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I’m meditating and I’m still so damned stressed!

So you’ve been meditating regularly and you’re wondering why you’re still stressed? You’ve experienced some peak meditations where you felt perfection was just a breath away and you’re wondering whether you are getting it right? Well it’s possible you are dealing with some of the pervasive myths about meditation.

One myth is that meditation is about attaining a state where upsetting things just bounce off, or being so on top of stress that you’re impervious to it. You know those ideas don’t sound like real living and I don’t think meditation was ever meant to work that way. But that doesn’t mean meditation can’t relieve stress, it can.

Meditation certainly helps with the “bounce back” from stress, but what about the “bounce off”? We need to ask what we are trying to do when we meditate. Certainly we are creating an inner refuge, but are our own expectations undermining our attempts to create calm and peace?

So how does our expectation of meditation colour our experience? Let’s clear our expectations of instant nirvana, and embrace the transparency that meditation gives us. My own experience of meditation is it makes me aware of my personal shortcomings, and helps me to love and accept them. Meditation is so much more about self acceptance than we ever realize. As we know ourselves better, it signposts us on the way to becoming more loving and forgiving of others. We begin to see inside another person, what we see in ourselves. This is a significant signpost of maturity in meditation, often hard won.

That’s because when we meditate, we are breaking down our sense of separateness to our inner self, and then to other people. Source isn’t in the business of faking Nirvana, it wants us to have the real deal, and help us deal with stress head on. None of us is/are separate in any real sense. We are all made of the same omnipresent energy and vibration. When we grasp this as actual, the real path of compassion unveils itself. Until then, I think practicing compassion, no matter how heart felt, is noble mental posturing.

So that’s the thing, the work on acceptance of our self, (all of it including the messy parts), that allows us to embrace and accept the process of living.

Where it takes us on our quest to deal with stress, depends on our ability to read signposts along the way. But as soon as we actualize a compassionate viewpoint, we gain the instant peace of comprehending another person’s way as our own. It’s a subtle but powerful shift. It opens the door to self understanding and to human understanding. Inevitably, it is a powerful tool to dissolving our stress.

Meditatively questing for real self acceptance, and sourcing it as a quality that springs naturally from within, will undermine stress at its roots. Self acceptance is an expression of your authenticity. When you cultivate that, it becomes the art rather than the code by which you live, and love.

Blessings, Wendy xxx

"Look Mother, no hands...I'm meditating without actually Meditating!"

Meditation is the activity of sitting in a painful cross-legged position allowing our mental distractions to drive us crazy. We do this for say, half an hour a day, and snap, we attain mental equipose and never have to frown again. And that statement is about as true as our mother's telling us, if we ate our crusts, we'd have curly hair. But meditation can be a cross-legged activity. That form of seated meditation is very proficient at getting us where we want to go meditatively, and we shouldn't toss it away lightly. The drawback with it is it doesn't suit everyone who walks on two legs, and really there's no reason why it has to, one size doesn't have to fit every single foot. That leads me to a useful definition. Meditation occurs in any activity that involves sustained focus and awareness. If we try to squeeze our toes into that idea, we begin to step into our comfy meditative slippers. Now we can conjure up the image of a monk quietly walking in a garden, total focus and awareness of each footstep and the crunch of pebble underneath. The calligrapher, with pen or brush in hand, placing each stroke on the page. The writer writing a stream of consciousness. The rolling of dough under the baker's hands. Think of how present you are in a kiss. Could you be more there? A meditative attitude transforms anything we do. Riding our bike, we let go of the handle-bars, and let our focus and awareness guide us along. "Look Mother, no hands...I'm meditating without actually Meditating!" In oneness, Wendy xxx Illustration is a painting "Close up girl" from the Black and White series 2007. Wendy Bradtke. Copyright.

Megan Mullally...Free Again!

Megan Mullally and Supreme Music Program's new CD was released on July 28th. Its been a wait for a new album from this vocal artist and her band, but WOW this one is worth the waiting. It's only available for download at the moment at Megan's official website but will be available on CD soon. Personally I couldn't wait any longer. I've enjoyed Megan's voice and musical attitude since I clicked on a clip of her singing at youtube a while ago. She can make a song sweet, hot, raw or deranged. She has one of those voices that went into my head and wouldn't let go, as does the music of her band SMP. She's not afraid to exercise versatility, and there's something uncompromising in her style I really admire. Someone who has reached her celebrity-ness and is still prepared to produce edgy music that oftentimes stuns has me really listening. She can draw out a musical energy that expresses a purity you'd find only in the rawest of elements, maybe like the drama of a storm framing the naked skeleton of a tree, or the delicious texture of weather beaten skin - a concept difficult to define - but all good art has it. Her music has it, and she never gets too serious about it either. I like way she sings the story of each song, as nothing she sings is quite as it seems. There's a tiny child's piano in "Ave Maria", laughter on "Talk to me", heat in the murkiness of "Down by The River" The sub-text in each song can be sad, dazed, obsessed and glowing in the same moment. It feels to me like she's saying, and I have to use an Australian expression here, "cop it sweet". I can't say it any other way. At last there's a new MM/SMP CD to wear out, and to walk along the river to... Bliss, Wendy xxx

