The state of recognizing everything you have in a precious moment is profound. Gratitude for the people in your life and for the home you make can simply wake up your senses to your individual connection with love instead of fear. And today proved to be one of those days…
The affirmation for today -
I am grateful for this moment.
Fully appreciating ourselves and everything we’ve experienced today is the epitome of gratitude. This thoughtful affirmation hasn’t left me since posting my morning vlog and it comes with great purpose too since my day ended up being quite magical and miraculous indeed. I chose to embrace the good, great, and ugly like Gabby had suggested. Today, the news featured North Korea’s alleged plans to send a ballistic missile toward the US. My immediately thoughts were to not give into this obvious fear and the second was to envision an energetic bubble that surrounds the country to prevent even more negativity from spreading. Yuck! So, I had to re-calibrate my senses to being grateful.
Today I am grateful for:
My body, because I am alive.
My home, because it is peaceful.
My love, because it is strong.
Making a quick list like this helped realign my attention on being focused and determined (qualities that exemplify this month’s soul path Goddess Artemis energy). Just like a bow and arrow in hand, I am hunting down for active ways to be positive and miracle-minded. What’s on your list?
My miracle moments -
Waking up – I woke up today early and refreshed. A feeling that I haven’t felt since jumping into finding employment, but I have my groove back and lovin it!
Sunshine- It is Spring here in Pennsylvania, and the weather makes me feel the VERVE of life! I couldn’t just keep my excitement contained so I listened to Celtic Woman’s The Sky and The Dawn and The Sun while opening all my windows to let in the gorgeous light of the day.
Swinging outside – The adventure of feeling grateful and alive led me to going outside and playing at the local park. Here I sat next to the river taking in the rolling ripples riding along the rocks. Pure joy that I got to spend it with my love!
So there, a great sacred journey thus far and I am so grateful to be able to share it with you. How did your day go? Got any awesome meditation photos to share with me on my Facebook page? Check out the Day 11 morning reflection vlog and let me know if My Inspiration Network can help you out. Thanks for reading.
Breathing rapidly. Feeling goosebumps. Seeing glowing white speckles of light around the body and room. The whole experience engulfs the senses and is a recognizable sensation that many would call an orgasm. But can this sexual climax also appear in the most reverent activities–meditations?
According to The Huffington Post the brain feels the meditative and orgasmic experience the same way.
Spiritual teachers have been on to this for years, but research is now showing that orgasm and meditation create much the same effect in our brains.
It does! I was a tad bit skeptical putting this out there for the world to read, but I wanted to share my thoughts. Last night, I meditated sitting upright which I rarely do. It was calm and fluffy as most of my meditations are, but then I decided that I wanted to resume back to my normal style of relaxing. I began listening to Colette Baron-Reid’s Journey Through the Chakras and focused on my breath and the visuals of the crystal mountain. With each color and chakra energy center, I was able to engage in a very active meditation.
At first I guess I loss control of my breath and mind. But reading up on how orgasms and meditations intermingle. It all makes sense now. The overall point of this parallel is that both experiences drop the curtain on our inhibitions.
In other words, both experiences lead to a temporary stoppage in the incessant flow of our internal commentary. Even if for only a few minutes, we are able to see ourselves as something other than the ego.
All those meaningless thoughts are stripped away and you can lay there naked physically or spiritually before the universe. I bet some people do both! As for me it was more of a spiritual stripping.
My breath just picked up pace with the music climaxing as the guardian spirit poured the contents of the chalice into my crown energy center and I literally felt a wave of explosions around my body and in my body. No physical response but that of my rapid breath. It was the most thrilling experience yet, and I immediately said to myself that it felt like sex. Which isn’t too hard knowing what sex is like considering all the movies, Tumblr, and of course the roundabouts of curiosity (I have to remember that my target audience is of age). But you get the point.
Well, I hope I didn’t scare away too many people with this, I just thought the overall subject was fascinating. If you are curious about having a DIY moment, I suggest getting Colette Baron-Reid’s CD and be fully engaged with the journey of your chakras. She doesn’t aim to get you to climax, but to soak up the energy colors…I swear!
4 years ago I would not have known about Tupac Shakur if I did not attend a school where they accepted a majority of inner city kids. And that is the truth from my perspective. I was not raised to know any rappers or hip hop aritist besides one Salt N Pepa song and I still don’t know a lot about music all that much.
Photo Credit: AP
However I do know that music is a major component to popular culture. People listen to at least one song a day. We are constantly surrounded by the music industry’s influence from the advertising to music video posts on Facebook. So after yesterday’s pop culture class I am left with sharing my peace about how I see the late Tupac Shakur and his influence.
