APNC 1.2 (Summer/Fall 18) C4

[Sheri]

The past several weeks have been full of moments where I have been better at observing patterns, coincidences and opportunities leading me to be more aware of many learning points. Ideas are coming together on how I may bring this coaching passion to my current place of work, whether for a long term situation or just as an opportunity to practice the skills I need for moving on to my next phase.

For instance when an opportunity came up that I a felt lead to participate in, even though it didn’t feel like a fit mentally, I followed that intuition, opened myself up to step into a workshop offered me and then the message was reinforced with another situation. After which the pieces fell into place as to the why behind my experiencing these steps.

Being open to opportunities, even if it doesn’t make sense in the beginning, can bring gifts we don’t expect until after the fact. I have always had a faithful trust in my intuition and would act on nudges that sent me to do comfortable tasks. However, expanding my awareness is helping me step into a new level of trusting my intuition, being more open to trying new and different things, often outside my comfort zone.

My curiosity has grown and I am more open to learning. My practicing being in the present moment is also bringing a new sense of calm and confidence that others are commenting on too.

[jgotts60]

I still want to work with this practice as I’m catching up with the course a bit. I’ve tried this in several circumstances: at work, walking in the street from work, in meditation with the moon in my back yard, in my men’s group meeting in my sukkah in my back yard. Each has led to a different experience, some with the sacred questions arising immediately, some where I deliberately asked the sacred questions.

When I say arise, that’s probably ascribing too much of a spontaneous, organic process to it. One of the things I like about the construct of the sacred questions is they provide a channel for the monkey mind. There are several things one can do with the mental chatter when trying to be in a mindful state: let it go, observe it, etc. I’ve found the sacred questions to be an interesting practice to direct the mental chatter to explore my feelings further. The questions become a kind of meditation themselves. Now I say all this having learned a little more last night that the main objective of, well, objective awareness is to just let the awareness happen and not go into the questions at the time, but although I might have done it “wrong,” this in itself has provided a learning.

My experience at work was very interesting. I tried the practice of opening up, and I found myself almost accidentally “dropped in.” This was a dropping in as I would experience in nature, a heightened sensory and energetic experience, at the same time very aware of my inner observer. I almost felt like I wasn’t controlling it and was wondering if my staff was picking up on any difference in the quality of my voice or my presence. I can’t say what I was saying at the time was any more brilliant than my usual level of extreme genius…it’s a very high bar to surpass, believe me…like I was tapping into some all-knowing intuition. In fact, I’m not even sure if what I was saying during the discussions at this time really made any sense. It was almost a little scary, but I stayed curious and went with it until I had to focus on emails back at my desk.

I didn’t try to explore, analyze or make meaning of this at the time, but as I think back on it, it is almost what I’ve been asking or longing for. For a long time, I’ve felt like I live a bifurcated life. I have my left brain Chief Data Officer job with the state, all about doing, accomplishing, trying to line up resources and people to do what sometimes feels like the impossible with the unwilling for the ungrateful (adapted from Mother Teresa) and that’s on a good day! Actually it’s not that bad. Then I have my right brain world of spirit work, personal work, earth based practices. I’ve started to let my personal world into my work world a little more, but for a long time I’ve wanted to integrate the two more. I’ve tried my own little spiritual practices of gratitude and other things throughout the day, but this is the first time I’ve just dropped into a different level of being in my work space. The biggest thing I want to take from this right now is that maybe the separation is not as distinct as I’ve thought it to be. I’ve known this intellectually, but now I’ve felt it.

[Saveria Tilden]

I have been trying to do the meditation and sacred breaths in different situations… I feel like where I am has a significant impact on what I am feeling. Since Labor Day I have spent 10 days at home, the rest traveling for work, weddings, to visit family ect. so I have felt very unsettled. But it has all given me a good amount of time to reflect.

I find that the what coming out of the sacred breaths is hard to distinguish from the how. In general my words reflect heaviness, fatigue, anger, fear, confusion, stuck… which are reflective mostly of how I am reacting to our current political situation as well as some stuff going on in my personal life.

This past weekend I was in Joshua tree with friends for a celebration weekend and my words reflected peace, calm, happiness….. a much different overall sense of being that prior times.