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Trusting Your Creations Begins with a Liminal Pause

I can trust myself as a perfect and luminous Creator. What an amazing discovery this has been!  The light of this awareness has been slowly dawning over the past few years, as I've come into the recognition that every experience is a perfect gift from my Higher Self, my Spirit.  And this is true for you too!

Every incident, occurrence, event, "accident", etc. carries with it an opportunity for healing, enhanced awareness, spiritual growth for yourself and others involved.  More Light, more Love, more Joy. When we are able to recognize the perfection of our own creations, we can identify and claim the gift(s) in any situation.  When we perceive from this level, we shift our narrative from stories of suffering to tales of transformation.  The trick is to find the gift within the experience.

In order to do this, we need to be able to detach from our suffering perspective and witness the dynamics involved from a higher level.  This requires mindfulness, the ability to connect with our intuition ... and, of course, practice. The first step is learning to insert a liminal pause.

What does this mean?

The liminal is a threshold state -- an undefined space betwixt and between, neither here nor there. It is the space between catalyst & response, cause & effect, an experience & our evaluation of it.

When we perceive a challenging situation, we tend to immediately label it as "negative", which triggers resistance and throws us into a fight/flight/freeze mode.  Our brain goes into a beta brainwave state. While this is an optimal state for running away from an imminent threat, it is not conducive to mindfulness or intuitive connection.

Intuition requires an alpha or theta brainwave state.  While we're in beta we cannot be in alpha or theta, which means if we want to perceive and receive the gift of our own creations, we need to learn to shift our consciousness.

In every challenging situation, I'm learning to insert a liminal pause. I stop, breathe and remind myself that I can trust my creations.  I'm cultivating the ability to suspend the temptation to tell myself stories of stress and impending catastrophe.  Of course, I can still be triggered into a fight or flight response, so I've also been learning energy medicine techniques to help me calm, center and reset my system when this happens.  As I relax, my brain shifts into a deeper brainwave state, making intuitive connection more accessible. 

As I work with these techniques, it's becoming a habit for me to incorporate them in the moment or as soon as I realize that I have been triggered.

One technique I find beneficial is Sedating the Triple Warmer.  Triple Warmer is one of the meridians or energy highways in the body.  This meridian tends to get over-stimulated by stress.  Sedating this meridian helps to soothe and calm stress in your body, mind and emotions.

SEDATING TRIPLE WARMER
adapted from Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine Kit

Benefits:  The triple warmer meridian is closely linked with the fight-or-flight response.  Sedating the triple warmer calms the meridian, helping to reduce fear and anxiety, release tension and overcome insomnia.  You sedate the triple warmer meridian by running your hand along the meridian in the reverse direction of it's natural flow. 

sedating triple warmer

Do these exercises when you are feeling stressed, frightened or anxious, having trouble grounding and centering or are over-energized or excessively jazzed.

Simple Option: Smoothing Behind the Ears
You sedate the triple warmer meridian by running your hand along the meridian in the reverse direction of its natural flow: 

  1. Place the tips of your fingers on your temples. Take a deep breath in through the nose and exhale through your mouth.
  2. On another deep in-breath, slowly slide your fingers up and over your ears, maintaining some pressure.
  3. On the out-breath, take them around and behind your ears, down your neck and hang your fingers on your shoulders.
  4. When you are ready, push your fingers into your shoulders, drag them across the front of your shoulders, and let them go.

Complete Option: Tracing Triple Warmer Backwards

  1. Place your right hand flat on your left temple.
  2. As you inhale, sweep your hand firmly and steadily along the triple warmer meridian (pictured above) to the tip of the ring finger on your left hand, exhaling as you release the energy through your fingers.
  3. Repeat 2 or 3 times on your left side as needed.
  4. Repeat on the right side.

I use this and other energy medicine techniques and spirit practices to help me restore balance. For more techniques, I recommend Donna Eden's Energy Medicine book &/or kit.

When I am calm and centered, I ask myself:

How is this perfect? What gift am I offering myself in this situation?

I don't try to find the answer through reason or analysis; I align with ease and ambiguity, stretching out the liminal pause to allow my Higher Self to slip through the space between my egoic responses and illuminate the situation with the Truth of the Spirit. Sometimes clarity arrives quickly. More often, I need to take my mind off the situation, release attachment to outcome and allow insight to incubate. Movement, sleep, meditation and prayer can all help me to connect to my intuition.

