Saturday, December 25, 2010

Abraham-The Twelve Hawks of Christmas





This starts out just like the last few postings:
I got up this morning and meditated and did a focus wheel.

I think that's so cool. I'm making meditation and focus wheels a habit. In part, the Vortex Diary helps reinforce this pattern as I celebrate all my Vortextual experiences. So, thank you, readers and subscribers, I really appreciate you all.

Since I've been tracking pain/strong sensation in my right arm, I found it interesting that I felt a big "ouch" right after I staked my claim to the quiet living room for my 10 minutes of quiet at around 8 AM. My partner didn't express any displeasure, take a tone with me or do anything yet I was able to supply a soundtrack of scary, dissonant brain squawks as I walked unaccompanied through a thicket of my thoughts. Thoughts like: "But it's Christmas!" (So?)
"What an inconvenience!" (10 minutes?)
"So pushy!" (Well, yeah.)
"Where's he supposed to go while you're hogging the living room? (For 10 minutes?)

Notice that my rumination brain always speaks emphatically. And accusatorially. I love that paying attention to a sensation in my arm allowed me to access the negative thoughts. Other physical sensations included a tightness in my thorax which caused my shoulders to cave in a little, and what I would call an antsy feeling in my stomach--a kind of throb, I suppose. So, okay, I'm feeling all that, so....????

So, I'm not in the Vortex after meditating. I feel okay, just not great. Activities I have opted for in the past under these familiar conditions:
-eat something salty or sugary or starchy
-get busy with all the things I had to do
-drink something with caffeine
-watch some tv
-do something mindless
-go shopping-resent some people who seem to have it better than I do
-blame others for anything that's about to go wrong because something always goes wrong when I get into one of these "episodes"


After becoming aware of the physical sensations, listening to the negative thoughts and identifying the negative emotions as fear and guilt (this took less than 5 minutes), my task was to find the negative statement clarifying what I don't want:
"I feel guilty if I think I am bumming someone out by taking care of myself."

Which led to the positive statement for the center of my focus wheel:
"I feel confident and stable in my Vortex."

So there I was sitting in my chair with the beginning of my focus wheel and feeling a bit icky and doubting that this process was going to have an affect. I didn't even know what my first statement would be about and how would I get all twelve completed. Here are the first few statements:

1. I trust that the Universe can sort out the details of me taking care of myself.
2. I know the Universe can provide avenues for me to get what I want w/out robbing someone else of their desires.(After this statement I felt a lot of relief and a release of pressure in my stomach and thorax.)
3. I think I can relax and let the Universe orchestrate all the details beautifully. (More relief as well as a sensation of open airiness in my chest and core.)
4. I know that my actions cannot keep anyone else from accessing their own Vortex.

The relief comes from letting go of the resistance to well-being and joy, which are our birthrights. So I discovered that somewhere along the way, I picked up the belief that if I'm having fun, it's probably bumming someone out. That if I please myself, it's at the expense of another. So in a few short minutes of focused thought, a deep-seated belief (and a deep-seated belief is simply a thought that has been picked up somewhere, thought again and again and therefore amplified) is changed by examining it only a bit and by activating other thoughts that are much more helpful.

So I got into my Christmas Vortex. And here's what happened while I was in....
Made a delicious green drink (the celery, cucumber, kale combo w/a little apple). Appreciated its beauty and savored its taste.
Remembered to take a picture of it.
Opened Christmas presents (anecdote to follow in another posting).
Watched fabulous partner opening Christmas presents, which was really fun.
Performed several tasks in joy, at a comfortable pace in cooperation with my wonderful partner.
Reveled in my lovely hot shower.
Looked into the mirror and smiled at myself and appreciated my own beauty.
Started to hurry while grooming and dressing but told myself that there is no hurry in the Vortex and relaxed.
Got out of the house late for our trip to Portland for our Christmas movie date.
Found out that we were all going to a later movie; took my foot off the gas and slowed way down to appreciate the beautiful day and the gorgeous scenery along the freeway, which is there if you look.

It was then that I saw my first hawk. A big one. High up on a branch of a bare tree. We took in the beautifully sunlit snowy mountain contrasting with the darkness of the surrounding hills. We admired the tree limb fractals. Then, another hawk. Big again. Back facing the freeway. Wow.After those first two I said, "Hawk, hawk, number three. Come and show yourself to me,"and within minutes it did.

This went on throughout the hour-long trip. Beauty; appreciation; more beauty; hawk. We turned on the radio just after a dramatic reading of "A Christmas Carol" began which added greatly to the pleasure of our ride. Each time we saw another of the magnificent birds, we again marveled at the beauty of Oregon and commented on the great fortune of being in hawk country. After the first four, I tried to guess how many hawks we might see and I came up with 13. Almost--we saw 12 hawks in that one hour in the vortex. And the highly entertaining reading (by actor Al Lepage, we discovered) ended just after we exited from the Banfield. I turned the corner on Water Avenue and pulled into the parking lot in front of the building which houses the restaurant, Clarklewis. We needed to decide on our next destination, but were still chatting about the wonderful ride and about those twelve hawks, that my partner was now calling "The Twelve Hawks of Christmas". As I began to take in my surroundings, I was amused and delighted to note that that the Universe had led me to park in a space clearly labeled with the number 12.

2 comments:

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  2. Hi, Judy. I poked around your fabulous blog and found myself starting on this post. Thank you. You're a joy to read and this was my "coffee read" while waking up this morning. Loved the feeling of slipping into the Vortex this way. You've an easy, delicious style of writing, and I so appreciate your sharing your life experience in this powerful and fun way. Magi

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