How to Read or Post Comments

Hello readers,
You're watching my learning curve in action, as I figure out all the tricks and features of blogging.

Some things I've discovered:
1. to read comments, click on the time stamp at the bottom of each entry. This takes you to a page for that entry only, and comments are displayed at the bottom of that page.

2. to post comments, click on the comments link at the bottom of each entry, or use the comments link at the bottom of a comment. Either way, this takes you to a page where you can easily type in your comments.

3. I'm experimenting with how many days of entries to display on the home page. Be sure to check the right sidebar for archives and titles if you think you've missed some.

Thanks for your interest, and your contributions to this internet adventure.

Inspiration

It's not that I was intending to send e-cards this morning. I was just cleaning out the urls stored in my browser favorites, while simultaneously wondering what I'd blog about today……..

……when I came across this site called StoryPeople, (click on the name to go there)and thought, what a cool place to find some inspiration.

Then I realized: Inspiration is all around us, all the time. Most of us tend to ignore it, but it's everywhere. The word inspire literally means to breathe in the spirit. We have to take it in, and this means we have to be open, receptive, waiting, allowing, unhurried and undistracted by our mental chatter, emotional tapes, and unconscious behavioral habits.

Becoming inspired isn't difficult; it's magic. It's allowing the energetic spirit of something to change your consciousness. It's shifting your focus, gifting yourself with a different perspective, stregthening your lifeforce.

Close your eyes, and take a deep breath right now. Allow your eyes to open with a soft gaze. Breathe in the spirit of the view out your window, or the cyclmen in your living room, or the sound of crows nearby. What's waiting to inspire you today? What's wanting to be taken in by you, to become a part of your spirit?

Dr Deah's Musings
Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities
a personal growth education venture
Deah Curry PhD, publisher
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Gratitude

First, my thanks to those who have accepted the invitation to join this blog. I hope to see some lively contributions and discussions among us here.

And second, I'd like to suggest that it is psychospiritually essential to be in an emotional, mental, physical, and energetic state of gratitude. Such a state creates a multi-layered dynamic within and around us that has healing power, that wards off stress, and that strengthens bonds of relationship (not just with people, but with the entire natural and built environments and their components).

Can you locate the sensation of gratitude inside yourself right now? What does that feel like for you? What are the qualities of gratitude that you experience in your bodymindspirit? Most of us probably leap to feeling grateful for other people we interact with and how they treat us with respect, compassion, caring, and love.

Now see if you can feel gratitude for the beauty of the view outside your window or of a lovely landscape held in your memory.

Accessing feelings of gratitude even in the midst of frustration, annoyance and stress is a stretch of our self-compassion muscles, but an exercise that has good benefit for body and soul. In commuter traffic, can you be grateful for the time to listen to NPR or a book on tape? During a sleepless night, can you be grateful for a soft bed and a warm dwelling?

And so I leave you to ponder how increasing our conscious awareness of being in gratitude for everything we experience is not just good for our health, it's a spiritual practice that sustains balance and wholeness, and contributes to a life well and lovingly lived.

Dr Deah's Musings
Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities
a personal growth education venture
Deah Curry PhD, publisher
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Spiritual Emergency

In the news this morning is a report of the Vatican training a new crop of priests to perform exorcisms. The report makes the point that it is essential to distinguish between demonic possession and psychological problems. That, of course, got my attention.

I'm not sure I believe in demons as entities external to oneself that can possess the human mindbodyspirit. And the mind is a powerful creator of our experience. What we believe is real or true, we can experience. Several hundred years of research into hypnosis proves this. If we believe in demons, we are likely to interpret distressing or anomalous experiences as possession, thus relieving ourselves of personal responsibility for getting appropriate psychospiritual help.

The concept of spiritual emergency fits into my personal and professional belief system. Those of you who have read the Grofs book Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis will be familiar with the psychospiritual explanations for various experiences that the Vatican is likely to consider demon possession.

But isn't a larger issue at play here (isn't there always a larger issue to consider)? What is it in the human soul that is so uncomfortable with difference, ambiguity and uncertainty that it needs to demonize what is unfamiliar to or divergent from the commonplace? And haven't we --- in our sociopathic efforts to narrow ideas such as the good and the sacred into extremely small, limited, and fuzzy reflections of the Great Mysterious whole of the universe --- already been living in a slow-boil spiritual emergency for centuries?

