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Tapping the Well Within

Balboa Press

Chapter One

The Daily Practice of Clearing Your Energy and Communing with Your Higher Self

Birth Day

    Each day     Is like my birthday

    I awaken     Early     Release the dogs into delicious morning     Free the collective curiosity of chickens and     Pet the cat

    And then I come into this space     Into the silence of my breath     Into the lightness of my spirit     Into the limitless space inside my head

    The sky begins to brighten as     I wait

    And the gifts begin to arrive

The Wisdom of Spirit

There is a wisdom that comes to each of us from the small, still place of being called Spirit. When we are silent, when we relinquish our hold on ego and on mind, then we are able to hear Spirit talking.

The words that flow from Spirit are deeply true, for me, in the moment of their writing and beyond. As I connect with Spirit within, I connect with what I have to say from the core of myself.

The words sing.

They chortle.

They play.

I am better than I know I am. I am Divinely inspired, and luminous.

* Writing Is Not Hard

There is a myth/story/picture in our world that says that the process of birthing words is as agonizing as the process of birthing young. Yet writing does not have to be painful.

When we are tapped into Spirit, communing with the deepest places within, writing becomes effortless and joyful. The words flow forth with ease, surprising even the writer, whose job becomes listening to, recording, and polishing the words that come.

I have learned to connect with my spirit and to write from this sacred space through the practice of meditation. I practice a grounding and clearing style of meditation taught to me by clairvoyant healer Christine Agro (www.christineagro.com). Her seeing and her teachings inform this book, and I honor and acknowledge her work.

Meditation is now as much a part of my balanced day as showering, eating, and sleeping. It is in the meditation space that I am able to release judgment, perfection energy, and ego. I clear from my space the energy that no longer serves me, and I use the connection to my Higher Self that meditation creates to receive words, messages, and insights that guide and inform my life.

It is through my daily practice of communing with my Higher Self that I decide what to write, what to write about today, and what belongs in the manuscript I am creating. Sometimes when I meditate (which I do for an hour or more each day), words simply come to me, even though I am not consciously thinking about my writing. Truths about dog training, ideas for articles, wording for my Web sites: All this and more floats up from that deep, still place within. I never know what gifts I will receive from my meditation session, and they usually come when I least expect them.

When I am working on a piece and the words don't feel right, I have only to close my eyes, breathe deeply, and dip into the meditation zone to find the wording that I need. It's stress free. It's fun! And it's a place all writers can visit to support their own creativity.

In this book, I will share with you the simple process of grounding meditation that Christine Agro taught me. I will show you how to use the meditation space to clear the energetic blocks that might be hampering your writing, such as giving your power away to others in your search for validation, or reaching for perfection at the expense of momentum. I will teach you how to set up a writing space that honors your spirit, and I will show you ways to connect with your spirit and channel its words and its wisdom as you write. And finally, I will talk briefly about how my journey into living as Spirit-in-a-body and my ability to write from Spirit are inextricably intertwined.

As I share with you the way I use the meditation space as a vehicle for all these journeys, what I share with you is my truth. It is true for me—not necessarily also for you. If any of these suggestions resonate for you, that's great. Use them. They are tools that belong to all of us. What does not resonate for you, you can simply leave behind, like items from the buffet that you choose not to eat.

It all begins with what Christine Agro calls "running your energy," or simply "meditating." Running your energy, like all great tools, is very, very simple; yet what it shifts in your life can be profound.

* A Simple Grounding Meditation: Running Your Energy

Choose a comfortable chair or seat that supports your back and allows your feet to rest comfortably and fully upon the floor or ground.

Begin with a deep breath in through your nose, and then exhale through your mouth with the soft sound of ahhhh. After the deep breath, feel how effortless the next breath is: Your belly fills with air and you can follow the breath in and up, out and down, with soft intention. Allow your breath to come and go without force.

Now close your eyes. Pick a color of light, and imagine a tube of light in the color you have chosen. Attach it firmly to the base of your spine. Yes, you can! You're a writer—imagine it! Next, see, imagine, or allow this tube of light to extend down through your body, through your seat or chair, down through all the layers of the house you're in, and into the earth. The tube of light extends effortlessly down through the earth until it reaches the center of your earth, and makes a strong connection there. See, imagine, or set your intention to have the cord of light attach in whatever way you choose into the center of the earth.

