Horizons Magazine
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JUNE 2004
Retreat with Jamie Sanders, Sharon Renae, Donna & Dudley Voll,
Armand & Angelina at The Center for Rose Creek in the Smokies; walking the
labyrinth, orb photos in the cemetery. Wesak full moon. Transmission Meditation.
Sitting in silence with others is a consciousness-altering event. Wayne Dyer and
the power of intention.: What you're feeling is a function of how you're thinking, what you're contemplating, and how your inner speech is being formulated. If your life isn't going exactly as you'd like it to go, take a good look at your internal dialogue, People without television do not get Attention Deficit Disorder. A simple breath technique for mindfulness practice. When we do take time to be in the silence, a new world makes itself known to us.
Hello and welcome to the June 2004 issue of Horizons Magazine. Last month, I spent a week in the Smokey Mountains with a group put together by Jamie Sanders of Pensacola. The retreat was held in Franklin, North Carolina at The Center At Rose Creek and it was the first time I'd been to The Center. What a great location for a gathering! The accommodations were private and spacious, the grounds and view was breathtaking, and you couldn't ask for better hosts than Frank & JoAnn Meeks.
JoAnn is an excellent cook and we were fed sumptuously on homemade soups, tender chicken, beef roast and ribs, every meal more delightful than the last. Breakfast was a variety of fresh quiches, as well as smoked sausage and bacon. For the vegetarians in the group, there was an abundance of fresh greens, seasonal fruits, al dente asparagus!, a great broccoli/nut salad and other tasty alternatives. There were too many desserts to list, and excellent coffee and tea. Oops, am I getting off track here? The food so impressed me that I offered to help JoAnn create a cookbook so we could all know her secrets!
Rev. Jamie led us on a (slippery!) walk to a great waterfall, and that evening we had a drum circle around a bonfire in the gazebo area, where Frank played the flute, while Armand & Angelina played drum and guitar and sang for us. One morning I got up before everyone else and put on my hiking boots and took a walk with Cody, the Center's border collie mix dog, down to the pond and gazebo. I wanted to see the frog that made the gator sounds but never did see him… Frank & JoAnn have a few dozen acres and it's an amazing property.
There is a stone labyrinth just outside the property that Jamie and I walked on the way in. Two nights we went into the adjoining cemetery and got some orb photographs, and Jamie got a really good one over Donna Voll's spiritual portrait during her presentation. I'm planning to go up again at the end of July. I can't wait to turn my workshop leader friends on to this place, it's enchanting and very affordable, and has an excellent auditorium for larger events. See website www.centeratrosecreek.com and check it out. It's just minutes outside the town of Franklin and about 40 minutes from Bryson City and Cherokee, so you've got a private hideaway if you want it for one night or a week, or can be in the middle of the action if you like. I plan on making many trips up there now that I've found it, and suggest you'll have fun doing the same.
We left The Center after the retreat and I followed Jamie into Bryson City, where we spent time at his mom's summer place overlooking the Nanthahala River. Having just spent the last few days in the calm serenity of the woods, I hadn't driven since the Wednesday before, and being on the road took some getting used to. It was drizzling lightly and me, the flatlander, was poking along, barely keeping up on the mountain roads, busy looking at the sights, breathing in the crisp mountain air. The weather was in the 30's at night and in the 50's during the day - I love that kinda weather! We saw snow up on Clingman's Dome at noon on May 3rd and took pictures of ourselves playing in it. We drove to Gatlinburg and Sevierville, TN and would have gone to Dollywood had I not been babying a sprained(ish) ankle from the waterfall excursion. We did a walking tour of some local cemeteries, and took some daylight pics, hoping for orbs. The best orb photo of the Bryson City trip, however, was taken right inside Jamie's living room, where a distinct prismatic orb appeared right behind him, directly over a framed set of family pictures on the wall. I took another photo of the same wall when Jamie was gone, from a different angle, and the orb appeared again over the same picture. I love when that happens! See the image at www.auraspiritphotos.com.
