Day 30 - December Meditations - Becoming

"Through Life Visioning, we become the living condition through which divine ideas express themselves...These ideas can be anything from solutions to problems to a new business model to direction in your spiritual development." ~ Michael Bernard Beckwith

Affirmation:  My vision pulls me into my becoming.  

I live to expand and become everyday!

Contrary to what most of society tells us, we are not here to perform and produce.  Of course it is necessary for us to perform...perform tasks, duties and skills...and often times to be a contributing member to our friends, family and work systems, we must be productive and produce and contribute to the whole.  Performing and producing can pull us away from our underlying purpose and becoming though if that is all that we focus on.  In consciousness work and spiritual practice, the question is less about "what" and more about "who".  Who are we becoming today, tomorrow and the next?  The what actually can be quite easy, the whats of our lives reveal everyday as things are needed and required, but who are we becoming in the midst of the details of our lives.  

This is what we focus on today in our meditation.  Join me in listening for the answer to the question "Who are we here to become in 2015?"

Day 23 - December Meditations - Listening

How often do we listen to actually learn something new or discover something about ourselves or another?  Challenge yourself today to listen for something new as opposed to listening for what you want to hear or what you think will or should be said.  There IS more to our daily living than what we already know.  Are you ready to listen for it?

"I remind myself every morning:  Nothing I say this day will teach me anything.  So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening." ~Larry King

Affirmation:  Today I listen to my life and make myself available to the wisdom it seeks to speak to me.

Download today's meditation and join me in a powerful listening session.

Day 20 - December Meditations - Allowing

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are." ~Malcom S. Forbes

What if you actually allowed yourself to be you today?  Valuing and allowing more time, energy and attention to land on who you are as opposed to what you are not."

Join me today in meditating and affirming your "enoughness".  

Download the meditation here.

Affirmation:  I value who I am today and let that be enough.

Day 14 - December Meditations - The Light of Love

Love is the willingness to accept and embrace another or ourselves beyond a specific action or word even.  In the Christian tradition, today is the third Sunday of Advent, the holy time leading up to the celebration of Jesus' birth.  Every Sunday during Advent a candle is lit, remembering a specific quality of the spirit of Jesus and God, today's candle is love.

Let us be willing to embrace ourselves or another in meditation, regardless of what happened or didn't happen.  "Hate the sin an not the sinner:" Ghandi wrote in his auto-biography.  Lets put our attention on simply loving the sinner or the one who made a mistake.  Whether that person be yourself or another, simply move your attention to the light of love they  are and love that light.

Click here to download todays' brief guided meditation.

Affirmation: Today I love the light of love in all life, no strings attached.

Day 13 - December Meditations - Where shall we rest?

"Our hearts are restless until they rest in the Thee, O Lord." - St. Augustine

What shall I rest in God?  What shall I rest in Universal Truth?  What shall I rest or give over to the law of fulfillment and possibility?......EVERYTHING!  I am always amazed to find another aspect of my life or challenge that I think I have to figure out on my own.  There is a law or tendency in the universe to co-create or partner with us in everything, but it can't force us to partner with it, to rest in it.  Lets just see what it would fee like to rest all of our problems, even if just a few minutes, in the loving, nurturing support of the law of fulfillment.  Join me here for meditation.

Affirmation:  I rest today in the ever expanding possibility of life.  I know all things are possible.

Day 11 - December Meditations - Remembering our loving nature

Love is so often said to be a verb and not a noun.  However, how often do we try to understand love as opposed to engaging in love or practicing love.  Today let us not attempt to understand how we can love someone who challenges us or attempt to figure out how we can love that aspect of ourselves that drives us crazy.  Rather, let us simply affirm our love for ourselves or another simply because we love as opposed to loving because of something.

Affirmation:  I am a loving being.  My nature is to love.  Today I remember my true nature.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me an I may remember, involve me an I learn." ~Benjamin Franklin

Involve yourself in loving right now, download todays meditation on love here.

Day 9 - December Meditations - Awareness of ever present Universal Intelligence

"Meditation is an invitation for God to speak to us or to make Himself known to us; it is not an attempt to reach God, since God is omnipresent.  The Presence already is.  The Presence always is, in sickness or in health, in lack or in abundance, in sin or in purity; the presence of God always and already is.  We are not seeking to reach God, but rather to achieve such a state of stillness that the awareness of God's presence permeates us."  ~Joel Goldsmith, Practice the Presence

Affirmation:  Today I am open and available to hear and see something I haven't before.  The ever present voice of God, the Universe, Source & Intelligence guides me now.

Take this affirmation into mediation, download this 10 minute meditation for free!

Day 7 - December Meditations - Shine your light!

