CATCH YOUR SPIRITUAL BREATH

Dear Angelic Blog buddies:

Good morning. It is my prayer and intention to be a blessing to each of you in my message this morning. It is my intention to offer helpful inspiration on how to achieve and maintain inner peace in our lives. I bring to you peace offerings.

Peace. Webster’s definition of peace is: a state of physical or mental quiet or tranquility or repose. The absence of war. Freedom from mental agitation or anxiety. Freedom from violence or riot.

And wouldn’t it be wonderful to be in a state of harmony, quietness, stillness, calmness?

We’ve heard people question: “can’t I get a little peace and quiet?”; we’re familiar with terms such as peacekeepers, peacemakers, peace movement and peace time. From the sacred Native American pipe ceremony has evolved the popular phrase of sharing the peace pipe. In the words of St. Francis: Lord, make me Thy Instrument of peace.

We all want peace but somehow life gets in the way. I think each of us can think of all the things that act as interruptions and distractions in our quest for peace. You get into your car and start on your drive to work. You’re looking forward to a pleasant day. All is peaceful in your world and then you merge into traffic. We have a rotary near our home. There is a yield sign which is greatly ignored. I am certain everyone has had driving experiences where you are going the posted speed and people zoom by you as if you were standing still.

Mahatma Ghandhi said: There is more to life than simply increasing its speed. You wouldn’t know that is true from the speed people are driving these days. And many of us are experiencing “being left in the dust” – being left behind – being passed by. It triggers an emotional response inside of us.

That experience is more powerful than we think in diminishing our achievement of inner peace. Alabama has a song with the lyrics

I'm in a hurry to get things done
(oh,) i rush & rush until life's no fun
All i really gotta do is live & die
But, i'm in a hurry & don't know why

Life has become one big zoom experience. Anna Jane Grossman has compiled An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. She entitled the book: Obsolete.

The amount of change each of us has experienced to date in our lives and continues to experience in each passing moment is staggering.

Advancements in technology and science are truly amazing and abundant in many ways; however, we are being impacted dramatically on an inner level.

The younger generation now communicates with texting. A recent survey showed the number one way young people communicate with their parents is texting; they text more than they talk on the phone and even more than they talk in person.

Not too many people write letters anymore. Do you remember stationery stores? It won’t be too long until I will be asking you, do you remember the government department that use to handle mail? It was called the US Post Office.

Just like phone booths, public mail boxes are disappearing. And what about the changes in telephones. Some of you, like me, grew up with party lines. And then private lines came into our homes. Remember when the phone company would threaten you not to touch the equipment they placed in your home. Isn’t that hysterical to think about? Remember when you wanted to have change in your pocket or purse in case you needed to make a phone call?

We have land lines being replaced by cell towers and fiber optic. In thinking about my message I remembered going to the library to do research for school or looking at the family’s World Books or encyclopedias. And the World Book would send out a yearly book – one single book – with the latest new information.

Now it’s all found on the internet. And information is expanding at record rates. A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in 17th century England.

Think about music: 33-1/3 rpm; 45’s; eight track tapes; cassettes; cds; mp3 players. And cameras. Anyone have a brownie? And for the young people, no I am not talking about a dessert from a Pillsbury box mix. Remember Polaroid where you pulled the picture out and counted. How would that fly now in this world of great impatience and got to have it now.

Last summer my husband and a family friend and I went to Philadelphia for the Princess Diana exhibit. With our ticket we were given an audio tour . I was familiar with audio equipment where you saw a number on the wall and you matched it on your cassette and the audio played. We were handed a little gadget that I was unfamiliar with. It was a sort of IPod where you stroke the screen of the IPOD as you moved from room to room to reach the correct audio. I just didn’t get it and I just wasn’t making it happen. I remember standing in the first gallery with this IPOD thinking: this is the moment that life passes me by.

As the group of people we had entered into the first gallerywith, including my husband and friend marched forward in unison with advanced technology, I was standing there totally bewildered and feeling lost. My knowledge of audio tours in museums was obsolete.

Somehow by God’s grace, my husband and friend picked up that I wasn’t keeping the beat and came to my rescue. They gave me a crash course on the spot. I have to be honest, I limped my way through the exhibit.

I am not condemning advancements. However, I want to point out that when something becomes obsolete and there is no longer a use for it. It is thrown away. And even if we throw something away, the energy is still on the planet with us. There is an unbelievable amount of energy of items that are in dumps and landfills. Islands are being filled in our oceans that are made up of discarded trash. Just as we are touched by the beauty of the mountains of nature made by God. We are touched by the energy from man made mountains of trash and discarded items.

Just as if you never let fresh air into your house, you would eventually be impacted by the staleness or mustiness of the air, we are being impacted by the energy, vibration and consciousness of being a toss-away; throwaway, get the latest model, get the fastest speed , and newest technology nation.

When we replace something with the newest version, what happens to what came before. I don’t think we as a race have figured that out. And so we have piles of energy on the planet that radiates the message “out of sight/out of mind” – and it just doesn’t work that way.

In my booklet Angelic Feng Shui I share, out of sight doesn’t mean it’s out of your energy field.

On a deep level, our soul is asking us to stop and reflect if we truly need to always upgrade to the latest, newest, cutting edge, fastest model. One of the keys to peaceful living is to live simply. Living with a knowingness that what we have is enough. As the song says, we’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night and I’m all right.

I am encouraging all of us to ask ourselves: when is enough, enough?

When we bring more stuff into our homes, we are bringing what we think we are collecting and gathering because of a need that is being fulfilled; however in time the stuff will collect our energy and gather from us our inner peace.

