“What if all the world’s inside of your head
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your gods
All the living and the dead
And you’re really all alone?
You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can’t find the woods
While you’re hiding in the trees”–Nine Inch Nails
Feeling Some Good Vibes….
Feeling so many good vibes today. So many ideas and concepts are coming to me. Vast, eternal, life is so much more in this new mind frame. Layers are shedding off. I am realizing how much easier life is when you let go of attachments. You can read a ton of books and blogs about walking this path, but oh boy is it amazing to FEEL IT! I am so grateful, sooooooooooo grateful to have stumbled into the world of meditation. The planes I reach through it vary, sometimes I go back to lower vibrations: to the feeling of wanting this or that, not being where I am supposed to be…..but when I reach these good vibes, I remember.
I want every single living thing to understand what it is I am feeling–that’s a bit of an attachment, a want.
I want to scream to the world what I finally understand, but I don’t even think that words can explain it and since everyone is experiencing reality different, my words will only resonate with some.
Much Love All!
Life is….
Life is….
The pain, the joy, the sweet smells, the luscious green grass, the animals, the children’s laughter, biting into a peanut-butter filled chocolate truffle, the tossing and turning at night, the smile on his face after something I said, the fleece blanket I was curled under as I read “Desert Solitaire”, the shadows against the garage at 6:00 in the evening, the pain in my leg muscles after an indoor soccer game, the depression I felt on a beautiful sunny afternoon, the longing I feel for a place that I remember I came from, the attachments that I feel towards my dreams, the sounds and smells of my housemate cooking, the cute little eight-year old girl that just came knocking at my front door to break me out of my musings to ask, “Do you have a plastic fork or a balloon, I’m on a scavenger hunt….” Aren’t we all? The sounds of cars speeding down the road, the hum of the lawn mower two houses down, my cat meowing—begging that I let him outside, the beautiful black crows ascending and descending from the tall Oregon fir trees, the illusion of being alone, the grumbling coming from my stomach, the dust on my windowsill that I have been meaning to wipe down for the last three weeks, the realization that there is so much yet to learn, the memories, the pulsations throughout my body, the gratitude I feel, the art that I need to work on, the breathing that I concentrate on, alert, I am awake….for now. Every single thing—all of it, it’s amazing and miraculous.
This Place….
There’s This Place that I go into, a place where my sense of reality changes, it might be considered by some a trance, maybe? In This Place, everything makes sense and there is no worry….in fact, worry seems so laughable in This Place. This Place envelopes me and I become so at one with it that I can’t imagaine a place other than it.
And then…..I get attached to this place, I cling to it and realize it could leave and once I think that, I snap out of it and get back into “the real world.” I truly do love This Place though, because This Place is pure love. This Place is gratitude, joy, love, and freedom all mixed together to make the most beautiful feeling. In This Place, I remember the divine orchestra of life, that every single thing is just as it should be. No regrets and no frets….This Place is a reminder of what has been forgotten and I’m forever thankful for it.
In This Place, my past, present and future are nonlinear. In This Place I remember that we are all eternal. I remember that just as every single leaf, every single blade of grass, and every single dot of dust had so many different things happen to make it exist, we are alike. We are just like that leaf, just like that grass, just like that dot of dust, so many different things had to happen to bring us to who we are RIGHT NOW. And who we are RIGHT NOW is going to be so much different from the person we are going to be at 2 PM tomorrow, circumstances and situations are constantly changing who we are in the moment.
It is so freeing in This Place. In This Place, you can let go of everything so easily. In This Place you remember that everything is flowing like a river, things are constantly changing, but it’s not scary: it’s absolutely, beautifully stunning. In This Place I don’t worry about whether or not my toenails are looking like they’re in massive need of a pedicure, in This Place I’m not worried about what people think of my hairdo or the way I dress because in This Place I remember that none of that truly matters. In This Place there is no judgement.
This Place overtakes me inside and out, in This Place I feel at one with everything around me. This Place reminds me of how truly amazing everything is, how when there very well could be nothingness…there is somethingness. It reminds me to take everything in with every single breath, the way my feet feel against the ground, the sweat on my skin, the colors surrounding me.
