Create A Spiritual Practice

I am looking for ideas, suggestions and inspirations as I work on creating my own spiritual practice that affirms and celebrates a beautiful world and a beautiful life. Today, I woke at six and did 20 minutes of a guided body scan meditation where you sit in a meditative pose and go over every inch of your body. I chose it because it was the first in a list of guided meditations provided free from Audio Dharma.

I have been wanting to learn how to meditate for many years. The best meditative experience I had recently was in Los Angeles with my friend Johnny at Agape Church. It was a group mediation of a half hour with several hundred people before a sermon by Marianne Williamson whose book A Return to Love, allowed me to look at my own Catholic background with less anger. Previously, during a religious spell as a teenager in Catholic School, I use to get to a focused and ecstatic state by praying three rosaries first thing in the morning. After I decided in college that I could no longer associate with an organized religion that oppressed women and children with the result of facilitating institutionalized pedophilia, I was never able to find a substitute for the mental focus the three rosaries gave me and in truth, I didn't try to find such a thing until now, fifteen years or more later.

Yesterday, in preparation for a long distance healing session with Viki, an amazing, gifted healer who has brought such lightness into my daily life and helped me release a tremendous amount of physical and emotional pain, I wrote down a list of gratitudes and prayers. The main spiritual practice, we have in my family of 3 is to say a daily list of gratitudes. I also wrote down what I was hoping to bring into my life and three versions of what my perfect day would look like. So today on Viki's suggestion, I spent 8 minutes listening and imitating a Brad Yates tapping video about manifesting what you want in your life by dispelling your doubts and fears about what you deserve. I had tried to tap once before, and it makes me feel instantaneously dizzy and shivery. Maybe this is an indication of the potential power of this technique. I did get through the 8 minute session, stopping several times and I will continue to try it. Not least because I am so curious about the physical reaction it immediately calls up, almost like vertigo.

For the past few months, I have been dreaming about creating an illuminated hand made book of prayers. I have this image of a white haired shaman leafing through a magical book of spells that resonates within me as something I experienced many hundreds of years ago. I would love any prayer suggestions you might have. Here is my retelling of the Hail Mary, the most said prayer of The Rosary:

HAIL MOTHERS

Hail Mothers, Full of Grace,

The Universe is within us,

Blessed are we among people,

and blessed are the fruit of our wombs,

our children.

Holy Mothers,

Mothers for all of us,

Pray for us children,

now and at every moment of our lives, amen.