Looking Ahead to Living Green

Well friends, this portion of the Quarter Life Crisis Project is slowly coming to a close as I’ll be beginning the next phase on March 6. Thank god, because let’s be honest: it’s pretty well fizzled like a flat can of cola. Perhaps I should have just gone with making this 3-monther the “Living like an Adult” project, because I clearly did NOT factor in the major life adjustment that starting a new full-time job would bring with it. I’ve been totally distracted and grappling with many different challenges and transitions, and quite honestly feeling more tumultuous than zen throughout the whole ungraceful process. So despite still giving it my best shot under the circumstances, I often resorted to robotically doing a one-week blog writing just to keep the thing alive.

Not that I didn’t learn things…oh, I most definitely did. It’s been a very learning-heavy past 3 months, in fact. But the learning that you get from life can’t really be fit into a box and turned into a structured project quite as easily as some other areas of learning can. I can’t say it’s impossible, because images of Julia Roberts in “Eat Pray Love” are popping into my head as I type this… but I think spiritual learning really is best approached as a natural unfolding of things. You learn things in due time. It can’t be forced or planned or executed in the same way that learning about food can. You can cultivate it, sure…but the harder you try and the more externally motivated you are (for example, by a blog), the more your growth is actually impeded. Living spiritually really seems to be about letting go and going with the flow, wherever that takes you. The more expectations you have, the more you’ll suffer.

 

That said, I’m uber excited to shift focus with the next phase, which starts on March 6 – the “Green Living” phase. While I’m a huge supporter of Mother Earth, I proclaim nearly full ignorance when it comes to environmentally friendly lifestyles… so I’m pretty excited at the prospect of learning a thing or two about how to reduce my carbon footprint and become one with nature, so to speak. However, I’m still trying to remain aware of the fact that I AM working two jobs now, and things will not be as easy since time is a very limited resource. Thus, I will try to be better with planning this time, and perhaps consider making the blog posts a bit shorter too.

In the meantime, I hope you’re all doing well out there! Hard to believe it’s been 6 months since I sat here and started pouring over healthy internet recipes for the first time. The journey continues…

xo Janine

Happy Long Weekend!

Well peeps, I wanted to write some kind of blog today to update y'all on the latest, but I'm heading to Ottawa tomorrow and just realized I have 283 things to try to get done in the next three hours. Given that, a well-thought-out blog is sadly not in the cards for tonight. But I do want to say a big "Enjoy! Relax! Revel in the freedom! Go out and do something craaaazy!" to everyone before our lovely February long weekend (...as well as share my big week's news that WE FINALLY GOT OUR FIRST PARTICIPANT...which doesn't mean a lot to anyone on here anyway since I haven't been giving you the lowdown lately, but the sheer time and effort it's taken to get here is cause for shouting it from the rooftops regardless.) Hard work pays off, my friends. This is the lesson of the week for me. (Maybe even the lesson of a lifetime.)

See (or I guess write) ya soon.......

xo Janine

Hello, my name is __________

Ah, labels. They are rarely, if ever, a good thing.

Ironically, my biggest obstacle to living spiritually since I began this portion of the blog is the fact that I gave myself the temporary label of a spiritual seeker for three months. I boxed myself into a particularly identity - which is exactly the opposite of what living spiritually actually involves. I think I thought initially that being vaguely aware of the possibility of that happening would have prevented it from taking over...but noooope. It definitely has impeded the whole purpose of this phase of the project significantly. I've even found myself at times in a weird inner struggle because I'm trying to handle various things that have happened as I think I should as a spiritual person - and it's actually led to less self-acceptance, less wisdom, and less insight. (Hah...life has the weirdest tricks up its sleeve sometimes!) Well, this may be the most important lesson I learn (and hopefully maybe even impart) along this rather strange paradoxical road..and if so, hey, I can be at peace with that.

So where will I go from here, with three weeks left in the spiritual living phase? Good question. Maybe I could try not to think of myself as a person who's trying to be spiritual anymore. Maybe I could try to remind myself how being spiritual involves not intentionally trying to be spiritual. Maybe I could try to release myself from the spiritual identity by doing things that are not typically thought of as being very spiritual (ooh, kinda like that idea...)

