more than emotions, more than unconscious… I’m a multi-dimensional, multi-density whole. All is here in one ‘place,’ overlapping, interlacing… overlacing, interlapping… intertwined. Here.

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Retreat to the Heart

Dear BeLoveds,

I don’t know what your life is like at the moment, and if it’s anything like mine, you might need a bit of a retreat at the moment… a moment of calm to help reset, restore, and respond to whatever your heart wants to say to you.

I’m deep in the second week of an impromptu personal retreat. Impromptu? I guess I could have seen it coming… If nothing else, this year has been an amazing opportunity for letting go. This time, no loved ones passing (fingers crossed), but my lack of clarity over who I am best to serve right now has caused a stagnation so big, that it was either keep pouring love and passion into murky waters… or pause.
Retreat. Ground into the heart. Sit and listen.

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Stopping Unconscious Behaviors in Their Tracks

Last month, a week after my partner left for the States, I was standing at the kitchen counter making lunch when my fingers landed on something sticky. “Gross!” Disgusted, my thoughts ran down their habitual rails, “Damn it, Benoit! Why don’t you ever clean the counter?! You don’t care about keeping the kitchen clean!” As I unstuck my fingers, a mortifying realization dawned, “Oh no! He’s been gone a week! This mess is mine!”

Cue guilt, shame… “God, why do I always blame him? He’s not even here! I can’t believe I’m so mean to him! I’m so unconscious! There must be a million things I’m not taking responsibility for! How am I ever going to fix this?!”

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Why Manifesting Also Attracts It’s Opposite

Hello Beautiful Souls,

We’re moving this weekend, and, as usual, I’ve taken the opportunity to manifest an even more beautiful home. Yay!

Somehow, magically, this always works.

I’ve moved a lot, and I know that if I’m patient, stay in the orbit of grateful and allow myself to expand, I will find an even more amazing home than the one before.

By now, I mostly trust the process, but it can be hard to orbit grateful and allow expansion – because life always throws spanners in the works.

Sometimes big ones.
The question seems to be, how big do I want to get?

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Should I Have A Morning Practice (or Any Practice)?

Hello Beautiful Souls,

Having a morning practice has become a bit of a thing, and you might be wondering if you should have one, or you might be wanting some motivation to keep one going…

For those of us that have a hard time being consistent, this gets especially sticky… should I start yet another thing that I’m just going to quit later?
Argh.

But ‘everyone’ says they’re so good for me!
Ok, ok.

I started up a morning practice recently, and it has been AMAZING!
I even stumbled upon a podcast discussing ‘the science’ behind what makes them so great… (Having a BS, that usually makes my eyes roll. We can back up anything with science. We just need to find a study with the results we want and voila, it’s backed.)
All of this made me wonder, if my morning practice is actually this magic why don’t I want sing from the roof tops the all it’s many accolades?

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Balancing Shadow Work with Light Work

Hello Beautiful Souls,

I hope you’ve enjoyed the sweet song of summer and are welcoming the fragrant winds of fall.

As we cross the threshold from one season to the next, I’ve relearned the utility of balance, that while digging down into the depths it is also important to nourish the seeds of what I want to harvest. Balancing the dark with the light, the pain with the pleasure, the challenge with the gift. One without the other is either too dark and depressing or too shallow and ungrounded.

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Assertiveness Tips for Building Beautiful Boundaries

Hello Beautiful Souls,

Ok, it’s happening.
Someone is doing or saying something you don’t like or asking for something you don’t want to give and alarm bells are going off in your head and heart.
You feel really uncomfortable, maybe even angry, and you want to address it.
A boundary needs to be set…

Here we go with Assertiveness 101.
I’ve just created this new crib sheet for us to play with.
You’re welcome to test it out with me. Below is a video for those who prefer to watch, and a more comprehensive text for those who prefer to read. They’re a bit different, so if you really resonate with this topic, consider both.

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Building Beautiful Boundaries by Developing Assertiveness

Hello Beautiful Souls,

It’s safe to say that assertiveness is challenging for most of us, largely because we’re asking ourselves to be respectful (or at least civil) when a boundary has been crossed. I’m feeling bad, and now I need to tell you about it. Challenging.

Before we start with how to be assertive, let’s look at some things to do to before we get there… some foundational preparation that makes healthy boundary setting possible.

I’ve listed things that I find critical to my process, including two key points that I haven’t seen any where else. Look for KEY POINT belowor jump down to the video that covers just those two.

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