This Place, it is a beautiful place to be. This Place brings me out of confusion, delusion and reminds me of how everything that I thought I knew, it was all just an illusion…..
Complete, Just the Way You Are…..No More Grasping.
“Well I met an old man dying on a train, no more destination, no more pain….” –Awolnation
As I was walking on the treadmill after work the other day, I noticed myself grasping. I was grasping for ways to escape the present moment. My muscles were hurting from the previous day’s workout, I knew I could only do a walking workout at this particular time and in all honesty, all I wanted to do was go home, crack open a beer and be lazy. I was bored! Walking this treadmill, feeling like some sort of lab rat, nothing of interest on the multiple televisions surrounding my vision 180 degrees. I kept picking up my phone, only to see that nothing had changed: no new phone call, no new texts, no new emails. I started scanning down old emails, trying to find something of interest that I hadn’t read yet…..only to find nothing. Bored! And then I stopped, I came back to the breath, came back to this meditation muscle that I have strengthened over the previous few months and realized: I could die this second. Enjoy…I remembered this simple word and this simple action. I took a look around and just shifted to a different paradigm realizing this moment will never happen exactly as it’s happening right now, ever again.
This is the beautiful part of meditation. It’s not just in the moment of meditation that you are gaining a keen awareness, it is in all of the moments of the day where you forget about awareness, and you bring yourself back to it so much easier than ever before. You remember. Every moment is so original, so unique.
One of my favorite meditations that I have done was one I learned back in Minnesota. I learned it at one of the first meditation workshops that I had ever attended. It was a meditation based from Buddhist tradition, I don’t remember the name of the meditation, however I do remember the monk that taught it–he was remarkable and I am forever thankful for his teachings. The meditation was incredibly simple and I highly recommend it. It basically goes as follows: after focusing on the breath for a few minutes, start to focus on the feeling of being complete. You have no need to eat anything at the moment, no need to drink anything, no need to need anything. You are fulfilled and complete just as you are, in this moment, in this second. Really take in the feeling of needing nothing right now, you are complete. Really focus on that feeling of completeness and anytime your mind drifts to other thoughts, just come back to the focusing on knowing you are complete. Nothing to worry about, because you have nothing to grasp right now, you need absolutely nothing.
The lyric that I posted at the top, every single time I hear it, it really reassures me. We are always fighting some sort of battle to be somewhere, to have something, to need something…….the struggle to survive, but death always reassures me. It reminds me that all is temporary. Every single want, need, desire….it’s all temporary, you’re not going to need money, food or shelter when you enter the next phase of existence. All in this physical world is temporary….such a beautiful thing to remember.
Walking Revelations…
Yesterday afternoon I went for a two hour walk with a new friend at Forest Park, one of the biggest urban parks in the U.S. located right in the city of Portland, OR. Getting started on the walk, I noticed my sense of thinking forward, as in “I’m feeling kind of lazy and a little down today, I hope this is a quick walk.” Right as I noticed myself having those thoughts I snapped out of it. Noticing how vast this forest was, the happy dogs and people passing us by, I thought, “why would I ever want this to pass me by without taking it all in?” I’m truly starting to get the sense of what “being awake” really means, it’s definitely not wishing for time to speed up so that you can get to another desire, it’s not to dwell on the past and think of things you miss….it’s being fully present in the moment (even if the moment seems treacherous or daunting.)
As our walk went on, we had some of the most intense and deep life talks that I have had with anyone in a while. It was an incredibly meditative walk, the two hours actually ended up feeling like 20 minutes and we both came up with some deep realizations and revelations.
Walking, although it’s pretty simple, can do some amazing things to our body and brain. Last Friday I took a half an hour walk around the block and although I started it in the same thinking mode as yesterday, the whole “I can’t wait until I get this done with,” after just 10 minutes thoughts started just flowing and I wrote all of this down when I got back to my house:
–When something is really upsetting you, or you can’t get your mind past the worry of it, remember that you were a baby at one point….right now, who you are is only temporary….so why let something get you down when you know that EVERYthing is temporary. Don’t waste that energy, let things pass and everything will become lighter.