But perhaps the best idea of all, is just to let myself be.

;-)

xo Janine

Mindfulness Meditation

Sit cross-legged. Close your eyes. Make sure you feel relaxed. Try as hard as you can to be peaceful. Say “ommmmmmmmm”. Think only thoughts of peace, love and positivity.

Nope…no need to do any of those things during mindfulness meditation.

The stereotypes are usually what trip people up, so best to get them out of the way right off the bat. The truth is, mindfulness meditation isn’t about making anything in particular happen. It’s getting used to allowing whatever is already happening in this moment to happen, without feeling like you have to do something to change it. It’s getting comfortable with right now…which truthfully is the only moment you’ll ever find yourself in. Has anybody ever actually been in the past or the future? We’re always looking to them as places where we can go to find answers, solutions, salvation…but the truth is, you’re always only ever in this moment, and those places called “past” and “future” have never really been seen by anybody. So why put your eggs in those imaginary baskets? Mindfulness meditation is about getting comfortable with what you already have. This one moment, which you always exist in, is already the way it is. The more you deny that, the more you suffer. The more you accept it, the more you are in touch with the truth… and then you come to understand, appreciate and value things. You start to cooperate with life as it is. And your moment-to-moment experience becomes a lot simpler, a lot easier, and a lot less painful.  

Sounds straightforward enough, right? So why do people find it so incredibly hard to meditate?

Let’s think about this for a second. Meditating isn’t actually hard, is it? The whole point of it is to do absolutely nothing. Meditation isn’t even really something you do; it’s simply setting aside time to NOT do. How can doing nothing be hard? It doesn’t demand anything of you whatsoever; it might be the only thing in the world that doesn’t. So shouldn’t it be the easiest thing in the world, really?

Well, now imagine that you didn’t have a mind. You didn’t have a voice inside your head running your life all the time. Meditation, or just being and not doing, would be the easiest and most natural thing in the world then, wouldn’t it? Aha - so the trouble with meditation lies in your mind. The truth is, it’s your mind that’s always telling you that there’s something you have to do. That you have to DO something in order to BE something. And the real trouble comes from the fact that you tend to believe whatever your mind says, no matter how blatantly wrong it is. Your mind tells you nobody’s going to like you at the party tonight, that it'll be a disaster? You believe it…your body reacts as though you're totally threatened...it goes into fight-or-flight... which makes you believe it even more… and then you don’t go. Yet absolutely none of that was based in reality. It became your reality when you listened to your mind, believed in the initial assumption. How much of your life is like that? Have you ever faced a situation you find so difficult that others find so easy, and just wished you were fearless? Well the truth is, nobody is fearless. It’s how much they believe their fear that makes the difference between relaxed people and anxious people.

Now, imagine sitting down, just you and your mind, and getting used to hearing what it’s saying without believing it. Imagine getting used to feeling the way your body reacts to your incorrect mind, and recognizing that’s all it is – you don’t need to act on it, to fix anything, because there’s actually nothing to solve. So you can relax. Just let it be there. Slowly but surely, your thoughts, your emotions, they lose their power over you. It’s not that you don’t have them anymore; they’re just not a problem anymore. You see clearly that they’re truly baseless, and so you become free to act in a way that aligns with the truth, rather than being a prisoner to your out-of-touch mind and body. You start to see that you can find peace with whatever what you face, having this orientation towards life; because the truth is, nothing that happens in this moment is really a problem. Only your mind interprets it that way, and you have the opportunity to start practicing how to not listen to it. How to let it be.

That opportunity lies in practicing mindfulness meditation…in practicing “not doing”.

For those of you who are interested in giving it a try, I’ve found Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Wherever You Go, There You Are” to be incredibly well-written, insight-provoking and helpful. Highly recommend it - best guide I've read so far. I also find www.wildmind.org has some helpful information, for those looking to learn more or start now (or start without having to purchase a book ;-)

xo Janine