Inner Vacation

In the lazy, hazy days of summer, I hope you have a sweet restorative inner vacation - full of fun and full of meaning.

I just looked up the definition(s) of vacation and found some real inspiration for self-awareness and some yummy food for thought.

Vacation is

1. an extended period of recreation.
2. a fixed holiday between terms as in school or law courts
3. the action of leaving something once occupied.

In thinking about these definitions I came up with some thoughts on the meaning, purpose and significance of vacation.

As children we learn that vacation means play and fun. Many of us continue with that picture of vacation but a vacation can be so much more. Using the three definitions above (in reverse order), I share some deeper perspectives on what a vacation can mean to us as we live our lives.

Vacating an Occupation

A vacation occurs when you leave a state or occupation of existence, activity, familiarity, identity, sameness, competency, ordinariness, and experience something different or new. A sacred vacation provides a new way of knowing yourself, your world and your future. Some part or all that has occupied your inner or outer life is left behind either temporarily or permanently. Do you need to leave something behind? Do you vacate and take a break from the “givens” of your life? Do you need permission to let go?

Between Terms

A vacation is a fixed time between terms. Do you have a fixed time or times of between-ness? This is a regular and committed time of reflection and rest or a time of adventure and inspiration? Do you take these kinds of break once a year? once a season? once a month? once a week? once a day? Is the duration of the vacation also fixed - 5 minutes? 5 days? 5 weeks?

This kind of vacation consciousness also asks us to be aware of the terms of our lives. When does a natural “between” occur in your year? or your month? or your day? How do you design an inner or outer vacation between the terms of your life that restores you and returns you to your commitments with new energy or new perspectives?

Re-creation

A vacation is an extended period of recreation. Of re-creation! Do you ever take time to re-create yourself, your world or your future? It is the school year of our childhood that teaches us, imprints us with the notion of summer vacation. We leave our school work for play. School gives us an education when we are young. As adults we leave work for vacation but instead of play, vacation might be education - educare is the bringing out of the deeper self - of what lives within. Education can be the re-creation of ourselves.

Who We Are in the World

In the work of the Inner Year, late summer is a time of educating or awakening ourselves to a deeper sense of who we are in the world. Beginning on July 27, I will be offering an intensive teleseminar program of four 90 minute sessions devoted to

The Mysteries and Questions of Personal Contribution.

What do you contribute to the world?
What do you long to contribute to the world?
What is your special talent?
How do you find personal fulfillment through your work?
How do you break free from a life of dissatisfaction?
Can you vacate what has occupied your life, but not occupied your spirit?
How can you re-create your life?

If your heart does not sing in the world or if you would like your heart to sing with more strength, register for this teleseminar. You may or may not find answers during the four weeks, but you will find new and meaningful questions. Take a vacation with eleven other people and educate your soul’s intentions around your unique contribution.

Working with the insights from this teleseminar, Questions of Contribution, you will

• develop ways to make the right choices and changes for your career.
• find your true reasons for volunteering and for learning new skills.
• give yourself permission to end an activity or begin an activity.
• learn how to liberate yourself to the demands and limitations that inhibit your self-expression.

Registration is limited to 12 participants. Participants receive a private 20 minute consultation with me to discuss specific issues about their life of contribution. Sessions are recorded and materials are sent out via email.

Register here!



Please add any comments or questions.

Anxiety and the Twelve Senses

We live in the age of anxiety and our challenge is the transformation of personal anxiety into personal confidence.

Anxiety arises out of a feeling of a gap. A gap is a break in continuity that asks for restoration. It is a hole or interval between you and what you desire that must be bridged. It is a lack of harmony or fit that requires alteration and adjustment.

Gaps occur in our relationship to our bodies, in our relationship to the world, and in our relationship to others. All these relationships are known through our perceptions. If our perceptions are distorted or our organs of perceptions are damaged restoration, bridging, alteration and adjustment appear difficult or impossible. Life becomes threatening. Anxiety increases.

Even confidence in our relationship to God or Spirit asks us to be "grounded" in our earthly perceptions first. Without this healthy and essential earthly life, our spiritual lives live over a gap in human experience.

Consequenttly, a very important way of managing, resolving or eliminating all forms of anxiety is to attend to our perceptions and our organs of perception.

From the perspective of inner development, we can look at twelve senses, twelve organs of perception:

4 senses give us our perception of our embodied self, the world within our skin:
the sense of touch or boundary,
the sense of well-being including our sense of hunger, thirst, exhaustion and pain,
the sense of self-movement and contraction and expansion, and
the sense of balance and uprightness.

4 senses give us our perception of the world beyond our skin:
smell,
taste,
vision and
warmth

and
4 senses give us our perception of what lives within the souls of others:
hearing,
the sense of word and gesture,
the sense of thought, idea and ideal, and
the sense of divine individuality in the other.

All twelve senses weave together to shape our soul and the sense of “I am.” Each one is a treasure of experience and information. But each sense is also fragile.

If any of these twelve senses is skewed with too much sensitivity or to little sensitivity, if any as been traumatized, if any has been inflated, depleted, overwhelmed or ignored, we experience distorted and unsafe perceptions of our meaning, our purpose and our significance. We do not find our perceptions harmonious. We become anxious.

THE TWELVE SENSES
an Inner Year program

Over four 60-minute teleseminars, I will offer a creative understanding of the twelve senses. This is not a boring course. It is filled with liberating “aha’s” and healing insights.

I love the senses - they make sense of every thing. When we have a conscious relationship - a real sense of our senses, we can gracefully master life. Anxiety becomes a “wake-up” feeling, instead of a threat. We do not get stuck in anxious feelings but find ourselves moving through a more dynamic process of growing confidence in all our relationships.

Through the Twelve Senses, we learn how to sustain and deepen the feelings:

I am calmly contained within myself.
I meet my needs for nourishment and restoration.
I move gracefully and purposefully in the right direction.
I am elegantly balanced in all matters.

I breathe in life.
I taste the richness of life.
I see life with clarity and focus
I feel the warmth of life

I hear the voices of other souls.
I recognize the words and gestures of other souls.
I discern the thoughts of other souls.
I love the divine essence within other souls.

These are statements free of anxiety. They are declarations of growing confidence. Knowledge of the twelve senses and understanding of the challenges living in our twelve senses give us ways to move from anxiety to confidence.

The Twelve Senses teleseminar will introduce you to each of the twelve senses and help you grasp the myriad ways the senses interact with each other.

In the fullness of summer, we will experience the fullness of our senses.

Join me for this sensuous and sensible study.

The Twelve Senses
an Inner Year program

*four 60 minute sessions
*sessions will be recorded and available to download for 30 days
*emailed handouts and notes

Sundays at 7:30PM Eastern, 4:30PM Pacific -
July 12,19,26, August 2

$47

Register here.

If you have any questions, email or call me.