At the cliff-face

Eknath Easwaran well described the meditative process as diving deeper thru the layers of mind, and coming to rest against “walls”. Then there is a wandering along the “wall” trying to find a chink, a tiny opening, to let you thru into the next layer. I have always liked his idea, it’s something I feel I’ve experienced myself over the years. But, all of that posits a sense of direction towards something which was to Easwaran, a devout Hindu, straight forward enough. But what is our relationship with that today? Do we need in our times to be re-energizing our sense of what Source is, and maybe more importantly, our relationship to it? That is what I am finding now, I need to do that. It feels like I'm meditatively edging around a big wheel, and each way I position myself in relation to it I find another wheel in a new position. However it doesn't feel like edging around a collection of inter-connected wheels, but more that wherever I am the position of the wheel changes. But also the position is the same depending on which way I face, or look. It sounds confusing but when I'm there its oddly satisfying, its like I'm seeing every position at once. Now in that last sentence I see the presence of a paradox. That’s usually a good sign to me that I’m onto something. Nothing smells of Source more strongly than a paradox. I wonder where this will go? I feel like I’m about to be turned inside out energetically. Why do I feel like that? I sense a “realization” looming. Marvelous! A new way of being is edging towards my doorstep. My fear has dissolved away and I'm following a meditative thread again. Upliftment, Wendy xxx

Where a mantram goes...nobody knows.

As I’m passing thru a very thorny patch in meditation presently, its probably a great time to think a little about how valuable a mantram can be. Let me say though, in one sense I struggle with the use of mantrams. Its not that I don’t love the gentle lull of the mantram’s beat in my head, I genuinely do, its that to some part of me it seems such an unimaginative way to deal with the mind, which is after all essentially creative. The artist inside can scream "give me a picture to contemplate!"

Now this may or may not give a glimmer that recently I made some peace with having a mind. Now that may seem like a weird thing to say but the truth is a lot of yogi’s do have that trouble and tend to see the mind as an enemy to be vanquished. I have recently given that some deep consideration and I accepted it is there, and even embraced the mind's busy-ness.

I actually accepted that I like my mind, I no longer see it as a restless enemy to quieten down to non-existence, rather I see it as a part of me I simply need to deal with. And maybe because I've become more acquainted with what’s beyond it, digging around in the pre-conscious mind. All of this has come about because of a re-newed commitment to find happiness inside me instead of from outside sources. Yes, that finally happened! It’s taken me 50 years bloody hard slog to get there.

So my inner resolve to find my inner smile has occasioned a hugely creative renewal, it’s almost like a renaissance and my mind is full of wonder and dreams again. I have an entire series of paintings, one novel, two non fiction titles and a heap of short stories all sitting inside like Hoover dam. I barely have time for inner misery any more.

There’s a marvelous land within to be experienced, lived and expressed. That being so, until I lose my marbles, I intend to play with them. Now those marbles I’ve really earned, and really own. Others may have left marks on them, may have tried to screw with them, even possess them, but I know they are un-possess-able. It's my "inner landscape", and if I screw that up, or make it good, it’s my deal after all.

It occurred to me this morning, meditating, that I might use the time to SENSE LIFE, rather than embrace the void. And a practiced meditator will recognize here I am at the cliff-face of a deep philosophical change. Excuse me but its - scary.

Aside from that, I can't get enough today of Megan Mullally singing "Marie"....I'm wearin' out the CD...

Bliss, Wendy. xxx

Chakras are not sharks....(but what are they?)

