Friends in high places

I clearly remember how my mind was blown when I first picked up Doreen Virtue’s Archangels & Ascended Masters in the bookstore. As I write, it’s here next to me on the sofa, just where it usually is.

I was raised Protestant, so unlike my Catholic friends, the idea of asking a saint or Mother Mary for help was completely foreign to me. At the time I picked up the book, I still thought of, say, asking St Francis’s assistance with a pet as pure superstition to be pitied–one of the relatively few childhood-taught beliefs I still held.

So when I picked up this book containing a mixture of angels, Biblical figures, saints, deities from various cultures, and so on, with information about the specialties of each, a channeled message from many of them, and the author’s statement that she had worked with and had a purely positive experience with each entity, it was absolutely mind-blowing for me. If this were true … I could practically feel the final walls of my childhood mental model of how everything worked falling, like the walls of Jericho. (There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a model … you just have to be ready to let it go when a better model arises.)

Today, all these years later, not a day goes by that I don’t ask an angel or ascended master for help. Sometimes I’m asking for help with something lovely and elevated, but more often, I’m asking for help with something like keeping my cool in a potentially difficult situation, or for cooperation when dealing with some corporation or other. I did this recently before calling my corporate mortgage holder because my annual escrow statement made no sense, and I was simply amazed. The person I spoke with was truly knowledgeable, flexible, and really helped me get exactly what I wanted, as well as teaching me new and helpful things I didn’t know about my online banking.

Angels and ascended masters, according to several sources I’ve read, all operate according to the Law of Non-interference. This means that unless our lives are in danger of being cut short in an unplanned manner, they allow us to go about our business unless asked for help–at which point, I’ve found, they can really make an amazing difference.

These are some of my very favorite angels and ascended masters–the ones I return to again and again.

• Hardly a work day goes by that I don’t ask for Solomon’s assistance. I find that when I do, I’m wiser, calmer, more measured, and make very few mistakes. My judgment is enhanced.
• I always invoke Archangel Haniel prior to social situations, or an interview or meeting where I need to make a good impression. I always feel more at ease and have more fun.
• According to Doreen Virtue, Archangel Raguel oversees all of the other angels, ensuring their harmonious and orderly cooperation. I’ve experienced some truly stunning turnarounds with uncooperative people after invoking this archangel. Try it and see (unless you don’t know any uncooperative people, in which case move along!).
• I always invoke Archangel Gabriel prior to writing or creating art. If I’m trying to decide among ideas, or looking for inspiration, I ask for her help with that too. I find that when I do, my writing flows effortlessly, and I’m able to complete my projects with an absolute minimum of angst and friction. No doubt some of this is due to an awful lot of practice, but a great deal of the credit goes to this archangel. I can easily prove this to myself by starting a project without asking for her help–but I don’t feel like proving it very often.
• Archangels Raziel and Uriel help with enhanced psychic insight and communication with guides. If I have a question I want an answer to, I generally invoke one of these archangels before meditating on what the answer might be.

Now maybe this is a new concept for you, and if so, please don’t take my word for it. I’m a big believer in “whatever works” (and not a believer at all in things that don’t). I would suggest that if you’re interested, choose whichever angel or master most appeals to you. Next time you find yourself in a situation where you could use their sort of help, just ask for it. I like to invoke an entity as I meditate for 15 minutes or so … for me, that seems to make the invocation more powerful.

I hope you’ll try it, and I’d love to hear about your experience.

This post is illustrated with my SoulCollage card Angel + Guide. This card is the second one I made, hurriedly and with limited materials at a workshop–but it is not incomplete 🙂

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How to meditate

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It’s a way of entering into the quiet that’s already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day. –Deepak Chopra

When you have pain in your body, when all sorts of thoughts are going through your mind, you train again and again in acknowledging them openheartedly and open-mindedly, but not making them such a big deal. –Pema Chodron, in How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind

Before I started meditating, some years ago now, I resisted doing so for a long time. The instructions all seemed inane–“Just focus on your breath. It couldn’t be simpler.”

When meditation is difficult for me now, my favorite method is to focus intently on the sounds around me. The clock’s pendulum, back and forth. The barking dog outside. A dog breathing at my feet. Leaves being raked. Whatever’s happening–there’s always something.

A common misperception is that you need quiet in order to meditate. People often tell me that they have to wait for more perfect circumstances to start meditating. The apartments where they live are too noisy, or their dog has dementia and wants to go outside every five minutes.

The bad news, and the good news, is that life never gets perfect. You should also know that someone, somewhere, is always using a leafblower. You must simply begin.

Meditation is a way to create peace and quiet in a noisy and imperfect world, not to mention a noisy and imperfect mind. When I describe to people what meditation is, sometimes they’ll tell me there is never a break in their stream of thoughts.

If you meditate, though, there will be.

I remember being dismayed when I started meditating that it seemed I wasn’t very good at it. There’s still the occasional day when that seems true. If you find that you’re not either, remember that the beauty of meditation is that you don’t have to be good at it to reap its benefits. And, you will get better.

