Are you in flow in your life? By flow I mean that when you sit back and look at your day to day life, the manifestation of it, does it feel right? When I meditate and prayer and muse and think, I often look for the natural state of flow to identify where I'm at. Recently here in New York the weather has violently effected the physical landscape and therefore the people, displacing them, destroying their property, disrupting their lives. Then of course there's been a massive election campaign happening everyday on television and the internet. And a third element has been the media constantly feeding into the social zeitgeist about war, lack of employment, political divisiveness and apocalyptic weather conditions. What does that do to people psychically when all of these mega-events are happening on top of a person's normal life.
The way I stay in flow, as an introvert, is I take time for myself.
Take It: No Excuses:
Not simply make but directly take time for myself. That means that not every phone call will get returned in five minutes, every email replied to, every tap be acknowledged. I take as much time as I need to sleep, rest and sometimes I directly do nothing, I simply laze and haze and contemplate my navel and rent bad dvds and spend a good day just napping. Like a cat. By taking cues from cats when I need to spring into action, I generally have the energy to do so.
Force Fields:
When people tell me about their day or their stressors, they often bring up crazy people. People who are time wasters, who are crazy makers, who are always going through crisis, who want you to call them NOW because of-----no, thank you. My rule about crazy people is that you will see them coming, down the figurative or metaphorical street, and responsibly, to myself, I cross the street. I don't engage or assume that I can fix people's problems. I can offer an alternative perspective and then I can go get a Pepsi. What you do with the advice has nothing to do with me and it's not that I don't care but I practice the two D's.
Dispensability and Detachment:
Everyone relationship is dispensable I am comfortable with that. And I let people know. There are no permanent parts/position in my life if what you do isn't healthy towards me (or yourself). From parents, to family, to friends, to lovers, to pets---I am comfortable with saying: Thank you and Good Bye. That's rough to people in thought but it is generally the desire I hear from people, to be able to disentangle. When I tell people this they often ask me if that makes me simply cold but in fact it does the opposite, If I am in your company, spending time with you then I genuinely want to be there.
When I am in people's company, I very rarely use my cell phone and only look at it from a need for the time or if there's a vibrating alert that it could be some of my ill relatives. Other than that, I'm paying generally my full attention to the person I am with. And you know what I've noticed? How much other people are constantly checking their phones, going mute during conversations to check Facebook---while with people---how sad. I generally limit time with them. It's stupid to be with people and because technology gives you the option to want to shift from someone in front of you to others. Or you disengage just to check on the idiosyncratic thoughts of others online, how insulting. I am present with you. How often are you truly present with other people?
A few days ago in one of my classes a classmate asked me had I gotten an email from them an hour beforehand and I said no, I hadn't seen it. She was shocked and pressed, hadn't I gotten it??? Wasn't I checking my email----hourly? No, and that leads to Detachment and by that I'm not attached physically, spiritually to every alert from the universe because not every pebble into the pond has much to do with me. In fact when I really meditate and look at myself beyond the ego, I realize that I am not spiritually attached to anything I don't choose to be. I'm just the observer of the universe. Detachment allows me to see myself much clearer, to make sure that I am not distracted by other people's fluvia, their messy identities and instead I can either see them as whole people or see beyond the emotionality of the moment for them and into the outcomes, the future possibilities, the strategic options of their problems. Contradictorily, detachment allows me to feel and be even more connected.
Quiet Sacred Space:
I make time to be quiet. For there to be as little sound around me as possible. I've slept under some form of candle light nearly every day for the last 20 years because it's a wonderful way to bring the bedroom down visually to small flickers. It's amazing how many little creaks and cracking sounds there might be that you never notice with TVs on, radios, phone chirping. I've really gotten into the using feng shui in the past few years so I'm conscious of the kinds of objects I have around me, opting for just a bed, a table with a candle, lamp and book. No televisions. If I have music playing, it's low from the living room, no electronics generally in the room. If I feel the urge to watch a movie late or from bed, I wheel/turn the television and bring it to the bedroom doorway and watch it from there.
All of this moves me into flow. It allows me to look at my life without all of the distractions that the above strategies divert. I can then see my life, see the events occurring in it, see my desires and capabilities and ask myself is this working? Is God steering me to the left or the right? Am I experiencing anxiety from fear or is there a level of tapping that the universe trying to get my attention about? In a level of solace and clarity I can then face my own nerves and fears or I can pay attention to what the signal is. Ahhh, I'm suppose to be taking more classes, that's what a series of dreams have been trying to tell me. Or I can sit on a bad date and directly challenge obvious crazy or misogyny from a date because I'm not attached to being liked or my own neediness.
Experiment with some of the strategies above and let me know what you were able to hear, feel, see or recognize that you were being moved along exactly as synergy would have you.
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
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