Horizons Magazine

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APRIL 2004
Perception, love it as it is, benefits of meditation, seeing the bigger picture,
power of intention, ever-changing sleep habits,ignoring media scares

Hello and welcome to the April issue of Horizons Magazine. Are you loving the weather
outside?  This is the time of year I'm reminded of why I live in Florida - it's a paradise
6 months of the year! Actually, it's paradise all year long, it's just that I sometimes
only appreciate it 6 months of the year. I choose to whine about the heat and humidity the other 6 months of the year *hehe *

Isn't that always the way it is? Herman Hesse once said, "Paradise does not make itself known to us as Paradise until we have been kicked out of it." I find that's true for lots of people lots of the time. We don't know what we have until it's gone and we reflect back on it. Hindsight isn't always 20/20 but it's easier because when we're looking back, we're usually out of most of the stress that made us leave in the first place. When we left, we were lots more focused on the negative aspects of the situation, and they loomed so large we felt we had no choice but to leave it behind. It's hard to stay in a job, relationship, or any situation where you feel under-appreciated or in a non-productive pattern.

It's been my experience with jobs and situations in the past, that until I love where I am right now, I won't move beyond where I am right now. There is no next stage other than remembering I live in a place I love, a paradise, with good friends around, earning good income in a job I adore, with plenty of time to write and create and do whatever I want to do. The only difference is how I choose to perceive what I do, and how I choose to perceive my life.

I can walk into a church or other sacred setting and immediately feel a sense of peace and calm. It's very easy to sit and meditate, pray and contemplate in an environment like that. Not so easy to do at home, while in another room your kids are playing, the tv is on, phones are ringing and the dog is barking. But when you think about it, the only difference is where you choose to place your attention. Sure, it's easy to just listen to the noise and allow yourself to be distracted by it; but then it's easier to fall down a cliff than to climb up one. It's easier to sink to the bottom of the ocean with a weight belt on, than it is to swim to the surface with it on. We just need to choose what is worth doing other than the path of least resistance. I was going to say "worth struggling for" but it doesn't have to be a struggle. That's my old language, my old programming showing itself to me again, giving me another opportunity to decide if I want to keep using a phrase that no longer means what it used to mean to me.
To me, it's worth the "struggle" to discipline myself to achieve effective meditation anywhere I am, rather than waiting for those choice quiet, private moments in sacred settings. There's no difference between me sitting here at home, and me sitting in the meditation hall other than how I choose to think while I'm here, and how I choose to think when I'm there.

Here, I can choose to think of work to do, who is that calling, etc., but it's to my advantage to train my mind to focus past the noise and distraction and maintain a quiet focus within. That's what meditation is all about: training your mind to respond by choice.

I unfailingly sit twice a day for breath meditation, and seldom am I "in the slot" for the entire hour. My mind wanders and I release the thought, my mind wanders, and I release the thought, my mind wanders, and I release the thought. And I've been doing it since 1972. That's why they call it "practice".

What benefit do I derive from it, if I can't go No-Mind for the hour? Well, it's helped me strengthen my willpower to maintain focus and attention, thus enabling me to glimpse a higher perception of situations and people around me. Seeing from the higher perspective has helped me understand the bigger picture and where it all fits together - thus answering, for me, many of Life's biggest questions.

Seeing the bigger picture has helped me see where I fit in, allowing me to clarify my intent and remain focused on my goals long enough to get there. Sometimes I get there and decide it's not really for me after all. When I make meditation practice a priority and do it on a daily basis, I know I'll continue to be guided in a direction that's consistent with my thought and expectation.
It just took me lots of years to realize that my habit of thought and expectation wasn't always what I wanted to attract more of into my life! When I discovered I was in charge of that, my world changed. Literally.

When I discovered that through just re-scripting my self-talk, the inner dialogue that is my stream of consciousness, and replacing nonproductive words and phrases with encouraging ones, it was a giant A-Ha! I call it Thought Replacement TherapyTM.
My life got happier, I attracted more genuine people around me, I had more fun, I made more money, I felt - and feel -invincible and powerful, as though I can achieve anything I set my mind to. And all that changed was my perception. All that changed was that I decided to train my mind to work for me, rather than against me.

Ilene Segalove, author of Snap Out Of It: 101 Ways To Get Out Of Your Rut & Into Your Groove writes: "Humans are billions of individual cells arranged in an infinite array of different patterns that organize themselves into our very unique being. Your hand is a set of patterns. so are your liver and your uvula. Your brain also expresses itself as different patterns. It creates its own set of networks in response to stimuli and repeated actions. Networks are neural off-ramps onto ways of doing and being. When we use these off-ramps over and over again, we fall into habit. Our most habitual roadmaps become etched in our brain circuitry and become guidelines for our behavior.

