Tag Archives: spaciousness

Daily Intention: Spaciousness

9 May

Spaciousness… was the the word I’d been dancing around using as an intention for the past couple weeks.  It’s such an abstract idea… but one that I’m so very attracted to.  It’s hard to describe how this one worked for me today, but I do feel like it helped me out to keep this word in mind.

Maybe it’s an “our day and age” thing… maybe it’s a southern California thing, but I feel like spaciousness is something that is very scarce these days.  Physically… mentally… so much is often packed into a small amount of space that it leaves us very little room to expand ourselves.  So much is packed into our schedules, so many thoughts are packed into our brains, so many buildings are packed in right next to each other.  I sometimes get the feeling of being cramped or cluttered, crowded in or slightly suffocated.  A lot of my other day’s intentions have been supportive of this notion, and trying to guide my days in tipping the scales towards the direction of spaciousness.  Breathing and Slowing Down… Being in Action and Listening,  all give me a chance to allow some space into my days and my thoughts.

There’s more to this word and feeling than I can explain with any kind of articulation right now… but this was a good start.

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Daily Intention: Slow Down

23 Apr

I’m trying something new.

I did this yesterday and it went really wonderfully, so I’m going to keep it up.

I’m making an intention to hold for my day.  Kind of like an extended, occasional meditation.

Yesterday’s intention was to be accepting of the moment I was in.  Which was a really helpful intention to hold in my mind while I was at work, and often, would prefer to be elsewhere.

It reminded me a bit of the practice of choosing a word for the year… where it just serves as  a gentle reminder whenever I could feel myself start to get disgruntled.  It helped to bring me back, at least into a frame of mind that wasn’t struggling against my unavoidable reality.

Today, my intention is to go slow.

There was one visit, several years ago, that I made down to Orange County.  I was at my friend Nathan’s house and had just said a brief hello to his parents as we were heading out the door, when his dad stopped me.  Without having had any kind of update on things going on in my life at the time… he told me that he felt like I needed to hear something before I left.  Slow down. he said to me.  He said a few more things, I’m sure.  But to this day, I can still hear the soft, gentle tone of his voice, and feel his hand on my shoulder.  Slow down.

I told Nathan about it later and he reminded me that his dad had once been a pastor.  And also said that he definitely had a some prophetic sensitivities.  And I’ll never forget that.  Because it was, exactly the message I needed to hear back then.

And while life is dramatically slower paced than it once was… Internally, I often still feel like I’m running the hamster wheel.  So today, it’s my message to myself.  To slow down, take things as they come, and allow myself some mental space when I’m not sure what should come next.

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