Hi Reader!
I hope you are enjoying the start of summer and the longer and hopefully less scheduled days. Here are the east coast of the US it has been insanely hot, and if you know me, I am NOT a hot weather person. But, seeing my kids be able to engage in things they don’t have time to do during the school year and have the freedom to explore makes it all worth it. As a mom of a rising junior in high schooler, it is becoming painfully obvious how fast this childhood thing goes and I am soaking up as much time with my kiddos as I can this summer, while also continuing to have amazing conversations with amazing humans on my podcast and coaching women back home to their essence or Dharma. It really is a beautiful life when we let go of what doesn’t speak to our heart so we can make room for what does.
Meditation & Music
But onto the most episode 57 of Mom On The Verge! I spoke with music composer, 7th degree black belt and breath master Jason Campbell.
Jason said that he began meditating at the age of 8 when his piano teacher told him to listen not ot the notes, but ot the space between the notes. The notes represent the clutter of our minds, the space, or the gap, is where we can hear the divine. When we clear out mind of the clutter, we make room for inspiration, knowing and peace. But how do we do that? We need to make room for the Being part of our human.
Human Versus Being
As human beings, we often forget about the being parts of us. We are so busy running around checking things off the to do list of life, that we should refer to our selves at human doings instead of beings!
Our human selves are ruled by what Jason calls the monkey mind, with its inscecent stream of thoughts that are often unkind, unhelpful and untrue. Our ego feeds off of these thoughts with it’s insatiable desire to protect our mental, emotional and physical self. The human being, if we aren’t aware, can be dictated by the ego and loose its being part altogether.
The Being part of us is our soul is where our sacredness, intuition, wisdom, connection to God and our peace resides. It’s the part of us we get in touch with when we meditate, enter a flow state, pray, spend time in nature or perform selfless service from love.
Don’t get me wrong, we all need our egos. They are essential to living in this material world and getting anything done! We begin to have a problem when we let the ego be both the driver AND the navigator of our lives. As the doing part of us, we can put the ego in the driver’s seat, but ONLY if we allow the Being part of us to give the ego directions on where to go and how.
The human part of us is the noisy, bossy and always sure they are right part (think the loud guy at the party that boasts about himself and seems to know everything about everything 🤨). The Being part of us is the quieter, more steady and calm part of us, that speaks softly and has the energy of a kind and wise grandmother who never pushes her opinions on you, but gives you gentle guidance and space so you can come to your own realizations). If we want to stop allowing the bossy guy at the party to rule our lives, we need to seek space to allow the soft voice and energy of our Being to come through.
Jason calls this “chaining the monkey to the tree.” When we learn to calm the incescent stream of thoughts, we acquire self mastery. The monkey will NEVER stay chained to the tree. It will always be a practice, an ebbing and flowing of humaning and being.
The practice of returning to the being over and over again has huge benefits in our lives including improving our mental health, physical health, longevity, improved relationships and overall fulfilment, connection and joy in life. So which do you think is ruling your life? The human or the Being?
Breath – Our Emotional Purging System
Breath practice are a great way to enter the world of meditation. In breath we connect with what Jason called the magic three. The magic three show up throughout religions and cultures over and over in different ways. But broken down to their simplest forms, they are matter, energy and consciousness. We are all made of these three things. Our bodies are matter. Within our bodies resides energy in the form of emotions and our ability to focus taps into our consciousness or soul. When we practice breathwork, we use our bodies and our focus to move stuck energy or emotions out of our bodies. We are purging our emotional waste. Our bodies take in food, remove the needed nutrients and then expel the waste. If we didn’t, we we become extremely sick. Ever get constipated?? 😬.
Just like our physical bodies, our energetic bodies need purging too. When we face a difficult situation or experience in our lives, it creates energy in the form of emotions in our bodies. We need these energies to learn from our experiences (like taking nutrients from food). But if we hold onto them too long (constipation) we will get sick. Breath work is an age old practice of letting go of the energies that no longer serve us and are making us sick.
Intuition Vs The Emotional Monkey Mind
Our intuition can be a powerful guide in our lives if we learn how to hear it. The Third Eye Chakra is the seat of our intuition. It is located in the space between our eyebrows, deep within the brain through a tiny gland called the pineal gland. This is what Jason calls our “antenna to God.”
We can strengthen the antenna to have greater intuition. But we can also decrease the interference, or static. Like tuning a radio dial, we can bring our intuition into clarity. The static is our thinking and our emotions That good old monkey mind we talked about above creates a tremendous amount of static and makes it really hard to hear what the announcer is trying to say and makes beautiful music sound jarring to the ears. Strong emotions create a nearly complete block to our higher selves.
If we want to hear the music and the announcer with complete clarity, we need to drop the internal dialogue, and allow strong emotions to pass. In doing this, we are tuning our radio dial to just the right spot. Everything comes in with crystal clear clarity. Answers, insights and creativity flow from this place.
Determination Vs. Stubbornness
Jason made a clear and meaningful differentiation between determination and stubbornness. If you have a strong willed child, or you yourself struggle with a hot temper, you are going to want to commit this to memory. Jason says that stubbornness is strong will where the will owns you. Determination is a strong will that you own. How do you covert stubbornness to determination? Learn to create space between the stimulus and the response. Learn to create a gap in the stream of thinking, let the emotion rise and fall, come to center and then respond. Easier said than done I know! But no one ever said self mastery was going to be easy!! 😜. It is however, worth it.
Jason and I talked about all of this and so much more. If you want to get all the juicy details, take a listen to the podcast. I would love to hear what stood out for you.
I hope the analogies above made it easier to understand some of these abstract concepts we are learning! Write me back and let me know. I want to hear everything you have to say!
And take a listen to this week’s minoside where I discuss how sadness and grief serve us and help us heal, and how we can let go of what we no longer need.
Love and Blessings Reader,
Katie