"Each one of us is an outlet to God and an inlet to God." - E. Holmes

You are the light this world needs.  Don't ever stop remembering that!  Whatever the world may say about you or to you....heck, whatever you may say to yourself, don't ever stop remembering you are the light this world needs!

We come together in our living and today to remember this truth. 

Click here to download today's free meditation.

Affirmation:  All that I am is right for this moment.  I allow myself to be enough today and know I will be enough tomorrow.

Day 6 - December Meditations - Moving from the invisible to the visible...

Ernest Holmes wrote, "All manifestation of life is from an invisible to a visible plane, through a silent, effortless process of spiritual realization."  Embracing this statement then...Let life stir from within us.  Although life around us at work, home, in the country and world will continue to stir around us, let us connect to and welcome the invisible power within each of us to be the real cause of our good.  Let us let the world off the hook today and embrace our responsibility to make ourselves available to the loving power of life that simply seeks to move through us and out into the world.  Join me in today's meditation and practice of acknowledging the invisible power that stirs within seeking to move through you and out into the world.

Affirmation:  I am a unique space where the power of the universe becomes manifest.  Today the divine effortlessly expresses as my living.

Day 5 - December Meditations - What limits your life?

"Never limit your view of life by any experience." - Ernest Holmes

These words of Ernest Holmes really inspired me this morning.  It caused me to pause and take a sobering look at where I view my life as limited and stifled and fess up to myself.  The only reason it IS that way really, is do to my belief and acceptance that limitation in that area of my life is true.  I may not know how things will change, but if I am not willing to entertain something different in my heart, mind, body and soul, I doubt I will be ready and available whenever a path, choice or opportunity comes along to shift things.

Are we willing to risk even the thought that our life could be something different?  The biggest challenge to new possibilities and expanded living in our future, is acceptance of our past experiences as the way things are.  Take this present moment today to expand the belief in your heart, that the experience of your life can stretch beyond your present view.  Join me in a brief meditation, welcoming and blessing the possibility known as your life!  Click here for the recording.

Affirmation:  My life and my living is an access point for something fresh today.  I am living possibility!

Opportunities to practice regardless of where you live!

• Click here to download guided meditations

June
What:  Community Prayer Call
When:  Thursdays 8:30 - 9:00 p.m. June 5, 12, 19 & 26
Where:  Conference Call, Call Number: 530-881-1200 Access Code: 431735#

What:  Saturday Morning Wake Up Call
When: June 21st, 9:00 a.m.
Where: Call Number: 530-881-1200 Access Code: 431735#

July
What:  Wednesday Evening Connections
When: Wednesdays, July 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 7:30-8:30 p.m.
Where: Darrell's backyard weather permitting.  Rain alternative will be a conference call

August
What:  Sunrise Meditation (Save the date, details to come!)
When: Sunday, August 17th, 5:45 a.m.
Where: Foster Street Beach


Speaking Engagments

• June 15th, Triangle Center for Spiritual Living, Raleigh, NC

Transition, Change, Uncertainty & Fear

Tomorrow, I end the part time job I have had for the past year while finishing my grad school program.  Friday I get on a plane and head to Denver for the graduation ceremony from my program.  I return next week to start a whole new job on Wednesday, all the while continuing to prepare for my oral panels to become a licensed minister in August...so in the midst of all this transition, change and uncertainty, guess who came by to visit...fear.  One of the greatest joys for me right now having finished my studies, is to read books that have been waiting for me on my bookshelf that weren't directly related to my coursework and reread some of my old standbys.  One of them is Ram Dass' "Journey of Awakening".  Here is a quote from Krishnamurti

It is not that you must be free from fear.  The moment you try to free yourself from fear, you create a resistance against fear.  What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it, not how to resist it through courage and so on.

I don't fear that anything bad will happen to me, but I am aware of some anxiety around the unknown.  How many hours will I really work, how will I juggle this with that.  Will I get everything done I want to before I start my job.  Will I forget to "close" anything up with my old work?  How will the plans I have made for trips and vacations work out with my new work schedule...oh shoot, I scheduled a lunch meeting months ago for a week from now with a colleague, will I be able to keep that meeting or have to reschedule, the list can go on and on.

For the past 80 days or so, I have also been meditating everyday and I know that has aided me in staying calm in the midst of uncertainty and constant change.  Meditating has created a space for me to be with my fear and learn about it and from it.  Meditation has created a space for fear to be okay.  Meditating has allowed me to sit with the question, is this fear or concern real or is it something just in my mind?  It has liberated me from the immobilization that fear can hold me in.

Meditation has supported me in my living in so many ways, right now I am grateful for the way meditation holds me in moments of uncertainty and fear.

Start your own personal meditation marathon.  Do 2 minutes a day everyday this summer until September 1st.  Want support on how to do that?

Drop me a line @ darrelljonesspirit@gmail.com.

Love, Light & Laughter,

Darrell