It’s not a new concept, a Gratitude List. But it’s something I usually compile around New Year when I’m working on my Goals List for the coming year. I don’t bother with a New Years Resolution, I prefer to state what I want to achieve as opposed to losing something I may or may not need to give up.

If you’ve never heard of a Gratitude List or indeed completed one, then now’s a good time to get into the swing of it. You simply make a list of 10 things in you’re life that you’re really grateful for – simple! Only sometimes it’s not – once you begin naming all the things that are important to you that you simply take for granted, you realise completing a Gratitude List containing 10 items can be a difficult task for sure.

So, mid way through the year you may be asking why I’m compiling another one. The answer is quite simply that I’m taking stock, mid way through this year, and looking over my New Years Goals List and wondering what happened to it!

Taking Stock

“Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret” ~ Mary Kay Ash

2009 has so far been unpredictable, changeable, rich, demanding, pressured and personally enlightening to name but a few. This year saw the birth of my Tarot blog, Tarot Elements, and a new found interest in web and blog design; my eldest son moved on to begin his military career and I gained a teenage stowaway in his place. My youngest child became a teenager (ouch!) and my middle child, in the tradition of ‘invisible’ middle child syndrome, and who wishes to remain anonymous even now – completed his high school education this year (another ouch for my ever increasing age); my cat nearly died and my personal finances look like the negative bank balance of a third world country. Time to take stock for sure.

So in the interests of sharing, and this is a wonderful, spiritually liberating exercise, here is my repeatedly revised Gratitude List for July, 2009.

In my life, I’m grateful for:

1. My wonderful children who drive me insane and yet keep me sane; their petty arguments and their crazy comments; their stubbornness and their energy; when they’re being more mature than me and give me that look. I’m grateful for each and everyone one of them.
2. My lover who nourishes me and helps me grow; who feeds me and gives me strength; who expands my mind and shines the light in my moments of darkness, and doesn’t judge me for my occasional mentalness.
3. My family, crazy bunch they are. They’re an eclectic support group that never fail to show when the chips are down, or even when they’re up – the parties are legendary
4. My friends, for there are no dark corners in me, or in them; there’s nowhere left unseen or unknown. We don’t always have to phone, but the line is always there; as are the Kleenex and the wine when we need it, and even if we don’t.
5. My Tarot cards because they know me too – and never let me down. They’re a source of knowledge with never-ending lessons that are always different, no two occasions are the same. A cool teacher.
6. My Tarot blog as it’s allowing me to express my ideas and share the knowledge I have gained from others, a kind of Pay It Forward. I have found new friends, new teachers and new students. We are one and the same but I wouldn’t have known any of them without Tarot Elements.
7. Led Zepplin ‘cos quite frankly nothing lifts me quite like they do when the chips are down – the volume goes up and the kids vacate the room! I think I’m pretty good at air guitar, I don’t know why they disagree…
8. Chocolate chip cookies. Or double chocolate chip muffins. Or chocolate ice cream. Or maybe just chocolate generally? Full fat, full cream, milk or dark – I’m eternally grateful for chocolate
9. A hot bath with oil and rose petals and candles lining the room…
10. My sunglasses as they save me from squinting in the sun, and let’s face it, you get to a certain age, you have to take care of the skin around your eyes

So there’s my list. Revised a few times and not a New Year’s Goal List in sight. I sat there thinking about the things I’m really grateful for, in this moment, right now. Some may seem flippant, but the small things matter almost as much as the big. Think of the small things as the Minor Arcana and the big things as the Major Arcana – we wouldn’t have one without the other, they’re both equally important.

So get your pen and paper out (it’s always nicer by hand) and write your own Gratitude List. I promise it will raise a smile and make your day, and your life will feel a whole lot better.

Chalkboard image courtesy of How to Succeed With Goal Setting by Andrew Carter

Have you ever written a Gratitude List before? Do you write one in conjunction with with a Goals List? Is there any part of writing a Gratitude List that you would do differently? If so, I’d love to hear about it – please feel free to share you ideas and experiences.

How I Use My Singing Bowl

I was very fortunate to be gifted with a Tibetan Singing Bowl a few years ago, though I never fully appreciated it or its uses until some time later. I never played it properly, and to be honest, I didn’t really know how or even what to do with it. I must admit to having a little fear of it too. I felt a little silly trying to get it to make the wonderful sound I had heard from other people and their bowls; and I also felt a little self conscious doing it too. Having teenagers in the house can seriously interfere with your spiritual pursuits!

The journey I’ve had with my bowl has been a rich and varied one. I have gone from complete novice to what I consider to be a capable player. It’s been very much a two-way street though, apart from learning to play my bowl and understanding its pitch and nuances; it has helped on my own spiritual journey, and it’s some of these that I’d like to talk about in this post: meditation and cleansing, or as some might say, asperging.

Beginning with asperging, or cleansing, I would like to just outline the basic concepts; and over time, what I have found works for me when I cleanse a house. To asperge simply means to cleanse with water. Born as a Catholic ritual before mass, its purpose is to purify the congregation. In these modern, perhaps ‘New Age’ times, the ritual has been adapted for the more practical settings of our own homes, or any space for that matter. Along with smudge sticks and incense, asperging is a great way to help with cleansing the negative energies that have accumulated in a house; and once completed can allow the house to ‘breathe’ again, refreshed.

My bowl came into its own though when I began meditating, and it’s where my relationship with my bowl began. I would light some nice incense and begin breathing in its aromas and take just a few moments to settle myself before playing my bowl. I was hopeless at first, I would be running my mallet too fast around the outside of the bowl and it would vibrate and ‘chatter’; but I allowed myself to go with the flow and let the meditation last for as long as it was natural to at that time.