I spent a relatively quiet Wesak full moon night, alternately sitting on the wooden deck overlooking the Nantahala River, and huddled beneath blankets inside, watching the full moon as it passed across the sky. I love to do that on full moon nights and I'm a real nightowl. It was a great location to watch the moon from, and the sound of the river rushing by was entrancing.
Most years during Wesak, I'm with a group of fellow devotees at a planned event and there is no denying the strength and power in a group meditation setting. Sitting in silence with a roomful of others is a real consciousness-altering event, and I've done it so often at Wesak that, when I sit alone, I can still feel the presence of everyone sitting for the same purpose. My most powerful group experiences have been with Transmission Meditation, where at the time of the full moon we sit in silence in up to 4 hour stretches, keeping the attention focused on the brow chakra, or third eye center. When attention wanders, and it will, you silently use the Om to bring your attention back to the brow center. Once you acclimate to it, you feel energized and fairly humming and are inspired to sit for the extended sessions. This establishes a strong connecting link between you and the invisible, formless, field of energy, which Wayne Dyer terms the power of intention.
In this issue, Dyer says, "What you're feeling is a function of how you're thinking, what you're contemplating, and how your inner speech is being formulated." Abraham-Hicks says "What you think and what you feel and what you vibrate and what you receive and what you keep talking about are always a match." That means that if your life isn't going exactly as you'd like it to go, take a good look at your internal dialogue, your self-talk. Sometimes our self-talk is related to what we're physically doing, but often it's not. Often our inner dialogue has to do with something from the past that we unconsciously choose to keep bringing to mind and rehashing over and over. Or something in the future that we begin worrying about in advance. Seldom are we fully focused on exactly what we're doing in the moment, and giving it our full attention. Being mindful of only what we're doing in each moment can be a powerful spiritual practice.
We pride ourselves on being able to multi-task and are so hurry-oriented that often we're rushing at breakneck speed to get the next sentence out, the next thing done, and our lives can easily turn into a rush of thoughts and actions that don't serve us very well, if we stopped to think about it. But not everyone stops to think about it. We wake up and turn the tv on and keep it on, we listen to the radio while we drive. All this serves to do is to train our minds to jump from one superficial thought to another. We've even created a name for this condition - Attention Deficit Disorder. And more recently, Adult ADD. With all due respect… please. Give… me… a… break... People without television do not get ADD.
We've trained our minds since childhood, via watching tv, to be able to hold concentration for only a few moments at a time. If you're having problems with concentration and focus, consider turning off the tv and beginning a mindfulness practice. Just take a few minutes several times a day to bring yourself fully into whatever task you're performing, and an easy way to do that is to connect it with your breathing. Think, "I'm breathing and brushing my teeth. I'm feeling the bristles as they pass over my teeth. I'm feeling the tingle at my gumline as I breathe and brush."
Think, "I'm breathing and washing the dishes. The hot, soapy water feels good to my hands. I feel the weight of each dish and expend just enough energy to lift and wash it, no more, no less. I'm breathing and noticing the feel of the surface of the glass, the rim of the plate, against my fingers. Just as these dishes are being washed, so too can my mind be washed clean and renewed with careful, conscious practice."
I've got a dishwasher I haven't used for 15 years. Doing the dishes by hand is an opportunity for me to practice mindfulness, and take conscious control of my mind. The more actions I perform while being deliberately mindful, the more control I have over my monkey mind, which wants to scamper here and there, from one thought to the next. The more control I have over my mind, the more I perceive in each moment and the more receptive I am to opportunity when it knocks.
One of my favorite daily practices is to sit in the silence and focus on my breath. Sounds simple, but it's not for the faint hearted. Many find the silence unbearable. Blaise Pascal once said "All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." Yet, when we do take time to be in the silence, to find a quiet place to "be", a new world makes itself known to us, a world far more expressive and responsive than the 3-D world we now live in. Franz Kafka said it well" "You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." Indeed it will. And as often as you will allow, you can experience that ecstasy. Enjoy our offering this month. Hari Om
