Three Minutes Twenty Four Seconds Divinely Sent

A friend sent an audio clip to me that I was not expecting.  It was three minutes long and it felt like it was a divine act.  I stayed dazed for a week on the timing and content of receiving this audio out of the blue.

My friend and I had never discussed the topic of this clip.  I think she knew I might find it interesting.  I listened to the first seconds of it and heard a woman ask the speaker a question, paused it  and I got really excited.  I thought, oh my gosh, if he answers this question the way I think he will, I'm going to freak out.

These aha moments blow me away.  I live for these types of discoveries.  They rock my world.

The topic was emotional sobriety and the speaker was Father Richard Rohr.  I became acquainted with him through his book "The Naked Now" in a Spirituality Quest class a few years back and then heard him speak in person for a two day ("best revival ever") conference at my church.   His content is a salve to all of the fundamentalist baggage that I carry.  My Sunday morning group began a Rohr book the week that I received the audio clip.

On the clip, a woman asks when anger comes up how does she "control" it?

On this blog, I have talked about learning to let my feelings flow through.  I had never heard of this technique but began doing so instinctively while hearing that I needed to learn to feel my feelings not push them down with food.   I didn't even realize that I was practicing a technique but I had input from therapy, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Gary Zukav, Deepak Chopra and "Celebrity Rehab" among others.  I am well rounded if anything.

Weeks ago, I saw a high school acquaintance that I had not seen in over 20 years.  I knew from some of her FB posts that we would have some similar ideas about life.  I took a risk and we talked about some "deep" issues.  And then bam, she used the words mindfulness training.  I laughed for a solid week that I had not known what I was practicing for the last two years, was called mindfulness.  I knew I was training myself to change my thoughts about feelings that arose.  I have learned to allow myself to feel them but not allow the feelings to own me.  I knew it was hard to do.  I knew that it was about changing the way I interacted with people as well, i.e. boundaries.  And now I know it is about moving to higher levels of consciousness.

In this audio clip, Richard Rohr explained the art of mindfulness simply, easily and concisely.  I began to jump up and down in my mind as he described it.  (I want to share the clip with you but it is copyrighted)

I knew I have been on to something, something really big, to change my worldview...

and my life.

I live for these aha moments.

This is not Richard Rohr - but it describes the process as well.