My pop culture class is directed to be a discussion class that strips movies to their core themes that depict cultural movements throughout the American society. We discussed movies like Children of Men (2006), Amadeus (1984), Mulholland Dr. (2001), They Live (1988) and finally ended the semester with Foxy Brown (1974) and Tupak: Resurrection (2003). This class has reassured many thoughts that passed through my mind prior to taking it. But my greatest challenge I would say was opening my mind to Tupak Shakur. Now, I know what most of you are thinking, oh he is white and he doesn’t like Tupak, so he must be racist. Not true. I simply did not know anything really about why people know him and are moved by his story.
The ending semester picks were Moulin Rouge (2001) and a 3-part showing of a documentary about the Black Panther movement, Foxy Brown, and then the documentary on Tupac. I had already seen Moulin Rouge and was totally up for dissecting this post-modern film since I had an interest in musicals. But the class majority was in favor of Tupac and the documentary series. So I told myself, well it is an academic class, so why not learn something new, well almost new.
I had learned briefly about the Black Panther movement when I attended Milton Hershey School and from that discussion Tupac was brought up. I found out that he was murdered just after he was known to beat up a Crip member. So the knowledge did resurface throughout yesterday’s class, but I only knew minor details and I had no clue how powerful Tupac or his influence was on popular culture.
Source: JoytoLife.com
From the notes I took from the documentary, the most compelling part of Tupac’s story was his deep love for his mother. I instantly was attracted to this because I adore my mom. As I am sure most sons and daughters would be if they grew up with a strong maternal influence. This motherly attraction is the same for my inspirations: Ellen DeGeneres and Kathy Griffin. They openly are honest about how much they love their moms. Like Tupac, they want to share their love with the cameras and the fan-base. My mom had always told me, that you can really judge a boy’s character by the way he treats his mother. Just knowing Tupac wrote songs about his mom’s strength and beauty certainly trumps any media speculation of his intention to exploit women based on their looks or calling them bitches. I believe here, he knew what sold more and by popular choice in this sex driven culture, his more sexy music videos and songs about “bitchy” women were probably more relatable to his audience. Also, I’d imagine the rhythm of the word was probably more natural to use as oppose to a different word just to keep the pace and tone of the songs.
The exploitation was not the only thing being shown in the film, but also the outbreaks that Tupac had shown in regards to him fighting with a director and spitting in paparazzi faces and cameras. These conflicting scenes really jarred my reaction to Tupac’s character. I kept feeling like he is a genuine person, but he is doing all these negative acts. I simply was sitting in class befuddled as to why. Then it occurred to me that I was seeing a pattern.
Tupac was displaying what other celebrities with issues also depict–a stress that comes from being a genius. That was clearly displayed in the movie Amadeus. Here we have a very talented human being and all of a sudden obsession of fear consumes the mind and these beloved individuals morph into a whole different, rather opposing, character. Some resort to driving fast like James Dean, subconsciously bound to inner acting like Heath Ledger, and alcohol like Amy Winehouse. We should look at these talented individuals and wonder why they are no longer living especially for being rather young.
So I decided to overlook Tupac’s behavior and start understanding his human experience. He himself spoke about his interests in social matters. His songs even express that attraction. He knew that growing up in the ghetto that others will too feel hopeless. So he wanted to become an example and I feel like maybe he was trying to balance the identities of thug-life and a transformational life. When I try hard to show people the concept of change it often turns stressful and chaotic because not everyone understands it or seems to appreciate it.
But no matter what, the documentary shows that Tupac wanted to be remembered for his talent and inspiration and he does live on for his efforts. The story of Tupac truly enlightened my perspective on popular culture and how poverty still affects us today. There were many points where I wanted to cry for how passionate he was for his understanding of love. I feel bad I had no idea who he was before this, but everything comes at the right time. So, I would like to share with you this story because maybe you did not know about Tupac Shakur and his amazing story. I highly suggest watching Tupac: Resurrection (2003).
One thing we all adore
Something worth dying for
Nothing but pain
Stuck in this game
Searching for fortune and fame
Bernard's Mission: To not only serve himself and those close to him, but to impact the greater public and persist on spreading the joy of learning and creation.
Inspire the People. Dream of Places. Create new things.
So there, a great sacred journey thus far and I am so grateful to be able to share it with you. How did your day go? Got any awesome meditation photos to share with me on my Facebook page? Check out the Day 11 morning reflection vlog and let me know if My Inspiration Network can help you out. Thanks for reading. 
