My house is back in order–the bowl of rooms always does the trick. I got back to the gym after my blog-birthing hiatus, and that pushed me closer to feeling like myself again (running outside is still out of the question given the 100+ temperatures over the weekend).
I forced myself to take a break from the blog yesterday. My plan is to post Monday through Saturday as long as it remains fun and I have meaningful content to add. That sounded like a lot to me when another author suggested it as a good strategy, but now a dozen ideas a day are swirling through my head. Here are a few of the topics I’ll be covering going forward:
- What is Feng Shui?
- What do I mean by Animal House?
- How will I protect my children’s privacy when I use events from our lives as illustrations of lessons I’ve learned (or am still in the process of learning)?
- What has been my process of spiritual awakening and transformation?
- What lessons did I learn from my breast cancer experience?
- How have I experienced the mind/body/soul connection in my healing process?
When a writing idea materializes, I “catch the butterfly” by jotting it down in a notepad or adding it directly to the “Catching Butterflies” file in my laptop. A mass of butterflies chased me from my dreams at 3:00 a.m. this morning, their fragile wings crashing against one another in their confinement.
Though my house was clean again, my mind was still cluttered. It was creative clutter–not as bad as negative or worry clutter–but clutter nonetheless. I considered getting up and releasing the butterflies to the computer, in the same way that Dumbledore pulled memories out of his head with a wand and deposited them into the Pensieve (I’ve been looking for one of those on Amazon).
Sleep, though, is something I know I need. Though I am an early riser by nature, getting up at 3:00 a.m. would wreck me for the rest of the day. So I lay on my back and practiced mind clearing. Eckhart Tolle’s advice to escape from obsessive thought patterns is to focus on the space between words. Notice your breathing; feel how the air enters your body and leaves it without you making an effort; shine the light of your awareness on the space between breaths.
Also, focus intently on your hands, paying such deep attention that you can feel the aliveness in the cells. When I practice this, I feel a tingling in my hands. At this point, I am so grounded in my deepest “self” that there is no room for obsessive thought patterns to distract me. It’s never a linear progression, though. It’s always two steps forward, one step back. When a thought manages to break through, I calmly start over again.
After starting over many many times, I finally managed to connect with sleep (including a strange dream that involved a spotted cat with a bladder problem entering our lives–analysis anyone?).
How do you handle middle-of-the-night wakefulness? Share your experience in the comment box!