When clarity comes and I glimpse the gift at the heart of the challenge, I often laugh aloud. Gifts come in many forms: an opportunity to heal a long standing wound, to forgive and restore a broken relationship, to recognize the beauty of my own being or that of another, to shed a limiting belief which has shaped my experience of the world, to hold another human being in love, compassion and trust in our mutual luminous creativity.

I open my heart and mind and say "Yes!" to my own perfect creation.  Once the gift is received, I ask Spirit for guidance to help me move forward, taking the necessary steps for resolution, releasing what is painful and aligning with joy.  I insert a liminal pause and await the inevitable inspiration.

article by Ananaia O'Leary

 

Quiet for the Quickening

Imbolc is a sacred Earth Holiday with ancient roots & modern relevance. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the time of the quickening. The first stirrings of Spring in the Earth. A perfect time to slow our activity, quiet our minds & dissolve our inner chatter to a sacred stillpoint.

In this keen quiet, our Spirit is moving, stirring the deep waters of life, engendering your next cycle of growth. If we are still, we can sense this subtle awakening. At this moment, you don't need the details. Seek the life-pulse rising, like Spring sap in sycamores. Your Spirit is calling you to expand, evolve, excel. Sense the Truth-Yes! in your being. Tonight, when darkness falls, energize a candle with your Yes! and set it in a window. Let your light shine in the world. Spring is coming!

If you are having trouble stilling your mind, a purification ceremony can help. Think of it as a Spring cleaning of the Spirit. I've adapted this practice from a ceremony I learned from Starhawk's Spiral Dance 30 years ago. When I did this lovely spiritworking for the first time, I experienced a profound sense of sacred empowerment & healing - just what I needed at that time. May this ceremony bring you the blessings you need in this moment.

Salt-Water Purification Ceremony

  • Create a time and space for quiet without interruptions.
  • Take a few deep breaths to calm yourself.
  • Invite luminous Spirit support to be present with you.
  • Fill a cup with water.  Add three mounds of salt, and stir.
  • Sit with the cup in your lap.
  • Let any disruptive thoughts or feelings surface in your mind; be present with any dense energies in your body or energy field.
  • Sense these as a muddy stream, which flows out of you as you breathe and is dissolved by the salt water in the cup.
  • Allow yourself time to feel deeply cleansed.
  • Now hold up the cup.  Breathe deeply, and invite the green light of Nature to rise up through you from the Earth.
  • Let this luminous energy flow into the salt water, until you can visualize the water glowing with light.
  • Sip the water.  As you feel it on your tongue, know that you have taken in the power of cleansing, of healing.  You have been cleansed by the power of change.
  • If you are planning to light a candle (as discussed above), now would be a good time to energize and light it.
  • Thank Spirit for their presence and support.
  • Place your candle in the window
  • Empty the leftover water onto the Earth (being careful to choose a spot where the salt water will not damage growth.)
  • Enjoy the sacred stillness of Imbolc.

 

Calling Out Your Spirit

At the luminous core, we are medicine. Light and love emerges from within us, seeking expression. Where it finds a clear path, it pours out uplifting the world with healing, harmony and wholeness. Where it is blocked or impeded, the light of our being bends into shadow, expressing in ways which create challenge and suffering.

But whether our light is flowing straight or bent, 24/7 we are only doing one thing: attempting to bring our medicine.  

I mean this literally, and without exception, stating this from deep and direct observation of the subtle energies of humans -- no rose-colored lens involved. Truth -- subtle, but observable.

When we come home to the Truth at the core of our being, we discover the healing and harmonizing power of Love. When we witness this clear light of Truth, we energize and call it forth. When we acknowledge and call out the light of our Spirit from the core, we help the wounded and blocked places in our being to remember their true nature, enhancing their ability to express the light within.

  • Take a few moments to calm and center yourself.
  • Tune deeply to the column of energy that runs through your body from above your crown to beneath your feet: Heaven to Earth. If you are new to sensing energies, use your imagination to help you connect with your luminous core.
  • Reflect on your intent to call out your Spirit.
  • Use a rattle to energize your intention. Each time you shake the rattle you are calling to the light within you, inviting it to shine forth. Energy follows intention, so trust the process. No effort or energy manipulation is required on your part -- this is as simple as call and response.  Align with your intention and rattle to energize and convey your intent. (If you don't own a rattle, you can improvise with a chime, tapping two rocks together or shaking a bag of beans.)
  • Breathe and welcome the emergence of your inner light.
  • Rattle until you sense a lightening or uplifting shift in your state of being.
  • Take a few moments to experience and appreciate your own luminous nature.
  • Explore the benefits of incorporating this practice into your daily or regular routine.

article by Ananaia O'Leary