Allie’s New Spiritual Uplevels, or, Two Practices She Implores You to Try Now

30k high in the sky, I feel compelled to share two new practices I’ve adopted (one very recently, and one that I’ve practiced for the last two weeks or so), because they’ve both revolutionized the way I view my days, as well as the way that I meditate.  Life Changers. Course Correcters.  Perspective Providers.

1.  Daily Rewind Exercise, from Invincible Living

The first comes from Guru Jagat’s book, Invincible Living (which, if you don’t have, please do your cosmic soul the biggest favor and go buy it.  Or, check it out from the library.  Or borrow it from me.  I’ll buy you a copy if you send me your shipping information.  Bottom line?  Everyone should own this book).  In this practice, you replay your day right before you hit slumbertown.  As you engage in the rewind of your day, Guru Jagat tells us to stop at any moment where we felt as though we acted out of frustration, or out of alignment with our integrity, or engaged in judgement.  Halt your mental tape at the misstep.  Then, she tells us to engage with that moment. Ask, “How could you have responded differently, What did you miss?  How would you rather experience that moment in time?”*  After you make your evaluation, then you get the opportunity to “write over” the tape.  This is like when you accidentally recorded Full House over your dad’s VCR recording of Monday Night Football, but with no one there to ground you or take away TV time for the next week.  You get to put that moment in a new perspective, one that is congruent with the reality you wish to be living in on 3D Earth.  Finally, rewind and watch the day again, with your newly rewritten scenario(s).  Guru Jagat says this will help us “clear the trauma, the nervousness, the anxiety, the depression, and the self-criticism”** that comes with harboring these negative thought-forms, either consciously or unconsciously.  I know that personally, I’m of the mental stock that ruminates on mundane mistakes like you could win a damn Olympic medal for overanalyzing everything.  This greatly helped me alleviate this.  Highly recommend.  

2. Find the Space Between the Words and You’ll find the Space Between the Worlds. derived from Don Miguel Ruiz’s Oprah Interview***

This little phrase has been the game-changer in getting my mind to quiet.  It’s almost a pre-meditation meditation.  Like a meditation appetizer, one might say.  I’ve developed this practice based on a particular phrase that Don Miguel said on his podcast interview with Oprah for Super Soul Sunday.  He mentioned that when he is mindful and present, he is actually living in the “space between words” in his mind.  This resonated with me, and I suspect it may resonate with you.  Our mental soundtrack provides us with so much noise every day that some of us may have even lost awareness of its nattering and chattering.  

An excerpt from my mental soundtrack right now (an approximation): “ohmygod should I have had ginger ale that’s 130 calories was it worth it it was a treat so it was fine should i offer that guy my pretzels and mustard because i don’t want them or is that weird he has a camera i wonder if he’s a photographer can i hit the call button to get some coffee i wonder if i have coffee at home because i know i was low on k cups should i go to the gym tonight or stay home maybe i could take a nap because i’m so tired or maybe i should power through should i save my sweet treat until i ask for coffee am i ever going to ask for coffee?”

Yep.  That’s like ten seconds of the 24x7 soundtrack to a life.  Also, it can get pretty judgmental and gnarly in there, but thankfully right now I’m fixated on whether or not it is socially acceptable to hit the call button on the airplane to ask for a cup of coffee to go with my cookie.  

Anyways, if you can find the space between two of those words, if you can find the way to live between “some” and “coffee” even for ten or twenty seconds? That’s living in infinite potential.  That’s living in the present now, without the projection of the mind ruining the moment.  That’s living between worlds.  

Thinking about meditation in this way—as mental space—has been the most effective way for me to quiet my mind and keep emotional outbursts at a minimum.  Sometimes it looks like me trying to stop that rat-a-tat-tat above in its tracks.  Other times, when I’m getting ready for a meditative or spiritual moment, I’ll use the mantra “space between words.” This gives me some mind talk to focus myself back into the space between worlds.  I’ll start by mentally vibrating the word “space,” and then just trying to hold it there.  Sometimes I can do it for two minutes, sometimes (and more often) it’s just two or three seconds.  Okay, that’s fine.  Move to vibrating “between,” and see how long you can hold it.  Then “words.” And repeat.

This has been so effective.  I never knew what an instant soul-soother that kind of meditative moment could be, but it is so powerful.  How powerful? The crowd asks, infomercial-style.  I’ve been able to transmute my flight anxiety two days running using nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing. No booze, no rosaries, no ill-thought out promises to the God) but my own breath and those three words.  In fact, on the way to Chicago, I managed to resonate in that space between words for so long, I was moved to joyous tears.  

Yep.  Now that you think Al has officially put on her crazypants, it’s time to sign off and go back to reading my books and contemplating coffee as I glide over the United States and back to my best coast home.

But really.  Rewind the tape.  Find the space between words.  Try to resonate between worlds, even if it is just for a moment.  Let me know how it goes for you!

-xoxo

Allie

*Guru Jagat, Invincible Living ( New York:Harper Elixir, 2017), 166

** Jagat, Invincible Living, 167