Q&A Time: Meditation is not working for me .... any suggestions

Question and Answer Time

Question:  "Carla any suggestions on meditating?  .... It is not working for me....I can't get quiet enough to meditate...."

Answer:
I can remember one of the first times I tried to meditate.  I had a mentor that told me to sit quietly and breathe in and out.  "Watch me" she said.  I sat there and watched her.  "Now you try it."  So here I am sitting down in her basement (she had a small corner all fixed up to try and mimic a living room) - picture this - I take a deep breath in and mimic her actions.  "Breathe the Divine in" and exhale "Breathe Bonnie out".  She never says a thing.  For two weeks at home I am trying to figure out why the heck I am breathing Bonnie out .  Go ahead and laugh - she did.

I was under the misconception that meditation meant I was going to have to sit in some strange pose, perfectly still and silent for hours.  The origin of the fear of meditating was far deeper.  I was scared of what I might discover if I became really quiet.  What would I find in my subconscious?  What might I remember?  What if I really did meet some weird spirit?  Discovering the origin of the fear, I was able to truly relax and discover the blessings and health benefits of meditation.    Meditation drastically reduces stress, relaxes and refreshes the body, and gives me a clear perspective of life.

Today, I begin each morning with deep meditation.  I meditate as I garden, as I exercise, and even as I sit in a gymnasium full of screaming teenagers.  I found there are a few tips to find your own path of meditation.

Determine what your focus or purpose of meditation is.  Why is it that you want to meditate?  Relaxation?  Then try simply deep breathing.  This will relax the body as the oxygen is is pushed into the flow of the energy.  Connect with the Divine?  Try using a simple mantra and focus on each word as you say it.  Repeat it over and over.  You will find that your mind will slip into the words and then the spaces in between the words after some practice.

Make sure that as you meditate that you are comfortable.  You do not need to twist your body around in some pretzel shape, nor do you want to find yourself so comfortable you fall asleep.  You do, however, want to be comfortable so that you are not distracted by tight clothing.

One of the major questions I hear is how do I stop the thoughts from popping into my meditation.  I have found that doing measured breathing works wonders when first beginning.  When I can't turn my mind off, I practice this.  Inhale deeply for a count of three and exhale for a count of three.  As you inhale take in as much oxygen as possible and expel as much as possible on the exhalation.  Increase one inhale and exhale every five breathes until you reach a count of ten.  Then return back down to three breathes.  This simple measured breathing exercise will help to shut the 'monkey' mind down and relax your body at the same time.

I also want to share that meditation can also include body meditation.  As an example, I meditate as I garden.  Focusing solely on the dirt and the plants shuts off the rest of the world and all my thoughts.  The purpose being relaxation of the brain.  As you exercise, focus on the muscle you are working at the moment or use the counted breathing exercise.

There are no wrong nor right ways to meditate - only different ways.

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Healing Wounds

We all experience events in life that can cause some sort of emotional wound.  Many of these events happened in the early years (before the age of seven).  When we have a traumatic event during these formative years, they can remain with us into adult years.  They affect how we accept or reject experiences, who we get into relationships with, and even how we behave.  They can become so deeply ingrained within our energetic matrix that they are no longer perceptions, but are beliefs.  These early beliefs are the foundation of our tribal mentality.

The old wounds or belief patterns can hold us locked in a prison.  They can bar us from truly experiencing love.  They can determine how we react and act in nearly every aspect of life.  My own experience with these early wounds affected my partnerships, the relationships with family and others, the jobs I took (or didn't take), and the decision as to where I lived.  In retrospect of looking back the representation of trust as a belief pattern was distorted.

Each person with the wounds will have different experiences.  Many function seemingly well on the exterior.  The emotional injury is only part of the wound.  These types of wounds transcend the emotions and go into the mental and spiritual realms as well.  Any type of energetic obstacle or block that exists on these levels can and often do manifest into the physical energy system if they are not taken care of.

In order to heal these wounds it is vital to understand the origin of the wound, accept and forgive both others and self before it is possible to release and heal.  Finding the origin can be the most difficult portion of the process.  It can actually originate from a seemingly unimportant event.  However, even that minor experience can be what sets up the trigger that shifts the belief pattern.  The key to finding the origin is locating the repetitive pattern in your behavior.

There are clues to finding the repetitive patterns.  Starting out with what makes you angry and writing out the history is a start.  Many times simply writing down a list of people that make you angry will reveal a pattern.  Once a pattern is found, begin to retrace your history.  Are you seeing the same action over and over again with different people.  Go backward until you find the first event that you recall.

This same process can be used for fear, self-esteem, or any other aspect of life that is causing you difficulties.  Once the origin is located, the awareness of what needs to shift is obvious.  The second part of the healing comes in forgiveness.  Not only is it necessary to forgive those involved, but just as importantly, you have to forgive yourself.  Do not beat yourself up for belief patterns established as a child.

