Days after writing the Champions post, where I said “never lose your muchness”, I awoke to a day when I declared softly: I have lost my muchness.  I forgot my own rule of thumb, never say never.  Never and its cousin, always, rules out another little thing called human-ness.

There I was, feeling alone in the suchness of losing my muchness.  As Emmanuel, once said: “if darkness were my natural home, I would be comfortable there.”  I wasn’t comfortable there and because I am a friend to me, I knew I had to take myself by the hand and find my way back to my light, my muchness.

Some of you may remember Abraham’s reference to having our pencil in the fan.  These days they call it “out of the vortex”.  I still like the pencil in the fan concept.  It’s such a perfect analogy of how I can impede my muchness.  So I developed a plan to turn back toward my muchness.  I call it my Emergency Pencil-in-the-Fan kit:

1.   move about mindfully
2.   whatever negative inner talk is going on, stop and ask what would a friend say to you right now, listen to what that friend has to say
3.   walk with your gaze outward and upward
4.   take 4 deep conscious breaths, up from the toes and exhale back down into the toes, feel yourself grounded to the earth
5.   tell yourself nothing is more important than being in your own corner, a solid friend to you
6.   eat something that had it’s roots in the earth, eat it slowly and mindfully
7.   surround yourself with the structure and support of doing what’s before you to do and doing it mindfully
8.   close your eyes, take one more deep breath, and as you exhale, feel your shoulders drop, drop into the body sense of “I am a friend to me”
9.   remember that whatever you are believing is based on untrue reasoning.  You may not know that now but you will as soon as your pencil is out of the fan.
10. move about mindfully

I made nos. 1 and 10 the same because if I did nothing else on that list, that alone would suffice.  It will ground you in the present moment.  This is what Eckhart Tolle says about the present moment:

“Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness, you are able to decide what kind of relationship you want with the present moment. Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend… Life becomes friendly toward you… One decision changes your entire reality. But that one decision you have to make again and again and again – until it becomes natural to live in such a way.”

A word about mindfulness movement, several words actually!  It means dropping into the body, aware of every movement you make.  While walking feel each part of your foot strike the surface, note texture of the surface you are walking on, the air moving across your body.  Reach to open a cabinet, note the arm extending outwards, fingers touch surface, texture and temperature of surface.  Hand encircles a cup or a plate, feel each tiny movement.  Note the sounds, the textures, the temperature, smells, tastes, movement of the body.  Practice it before you find your pencil in the fan and you will easily be able to fall back into it when you are feeling wonky.  For more information on mindfulness, I recommend reading The Long Road Turns to Joy by Thich Nhat Hanh.

This is what Thich Nhat Hanh says about the importance of mindfulness:

“… consciousness is said to be a field, a plot of land in which every kind of seed has been planted, seeds of suffering, happiness, joy, sorrow, fear, anger, and hope.  The quality of our life depends on which of these seeds we water.  The practice of mindfulness is to recognize each seed as it sprouts, and to water the most wholesome seeds whenever possible.”

Thich Nhat Hanh also recommends repeating a Zen Buddhist poem while walking mindfully:

“I have arrived.
I am home
in the here,
in the now.
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate
I dwell.”

May we all arrive home, solid and free.

There comes a turning point when you look
around and say, “I really might be all right.”

At that moment
the doors open
and life moves in.

Emmanuel’s Book II: The Choice for Love
Compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton

Yet, as the longing and the pain increased,
I began to turn,
just as you have done,
to seek the Light,
knowing that if I felt pain because of lack of Light
then there must be Light.
If darkness were my natural home
I would be comfortable there.

So I turned,
as you have done,
and climbed mountains and forded streams
and prayed in mosques and temples and churches
and followed teachers and stumbled and walked again
until I came to the time of evolution
when I could say truly and completely,
“I am one with God.”

Emmanuel’s Book I-A Manual for living comfortably in the cosmos

~Emmanuel excerpted from Book III-What is An Angel Doing Here?~

Emmanuel