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SPIRIT
LODGE
LIBRARY
Spiritual
Development
Page
26
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(Main
Links of the site are right at the bottom of the page)
Some of the links for the 97 pages in this Spiritual Development
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Fertile Ground
By EarthSky
When I started learning to meditate
the hardest and continuing lesson is in letting go. When I try
to let my mind settle, ideas, thoughts, images come and go.
Some ordinary, some paranoid. The
early lessons that I learned helped me disconnect from this
flow and recognize it as simply 'mind
stuff'. I was encouraged to see this 'stuff' as impersonal and
so when something came up that had
a 'hook' for me it became easier to let it go and let the mind
continue to settle into peacefulness,
into 'mindful' meditation. A lesson that came then was that
the 'mind stuff' needs me to give it
attention for it to live and grow; to form my reality. If I
do not think a thought, it just remains a
thought. Another bubble, floating away into the infinite space
of mindfulness. Easy to say…
But as well as the thoughts, there is the underlying ground
of the mind. If the mind has a ground
of fear, then thoughts that inspire that fearfulness can attach
and grow in the mind. I have seen
my own mind become deluded as a fearful thought takes root and
feeds the fearfulness of the
ground, adding to the cycle. My experience has been of there
being 'fear' present in my mind,
waiting to take shape. A seed thought, idea, image comes along
and the fear makes it its own.
The realization that this is 'fear' looking for a shape has
helped me learn to detach from it, relax
the tightening in my mind and move back into an untainted flow.
For a long time I have been working on becoming a 'less fearful'
person; fear of loss, not having
enough, failure. But there have been occasions when the fear
has sprouted through my mind and
rapidly come to dominate. The loving people in my life and my
own inner guidance has helped
me learn to release when it happens, but it can be a painful
process. The problem is being 'not
fearful'. The word attracts its kind and this has been a stuttering
process of emergence,
constriction, re-emergence, etc.
There is another discipline that has helped me deeply with this.
Rather than 'attacking' the fear,
encouraging the growth of 'trust' has been far more beneficial.
There is no particular practice that
has led to this, apart from when a 'fear' arises, questioning
it and making the conscious choice to
'trust' instead. Simply; 'I fear I will not be able to pay the
mortgage if I change jobs' becomes 'I
trust that I will be able to…'. As I have worked with trust,
the universe has provided me with
ample examples that grow in the fertile ground of 'trust' and
feed this new process. Also, spirit
provided a 2x4 in the back of the head when I recently lost
my job that forced me headlong into
this process LOL.
I am finding as this practice has deepened, that as thoughts
arise that I have seen in the past as
'fearful' emerge in my mind that they increasingly do not fall
on the 'fearful' ground in which
they once thrived, and they float away. The fertility of trust
has helped me move towards a place
where fears no longer have hold. In so doing, slowly my reality
is changing; feeding, nurturing
this trust. Gently, the stranglehold of fears is releasing.
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Libraries
are on this row
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INDEX
Page 3
(Main Section, Medicine Wheel, Native Languages &
Nations, Symbology)
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INDEX
Page 5
(Sacred Feminine & Masculine, Stones & Minerals)
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Text:
© Copyright: Cinnamon Moon & River WildFire Moon
(Founders.) 2000-date
All rights reserved.
Site
constructed by Dragonfly
Dezignz 1998-date
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