–If you gain control of your thinking/analytical mind and realize that it has no power over you, you open yourself up to a world you have never noticed before.
–If you let go of the ego, nothing will hurt you anymore…you will have no regrets in what you tell people.
–If you quiet that incessant chatter in your mind, you really start to notice amazing things that you, at one point, took for granted: the way a shadow looks against the sidewalk, the shine on your dining room table when the sun is blaring down on it, the way the moon appears at 3:30 in the afternoon: as if it was drawn onto the sky with a small piece of chalk.
–If you are ever in a negative funk or you feel you are alone, realize that you can never be alone because you are all that you see and every living thing is part of you.
Easier said than done with a lot of this and of course many of these thoughts have already been stated, but remaining present and realizing everything is temporary….moments don’t own you, is ever helpful to remember.
Peace and love,
Ilona 🙂
P.S. in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day, I want to leave this with one of my favorite quotes of his:
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Grateful.
“The universe is full of magical things patiently
waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
~Eden Phillpotts
(also attributed to William Butler Yeats)
Such an important subject to bring into daily life: gratitude, moment to moment. There is never a reason to get stuck in negativity when this world has so much to be grateful for and to be in awe of. I can name five things right now that I am so ever grateful for:
1.) My breakfast, I’m taking in every bite of it, being thankful for the elements on Earth that helped it to grow, the people that worked hard to help it to grow, the people that delivered it to the grocery store, the workers at the grocery store that stocked it, the lady at the register that carefully placed it in my grocery bag…..to have this bowl of nourishment in front of me, it took a lot to get it here.
2.) My best friend of 16 years called to talk this morning, the strong connection I have to her and her daughter. The other perspective that she gave me this morning about a situation I was stressing out about, so grateful to have supporters to help me open my eyes to other perspectives that wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.
3.) The double windows in my bedroom showing the backyard as a snow globe, snowflakes twinkling down onto Oregon ground.
4.) My health, my body’s amazing machine-work of keeping me healthy so that I can enjoy this day.
5.) The clean drinking water I have to sip on and to get it, all I have to do is walk 15 feet to my kitchen and lift a handle to the faucet, out comes clean drinking water.
What gets me in negative thinking and fear-mode is knowing that so many people on Earth don’t have this blessed life, so many people are suffering, and for what? So that only a small percentage of us can have such blessed lives? What gets me down is feeling so helpless, I want the whole world to be blessed. I will continue on this path and do all that I can do in my power to make this world a better place before I leave it.
Blog on Fire Award
I have been recently enlightened on the process of being nominated with a blog award. I am so incredibly new to the blogging world that I didn’t know you can get blog awards from other bloggers, I also am still trying to figure out how to put the award on the sidebar of my blog-site, haha. I really want to send out a huge “thank you!!” to the person who nominated me: Gina, creator of the blog: Iridescently: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/3217531/
I have also been enlightened to blogger award etiquette while being nominated with this fine award. Rules are: you must acknowledge the person who nominated you, share a few interesting facts about yourself and then pass along the award to some other blogs that you might frequent.
So, as much as I don’t like boasting about myself, here is a few interesting facts that I will share about myself as being Ilona:
1.) I was named after my Hungarian Grandmother, who made her way over to the U.S.A. from Hungary through hell and highstorm in 1956 with her two sons and husband.
2.) I was born in Washington DC, raised in Minnesota, and now reside in Portland, OR.
3.) I got my tongue pierced before I got my ears pierced.
And now, for the fun part, I would like to nominate the following blogs that I frequent on a weekly basis:
A Year of Meditating: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/30994237/
Through the Looking Glass: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/43726546/
…Virtually…: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/1697448/
Love2Ascend: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/blog/id/40227697/
That was incredibly tough decision making, with just how many inspiring blogs I follow, P.S. these were given in no particular order.
Thanks to everyone out there for your inspiration and support!
