LOOK WITHIN TO LIVE IT UP!
Does your conscious awareness "live" in your head, behind your eyes? Is this the perch from which you view the world? It's where most people do, except for folks like Helen Keller who said: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
This might just be true.
When we were developing the weekend retreat, Living From The Heart, one of the most amazing things we included was a technique for moving one's awareness from the head, behind the eyes, to the heart. Sounds weird, right? Or impossible. Or both. Yet while it may be odd, it's very possible and it changes everything.
Moving your consciousness from your head to your heart isn't imagining that you are doing it (although when you first try it, faking it till you make it is a great first step), it's really and truly moving it.
Once you experience awareness from your heartspace, instead of your head-space, things "look" different, feel different… in fact when perceiving from this place of nonjudgmental acceptance, things actually may be different.
And isn't that amazing? There are so many little - yet pretty profound - things we can do to make our world, and even the world, a better place. And as Buddha said: "The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart."
Stop looking up, and instead look within.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Living From The Heart.
As a facilitator and director at Rock The Path and as an intuitive medium, I'm often asked questions like... Do I have a spiritual guide? How can I connect? Are angels guides?
Most people I encounter on this topic are curious and interested, wanting to know who their guides are and wondering how best to connect with "higher guidance". But sometimes I encounter folks who don't believe in guides. Yet whether or not you actually believe in a separate entity, energy or spirit with the label "guide" is really irrelevant.
We all have Guides or Inner Voices, or Muses, or Angels, or a Higher Self or a connection to Spirit or God, or to use a Jungian term, access to the collective unconscious. What we label this interaction is no where near as important as participating in it. It's natural and healthy to want to know, and connecting is an endeavor truly worthy of our time and effort - it is also one very likely to be richly rewarded.
In my experience, we need only set our intention and put in a little effort regarding the things we want to accomplish, and our efforts and intentions are matched, multiplied and expanded to give us the requested experience. So, should you wish to "make contact," all you need do is clearly set your intention to do just that.
Guides are there to personally assist you, and so getting to know them is a personal quest. Therefore, get quiet and listen. A regular meditation practice is an excellent way to both initially connect with and then deepen the relationship. Start with a few minutes a day of simply getting quiet - meditation truly doesn't have to be a "big deal" and any way you personally find to "do it" easily and comfortably is the right way. Simply find a quiet space, maybe play a little soothing music and definitely unplug the phone.
When I was initially searching for contact with my guide Elvin, I used the book Opening to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide - this is an excellent manual for finding, connecting and communicating with your guides. Through insightful discussion and simple exercises, this book takes you successfully step-by-step through the process. And don't be surprised if you meet more than one guide in your meditative travels - your guide is likely part of a group, although s/he is also likely to be your 'primary' at the moment.
Remember to call in love and light and be in a state of gratitude before your meditations, and clearly set your intention before you begin. You can also ask your guide - even if you have yet to consciously "meet" - to direct you to resources (be on the lookout for signs, synchronicity and "coincidences" in your daily life after you ask), which will aid in communicating and deepening your relationship with her/him.
And have fun for Pete's sake! Connecting with your guides is truly an incredible and rewarding journey.
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About The Author CJ Kenna holds degrees in psychology and business, is a certified psychic medium, and is a founding director at Rock The Path, a nonprofit Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She meditates a lot and facilitates several self discovery workshops, including Get High, a workshop for consciously connecting to higher guidance.
I'd like to tell you a story. A really interesting story. A story about Meditation's
Wild Side, which allows us to have meditative experiences with others not physically, but in the esoteric realm of shared consciousness.
It was Thursday, October 12, 2006 and I was at the end of a weeklong group workshop called Lifeline at The Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. As a meditative exercise, I was learning to access a specific state of consciousness known as Focus Level 27. My previous attempts at accessing this state had been intriguing, entertaining but not all that successful. For instance, I was having trouble accessing a spot in Focus Level 27 called the Healing Center. I could get into the focus level, I could find the Healing Center and I could touch the "doors", but try as I might, they would not open for me. I found this both amusing and annoying. But on this morning, during this specific exercise, I was finally able to open the doors and enter the Healing Center.
When I walked through the front entrance, the space looked exactly like a hospital, but was a study in complete whiteness. The walls were white. The floors were white. The ceilings were white. And the people in the center, who looked like doctors and nurses, all wore white, and wrote on white charts with white implements, some of them sitting at white tables or leaning on white counters. It was not stark - it was bright and peaceful and incredibly friendly. As I walked through the entrance and down the first main hallway, various people glanced up and smiled - with their mouths and with their eyes. Genuine, lovely and warm, those quiet smiles made me feel completely at ease and totally welcome.
As I reached the end of the hallway, I saw Reggie, a member of my workshop group, who was at the time doing the same meditation I was, though he was in a different part of the building. I wasn't surprised to see him; I often "encounter" people I know during meditations. Over six feet tall and stocky, Reggie reminded me of a football player. He was gentle and several times during the weeklong workshop we'd had many long conversations about everything from politics to the strength and frailty of the human heart. In this meditation, Reggie was standing at the end of the hallway. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was about to go into a room and nodded to his right, indicating a large, white hospital room, complete with a bed, table, lamp... I commented that I thought the room was pretty stark and he said, "So change it." And I realized I could - I could make the room or anywhere else here look exactly as I wished - afterall, it was my meditation - and with that I resolved to create exciting forms with a little less white.
Before I left him though, I spontaneously took my right index finger and touched between the brows on his forehead, at what's known as the area of the Third Eye, and said "Remember." I then went off on my meditation, to a healing pool in the middle of which was a giant crystal and floated for a time, gazing through the glass domed ceiling of the watery oasis.
At the end of the meditation I returned to normal waking consciousness and, so as not to forget, furiously scribbled down my experience, including my conversation with Reggie in the hallway of the healing center. Just as I'd finished getting it all on paper, Reggie walked in, pointed directly at me and said: "I remember." He then told me of the white healing center and the conversation we'd had in the hallway. He also said he later saw me in the pool and described it to a tee. Incredible. And exciting. And what the heck are the potential implications of this amazing experience?
This was the first time I'd consciously had a corroborated shared meditative experience. It was not my last. And when they occur, I wonder what kind of reality allows for this type of experience? Certainly not the reality I live most of my waking conscious life in. In this reality, the one of alarm clocks, deadlines and traffic jams, I am separate from everyone else. But these glimpses of something... more... something... deeper lead me to think that perhaps reality is grander, broader, much more multifaceted and dimensional then I realize, and it is through meditation and other non-usual channels that I and all of us, can experience the greater reality where we share experiences not just when in physical proximity, but through thought and energy too. When we are paying attention to these oft ignored channels of existence and communication, we learn that separation may actually be false. Perhaps we are all connected, sharing a nonduality which simply allows for us to merely think we are actually very separate individuals on very personal quests, when we are actually not. And if this is so, it is this kind of construct which would explain and allow for things like shared - and corroborated - meditative experiences. And perhaps a lot of other rather esoteric experiences as well.
Hmmm. I think I'll meditate on it.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Excursion Retreat, where participants have also had shared meditative experiences.