"Yet the brain is considered a plastic medium. It can change shape, and does. Adult brains refashion themselves according to the demands of the owner. It's like we're all heads of our own department of roadwork - if we want to stop travelling the same old Main Street over and over again, we need to build new freeways and bridges and tunnels."

In other words, "if you always think what you've always thought, you'll always get what you've always gotten." You just have to set the intention to begin to train your mind so you're able to hold focus long enough to attract what you want to you.

Have you been watching Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS talking about The Power of Intention? His book is the #2 seller on Amazon.com right now and the response has been phenomenal. I chuckle when I think of all the great books in the past 30 years that talk about intention, and it's been a core of my teaching from the beginning with Horizons. It doesn't matter, though, who's been saying what, or for how long: when people are ready to hear something, it will become the hot topic, and Dyer is a most effective teacher. I've excerpted from Chapter 1 for you this month, and we'll have more in upcoming issues. If you buy just one book this year, let it be this one. Trust me. You'll end up reading it long into the night until it's done. And don't worry, the comfort and power you'll feel from reading it will counter any sleep you might miss by staying up so late.

As I get older, I find my sleeping patterns have changed. When I was in my 40's, I thought I might have insomnia. I began to worry about getting enough sleep, and began taking naps when I could, even if I wasn't sleepy, to ward off being tired later. As soon as I scheduled an appointment or event, I began to schedule my sleep for the week leading up to it so that I'd be rested and alert. Yes, that didn't work for long and my natural sleeping patterns kept emerging. I got very neurotic about sleep. A few years later, I realized I didn't have insomnia at all, it was just that my sleeping habits were changing and I was trying to go against the natural pattern. No big deal. And certainly nothing to be worried about. I just had a pre-conceived notion that went against the grain of Nature, and I kept trying to do it my way.

Now I sleep from about 4:00 until 8:00, both in the morning and at night: two 4-hour shifts. Even until recently, if I had to be somewhere at 7pm, I'd force myself to nap earlier so I could be up in time. I'd become tied to the idea that I needed 4 hours in that afternoon sleep segment in order to awaken on time and feel refreshed. Now I realize I don't need to put in the hours, I only need to sleep as long as it takes to receive the benefit. The same as with meditation and prayer. You find a way to do it for as long as it takes to feel you've made contact and received response. Anyone can sit quiet and still for 20 minutes twice a day with eyes closed, but if you haven't achieved contact and felt response, then you're not done. All it takes is practice.

Who's been freaking out at the gas pump lately? Besides the daily news anchors? I feel honored and privileged to buy gas at any price, in order to move freely about the country of my choice. If I believe in the abundance of the Universe as the source of my supply, how can I think my needs won't be met, as they always have been?

I remember in 1974 living in Miami during the big "gas crisis" where you'd wait in a line of 15-20 cars, wrapped around the block, to get gas. Gas at that time was about 43c per gallon, and we heard talk of gas going to $2 a gallon. It was all people talked about for months. Yet it took that 30 years to happen. How many things are the media trying to scare us about today, that will take 30 years or more to come to pass - if ever???

On the other hand, my late husband bought land throughout Florida in the 70's and was told it'd be worth lots more just a few years later. He died in 1996 with none of the values having increased. For the Brevard County land however, that's changing just this year. The price of land here is now skyrocketing and parcels around me that I paid $2,500 and $3,500 for years ago, I'm now getting offers to buy in the mail for up to $16,000 each. Of course, selling the land around my home is out of the question - we like the privacy of our lots and they are viable wildlife habitats for local endangered species. But parcels I now own in other areas of Florida are going much higher also *yay*

So all that means is that you shouldn't believe everything anyone tells you. Especially the media. Feel free to take in their information if you feel you can't do without it, but make sure to run your own tapes in your head afterward. Don't fall into their fear mentality of lack and limitation and the scary "what-ifs".

Run your self talk tape of "What if the best possible thing happens? What if I am guided to happiness and true love and creativity and adventure and financial independence? What if I set an intention to thoroughly dig who and where I am, right now, right here as things are now? What if I sent an intention to begin a daily meditation practice and take control of this monkey mind, and discover how I can become more of what I'm meant to be? What if? What if?"

I don't know about you, but I want to be able to look back on my life and be giddy with joy that I was the one who got to live it.

Andrea de Michaelis, Publisher
Photo from 2004