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So much of what we do through The Dragontree – both at our spas and with our products, courses, and articles – is meant to assist people to prioritize self-care. In an age when many people barely take a minute in a day for pure self-care, I’m happy to hear of any way in which someone is making space in their life for wellness. And also . . . if I could be a little nit-picky about it, I’d wish for even more Self in people’s self-care.
From talking about it with my patients, I’ve gathered that most people’s idea of self-care includes things like grooming, bathing, exercise, eating well, and perhaps reading a book in a cozy chair. These are all good and important, but it’s possible to do them without really getting to what the Self needs, and we can perform these activities without any conscious care. I’ve even known people whose die-hard approach to yoga was ultimately more stress-inducing than it was nourishing.
Care implies listening – quieting the mind and being open to understand what is needed. If someone handed you a crying child and said, “Care for this child,” you’d probably drop what you were doing – both physically and mentally – and ask something like, “What’s wrong?” Then you’d just listen. And perhaps you’d next ask, “What do you need?”
I don’t mean to imply that grooming can’t be self-care. But let’s think of self-care as comprising multiple layers. On the surface there are the things you do to maintain your appearance, your general health, your ability to function in society, and your composure – bathing, eating, sleeping, haircuts, etc. The next layer contains the deeper (or higher, if you prefer) measures of maintenance that enable you to manage your challenges and thrive. Perhaps this means taking time to forgive, to process your relationship challenges, work on your communication skills, clean up interpersonal conflicts, deactivate your buttons, define and pursue your (worldly) dreams, discipline your mind, etc. Most of this falls within the realm of “self-help.”
And then there’s an even deeper (or higher) layer of self-care that’s could be described as making space for your Essence. That is, letting your Self (AKA the Consciousness that you are, your Divine nature, Spirit, God, your Highest Self) be recognized and listening to it. (By the way, I make no promise that there are only three layers. There might be seventeen layers. My point is that self-care can address the form or the essence or both.)
Take a break from giving your attention to your mind, your emotions, your pain, your grievances, or any of the other content of your life. Instead, notice the container that holds it all. Or, as Adyashanti says, “Turn your attention upon itself.” Your attention – whose attention is that? Turn the focus of your attention around to notice the source of that attention.
The container that holds all the contents of life – all the thoughts, feelings, events, all the objects of your attention – that container itself, the Space, is You. Many spiritual teachers assert that it’s actually much more your true Essence than any of its contents. The contents are fleeting. The container – Consciousness itself – is eternal. The deepest self-care is the practice of trusting in it. Surrendering to it. Relinquishing everything to it. Even if only for the duration of a single breath.
A daily practice is likely to yield the greatest transformation, and you don’t really need to make time for it. You just need to make Space for it. Several times a day, give the whole of your awareness to a single breath (or a couple breaths). Once in a while you might ask yourself, how much of my awareness did I give to that breath? I just took a breath between that sentence and this one, and I’d say I gave 83% of my awareness to it. Notice that. Does it change over time?
Sometimes, try doing it without stopping whatever else you’re doing. Watch your breath while you are in conversation, while eating, while showering, while driving, and especially while doing the other forms of self-care. Although getting a pedicure might be a relatively superficial form of self-care, if you are completely present to it, it becomes true Self-care.
Little by little, your Essence will be a growing presence in your everyday life. You won’t get wrapped up as easily in drama. Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “My secret is . . . I don’t mind what happens.” This is the case when Essence, rather than ego, is in the driver’s seat.
Be well,
Peter
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A few years ago, Briana and I set out to create the ultimate system for planning, goal making, and life-sweetness-maximization. The result was The Dreambook. We launched it as a crowd-funded Kickstarter project and greatly exceeded our funding goals. In the years since then it’s been popular and successful beyond our wildest dreams.
When we were crafting the Dreambook, we knew that users would need to do some preliminary work to get aligned. So the first part is about discovering what your core values are, identifying your gifts, defining your life purpose, and learning what you really want.
