Maria Arpa
This week
Are you out of your mind
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
Try it. It’s wonderful
It is my humble opinion that we have allowed the mind to lead for too long. Rationalism, logic, intellect and knowledge are all very well, yet basing our decisions on evidence alone has not made life any easier or any more fun and has caused many avoidable mistakes in justice, education, government and healthcare.
There is another practice of leading from the heart and giving power to intuition, consciousness and love based decisions as a compass for living in harmony with our ecosystem.
This involves shutting down the mind and using it as a service to call on from time to time. One way of doing this is speaking from the heart. This means focussing my energy to my heart and practising speaking with the words coming from my heart through my voice and out. This is different to formulating words in the mind and transmitting them from the head using the mouth.
Given the indoctrination of the domination culture that rules our societies, it takes a quite a bit of practice to unlearn the mind based argument model of evaluation. You start by spending a minute or two several times a day shifting your point of attention out of the head and into your heart, working towards feeling your heart beating and breathing consciously as a way of life. (And there’s much more after that).
In this place I find myself taking such good care of myself that leading a sacrificial life is easy and that’s where meaning and purpose come from. I call on my mind to organise and work out the ‘how’. The question is where to seek out the information that will fulfil the purpose. In this place, purpose is holistic and community driven. I find myself needing less technology, less material things, less competition and less individualism. When I use my intuition to guide me, I find the messengers that are most useful. It becomes a system of trust and love that builds more trust and love and moves me into gratitude and giving.
Maria’s Mindfulness Moment
Make no mistake, this process took me 5 years of practice to truly understand the starting point, that was about 25 years ago and then it’s been a continuous learning journey. It’s this place that gives me strength to stand my ground when I experience misuse of power and authority, and humility when it is time to yield, let go and allow.
The Wednesday Whisper
Have you ever connected to your heart? What does it whisper when your mind is trying to dominate?