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November Newsletter: "Boomers the cat Teaches"
Stillness
“Let me let the stillness be.
Let me let the "me" be "Me".
In face of You sometimes I flee,
rushing, doing, busily.
Let me let the stillness be.
Let me slow and breathe and see.
Let me feel my hand touch Me.
Let my heart rise and break free.
Just who is it that must allow?
Who bars the way, the path, the how?
Who uses fear to bend and bow?
Is it me who won't, who blocks the Now?
Let me let the stillness be
I choose then Now to trust, to see,
accept the fear, embrace that me...
I love and let You. I am free.
And when I let You work in Me
I finally let the stillness be
And in that Being then I see
In the stillness, You are Me.”
- K. Hudson
The week before Thanksgiving, I gave my cat, Boomers, away. He now lives across the street with my darling neighbours, five other cats and a 99lb dog. He’s a cool little guy, absolutely fearless which is how I got him in the first place: I was walking Petey and Sophie one Spring morning and he bounded right up to Sophie and started jumping on her head. To her chagrin, he did this all the way home. I wasn’t planning on keeping him, but one way or another he always ended up back with me and that’s how I named him Boomers (from boomerang) for the cat that keeps coming back.
Having been used to the freedom and excitement of life outdoors, Boomers devoted a lot of time, effort and impressively creative cog-churning planning on escape. One time, I came home to find him gone. The only possible way out was through the open window in the upstairs bathroom. At the time it was impossible for me to believe that he threw himself out because it’s a good twenty foot drop and there was no broken body in my driveway. But the next day I opened the window and the little rascal came running in, jumped on the back of the toilet and climbed on the sill. It was true. He had thrown himself out a two-story window for a taste of freedom. Most times he got out in a more conventional way by dashing out the side door as someone was coming in or too slow going out. His destination of choice: my neighbour’s yard across the street, his new home.
 Boomers, The Cat that Keeps Coming Back
A week after settling in across the street, my neighbour texts me saying Boomers escaped and she found him in my yard! And I thought to myself, “Wow, even cats think the grass is greener on the other side.” When he was here, he was trying to get there, and now that he’s there, he’s trying to get here. He wants to be somewhere he isn’t. So if a cat with nothing to do but eat, sleep, pee, poo and play is not in the moment, what hope do we have?! Life is busy. How can anything get done if we are living in the moment? We need to plan and prepare to make stuff happen. When we are planning and preparing aren't we outside of the moment?!
Yes, but interestingly, in the moment you are planning and preparing, you are fulfilling the immediate purpose of preparing and planning. It also depends on how you are feeling when you are preparing and planning. Are you doing it out of fear, or are you doing it out of love, creativity and passion?
Are you trying to make something happen, or has an opportunity arisen and you are taking a lead? In my own experience, I have noticed that when I try too hard to make stuff happen, it feels hard and I ultimately get frustrated and discouraged. We can still be mindful of the moment and live abundant lives. Certainly, it takes disciplined practice but as the poem at the beginning of this newsletter says, the answer to the Self is in Stillness.
As is becoming my habit (see SeptOber's newsletter), may I remind you that it is useful to monitor your thoughts, or be the observer of your thoughts. When you observe your thoughts, you create distance between the thinker of the thought and the awareness that observes the thought. You will begin to notice that the entire purpose of Ego-generated thought is to keep you safe and loved. Feeling safe and loved are the basis on which our self-esteems lays. The question is, are you brave enough to know yourself? Are you brave enough to ask yourself, "Why do I make the choices I make?"
Neale Donald Walsch
Neale Donald Walsch writer/channeler of the Conversations with God series gives a simple self exploration exercise:
Create two columns. In the left hand column write down the thing you are doing, and in the right hand column, answer the question why:
WHAT AM I DOING? |
WHY AM I DOING IT? |
Writing a Newsletter
Compulsively checking emails |
To connect with people, to build a community, to learn, to teach, to love, to be loved
Procrastinating. Scared I don't have anything worthwhile to say. |
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To move past our tendency to self-criticize and judge, it is vital to avoid applying the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ –either to the act itself, or to the reasons why you are doing it. Neale Donald Walsch directs us to ask, “Is it functional to the intended outcome?” Compulsively checking my emails is apparently not functional to my intended outcome (getting my newsletter written and read by you!)
To connect with Stillness and the Self, let me reiterate an exercise from August's newsletter -it is an abbreviated version of Margot Anand's Meeting Your Inner Lover Meditation. You can enjoy the full experience at our Divine Goddess Experience:
Take a moment now to take a few nice deep breaths, close your eyes and drop your awareness down into your heart center. You can put your hand over your heart, and let your eyes drop down if you want to. Imagine, or remember a time when you felt truly loved and truly safe. Let the feeling expand to fill your entire body and know that you have the ability to provide that level of love and security for yourself.
This is a wonderful tool to use on a daily basis. It has the advantages of:
- connecting you with your Divine Self
- connecting you with Source or God
- bringing you into the moment
- raising the emotional frequency of those around you –spouses, partners, coworkers, employees, friends, people in line in the supermarket, and of course your pets!
Boomers, while no longer my pet, is a good teacher. These are the lessons I learned that I would like to share with you:
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Accept exactly where you are and who you are in any given moment.
If you want to be somewhere you are not (in a big house on the hill, Hawaii, or back in college), or if you want to be different to who you are (taller, thinner, bigger, healthier), you are outside of your present moment and not in reality. I noticed this as I started thinking about where I would live once I gave up my house. I started apartment hunting. On the first day of looking at apartments, I was so distracted thinking about my future that I absentmindedly drove my car over a Belgium block divider outside of Petco in Blue Star Plaza. The result? AAA towing (not even my membership), and $800 worth of repairs. The benefit of accepting your current circumstance means that when things like this happen, it need not be so stressful. |
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Appreciate LIFE.
Cats have nine lives but we have more. We fall many times. Sometimes the fall is a stumble; sometimes it feels like a 100-foot drop. However far the perceived fall, when you are at the bottom, there is nothing to do but take a breath and rejoice that you survived. In the space of grace and gratitude for LIFE, you can now dust yourself off, look around and appreciate that all you have is all you need. Mastering this level of gratitude provides a confidence of knowing that good things are coming your way. Expect good things and good things will come -maybe not immediately and not in the way you expected; that's where faith comes in, but it will manifest. Every day we are blessed with the chance to be reborn. We can choose to leave the past in the past where it belongs, and the future to our Highest Good because all we have is now.
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One more thought before I go:
"In stillness find the Self!"
Namaste!
Andrea
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