It might seem a simple thing to know what you really want, but over the past few years of publishing this book, we’ve probably gotten more comments about this section than any other part. It turns out that our days are filled with thoughts of what we want, they’re even more filled with thoughts of what we don’t want. And they’re also filled with thoughts of things we used to want or were told we should want.
Rarely do we go through a deep, introspective process for learning what really gives us satisfaction, what makes us feel most alive, what naturally energizes us, what inspires us bring our best self to the table. So there’s a whole section for that, and people often tell us it’s incredibly illuminating.
I want to share with you an excerpt from that section so you can see what I’m getting at and try it out. I invite you to do this for yourself, even if you only have a few minutes. Just answer these questions honestly, as if no one will ever see the answers, and as if you’ll have the approval of your friends, your family, and yourself – regardless of how you respond.
- What are you longing for most in life?
- At the end of life what do you want to have accomplished?
- If you knew you had one year left to live would there be anything you’d want to fix or clean up?
- What are you ready to let go of – habits, attitudes, obligations, beliefs, outdated goals, etc. – that aren’t serving you?
- What do you want to explore more deeply?
- What would make life feel ridiculously fun?
- What feels really nourishing in your life?
- Of all the things you’ve done or accomplished in your life, what has given you the deepest sense of fulfillment? When have you been most proud of yourself?
- Where do you find yourself not being fully “present” in your life, or not participating fully?
I hope your answers to these questions help you know yourself better and give you some insights into your true needs and drives. In the Dreambook these questions are followed by a section on each of the following areas of life:
- Livelihood, career, and influence
- Relationship and family
- Community connection
- Physical wellness
- Creation, exploration, and play
- Psychological and spiritual health
For each of these arenas, you visualize a best case scenario three years into the future and answer a series of questions that guide you to define exactly how your life will feel, look, and taste. It’s such a powerful process. So many users have written us to say that just doing this – being prompted to clearly define what they want and intend to create – launched the manifestation of their dreamlife into reality. Much of the rest of the book deals with choosing clear goals related to these insights and forming plans to achieve them – and, importantly, nourishing yourself and staying balanced along the way.
I hope you’ll join us for the 2020 version of the book. If ever there were a year to see clearly the path ahead (20-20, get it?), it’s this one!
Be well,
Peter
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Over the past several weeks, I’ve been discussing the 14 primary themes in our book, Rituals for Transformation. It’s a 108-day process with a short lesson each day, designed to help people release baggage, pain, and stories, and welcome a life of greater freedom, joy, peace, and connection. Today we’ll look at the last four of these “avenues for awakening.”
Courage
Courage may seem like one of those virtues you read about in fairy tales that seems to have little to do with being happy or successful in today’s world. In actuality, the presence or absence of courage can have a massive impact on our quality of life. It takes courage to choose a path that differs from what others expect of us. It takes courage to make hard communications. It takes courage to stand up for the truth. It takes courage to challenge our own thoughts. It takes courage to willingly be uncomfortable. It takes courage to enter the unknown.
And it takes choosing our own path, making hard communications, standing up for the truth, challenging our own thoughts, willingly being uncomfortable, and entering the unknown to have a life of true freedom and unrestrained potential.
The lessons in this theme deal with working through fear, forgiving ourselves for not always being strong, trusting in the Universe, tapping into our power, and accessing an experience of safety that transcends the impermanence of this human life.
Vision and Perspective
Vision and perspective are two facets of inner seeing that give us great power. When we speak of vision in the book, we mean the ability to see the truth (beyond all stories and interpretations) and the ability to envision as part of our creative power. And when we speak of perspective we mean the ability to choose where we place our focus and how we interpret what happens. Many of the happiest people we’ve met are great at continually seeing through the drama and holding an inner image of a good life. As we see it, optimists are just people who are in the habit of choosing positive interpretations (and anyone can learn to do this).