Firstly let's get my pet peeve about the sanskrit term Chakra sorted. Its pronounced CH-akra, as in CH-urch, not SH-arkra, as in the movie "Jaws". Right I got that off my chest, let's move on. For those who love some history (not one of 'em myself, let's go straight to the point - Yay!) Chakras belong to the meditation system called Tantra which pre-dates Yoga, so that makes it ancient. Tantra is based on the idea of liberating energy to change your consciousness. Now that statement beggars the question - "what is consciousness anyway?" I like to look at it this way, if we could think of how we feel as a reflection of our attitudes, then we could think of our consciousness as our state of being, or how we are. So, how do Chakras fit with that? The Chakras are energy flows that are really close to Source Energy, so they are a kind of consciousness in themselves. They sit in your body like whirlpools of energy, and yup, that means in everybody. In meditation we develop the Chakras by expanding and clarifying them. In that way we expand our own consciousness by experiencing Source energies directly through our own Chakras. These are the positions of the seven major Chakras with their sanskrit names -

• Mooladhara or Earth Chakra at the base of the spine. Its colour is red and it influences our stability and motivation.
• Swadisthana or Water Chakra in the lower abdomen . Its colour is orange and it influences our creativity and vitality.
• Manipura or Fire Chakra just above the navel. Its colour is yellow and it influences our instinct and drive.
• Anahata or the Heart Chakra at the breastbone. Its colour is green and influences the way we experience and give love.
• Vishuddi or Throat Chakra. Its colour is blue and influences direction and communication.
• Ajna or Mind Chakra back from the brow towards the centre of the head. Its colour is violet and influences intuition and visualization.
• Sahasrara or Crown Chakra at the top of head. Its colour is white and influences inspiration and life purpose.

This list is not extensive, as the subject of Chakras is vast. Thankfully there are simple ways of working with Chakras and one of those is through colour. Meditation on colour gives us an amazing way to experience Source Energy at its very purest, as colour is one of its building blocks. So here is a meditation within Vishuddi Chakra to try - anyone can do it, try it now, later, or a few times. Just go for it! Assume a comfortable seated posture in a quiet place. Don't get too pedantic about it, sitting in a chair is fine. The most important thing is your body is relaxed and upright. Close your eyes and unplug from the world outside. Focus on your breathing until it gets slow and deep. Cultivate an attitude of being at peace with things. Take time for all of this to develop, as meditation can't be rushed. Allow your mind to form a picture of a clear blue sky. Appreciate for a moment the expanse of blue letting your awareness spread out into the open space, floating up into the sky. Look out and enjoy the feeling of space, openness and lightness. Feel the full power of the sun imagining sunlight pouring down through the space like golden threads. Stay with this a few moments. Then focus on breathing in and out. Imagine that your breath can connect with the sky, so as you breathe in you draw the sky inside you. And as you breathe out you let your being flow out to the sky. Let this breathing increase your sense of connection with the sky...you are in a state of becoming...(sky) You could end your meditation here or you could then add a mantram. In this case use the So hum mantram, as it is a mantram of becoming. Say it internally with your breath - Sooooooooooo - very long as you breath in... huuuummmmmmm - very long as you breath out... Keep imagining that the sky and the blue are flowing on the breath, with the mantram. After awhile you can let the breathing and mantram go. Feel when it's right to do so.Then try sitting still with where-ever this meditation has taken you. To end your meditation stretch your body and take time to reflect. This meditation, one of many others, will help to open your Vishuddi Chakra and allow an experience of the space, clarity and direction within it. That's what meditation is about, its not about the technique, or the length, or anything complex. It's about what you experience, and from that you will learn all that you need to understand... Most important is to enjoy what you do, don't struggle too much with it. Joy is the soul of Tantra. It's joy that liberates our creative energy within. With Joy, Wendy. The illustration is a detail from a painting "Blue angel" - Wendy Bradtke 2000 Cpoyright.

Soup and secret women's business

Its too early in winter to be doing this, but my body decided, in the form of a cold, to unplug me from the flow of things. Colds usually don't hit me 'til winter is desperately bleak, but it seems this cold is saying now is the time for a re-plug into the flow of the stuff that sits beyond the senses in the Other World. Or maybe I'd call it the Dreamtime. A cold brings a small upheaval of routine and there's time to ruminate on things going on and down mind-wise. Aside from all the obligatory plunging into bottles of vitamins in search of a cure, there's that extra time for glorious plunging into thoughts - a little journey into "whatcha been doin' " within. Some thoughts sit inside and bubble up like the fresh gush of coffee in the espresso machine. Those ones are thrilling, awakening, like explosions of light, even fireworks. Some thoughts are like the folds of a newspaper - in a rush to get to the best most interesting story, you go through the banal, the sensational, the sporting, and if you're lucky you end up in the funny papers. All of it can be a very domestic experience, like falling into one shiny kitchen soup-pot. Well, the soup de jour is happily simmering chock-a-block with new things. It has heapin' spoonfuls of possibilities that weren't there before. Its like you've seen that secret page in the cookbook long-glued-together and it contains magical instructions revealing secret women's business from the far off Himalayas. You know, that way-up-high place shrouded in fluffy clouds, the inner sanctum, suddenly the clouds part and the hand of a goddess whips out. And its a sweet, humble and helping hand. So the soup becomes a mix of bright lights. And in the swish of its words, it transcends words, you can only marvel at being in the serendipity of right time - right place. And thats how it can be with colds, thoughts and soup in the Dreamtime. In a tiny circuit of ordinariness, a couple of days, and vitamins, you realize the wheel of synchronous energy is ever-flowing, looping around in circles and connecting everything to everything that lives. The so called real world reveals itself as a farce and then the Really-Guiding-Ever-Moving-Hands get to star in their own reality show. You can only deeply appreciate that, and you know, I really, really do.