As a spiritual counselor the one statement I have heard repeated from people is: I am overwhelmed.

According to a survey, 43 percent of adults suffer adverse health effects as a result of stress and feeling overwhelmed. 75 percent to 90 percent of adult visits to primary care physicians are precipitated by stress-related problems.

We are stress-out, overwhelmed, overcommitted, overstuffed. It’s time to stop and take a look at what we are filling our lives with.

Storage facilities have popped up in our communities to handle the continuous increasing of stuff. Not only our homes but the days of our lives are stuffed to overflowing.

There’s a whole new career paths that has been created: professional organizers, personal shoppers, meal preparation companies. These activities aren’t negative; however it is the result that we are desperately trying to find a way to get everything done that we have conditioned ourselves that we absolutely must do. So we are hiring people to help us do that.

Have you noticed how many magazines are featuring front page headlines that they have articles on getting organized, find balance, remove the clutter, managing your time? Oh yes, we are an overwhelmed nation.

Years ago I remember hearing a talk given byJohn Robbins, an heir to the Baskin Robbins fortune. John walked away from the family riches and he made this statement to his family: He was choosing to live simply so others on the planet could simply live. John is the author of the book Diet for the New America. I remember John telling the story that his family was angry about his decision to go out on his own and live this life of simplicity. The rift created a situation where father and son didn’t speak. Years later John’s father would suffer a heart attack. His father survived the heart attack. The father was told by his physican that he had to change his eating habits and recommended the book Diet for the New America.

So I suggesting that we consider the wisdom in the words “less is more”. Willa Cather wrote: Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things. Let’s live better with less.

Let’s transform our lives by contemplating the Buddhist wisdom: You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.

For everything we buy, let’s first ask ourselves, do we really need it?

Mary Carolomagno writes in her book Secrets of Simplicity:
Get comfortable with the idea of using, not amassing.
Use the pieces you have instead of buying multiples or replacing with a different model.
Love what you have.

Finally, I know that we are living in a time where every day new names are being created to identify health challenges. If you don’t feel ill, just watch television and one of the commercials is certain to hit something that is out of balance in you. Just as the younger generation has created a code language of abbreviation in texting to allow for faster communication, you will notice that the pharmaceutical industry comes up with short abbreviations to describe everything and anything that could possibly be wrong with us.

Well, I am going to take the liberty of giving a name to an in balance that I have noticed going on in the world. I am not going to abbreviate it; I am just going to share with you the name. I call it Sabbath Deficiency Syndrome. I am a firm believer that God was giving us a big clue when in the book of Genesis we read how on the 7th day God rested.

In his book, Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, Wayne Muller writes these beautiful words, “The Sabbath rocks us and holds us until we remember who we are.”

I think we have forgotten who we are and we fill our lives with so much stuff that there’s no time or space to spend with God; there’s no time and get to knows ourselves as God knows us. The fourth of the Ten Commandments is Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

It’s important to have time and space for sabbatical experience – a commemoration of the seventh day of rest God took after creating the world.

Many people work demanding jobs; full time jobs and adding on evenings and weekends. We may be a nation that is rich in stuff however we are truly impoverished in spirituality. We are burned out in so many ways.

Just like the closets and basements and attics of our homes, we are overloaded and we are feeling stressed and added to that is the impact of being obsolete. The obsolete energy adds the pressure that no matter how fast we go, we won’t be able to keep up and feeling that pressure we attempt to go faster, do more – just have some semblance of keeping up.

I feel we have an epidemic of quite frankly being out of our divine minds. Albert Einstein said, I want to know God’s thoughts; everything else is detail. It’s time to take sabbath time to commune with God and get to know what God was thinking when God thought of us.

I am encouraging all of us to incorporate the concept of Sabbath time, sacred rest time into our lives. Days away; time out; Time out from pressures and demands. Let yourself catch your spiritual breath and be alone with God.

Give yourself the gift of doing nothing time.
Visit with friends.
Eat regular, healthy meals.
Get enough sleep
Take naps.
Get out and enjoy nature.
Have a special place where you connect with your Higher Self.

Thoreau spent time in the woods at Walden Pond. Thoreau wrote: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Maybe it’s time we stop living life at the zoom, zoom pace and live God paced lives.
Make time to be alone. Take time to pull back and reflect. Relaxing time. Rest time.
Play time.

For me Sabbath time is – God gazing time; when I spend time looking into the eyes of the Beloved; my focus is God.

A book that has been extremely healing and helpful is Seven Sacred Pauses from which I share the seven daily pauses and prayer times which enable us to catch our spiriritual breath:

• The Night Watch pause is a pre-dawn pause that calls us to vigilance, deep listening, mystery and silence, surrender and trust.

• The Awakening Hour pause at dawn celebrates the new day with praise and resurrection, joy and delight.

• The Blessing Hour pause is a middle of the morning pause that challenges us to heed the coming of the Spirit and to bring breathe and blessing to our work.

• The Hour of Illumination pause, at midday, is a time to nourish our bodies, recommit to our service of others, and to pray for peace.

• The Wisdom Hour pause, at mid afternoon, invites us to reflect on the impermanence and the graciousness of life.

• The Twilight Hour pause, as evening begins, calls us to slow down as we make the transition from work to home and express praise and gratitude.

• The Great Silence pause , the last hour before sleep, is when we review the day, ask for forgiveness and strength, and surrender ourselves to God.

I would like to close this blog with a blessing for you. May 2010 be a year of catching our spiritual breath and pausing to be one with God and one with God’s peace.

Love, Jayne