The lessons in this category are intended to help readers access their vision and actively choose their perspective. There are a number of invitations to “try out” certain perspectives, applying them as often as possible to daily life to experience what happens – such as “Every hardship is an opportunity,” and “I choose to focus on the blessings in my life,” and “Who would I be if I had no resistance?” and “My flexibility allows me to respond with grace to what life brings.” We also practice seeing reality beyond the mind and remaining conscious of the vision we’re holding of ourselves and the world.
Receiving
The creative power I mentioned above is something that’s received a lot of attention in books and videos over the past several decades – such as those on the Law of Attraction (e.g., The Secret) and Conversations with God. The recognition and conscious exercise of this power enables us to play, to turn our vision into reality, and to create something different if we don’t like the current story.
However, we felt there’s been too little emphasis on the other half of the equation: receiving. The ancient text called the I Ching or Book of Changes is an exploration of the fundamental forces and dynamics of nature – and how they also pertain to all aspects of humans’ lives. The 64 chapters of the book, with names like Peace, Stagnation, Conflict, Temptation, Adaptation, Danger, Attraction, and Retreat, are presented in a deliberate order. The book starts with The Creative or Creative Power – it’s the expression of pure yang. And chapter two is called The Receptive or Receiving, the expression of pure yin. Each needs the other. The remaining 62 qualities all follow from these two.
What good is it to set a creation into motion if we can’t recognize and receive it when it manifests? It seems silly to think that someone would do this, yet it happens all the time. It’s so common to focus excessively on what’s wrong that we frequently fail to notice that what we’ve asked for has come to us. Receiving is more vital than one might think. If we fail to receive, it’s not merely that we’re walking away from the vending machine before the candy drops down; what’s more detrimental is that we don’t get to see that our creative power works.
You might think as you’re reading this, “If I asked for money and money came to me, you can bet I would receive it!” But receiving goes beyond putting it in your pocket. Another interpretation of this dynamic in the I Ching is Yielding or Responding. It’s like you’re both the lead and the follower in a partner dance. When you utilize your creative power, you’re the lead. Being the follower entails responding, yielding, changing even, based on what transpires next. It means not just that you accept your gift, but that you become the person who is the natural and grateful recipient of that gift – and any feeling of lack associated with the original request ceases.
Expansion and Contraction
Our final theme, and really the whole gist of the book, is to encourage expansion of consciousness. For most people, our everyday consciousness is occupied almost entirely by our thoughts and emotions, often about the past and future. Our sense of who we are is a concept constructed from the history of what has happened to us, the roles we’ve adopted, and our redundant thoughts about all of this. As such, we’re immersed in something other than the truth and depth of reality, which is always happening right now.
When we allow some space into the picture (as through meditation and spiritual practice) so that our ego doesn’t dominate the whole of our awareness, we begin to recognize that consciousness is bigger than our thoughts and feelings. It contains them and it allows us to witness them. It’s always present, it’s always now, it’s always still, it’s beyond conflict, and it’s eternal. And it’s more who we really are than the short-lived character we tend to get wrapped up in playing.
Expansion of consciousness also occurs spontaneously at times, when we witness great beauty, or tremendous kindness, hear an inspiring story, or through another form of grace. Usually we return to our contracted state – often the moment we reach for our phone – but these peeks into expanded consciousness can change us in a lasting way. We never forget what we’ve experienced, and that glimpse of awakening yearns to awaken us even more.
Along the way, we’ll also have times of intense contraction – especially when a period of expansion takes us out of the ego’s comfort zone. Sometimes it occurs right after a spiritual experience or a profound healing. Then suddenly we’re fabulously unenlightened. We’re starting fights, we’re depressed, we’re cranky, we’re petty. “Why is this happening?!” we may think, “I thought I had come so far!”
