What Works for You??!!

[Alpha]

When everything is more wrong than right, when life and people throw you curves or situations you never expected, when everything that can go wrong does....your boss, family, finances, the weather....all, part or some...just a bad me day...whatever....., what do you do?

How do you get beyond that...balance yourself....realize that his planet is still a place of magnifisance and we have a privilege to have had the experience to experience it?

What do you do??

[Project]

I go geocaching, or I work on my own projects that I think are either personally rewarding or socially conscious. Helping someone else when you are down is a great way to forget about things, and to feel good about yourself.

[Jennifer Robins]

That's when I go on a cleaning spree. I think it's a way of wiping away the hurt. Other than that I write.

Jennifer

[Stone X]

I light a couple of whte candles, sit before my personal altar, and meditate and pray, attuning with my Patron. Usually, no more than 15 minutes of this is required for get my balance and/or lift my spirits, although I have done it for longer periods of time. It just works for me...

[Kamalam]

I light a couple of whte candles, sit before my personal altar, and meditate and pray, attuning with my Patron. Usually, no more than 15 minutes of this is required for get my balance and/or lift my spirits, although I have done it for longer periods of time. It just works for me...

Stone, do you mean what Carlos Castaneda might do to get in touch with Don Juan? Or Paolo Coelho might with "J"?

[Kamalam]

Well what I do depends on the mood I'm in and my state of consciousness.

Sometimes I delve right into a book (right now I'm reading George R.R. Martin) and just ESCAPE.

Sometimes I do The Work - which I described in another thread. That's when I'm serious about ending the pain.

Sometimes I heed the call to just stop. Stop and sit with whatever comes up. Like a pebble that's thrown into a calm lake, I know that the more I struggle with whatever is up, the more ripples I create. Pema Chodron has written a wonderful book called "When Things Fall Apart" - And she describes this process in compassionate detail. Gangaji does as well. So... I stop and let it burn. And find out what's on the other side.

[Captain Beyond]

It's been a while for me as my life has been upside down for quite some time now,(but things got Mucho better) today.

Anyhoo, the most refreshing times I have ever had have been short, but wonderful...those times when I was able to completely Stop the internal dialogue, a complete quieting of the mind....no thoughts at all.

This is very hard to do, I mean, any thought at all spoils it, so it is a very short and fleeting experience for me thus far. However, when you do reach that absolute inner silence, it is the most refreshing time you will ever spend in a consciouse state.

Also, remember this....when you go to sleep, you go from many thoughts (rambling mind) to regular sleep and dreaming. If you get relaxed enough and focus enough and entertain only one thought, and OBE will result. If however you can relax enough and completely empty the mind of thoughts at the moment of sleep, you can enter the mental plane.

Yes, I hear a few snickers, but they are in the distance, in other places where the topics are bars and naked women, where the little head rules!:yup::haha:

[snowbird]

Well, unfortunately, I've been there quite a few times - a lot of menusha has come my and my family's way. I have looked around and saw other people enjoying life, doing interesting things, having a great time and I wonder why I'm always on the outside looking in.

However, when s&*^t happens(ed), I remember being so gripped by fear that I curled into a ball and prayed a lot. At night (dusk is the best time, I don't know why) I would lay in bed and try to clear my mind and meditate on the future and what message I would get - from whom, I don't know - guardian angel, maybe, probably. But there would suddenly be a "knowing" that things would turn out okay eventually. This has happened time and again. I rely on my guardian or guardians, the entity(ies) that directs me and my family and has saved us from disastrous fates time and again.

What I have learned is that prayers and meditation works, but sometimes whatever I was going through was a means to an end and because of that, sometimes the answer to my request is "no".

snowbird

[ShardsOfNarsil]

Several things work for me:

1) Listening to my favorite music.

2) Getting out to some of my favorite parks. One of them has some nice trails through the woods and some scenic overlooks over the water. There's one spot where there is a bench where you can sit under the trees and look over the water to the islands and the mountains beyond. I like to go there with a coffee and a journal. Very refreshing.

3) Watching the sky. Keeping track of the moon phases. Watching the stars and planets, even watching the planes, particularly in the twilight.

4) Appreciating the nature right in my yard: the birds, the squirrells, the plants.

:) I'm feeling pretty good, just thinking about it ;)

[Marlantis Buzz]

Years ago just working on a life like painting was my escape...now it's working the ancient code. If I'm down, I open up to the hall of records. I'm just scratching the surface but I'm there. Finding little Bo Peep was a trill last week.

[snowbird]

On a daily basis, I prefer to take the slightly longer but more scenic drive to work. And I get my daily fix of nature at breaktime sitting facing the window looking at trees and river, etc..

s.

[Alpha]

So much good stuff here...thank you all!! :hug:


....... Helping someone else when you are down is a great way to forget about things, and to feel good about yourself.

Yeah P...that works for me to alot of the time. I guess sometimes we let ourselves and our problems take on far too much importance compared to others...yet when the gates are crashing and fires our burning for each of us in our own respective ways, it's sometimes difficult to see that forrest beyond our trees.