Now that you have an awareness of the wound, its origin, and have begun the forgiveness process, it is important to shift your consciousness.  Shifting your consciousness is what will heal the wound.  My experience has been that in shifting consciousness one must also release the pattern/event to the universe.  A surrender in order to heal.

There are many ways to release, many ways to heal, and many ways to shift your consciousness.  No one way is the right way.  Find a path, a way, a healing modularity that works for you.  Writing, the release to a Sacred Fire, working with the energetic signatures, among other shamanic methods is my path and is what my experience is.

What is your experience in healing old wounds?  What healing modularity do you use?

Agni: Neck chakra limitations

Agni: Relations and spiritality

Do you have a mission statement?

What is your mission statement?  What is your purpose?  Do you have a priority list?  These are questions that most often are asked of a business owner around some large oak board room table.  But each of these questions should be asked by every individual.  Why?  What is a mission statement or purpose statement tells you?

Any company that you ask will tell you that they have a purpose and a mission statement in order to stay on track with their business.  The purpose defines who the company is and the mission statement sets out what they are going to do to achieve their set purpose.  As an individual you too need a purpose and a mission statement.  Without them, how would you know what your priorities are in the first place?  Or if you need to adjust them?  Developing self-worth includes being able to think about and identify what your individual purpose in life is.  When you discover the purpose, you can value yourself. 

The underlying component that needs to be changed within for any priority list or mission statement to become an automatic habit is one of self-worth.  A person needs to believe that they are worth taking the time for what they set out as their new priority.  Remember there is a vast difference between self-worth and self-importance.  Self-importance is when a person decides they can do everything on their own, and thus feeds their ego.  Self-worth on the other hand is having the humility to know that you do not know everything, but you are still a valuable individual with your own unique gifts to share with the world around you.

Having priorities allows you to maintain the right attitude about life around you.  It gives you gratitude for being a part of life itself.  Having self-worth allows you to hone with yourself as to what is important to you.  It allows you to develop a gift of usefulness.  All of these wrapped up can allow you to live free from guilt, self-pity and misery.  Without self-worth a person can and most often does feel useless as they are not using themselves to do anything for themselves or the world they live in.

Without knowing what your own personal priorities are, there can be no feeling of usefulness or self-esteem.  The idea of having a priority list is not for other people, it is for every person.  Simply changing your attitude about yourself and developing some self-worth through having a priority list will reap untold rewards in your life.

To an individual, a purpose statement all that is necessary is a piece of paper and pencil.  Write down what is important to you as an individual.  What are your priorities for each day, each month, or each year?  The things that are written down can be as simplistic as having a loving partner or as detailed as by next month I will get organized.  Once you have the items written down begin to prioritize them to fit your own desires and needs.  Remember there is no right or wrong here, each individual will have a different list.  From this list you can begin on your mission statement.  How are you going to go about each day to complete what you, yourself, have determined to be your priority?  Taking the time out of your schedule to do this introspective look will enable you to have a feeling of purpose that will lead to balancing your life in every aspect.

Agni shares wisdom how to recognize each other

 Hello my friends, this is Agni, from Rio de Janeiro.
Today it’s February 17, 2011.
And I received a message and question from (name) from Greece, she wants to know how to recognise people, especially masters and beings from other ??? levels. First you learn to see the aura of people, which is not THAT difficult. It’s just not to focus your eyes on manifestations, but keep them unfocused and you start to see light. After you get used to see the light, signs in the aura become visual, and there are thousands of different signs. To see them doesn’t mean that you recognise them, this is the next step in learning, and you can be sure that you only can recognise people or beings up to your own level. So, to recognise masters, be a master yourself. To recognise avatars, be sure you are an avatar yourself, otherwise you can compare what you heard about, but not knowing by your heart. The easiest thing to recognise people is to love them. Love them with all of your heart. Love them with all of your being. And they will respond with their love, and their being, and they return their information about themselves. And then you can say: “Hey, I see you, I see you with my heart, because my heart opens to your heart, and your heart opens to mine. And we know each other.”
So have a blessed day and love whoever you meet on your way. Open your heart and recognise each other in your love. See you soon.

Agni shares wisdom on how to handle mistakes

Hello my friends
This is Agni, and I am in Sao Paulo on February 16, 2011.
I received a message from a friend from Taiwan, (name), she asked me to talk about how to tread mistakes.
Mistakes are what we do on a daily basis, the kind of behaviour we have. Mistakes are our teachers to distinguish right and wrong. So treat them with respect. If you recognise mistakes done by other people, lead them to this respect, and yourself have forgiveness for them, because it’s what happens on the way. It’s our natural behaviour. As long as we are still sharing polarity, mistakes will happen all the time. Only unity can heal making mistakes. Have a blessed day.