The lessons in this section address how to recognize a contracted state, stop fighting it, and move through it gracefully. Primarily, though, they speak to how we can expand. Some of these lessons are: When I expand my consciousness the world is freed; I can exchange my burdens for grace; I awaken to my true identity; and Everything I see is the play of Divine Love. Wouldn't it be lovely to embody these sentiments?
I hope I’ve conveyed just how much intention and love we put into this book. We want nothing more than for people to read it, practice it, and experience greater freedom, joy, and connection. Please check it out and share your experience with us.
Love,
Peter
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So much of what we do through The Dragontree – both at our spas and with our products, courses, and articles – is meant to assist people to prioritize self-care. In an age when many people barely take a minute in a day for pure self-care, I’m happy to hear of any way in which someone is making space in their life for wellness. And also . . . if I could be a little nit-picky about it, I’d wish for even more Self in people’s self-care.
From talking about it with my patients, I’ve gathered that most people’s idea of self-care includes things like grooming, bathing, exercise, eating well, and perhaps reading a book in a cozy chair. These are all good and important, but it’s possible to do them without really getting to what the Self needs, and we can perform these activities without any conscious care. I’ve even known people whose die-hard approach to yoga was ultimately more stress-inducing than it was nourishing.
Care implies listening – quieting the mind and being open to understand what is needed. If someone handed you a crying child and said, “Care for this child,” you’d probably drop what you were doing – both physically and mentally – and ask something like, “What’s wrong?” Then you’d just listen. And perhaps you’d next ask, “What do you need?”
I don’t mean to imply that grooming can’t be self-care. But let’s think of self-care as comprising multiple layers. On the surface there are the things you do to maintain your appearance, your general health, your ability to function in society, and your composure – bathing, eating, sleeping, haircuts, etc. The next layer contains the deeper (or higher, if you prefer) measures of maintenance that enable you to manage your challenges and thrive. Perhaps this means taking time to forgive, to process your relationship challenges, work on your communication skills, clean up interpersonal conflicts, deactivate your buttons, define and pursue your (worldly) dreams, discipline your mind, etc. Most of this falls within the realm of “self-help.”
And then there’s an even deeper (or higher) layer of self-care that’s could be described as making space for your Essence. That is, letting your Self (AKA the Consciousness that you are, your Divine nature, Spirit, God, your Highest Self) be recognized and listening to it. (By the way, I make no promise that there are only three layers. There might be seventeen layers. My point is that self-care can address the form or the essence or both.)
Take a break from giving your attention to your mind, your emotions, your pain, your grievances, or any of the other content of your life. Instead, notice the container that holds it all. Or, as Adyashanti says, “Turn your attention upon itself.” Your attention – whose attention is that? Turn the focus of your attention around to notice the source of that attention.
The container that holds all the contents of life – all the thoughts, feelings, events, all the objects of your attention – that container itself, the Space, is You. Many spiritual teachers assert that it’s actually much more your true Essence than any of its contents. The contents are fleeting. The container – Consciousness itself – is eternal. The deepest self-care is the practice of trusting in it. Surrendering to it. Relinquishing everything to it. Even if only for the duration of a single breath.
A daily practice is likely to yield the greatest transformation, and you don’t really need to make time for it. You just need to make Space for it. Several times a day, give the whole of your awareness to a single breath (or a couple breaths). Once in a while you might ask yourself, how much of my awareness did I give to that breath? I just took a breath between that sentence and this one, and I’d say I gave 83% of my awareness to it. Notice that. Does it change over time?
Sometimes, try doing it without stopping whatever else you’re doing. Watch your breath while you are in conversation, while eating, while showering, while driving, and especially while doing the other forms of self-care. Although getting a pedicure might be a relatively superficial form of self-care, if you are completely present to it, it becomes true Self-care.
Little by little, your Essence will be a growing presence in your everyday life. You won’t get wrapped up as easily in drama. Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “My secret is . . . I don’t mind what happens.” This is the case when Essence, rather than ego, is in the driver’s seat.
Be well,
Peter
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