That's when I go on a cleaning spree. I think it's a way of wiping away the hurt. Other than that I write.

Jennifer

Yeah Jen I hear you too...cleaning is or can be an extremely cathartical experience, specifically when you are cleaning the woes and frustrations away with all the dust and grime........and yes, I'm sure that writing or an alternate creative source is a wonderful receptor, conduit.


Well what I do depends on the mood I'm in and my state of consciousness.

Kam, what you said here hit right home with me...depends on the what, the where the why and what space I'm in or what has happened....never the same for me either. Would love for you to expound upon Pema Chodron and the book you mention........... "When Things Fall Apart"


Several things work for me:

1) Listening to my favorite music.

2) Getting out to some of my favorite parks. One of them has some nice trails through the woods and some scenic overlooks over the water. There's one spot where there is a bench where you can sit under the trees and look over the water to the islands and the mountains beyond. I like to go there with a coffee and a journal. Very refreshing.

3) Watching the sky. Keeping track of the moon phases. Watching the stars and planets, even watching the planes, particularly in the twilight.

4) Appreciating the nature right in my yard: the birds, the squirrells, the plants.

:) I'm feeling pretty good, just thinking about it ;)

Shards, what you say and do rings right with me....those are the types of things that nurture and bring me back to a more level place.

Guess we all have our own way to regroup, ground, get back...yet ready to face another day of the same old that puts us back once again...guess perhaps this life's journey or the "human condition".

Kam started a very interesting thread titled "What is the Work" HERE (http://www.imaginativeworlds.com/forum/showthread.php?p=83351#post83351)

It was based on a previous conversation some of us had a while ago regarding a similar topic and I'd like to hear more about it...thanks Kam...haven't had the time to go back and respond in your thread....the Four Questions...am still digesting it and yes, I do understand the premise.

So I guess my next question perhaps is, how do you all stop the vexacious, the downers of which you have control over to minimize this cycle?

I realize this life and journey is filled with trial, tribulation, journey, learning...but how do we get ourselves off that hamster wheel, where we have some choice and influence?

Many thanks to all who have responded, even if I didn't use your quotes...I read and took to heart all that was written here. :)
,

[Kamalam]

One thing I used to use that helped my mind get off the hamster wheel was the use of a Light and Sound machine. Unfortunately, when I moved from Seattle, I had to leave it behind (belonged to my S.O.).

The one we used was by Theta Technologies and it was an incredible tool to calm the mind, or energize it, or send it into sleep (inducing delta waves), or just create a general feeling of peace.

It works by using pulsed sound and binural beats in combination with flickering light. The effect is similar to what happens to your brain when you gaze into a fire. You close your eyes, put on a headset and these special LED glasses, then push a button. Voila, you are minutes away from what might take a half hour of meditating.

What's interesting is that there are also energizing sessions and "explore" programs that send the brain far and wide. They have done some research into helping people with ADHD as well. Turns out the Energizing programs work best for that. The reasoning is that people with ADHD have a higher threshold for stimuli. In order for their particular brains to feel relaxed, a higher level of stimulation is needed to satiate the neurons.

Cool little piece of technology... and it was nice to have another option for getting off the thought train besides meditating or writing or bitching to a friend, LOL.

[Project]

One thing I used to use that helped my mind get off the hamster wheel was the use of a Light and Sound machine. Unfortunately, when I moved from Seattle, I had to leave it behind (belonged to my S.O.).

The one we used was by Theta Technologies and it was an incredible tool to calm the mind, or energize it, or send it into sleep (inducing delta waves), or just create a general feeling of peace.

It works by using pulsed sound and binural beats in combination with flickering light. The effect is similar to what happens to your brain when you gaze into a fire. You close your eyes, put on a headset and these special LED glasses, then push a button. Voila, you are minutes away from what might take a half hour of meditating.

What's interesting is that there are also energizing sessions and "explore" programs that send the brain far and wide. They have done some research into helping people with ADHD as well. Turns out the Energizing programs work best for that. The reasoning is that people with ADHD have a higher threshold for stimuli. In order for their particular brains to feel relaxed, a higher level of stimulation is needed to satiate the neurons.

Cool little piece of technology... and it was nice to have another option for getting off the thought train besides meditating or writing or bitching to a friend, LOL.
You can now get software to do this with normal headphones and your laptop or desktop screen... even better is to program your own, I played with this for a long while before getting frustrated at the limitations...

[Kamalam]

You can now get software to do this with normal headphones and your laptop or desktop screen... even better is to program your own, I played with this for a long while before getting frustrated at the limitations...

I wish I was creative enough to program my own stuff! And, yeah, there are still a lot of limitations - even though I like the machine b/c I can lie down on my couch and not have to sit in front of a monitor, what I don't like are the wires all around me - headphone wires, eyeglass wires, and if you want to add a Polysync tape or cd to the mix... you've got to have a Walkman and the wires associated with that. It's doable, but kind of irritating. Seems a "next generation" would have been created by now, but everything is still rather at the same place it was a few years ago.