Practice

Saturday 8March08 12:26pm

Some of the pieces I have added to my daily practice include which began on my writing retreat:

Rumi Wakeup - I got this from Wayne Dyer's book Inspiration, Your Ultimate Calling (one of my favorite books). He discusses that time in the early morning when you wake up (between 3am and 4am) and you don't have to get up. The thing is to actually get up. It's based on a Rumi poem that says something along the lines of, "The morning breeze has something to tell you, don't go back to sleep." I'm not always religious about it because I love sleeping but eventually I will be. I love the 4am hour for its peacefulness. I do stream of consciousness writing and record my dreams from the night before.

I do the Adi Mantra from Kundalini Yoga - Ong Na Mo Guru Dev Namo. Which means I bow to the Creator, to the Divine teacher within. From that I move into my stretches and a Kundalini Yoga set and another chant. I'm slowly starting to add 15 minutes of silence, that I want to do twice a day before I write. It's kind of hard to sit silent for 15 minutes straight but I'll get it. As Quincy Jones would say, "It's ragged but I'll get it."

I've been doing a couple of writing exercises to get the words flowing. One is from 30 Ways to Help You Write by Fran Weber Shaw, which I used to do years and years ago. You write "Now I'm Sitting Here and..." at the top of the page, then relax all the muscles in your body and listen to the sounds. Then you write nonstop for two or three pages and stop. That was how I used to do all of my writing, so needless to say, I'm getting back to beginner's mind as Natalie Goldberg so aptly calls it.

And another exercise that I got from a writing newsletter where you write down three random words like 'pimps, women, black music' and with those words write a scene for my novel. You basically come up with three words for 15 scenes of your novel and write each scene starting the first sentence with one of those words and including the other two words in the first paragraph. I guess it gets your mind away from thinking about how to start. It's crazy but it works.

I also write a series of affirmations in my steno from an article I read on manifestation in Mind Power News, an email newsletter that I receive. I'll look for the article and post it. Basically it's 4 affirmations: 1- What I am doing now (some goal that I want to realize) 2- How I support myself in realizing that goal 3- The good feelings I have for realizing that goal and 4- A Thank You to the Universe or God.

And overall, I'm enjoying the abundance I already have in my life. I have books galore and enough inspirational CD's and meditation tapes and CD's to cure all of Toronto. Ha Ha! So I'm making it a point to listen to and enjoy what I have. I belong to the Spiritual Cinema so I have all these great movies and short films. I'm building a DVD collection because my breakfast buddy buys me DVD's for birthdays and Christmas. And Music? Well anyone who knows me knows I have an insane amount of music, what with working at Sam's years ago and having that itunes addiction and importing anyone's music collection that I can. And I also belong to Simply Audio so I have a decent amount of audio books. If I didn't leave my house for a year I still wouldn't make it through all the stuff I have. And with my comfy bed? Praise God I am blessed!

I'll see if I can find the manifestation article...

EY