To be more childlike, you don't have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.
- Wayne Dyer
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I don't know about you, but this year has felt especially cold and dark. I am so ready for the days to get longer and brighter!
To celebrate tonight's solstice, I'm going to 108 Sun Salutations. I've done this event before during the summer solstice, and wrote about the experience here. I've since done it one other time, and this will be my first time doing it as one year closes and another prepares to begin. I've also been preparing for this solstice by doing my Winter Healing meditation. This meditation is wonderful for releasing the old, preparing for the new, and rejuvenating your spirits. You will finish it feeling refreshed and ready to go forward motivated and energized. A New Year is almost upon us. You're doing a great job! All you've been working towards will soon be flourishing in your life. Stop on by the store and find the free gift I'm offering! You do not understand the dimensions into which your own thoughts drop, for they continue their own existences, and others look up to them and view them like stars. I am telling you that your own dreams and thoughts and mental actions appear to the inhabitants of other systems like the stars and planets within your own; and those inhabitants do not perceive what lies within and behind the stars in their own heavens.
— Jane Roberts & Seth The "Unknown" Reality Volume 2 Section 4: Session 713 October 21, 1974 The term "monkey mind" has become synonymous with worrying, anxiety, and an addiction to business. It's essentially a mind at the opposite of stillness.
Ever since I first heard the phrase "monkey mind" I disliked it. For one, it didn't make any sense to me. Monkeys are by nature playful, curious, and spirited. When I'm spiraling down in negative thinking, the last thing I associate that with is monkeys. In fact, I would rather have a monkey mind, because I'd be far more likely to go play and stop worrying so much! As I was talking to a friend the other day, this expression "monkey mind" came up as I was about to say I was wrestling with my thoughts. Since I'm not a fan of the phrase, I got all jumbled up, and ended up saying, "I'm wrestling the monkey!" After I said it I began laughing. This, for me, felt like a much more apt metaphor for what I was feeling. I could see how when I'm wrestling with worry, what I'm wrestling with is something that is by nature care-free and happy. My mind, when not engaged with worry and doubt, is naturally playful and curious. All of ours are. We know this because we were all once playful and curious children. So when I begin obsessing over worrisome things, fighting with my anxiety, or thinking about all the things that happened ten years ago, and might happen ten years from now, I am basically grabbing a part of myself and engaging it in battle. All these thoughts want is to be set free and to be able to return to their carefree and curious state. Now, when I catch myself wrestling with my thoughts and feelings, I imagine I'm wrestling a monkey. This always makes me laugh, because it's such a funny visual. Once I get myself to smile, I'm already feeling better. Then I acknowledge that the thoughts don't want to be wrestling with me anymore than a monkey does. All the thoughts really want are to be set free, so they can play and find solutions in the way the mind does best - through feelings of ease, joy, and freedom. I don't know about you, but I've never solved any of my problems by wrestling with the monkey. The next time you find yourself obsessing over things you can't control, spiraling into negative thinking, or just feeling like you're fighting with your own well-being, imagine you're wrestling a monkey. It will hopefully make you laugh, which will break the tension. It will also put into perspective how hard it is to get perspective when you're fully engaged in the inner-battle. In the same way a monkey would get tired if you never let it rest and always wrestled with it, so too does your spirit. Your spirit is tired. It wants to rest. It wants to let go of all that stuff you're fighting with. So just let it go. Let the monkey go. Repeat after me. Do not wrestle the monkey. The monkey will thank you. And since the monkey is just a metaphor for your thoughts, you will thank you. You will return to wholeness. And you will find what you need, which is so hard to see when you're neck deep in monkey fur, trying to wrestle the poor thing to the ground. Every cell of my body is a cell flush with Divinity. There was never a moment I became divine. My divinity is infinite. It never started, and it can never end. I was created that way, and I shall always be that way. Nothing can change this, and if it seems it has, it's only an illusion. I was created from a single cell, and in that cell was all the cosmic love and magnificence of all the Universe. From that single, divine cell, I grew into hundreds, and then thousands, and then billions of cells. Each one divine. Each one created from the same Source as the first. Each one mystical. Each one as valuable and spectacular as the stars in the sky. With each cell, my Divinity expanded with me. When I took my first breath, I breathed as a divine being, and the Divine breathed with me. The Source of Creation did not stay in some parts and not others. There was no part of me that separated from the divine Source of all of that is. If it seems some parts are separate, it is only an illusion. There is divinity in every cell of my body. I am a holy temple. Each breath I take is a breath of divinity. There is nothing in the Universe more holy, more divine, than my own Self. There is divinity in every cell of my body |