Tag: meditation

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Smudge Me

Several years ago, Sr. Kristin came into my office, and I greeted her with, “I feel like I could use a good smudging.” Without missing a beat, she said, “I think so, too.” And off she went returning a minute later with a sage stick, which she lit and with a feather proceeded to direct the smoke from it around my body, from head to toe, and throughout my office, moving slowly and with holy intent. Long after she finished, wafts of the sage’s earthy, bittersweet scent lingered.

Smudging is the practice of cleansing energy, a ritual said to pre-date recorded history. Used in ceremonies and for healing, purifying energy is still practiced today. Palo santo, incense, crystals, and sound vibrations are some of the other natural materials used to cleanse energy.

Energy is palpable. We are made of and surrounded by it. If you do the simple exercise of pressing your palms together, then pulling them apart and pressing them back together a few times, almost like you were playing an accordion, you’ll begin to feel the energy between your hands. 

We’ve all been confronted by unpleasant energy that makes us want to back away. The energy of conflict, even small arguments or tension is like that, or energy that doesn’t mesh with ours. We can magnify this effect exponentially when we think of the energy created by fear and paranoia, the energy that incites violence and war. 

Our energy reflects not only our physical health but our mental and spiritual health. It’s been said that our energy enters the room before we do, and everything flows from that. It affects the energy of the people and places around us, so it’s important to protect it and be mindful of it. What are we exuding?

And our combined energy can have tremendous power for good. “When we come together as a group, with a common purpose and commitment to mindful action, we produce an energy of collective concentration far superior to our own individual concentration. This energy further helps us to cultivate compassion and understanding.” (Thích Nhất Hạnh)

Sr. Kristin has since gone on to another realm, but I have been thinking of her a lot lately and wondering what she would make of what is happening in the world today. I like to believe she’s a spirit in the sky with other holy wisdom spirits, lighting divine sage sticks and smudging the Universe. We need to do our part and meet those divine energies at least halfway. So, yes, smudge me, please.

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Good Vibrations

Image by G.C. from Pixabay

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions because I rarely stick to them. But something happened recently that has me thinking this year might be different. I was scheduled to fly back to the East Coast from the West on a Boeing 737 Max 9 and was among the thousands whose flights were cancelled.

From a young age, I’ve been claustrophobic, which means I go out of my way to avoid small or crowded spaces. I often book flights based on whether or not I can sit near the front to make disembarking less intense. When so many flights are cancelled, rescheduling options are limited, and I found myself booked a day later in a window seat in row 41 of an airbus. Fear, which usually sleeps in some dark corner of the house, seized the opportunity to awaken and inhabit all the rooms. 

It is challenging to drown out a phobia’s persistent noise, which is manifested via emotional, mental, and physical discomfort, not unlike grief in that sense. Logic is useless, but I told myself there were much worse things going on in the world. It was indulgent to allow fear to take over. Time to take a breath, several of them, in a measured intentional way, not hyperventilating and pacing in circles.

Everything in the world is energy and vibration. The human energy body has been likened to a tuning fork. High emotional states like love, gratitude, and peace cause us to vibrate at higher frequencies than low emotional states like anger, fear, and hate. I think we’ve all experienced the difference.

Practices like breath work, meditation, yoga, qigong, tai chi and others can help us calm down, reconnect to our bodies. Even if not practiced regularly, they can provide instant relief by steering the focus from the emotional/mental state of anxiety to the body and breath.

I hit the Insight Timer app and listened to several guided meditations the night before I flew. I downloaded videos and had a novel. I did some walking and stretching. Still, I told my brother on the way to the airport, it was Code Red in Jan Land. And yet, incredibly, when the time came it was more like Code Crystal Blue Persuasion, a new vibration. I settled into my seat, put on my headphones, and made a New Year’s resolution to really work on this phobia. We’ll check in again after my next flight. Until then, inhale, exhale.

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A Fine Sermon

Osprey: Audubon.org

At times we all have attention deficit disorder to varying degrees, and that may be truer these days than ever.  I try to cut myself some slack when I find I am staring out the window more often, thinking about not much.

My colleagues know that it’s not unusual for me to be distracted to the point of stopping mid-sentence when I see a raptor out of the corner of my eye. So, it wasn’t that unusual that I was captivated by a white-headed bird perched in one of the trees on the lower part of the cliff. Her head made her conspicuous among the leaves in mid-autumnal wardrobe change. From where I watched, she didn’t seem that big until I put a pair of cheap binoculars on her. Whoa. Was she a bald eagle? An osprey?  Come on, turn to me, let me see your face. Alas, she stayed still, lost in her own private worship of the river.

I stood watching her for five or ten minutes, telling myself I needed to get back to work, but I longed to see her more clearly and to watch her take flight, as I knew she eventually would. Did I really have better things to do? I suppose that might depend on who was being asked. My shoulders started getting tight from leaning against the window ledge with the binoculars pressed to my face.  Ah, there, she spread her wings and turned her masked face my way. Oh divine osprey, you lured me, not for the first time. But she was just shifting in her pew, resettling for a longer meditation, and I was becoming impatient, antsy to leave church. 

Here’s the thing about nature’s divine goddesses; they don’t change their rhythms to suit anyone. They will be still as long as necessary, take flight when the time is right and soar when it’s time to soar. I settled in for what turned out to be a long sermon that, in the end, refreshed my memory about natural rhythms, about patience and stillness, really bringing it home when she finally spread those awesome wings and flew north along the Hudson. Hallelujah!