Having An Intimate Relationship With YourSelf

The one person, the one love that you can always depend upon, always feel secure in, is the love you have for yourself.  Partners and relationships will come and go for a variety of reasons.  The only love that can be cultivated to become secure in all ways and ultimately is the foundation for your happiness and joy in life is the love you find within yourself.

Loving yourself can be the most difficult emotion to experience.  Loving yourself happens when all your energetic bodies are in alignment; it includes your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual bodies.  Self-love depends upon becoming connected to the Universal energy in the Cosmos.  This connection allows you to tap into the positive energy vibration of who you truly are within.

For most, the experience of being intimate with self has been blocked by so many past obstacles it seems impossible to find the self-love; let alone experience it.  In order to find that intimate relationship with another, however, it is vital to have an intimate relationship with yourself.  Intimate is really in to me I see.  When you can deeply see into your soul, into your heart, then you can open and share that with another.  When you truly love yourself (which includes acceptance of yourself) it is then that you feel complete in wholeness.

In order to truly have an intimate relationship with yourself there are many old beliefs, old messages, and old patterns that must be released.  It can be a painful process to see yourself as truth; however, the magnificence of your inner light is waiting to shine.  You can heal yourself internally.  In developing this intimate relationship with yourself, your approach towards others shifts to an amazing wholeness that manifest the partnerships you desire.  You can have the relationships in your life that you crave.  It starts with having that intimate relationship with self and thus with the Divine source.

The path to this relationship with self begins with discovering what it is that you desire in an intimate relationship.  In order to create something, you have to know what you wish to create.  Begin with a simple list of what you desire in an intimate relationship.  What are you seeking?  Love?  Playfulness?  Trust?  Honesty?  Write the words down that are most important to you in your intimate relationships. 

Once you have the list (it will shift and change) start to define what the words mean to you.  What does honesty really mean to you?  What is trust in your relationship defined as?  By defining the words you will begin to discover the obstacles and blocks in your relationship with self and in your relationship with the Divine Source.

May you fall in love with the beautiful soul that you are and shine the inner light for all to see.  

Freeing Yourself From the Clutches of Guilt

"It is impossible to follow a code of ethics when you have no idea how to have a healthy connection with others. The results of not having healthy relationships are guilt and shame over the consequences of your own actions or non action as the case may be."  Read the rest of the article on my featured guest blog on Personal Growth Guides

"In the Stillness", Karen Drucker, TayToones Music (c) 2009

Pillow Talk for Valentine's Day (or How To Ignite The Fire)

Astoundingly research shows that 25% of all married couples are currently having sex less than once a month.  Most don't even realize that sex in their relationship has faded away to near nonexistence.  Re-sparking the fire is not as hard as you might think. 

1.      How you perceive your partner has a lot to do with how often you have sex.  If you think of your partner as your best friend or your roommate, there is your biggest problem.  Remember, you are not room mates; you are lovers.  Remind your partner by taking the inactive that you are most definitely not just a friend.  Re affirming to your partner I love you is not enough.  Show you love them physically as well as emotionally.

2.      Take the showing one step further.  Start touching.  Start holding hands.  Start cuddling.  You do not have to have sex every time you touch your partner.  Intimacy is that physical closeness that two people have for one another.

3.      Stop thinking about what may have gone wrong in the relationship and start rebuilding the relationship.  The longer that you dwell on what may have gone wrong, the less you are doing to improve the situation.

4.      Sex does not have to be scheduled in all the time; however, if you are going more than two weeks without it, write it on your calendar.  Make a date.  Once a week plan a night that is just for the two of you.  It does not have to be going out to dinner, perhaps snuggling on the couch and watch a romantic movie with a pizza.  Just ensure that you will have 3-4 hours uninterrupted for the two of you.

5.      Communication is one of the places that seem to fall away with our busy lifestyles.  Conversations tend to be about work and children rather than you look amazing or even simple gazing into each other's eyes over candle light.  Pillow talk should never be about the day's events or the next days schedule.  Pillow talk is about you and your partner.  Instead of a quick peck on the cheek and rolling over to your side of the bed, spend some time talking to your loved one about why you love them.

It is easy for couples to fall into the rut of a sexless partnership.  With the hectic lifestyle that most Americans live in today, the demands for our time are great.  Things such as sex fall to the bottom of the list of things to do.  It is time to re-prioritize that list.  The hours are not as important as the moments you spend together intimately.  By following the three simple suggestions above, you find that the once dying ember of flames is fanned into a raging passion again.

Why Doesn't God Love Me?

Today's Guest Blog on Personal Growth Guides is a short story based upon a true experience.

Why Doesn't God Love Me?

I hope that you enjoy!

Why I Don't Celebrate Valentine's Day

Today my guest blog post on Personal Growth Guides explains why I don't celebrate Valentine's Day.