Question to ponder today: How are you limiting your reflections of the sacred? How can you expand your view of what is spiritual? What do you need to transform spiritual emergency into spiritual emergence?

Dr Deah's Musings
Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities
a personal growth education venture
Deah Curry PhD, publisher
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Inner Journeys

Remember when we were little and had an imaginary friend? Can you recall the adventures you had with this being? Or, have you ever been able to project yourself into the fantasy worlds of movies or reading fiction and feel like you were one of the characters taking part in the action?

If you have, you've got experience with taking inner journeys. And that's exciting because learning to journey inward is a useful psychological tool for exploring the subconscious mind.

Journeying into oneself can be an energetic and spiritual adventure as well. Back in the 80s Dr Bernie Seigel burst onto the pop science scene with his revelations regarding the healing power of guided imagery in working with cancer patients. Then Stephanie and Carl Simonton, Jeanne Achterberg, and many others furthered the research on the mind-body connection, proving that what we can imagine can be what we experience at a cellular level.

It is well established that inner journeys are a useful training skill for excellence in sports and business as well as personal healing. But my question now is, if journeying inward connects outer experience with cellular changes, can journeying inward also connect us with the spiritual forces that are commonly thought of as being outside and beyond ourselves?

Pardon me now, while I take an innerjourney to explore that question. and stayed tuned for further reports from the World Within.

Dr Deah's Musings

Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities

a personal growth education venture

Deah Curry PhD, publisher

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Liminal Realities

Do you know this word, liminal? It means in between or at the threshhold. It implies a time and space of uncertainty, when the future can't be seen or known, when the past is completed and we have moved on from that to be in infinite possibility.

It's counter-intuitive to want to hang out in the liminal. As goal-driven, pro-active, assertive Westerners we want to charge full speed ahead to get beyond ambiguity, beyond the unexpected, beyond the unknown. We put on blinders in order to keep a focus on the target in the distance, we take a deep breath and hold it, jump in and run as fast as possible through this territory.

And that's a mistake.

There is much to be learned in the liminal. There are realities inherent in uncertainty that are precious and valuable teachings. The only way to experience them is to hang out in that space/time of liminal realities more often, and for longer periods of time, and allow its gifts and teaching and message to soak into our consciousness.

Here's a practice tip: Stop. Whatever you're doing, in the minutia of the day, or in the grand scheme of life, set aside some time to just stop. Notice how you feel when you aren't doing anything "purposeful." Don't substitute any kind of activity for whatever it is you were doing when you stop. The first step in enjoying liminal realities is to just notice where you are and how you feel and what goes through your monkeymind without you chasing after it.

Dr Deah's Musings

Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities

a personal growth education venture

Deah Curry PhD, publisher

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Autumn Mysteries

It's a gray and darkish day here in the Seattle environs, the sort we are known for, the sort I look forward to every year. Splotches of lemon, pumpkin and cinnamon color the trees to brighten our mood as we draw ever closer into the dark afternoons and long nights. A feeling of mystery and magic permeates the crisp, woodsmoke smelling air......can you feel it too?

These are the dying weeks, the cycle of letting go, surrendering to the void, making room for a period of rest in which new growth germenates underground, unseen. It's an energetic dynamic at odd contradiction to the ritual beginnings that we have artificially designed by making autumn the start of a new year of school. Yet, I'm reminded that some cultures begin at the end, with an honoring of things passing away as the first step in things being born / re-born. We must create the void so that new life can enter.

Admittedly, this isn't the usual way of thinking in American society, or much of the Western so-called civilized world. But it is more common in indigenous societies, people who live closer to nature and the land it her cycles, whose wisdom comes to great extent from observing the natural laws played out in the life of trees and the changes of the motherearth as she persistantly renews through the eons.

Spring cleaning was a phrase I grew up with in the Midwest, but here, now, I'm called into autumn divestment, giveaways as my native ancestors would know it. Having no choice but to enter into the autumn mysteries, knowing not what challenges and opportunities await me in the void, unable to see clearly what is passing away unnoticed in front of my eyes, I must create the void into which new wonders can take root in my life. What a blessed period of being in the life mystery.

Dr Deah's Musings

Copyright 2005-2006 by Liminal Realities

a personal growth education venture

Deah Curry PhD, publisher

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED