Carnival of Healing #12 - Fusing the Eternal With Daily Existence

Welcome to the 12th edition of the Carnival of Healing. This week I've been thinking about fusing spirit with daily life, the profound with the mundane. Nope, not just the balancing act where one does yoga in the a.m. class and - then fast forward a few hours - one spews forth venom at your cubicle cellmate. Rather a living meditation, or in the workplace what Zen calls a working meditation, or samu. An integrated life where as Eckhart Tolle advises wherever we are, we are totally there. Reading through the posts this week, I'm reminded the secret is in resting in the eternal in each moment by moment.

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. - Rumi

For folks like this week's contributors a commitment to wellness, personal growth, healing, and spirituality, is grounded in what's ultimately important and a sense of the eternal pervading the present.

Over at the new blog, the hip and zen pen, Elisa Camahort asks herself "Do I Feel More Commitment to My Blog Readers Than Myself?" Elisa says, "I believe accountability is very important to meet fitness and lifestyle change goals." Noting that the only fitness goal she met the previous week was the one she publicly declared on her blog, she takes the experiment one step further. Watch Elisa's travails unfold online. (Bonus: Elisa shares filmmaker David Lynch's experience with meditation: "He describes being really angry when he started the practice at the age of 27, and how it really improved his life in beautiful ways.")

I mentioned this week that Steve Pavlina is graciously going to share with us over the next month or so a series of posts on consciousness and awareness (he shares that the intense feeling of total oneness is "now with me all day, every day"). In this post, "Life After Death" he invites us to truly consider death squarely as a way to live in the present and focus: "I feel my life is firmly rooted in what is permanent, not what is temporary."

A temporary aside. Steve's posts echoes a story relevant to the theme this week: When the future Buddha's charioteer tries to convince him to stay at the palace with his family, the Buddha responds, "I don't see any palace there, because death is coming closer every moment. And I don't see any palace there because all palaces disappear sooner or later. In this world, everything is momentary and I am in search of the eternal. Seeing the momentariness of this world, I can no longer fool myself." (Source: Osho, Buddha: His Life and Teaching)

Phylameana lila Désy of Spiral Visions shares what works in times of hazy gloom or stuckness, affectionately known as F*** Growth Opportunities in "Waiting for the Fog to Clear": "A FOG can be an unsettled legal dispute, a personal health crisis, impending divorce, finding yourself unemployed, or some other unhappy scenario. The tricky part is not what the actual crisis (FOG) is, but knowing how best to respond to it." The tricky part indeed. Responding instead of reacting is part of the trick and sage advice on using the gifts of a FOG are offered.

Spurred by a new drug for Restless Legs Syndrome (the author's dad suffers from RLS), Josh Cohen pens "It's not overmedicating if you really need the medicine" over at his Multiple Mentality blog. He ponders if we are using medications because it's easier than changing our lives? For instance, Josh writes: "If you get a headache, take some aspirin, but remember that when you’re out in the sun for four hours without a hat, you’ll get headaches, and next time, wear a hat."

Curt Rosengren at The Occupational Adventure tells us his techniqueless meditation technique in his post, "Meditation: The Do Nothing Technique". Curt's post resonates with me since my teacher whom spent the better part of fifteen years in a Zen monastery says, "Most quote 'meditation' is a refined way to manipulate experience. Meditation is allowing everything to be as it is. Not seeking a goal. Not seeking a result - including concentration."

Julian Elve of Synthesia recounts an engaged roundtable dialogue experiment with Johnnie Moore in his post "An experience of Dialogue" where even the silences were spacious and relaxed, "Unlike trance there was no feeling of drowsiness - rather at those moments the sensation was one of awareness and concentration without effort." Julian skillfully tugs at the thread of what made the experiment so powerful: "The silences became deeper and, almost at the end, there was a sense, hardly more than a fleeting glance, of the trance-like feeling carrying over into the conversation and suddenly it was as if we were dancing a piece we all knew."

Chris Corrigan of Parking Lot invites us to take up one of his practices, "The Practice of Giving Space": "It has occurred to me that the act of driving can be both the greatest source of stress in my life, or one of the best opportunities to develop a practice of compassion, relaxation and offering." You heard right. Driving time as a perfect time (why not use it?) to feed your soul and arrive refreshed. No more hints, you'll just have to read (and apply) for yourself.

In the "DNA of Behavior, Part 6: The Animating Force of Life That Marketers Generally Ignore", author of the book and blog Ageless Marketing, David Wolfe reminds us of the vital need for intrinsic purpose: "Purpose is a primal need that is essential to life. While I-Values (the individual self) and R-Values (the social self)) are heavily exploited in marketing, P-Values (the inner self) receive the least amount of attention of all primary core value systems despite their importance." David cites a few examples including Del Webb and Tom's of Maine that show that customers have needs for deeper purposes than a fulltime life of frolicking on golf courses.

Jill Fallon's The Business of Life blog delves into healing and life transitions, so I wanted to share it as a resource. In this post, "The Contents of My Mom's Life," Jill shares the symbolism of the lotus while alerting to us of healing power of addressing life and death and art, in this case post-Katrina photography.

In ThirdAge's blog, author of Elder Rage, Jacqueline Marcel shares caregiving advice applicable to many realms in her post, "Caregiving Coping Skill: Emotional Shifting": "It involves a conscious decision to change your perspective about what is happening to a loved one, and forcing yourself to stop focusing on the decline and resolving to live in the moment."

I stumbled onto this Sufi discussion on art via Technorati entitled "Thoughts on Art Work and its Meaning". I liked the author of Inspirations and Creative Thoughts line: "Knowing me is knowing nothingness. Knowing The Truth is knowing the Real" and am adding it to my growing reading list.  I found the commenting artist's response to be the essence of what makes art of all kinds including writing so healing: "Art comes from God, it only passes through me. Who knows what it means?"

Yogalila shares relaxation in action with us in honor of B.K.S. Iyengar's U.S. visit. "By practicing outer balance you can cultivate your inner silence," is the kernel of truth that resonated with me in contributor Loretta's quick handy reference post "Balancing Poses – Find the Balance You Seek."

Closing lightly, laughter yoga made it into Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind chapter on play. Yes, that four-letter world P-L-A-Y keeps us in touch with our lighter self. Yvonne DiVita at Lip-Sticking had a chance to interview the guys behind the Stooples book and ask a few questions like: "Your book makes us wonder, why don't people laugh more in offices?" Author Kevin Reifler responds: "Well, they worry about getting ahead, getting fired, getting their bonus, getting a bigger desk than the next guy or gal. They worry so much about every little thing that they forget to laugh."

Send in your blog posts for future weekly Carnivals of Healing. Next week Carnival of Healing Lucky #13 will be hosted by Spiral Visions. Not too late to check out last week's carnival, "Carnival of Healing #11: For The Love Of Autumn." Hmmm, reminds me of the luscious Mendocino Pumpkin ice cream I ate while enjoying the eternal moment in Sausalito yesterday. Have a beautiful fall week!

There is not a moment when I do not feel the presence of a Witness whose eye misses nothing and with whom I strive to keep in tune. - Mahatma Gandhi

p.s. I'll be writing a series on the integrated life for a symbolic forty days beginning next Wednesday (or Thursday) on Fusing The Business of Our Soul with the Soul of Our Business.

p.p.s. Check out the modern healing devices on the altar pictured in photo.

tags spirituality consciousness meditation power of now presence awareness wellness healing | flickr photo by bluheron

Comments

[Phylameana lila Desy]

Hi! I pinged your carnival ..... a couple of times actually. Once from http://healing.about.com and also from Spiral Visions. Hmm..trackbacks didn't seem to take. Perhaps you have them turned off.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Nope, they're not off. There seems to be something up with Typepad trackbacks. I had to try to ping a couple of the Typepad sites referenced in the Carnival a couple of times too until it worked.

[Elisa Camahort]

Thanks...great work Evelyn. And I should mention that the bonus link you included from hipandzenblog.com about meditation was written by my co-author (and hipandzen.com proprietress) Karen Clothier.

[MysticSaint]

Thanks for mentioning my blog.

God bless.