The Archangel of laughter

Many years ago when I was spending more time learning about western meditation, I learned about the power of laughter. In many of the western practices energies are ascribed to angelic forces, and the Archangel of laughter is the highest of all angels. Whenever there is laughter, energy naturally spirals upward. I have used this technique myself to re direct myself out of stale situations with great effect. I believe laughter is a potent antidote to resistant grief, depression and disease. Love flows naturally from those who can laugh. It is shame to me to see the demise of the TV sitcom. It would have to be the most noble of all TV forms. Life in its own sweet way, so resembles a sitcom, its hard not to laugh all the day :D

The murky but clear depths

Sifting around here in the quagmire and simultaneously going through one of those impossible to focus on anything in meditation phases, I am engaged as best I can in simply watching inside. Its a fascinating process for a human being to undertake. Perhaps it is the essence of self-reflection, and at its worst perhaps just self-fascination :D It occurs to me that my recent forays deep into the sub-conscious realm have stirred up a deeper experience of Self. I note there's a certain obvious logic in that statement, yet at first its implications completely escaped me. The sub conscious is just as much a part of Self as any more surface part of the mind and yet sinking down into it now shows me the leviathan effects its has on our being. Someone recently came up with some new pics the Loch Ness monster. The images are like a lurking dark shadow just barely at surface. Its like that now. Gazing into the pool of consciousness I am now aware of forces too deep to rise up into actual thought. They slip like eels like under the darker surface, although they are not necessarily spooky. They are like, and how the hell do I put this, leviathan energies that belong in the pre-consciousness of thought; flowing out from the greater energy of Source. And so the sub-conscious or pre-conscious (as I now think it should be thought) holds subterranean energies not quite realised onto the surface. Its like the whole sub conscious is a churning factory of half formed manifestation, closer to source, thus more energetic in nature. This would explain some things that have come up for me recently. Its like little fragments of self coming home to roost in "Home". You welcome them in because you know they are so essentially "you" they can not be denied. And yet they are powerful energies that need to be assimilated in, because they have that contrasted aspect of dark and light.

Sacred Cows

One day you wake up and find you can question the hitherto unquestionable. And once you do that its like the domino effect, all the old cards fall on the table and you need to rearrange them. And for awhile there is some inevitable fumbling, sticky fingers etc, whilst you wipe the grubby marks off the only but recently clean glass. Its a good but dangerous way to begin a day. New energy sweeps away the old. Its time immemorial in ACTION! As teaching yogi's and meditator's we tend to mouth a lot of stuff at listening ears about the immutable quality we call...change... embrace it, love it, accept it, and cage it in words like "let go", "release" etc. We know it changes lives, we've seen the sick, the depressed, the grieving leave crutches in our classes and walk out the door as new and freer people. But what then do we do with our own personal sacred cows. The spiritual world is littered with them. Has anyone lately wondered just how relevant Patanjali is nowadays? Do we really need to step off this wheel of rebirth? How are all these ideas serving our purpose? And do in fact we need one? Now this is not to say Patanjali was wrong, or Buddha's thoughts are anachronistic. Far from that. Its that do we query enough? We have faith, the intangible quality that serves the intuitive voice within. Its not even about that. We learn that yogicaly we need to honour our traditions. And there is a body of knowledge ascribed to the sages of time that we just need to believe. But how much of this knowledge over the centuries has been tinged by the inevitable agony of conditions. A source milked and milked becomes stale. When do we need to rake through the bones? Not everything ascribed on crumbly parchment is necessarily holy and maybe its time to dig deep through the time honoured and put the relics in the basement where they belong. We live in a world that is shaping itself constantly. Never before, never before, never before has this world been so shape-able. I woke up this morning and saw it all afresh. I didn't care where the cards were on my table. Until we look at our sacred cows are we missing the vast opportunities around us NOW. This world is an amazing place!