I’m not sure at what point I began to improve, but slowly I did and I found myself humming to the sound too – now I was singing with my bowl, it was quite a moment! I have tried to say mantras*, but to be honest, I get lost in the meditation and find myself unaware or unable to complete it. This is ok though, as something else happened during my experiences: soaring.

This simply begins with playing my bowl and then visualising myself, or rather my spirit, rising skyward. I usually hum while doing this as I find the vibration helps. While I can’t tell you when I get lost in that moment, I know I have only when I return to myself and regain awareness of my being. The effects of this kind of meditation last throughout the day; I’m more centered, calmer and seemingly better equipped to just go about my day.

I find this particularly helpful when I prepare for a house cleansing, or asperging. Centering yourself in this situation helps you to focus and attune to the natural energies of the house or space you will be cleansing. Raising your vibration this way also fine tunes your clairvoyance and psychic frequencies so that spirit communication is clearer. It’s important to point out that this process with your bowl is an inner one; this is about you connecting to source, to spirit, to the energies around you and is in no way suggesting that a singing bowl is a means of spirit communication like a Ouija board or seance.

There’s something truly wonderful about the sound that you create from playing your singing bowl, and as I have said earlier, it took a while to get the hang of it, but I’m awfully glad I persisted. A bond now exists and whenever I reach for my bowl, we’re like two old friends picking up a conversation that has been lasting forever.

This excellent video from Shakti at Bodhisattva Trading Company clearly shows how to play your bowl properly and would have been a terrific help to me had I watched it when I was first learning. Enjoy.

*Om Mani Padme Hum is a mantra often used with meditation using a singing bowl.

Do you use a singing bowl? What are your experiences with it? Do you have any tips or other ways to use yours? We’d love to hear from you!

Catherine

…And Finding My Spirituality

It seems like a strange thing to say, as a lot of people consider the two things to be the same, or at least so closely related they never considered them as separate and unique. There perhaps was a time when I thought the same way too. But not now.

Losing my religion was the best thing that happened to me. It’s not been an overnight event, but a long process that I wasn’t even aware had begun. But I’m awfully glad it did.

It’s been a very liberating experience – and at times a difficult one. My own personal opinion is that Catholicism is indoctrination; and the indoctrination runs deep. Being schooled privately by nuns as a young girl will do that to you. It was years until I could finally believe that God didn’t punish you for doing something wrong; and it was years after that, that I questioned God’s existence in the manner in which I’d been conditioned to believe.

There may be some of you screaming heretic at me now, but consider the logic and realism of a heavenly father. Think for a moment, just one little moment about the idea or image you have of god in your heart and mind. What do you feel? Do you feel? Is what you know about god brought to you by your own experience with him? Or is it what you have also been led to believe all these years? Is your heavenly father the forgiving kind, or the vengeful kind? It would seem to me that the global god is many things and the more you search, the further away you go from finding your answer.

That statement itself raised further questions for me and without prior knowledge or understanding, I found myself loosely exploring the philosophy of Descartes. In trying to find out my own truths, I began stripping every thought and ideal I had once embraced, and applying his process of Radical Doubt to my questioning, I found some of my answers a little hard to take.

Very briefly, Descartes concluded that the only truth you can prove is of your own existence; the only thing you can truly rely on is that you think. He coined the phrase: ‘I think therefore I am’. Of course this led me to question the very existence of God, though Descartes says you can conceive of God. This was troubling for me as it seemed that despite all the scriptures and writings down the ages, the doctrines and the instructions, it left me with nothing heavenly, only the earthly dogma applied by man.

‘But I’ve had religious experiences,’ you might say; ‘I can feel God’. I would say ‘can you? Have you? Can you be absolutely sure that what you experienced was real? That it wasn’t some trick of the mind or the senses?’ Where does this kind of thinking leave a person? It left me in a void for a while, considering that Descartes also showed that your senses can be tricked and therefore cannot be trusted. I can’t say that aspect has been a pleasant experience. I too had religious experiences; I received healing in church and felt the heat throughout my body and I’ve spoken in tongues; so to find myself logically questioning my own experiences has been challenging to say the least. But challenge them I have. In the pursuit of freeing myself from the shackles of dogma and preconceived ideas that weren’t my own, I’ve had no choice. It’s also been a very liberating experience and for once I can ask those questions that have plagued me for years about myself, my existence and my purpose without fear of hell-fire and damnation.

I can finally question the god that has been presented to me by people who actually didn’t have my best interests at heart; or perhaps their own. What kind of heavenly father have they asked me to embrace? One that will punish me? One that will ostracise me and abandon me if I don’t conform? I am a mother and I cannot conceive of the idea of imposing any of those ideas on my own children. If I am truly a child of god, then why the heavy hand? Why does my spiritual health come with a compromise? Why so many conditions? Why apparently give and then restrict?

I have this body and it feels sensations. Sex is pleasurable and yet it is scorned upon and layered with conditions for its proper use. I’m a very sexual person and have always enjoyed sex. However, religiously, and in my religious mind, it has always been compromised with conditions and restrictions. Only when you can learn to drop the religion can you see sex as the most natural thing in the world; and most importantly, I feel, that sex is the link to spirituality. The point of orgasm is the closest thing to divinity that I have ever experienced; it’s otherworldly, sublime and something my body does so easily that I have to question why my so called heavenly father would want to physically give me the equipment and then scorn me for using it? He giveth and he taketh away? That’s not good enough. You can take my religion away, I’m finding my spirituality my own way, without the dogma; and I’m thoroughly enjoying the sex!