Key to the whole process, I believe, is dropping judgment about having thoughts. There seems to be a belief that meditation involves turning off your thoughts. It does not.

It involves becoming aware of your thoughts, and gently releasing them. As this process continues over time, more space opens up between your thoughts.

When I become aware during meditation that I’m thinking, I let the thought go, like cutting the string to a helium balloon, or releasing a bubble to the surface of water. There is less than no point in thinking, “Oh damn, thinking again,” because that is creating more of what you don’t want. So release any judgment along with the thought.

Thinking is what everyone is doing, even during meditation. However, those who meditate are having fewer useless thoughts, even when they’re not meditating. The habit of creating mind space (as well as of dropping judgment) carries over into real life. Thank goodness.

Besides creating calm, peace, and tranquility, a major point of meditation is to create space for guidance and wisdom to come to you. If the noise of your busy life is preventing you from hearing your inner wisdom, meditation clears space to allow it to come through loud and clear.

I typically meditate 15-20 minutes (I set a timer), both morning and evening. If work is really pushing my buttons, sometimes I’ll take 10-20 minutes to meditate at lunch as well. I keep Doreen Virtue’s Archangels and Ascended Masters on my coffee table, and often ask for the help of an angel or ascended master as I meditate. I also keep a journal nearby, so that when guidance comes to me I can write it down. It’s encouraging to flip back through my journal and read so many positive and encouraging words.

I find that meditation really centers me in the morning, preparing me for my day, and calms me at night, preparing me to sleep.

I’ve just recently started a 40-day x 40-minute meditation challenge. I’m still meditating 2-3 times a day, but extending one of my meditation sessions to 40 minutes. So far I’m finding the 40 minutes quite long, but I also have a sense that the extra time is benefiting me in ways I don’t fully understand.

If you aren’t yet meditating, I encourage you to simply begin! Even 5 minutes a day will benefit you. And if you’d like to meditate longer, please feel free to join the challenge!

How not to melt down

Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment requires me to do, and so I do it willingly. –Eckhart Tolle

Tonight’s the full moon; yesterday at work a new policy that disadvantages all of us who work on a particular product was announced. General unhappiness was rampant; one person in particular was really angry.

This morning first thing she was presenting at a fairly major meeting, and both she and the meeting pretty much melted down. I was only on the phone, where it was bad enough–I was pleased not to be an eyewitness to the train wreck.

Yesterday I was able to receive the bad news with equanimity, and feel fully at peace, which really made me happy.

Earlier this week I worked an intense 12-hour day tracking down production issues. When I finished, I told my manager she could call me the next morning if she needed me.

About twenty minutes after I got up, just as I was about to pop my farm egg into the oven, the phone rang.

What I meant was that she should call me if she needed information she didn’t have to answer questions from the VP. What she wanted me to do was to start working again at that moment and produce results to be presented at the management meeting in an hour. I produced results in half an hour as the dogs circled, wanting their breakfast, and then got back to my morning routine.

The night before, my manager had strongly encouraged me to leave the office and go home, and I’d said that as long as I was working late, I might as well finish what I was doing–and mentioned that I’d thought of leaving early the next day, and she agreed. As I left my unbaked egg on the kitchen counter and headed into my home office, I was so glad I had. I know very well that I don’t handle a lot of overtime well. I can crank up the intensity and get extra results out of a fairly normal workday, but working continuous extended hours is not a recipe for success.

I need time to recharge my batteries, to wind down so I can sleep, to breathe.

So the day of the wakeup call, I did all that immediately needed to be done, attended scheduled meetings, and then took the rest of the afternoon off. I took a lovely walk by the river, and then ate at a barbeque restaurant and had a cocktail. I knew a local chef had opened this place, but didn’t know quite where it was. I wandered into a chain-linked patio with a Coffee Bar sign, and found I was actually in the restaurant I’d heard about.

It was a really peaceful, laid-back afternoon, and I think the physical exercise out of doors was significantly helpful.

As well, I have had a regular meditation practice for some years now, 15-20 minutes morning and night, pretty much without fail.

Some years ago I came across Doreen Virtue’s Archangels & Ascended Masters while browsing in the bookstore. I keep it on my coffee table and frequently flip through it before I meditate, asking one of the angels or masters for assistance with a particular concern, insight, healing, or whatever’s top of mind. I usually focus outward in the morning, inward at night.

I’ve also been using the prayer before work I posted awhile back on weekday mornings, especially when I have to join an early conference call before I’ve had a chance to meditate and center myself for the day.

I don’t feel a great deal of attachment to this workplace, which helps. I have absolutely no intention of retiring there, as a number of my coworkers plan on doing. It is not my home, and except for a few good friends, they are not my people. (Typically my people are not just everywhere in the corporate world in general.)

When the new policy was announced yesterday, someone asked if it was forever.

“I can tell you this,” I said. “Nothing is forever.”

It’s hard to contemplate that the good things in our lives won’t be forever, even if we ourselves are the ones to leave first. But for the not-so-good things, it’s a comforting thought.

No, this will not be forever.