Meditation within the subconscious mind

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the relationship between our inner and outer worlds. Maybe contemplating the idea of “as above, so below” in a new context or perhaps sinking a little more deeply into the idea, like dropping down another layer and seeing some more.

It’s an interesting idea that our outer world, our reality as we experience it is a reflection of what is inside us. To mull that over underlines the potential potency of our inner world. And maybe how it’s necessary for us to really have a good idea of our own inner landscape, how it looks, feels and exists. And in turn how that shapes our experience of life.

There is that mysterious part of our mind that maybe we can call the subconscious, or unconscious. Those two words are terms of psychology, and yet they do have a more general usage. I like to look at them generally to describe a deeper part of mind that exists in everyone. Eventually we get there if we pursue a meditative practice. Eventually we really do dip down below the talkative mind into the dreamlike, image-filled, colourful realm of the deeper mind. How that happens I do not understand except you practice and eventually you become.

It’s a whole new ball game in there. It can mean a renewed awareness of how things appear for us. I don’t mean just as a new perception but how that inner language is involved in bringing us things and situations that we actually live. Perhaps that’s because as we sink deeper inwards towards the seat of our being we are delving closer to Source, and that Source is creative and we are digging around in the stuff that makes worlds. Then we are seeing our own little factory of “star stuff” and how we are molding and forming that.

Reflection: Remembering Dad

Today, the 21st of March would have been my fathers 89 birthday. That means I lost Dad 3 years ago as he succumbed to old age and emphysema. Its been long enough now for me to remember without getting too emotional and I'm beginning to recall the fun times we had and the things he taught me without dissolving. Dad was an incredibly positive man, he believed in giving things your best shot no matter what. One of his lasting legacies to me has been a love of holidays. I am planning 3 separate ones presently, and he believed you couldn't take it with you. His somewhat forceful nature often rubbed people up the wrong way, but under that was a heart of gold for those he considered worthy. He adored Mum and I, my husband and his grandson, and thats the thing I remember most. Our joy was Dads world.

Projects: New Calligraphic artwork

I am starting a new calligraphy project based on the channeled writing if Esther Hicks and the Abraham. I think I'll do it in Italic which will give me ample time to practice my Italic. I am working on the emotional guidance system scale of 22 emotions looking at that like a chart. Anyway I hope it turns out well and I can hang it on my wall to help me check where I am at any time and how I can scale up the chart. Amazing thing with the A-Hicks stuff is it works so well. I have gone from better, to better, with it. But this chart is going to be a very long project to undertake, but it gives me lots of opportunity to learn and I'll have something I value and is useful at the end. Thats always a plus!!! Happy days:)

Reflection: Rain, Rain, Rain!

Sitting here as I am today on our first day of glorious rain for some months, and trying to reflect on all the stuff thats gone by in life. Its beautiful out there today. My roof is leaking, but rain is falling. So lovely just to hear it. A meditation in itself.

Meditation topic: Ego centredness

Sometimes I am astounded by ego centredness. In as much as you can be so blind to it. How bound up in an ego drama you can be, and how often there is a need to step out of that and find some perspective. Now isnt that real non-attachment? To find perspective in life and focus on its fullness rather than a sense of lack? Isn't it always the ego that cries out there isnt enough? Whereas in reality aren't we often drowning in too much? How can our minds crammed so full still seek out even more facts and stimulus in order to find the peace that comes from letting go of thoughts? Yet we do. Patanjali wrote that one of the foundations of an enlightened mind is contentment. Its a not a contentment that grows from a sense of something achieved, but from something that always is. Its not from climbing to the top of the mountain, because the ego always glimpses a taller peak. Its about being on the mountain top wherever you are and never minding if its the tallest. Then the view in every direction is more than enough. Om.

Meditation topic: Lifting energy

Sometimes you have to wait and wait to move into a different space. It doesnt seem to matter what meditation technique you try, somethings won't shift at all. You feel like you've been tacking back and forth in the pea-souper of your mind for weeks. Then, suddenly you close your eyes and its like lifting up the corner of a dense curtain. Suddenly there is quiet where there was din, sweetness where there was darkness. You listen to the sound of your breath and it becomes everything pure and soothing. You drop into a stillness in which its OK to be a human being living on a planet. Its like a droplet of healing and its so powerful, hours later as you write you can still feel that spreading like an elixir. What makes the karma you are burning up suddenly give up the ghost? It dissolves and you can glimpse the other beautiful shore. Life goes on. Om.