Peace and love 🙂
–Ilona
Letting Go
“There is no freedom in life, without freedom of mind…” –The Fire Theft
Last night and actually quite a few times this week I have been experiencing the feeling of being the observer. I have my thinking/rational/analytical mind and then I have the observer behind that, realizing that the thinking mind isn’t actually me. I mean it is, but I’m realizing that it’s not my TRUE self , it’s just this annoying voice that has to say something about everything. Stepping back and realizing this is SUCH a weight lifted off the shoulders, it’s such a relief to realize that I don’t have to believe anything that voice says….it’s just going to say what it’s going to say, but my true self knows that it’s not reality.
A couple days ago, my roomy and I were traveling with a Couchsurfing friend to Canada and he said something that really hurt me. At first, my reaction was to defend myself and I actually felt the physical sensation of my ego being hurt (for me it comes as a tightness in the chest.) At first I fought back and there was some bickering back and forth for a minute with him about it and then I just stopped. I told him, that’s fine he can say that, we would just have to agree to disagree. I realized I really didn’t like that feeling I had and didn’t like that it started a little fight, I could feel the energy in the car change–to this fearful, fighting mode. People are going to say things that will damage our ego, but it doesn’t mean you can control that situation, this is where clinging comes up–clinging to what we think we are and how we think other people should be to us. When I stopped fretting about it and just let it be, I felt a love and openness again.
Last night I was having a conversation with a new person I had just met and I could tell he wasn’t listening. One major factor in knowing he wasn’t truly listening was I asked him a question and he just nodded his head to me–this wasn’t a yes or no question, haha. Once I got that response, I repeated the question, but by this point he was completely absorbed in looking down at his phone and typing away. This continued on for the hour he was with our little group of friends, the rest of us would be having authentic conversations and he was completely absorbed in his phone. The voice in my head started judging him and saying things like “he is completely rude! How annoying. This guys is ruining my night. I can’t believe he has pretty much completely ignored anything I have said to him.” And the observer noticed this voice, listened to it, but then let it go…..like clouds drifting by in the sky. Truly, I didn’t know this guy, who knows what’s going on in his head, but I have no right to judge him. I just let him be, I forgave him (in my head) and I realized what a beautiful night I was having catching up with my other friends.
In the past I would let both of those situations bug me to the point where I wouldn’t let it go and I would get obsessed about it. I wouldn’t notice everything else going on in the moment because my mind would be obsessed in this judging world for so long. It’s such a wonderful thing recognizing this voice in my head, which used to create my reality, is just that–just a voice. To relax in this voice, to not let it hold so much power over me is so completely liberating!
“Why should anything that anyone says or does cause you to get disturbed? You’re just on a planet spinning around the middle of absolutely nowhere. You came here to visit for a handful of years and then you’re going to leave. How can you live all stressed-out over everything? Don’t do it.” –The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer
We Are One.
Sitting on the MAX train, lost in thought. A mother and her young daughter step onto the train, the mother holding a sign pleading for help. The daughter with scared eyes, wearing a jacket much too big for her and paint stains all over it. All of a sudden I saw my mother and myself standing there, I felt the fear of being eight years old and feeling vulnerable stepping onto a train of strangers, begging. I dug into my pockets and pulled out what I had as the young girl approached me, “do you have any spare…” she stopped talking as I looked into her eyes and smiled, placing a few quarters in her small palm with finger nails painted purple, chipping away. “Thank you!” She smiled politely.
For hours after that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, obsessing of how sad it was, the whole situation. I wondered about the story, how did they get there, is the mother on drugs? I tried to push the judging thoughts away. What it came down to was: I am them, they are me. We are one. What I can’t stop obsessing about is: how can I do more? I can’t give spare change to every homeless person in the world, I’d become homeless myself. I guess what it comes down to is acknowledging intent, with each moment I choose the path of love and kindness. If I can help in this moment, I will, if I’m hurting myself in the process it does no one good….but I will do what I can with what I have in the moment…
“The inferior, old-fashioned method is to use your mind – to analyze everything to death – to run it through the computer – to distinguish how different we all are – to weigh, to compare, to compete with and to kill. This ruinous route leads to the dualistic, stupid self-destruction of our species.
The superior path – to get it together – is to use your spirit – to unify, to empathize with – to be at one with.” –Earth Freaks by Earthman
My Meditation Challenge 