Bring your attention back up the cord of light, allowing the grounding cord to expand in all directions until it is as big around as your physical body. Let it grow past your physical body until it is as wide as your aura, or energy field. Yes, it's still attached to your spine, and it's also as wide as your aura in all directions. Tell your mental body to shush; all this can be true at once if you intend it.

Now, on that cord of light there is a switch. Turn it on, and start to release all the energy that no longer serves you. This could be the energy of other people that has rubbed off into your space, the energy of your past that you are willing to relinquish, the energy of the five jelly doughnuts you just had for breakfast.

At this time, you do not even need to know exactly what the unwanted energy is that you are releasing. Later we will name some of it; for now just send it on, down, and out.

Sit, and breathe, and run unwanted energy down your grounding cord for the next five to fifteen minutes. If your body wants to yawn, yawn to the fullest. Yawn, sigh, blow your nose, wipe your teary eyes: All these are signs that the body is releasing energy. Meditate with tissues nearby, and perhaps a tall glass of water or herbal tea, to cleanse and refresh your physical space.

Before you leave the meditation space, use the golden sun exercise, which follows, to fill up the energy spaces you have just created with new energy of your own choosing.

* The Golden Sun of Our Choosing

Running your energy empties your space of the energies that no longer serve you. With this activity, you create spaces in and around you. These spaces will fill with something over time, and you probably would prefer to choose the energy that fills them instead of randomly absorbing whatever energy is near.

To fill yourself in with fabulous new energy, imagine a huge golden sun above your head. Fill this sun with the energy you most desire in your life at this time: abundance, forgiveness, love, amusement—whatever thing or things you wish to have more of in your life.

When you are ready, burst this golden sun and let its energy flow down into the top of your head, through all the crevices of your face and head and neck. Let it flow down through your shoulders and into your arms, through your fingers, and out your hands. Let some of this glorious vibration go through your torso, down your legs, and out your feet. As the excess energy spills out through your fingers and toes, it fills your grounding cord and surrounds you in its glow. Now that you have filled yourself in, you can either continue to meditate, or simply sit in this energy space until you are ready to open your eyes.

Congratulations! You have just run your energy. This simple practice of grounding, releasing, and refilling is the gateway to yourself.

* A Daily Practice

I have heard many advisers suggest that writers should write at least something each day, that they should sit down at the same time each day and put some words on paper. If I had to pick a daily practice, however, it would be this: to run my energy, to clear my space, to connect with my inner wisdom each and every day until I could not live without this time set aside for myself.

At the time of this writing, it has been eighteen months since I began my work with Christine Agro and learned to run my energy. In the beginning, fifteen minutes of meditation seemed like a long time, I did it because I was supposed to, and I checked the clock to see when the time was up.

Early on, I took a meditation class that included mantras. I dutifully said my mantras every day for forty days without skipping one day, but my mantra sessions looked like that old game show Beat the Clock! Each night I said the mantras out loud, and as I practiced the Sanskrit phrases, I got faster and faster, shaving time off my 108 repetitions as if going for the fastest time gained me some cosmic prize.

Each time I took a class with Christine, she reminded us to make space in our lives to run our energy. At first, she suggested fifteen to twenty minutes a day. That grew to thirty, to forty-five, to an hour and more.

Like any habit, the more I did, the more I became accustomed to doing. Now, sixty to seventy-five minutes six days out of seven is routine for me. If I skip a day, I feel a strong need to meditate the next morning, as strong as the pull to brush my teeth or take a shower or eat.

The time of day that works best for you will be something you will learn through trial and error. I tried meditating at night, and although I enjoyed it, I found that I was often so tired that I ended up falling asleep. Now I meditate every morning before I start on the chores of the day. If I miss the early morning time for some reason, I often meditate in the late morning before lunch, in the late afternoon before dinner, or as a last resort, just before bed. When traveling, I find a seat at my gate and meditate until boarding starts. As you experiment, you will find the time and schedule that works best for you.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you add meditation to your life. Choose a time before a meal or at least an hour after you have eaten. Meditating after a large meal is problematic, just as swimming or exercising right after lunch is not the best idea. This is because, after a meal, your body sends blood and energy to your stomach and digestive tract, so there is less available for your muscles to exercise with, or your brain to meditate with.

Also, people often get cold when they meditate. I know that I do! Joan Borysenko explains that meditation actually raises the temperature of your skin, so that you become warmer than the air around you. The chilly air against your warm skin makes you feel cold. Whatever the reason, unless it is summertime, I wrap up well to meditate.

Finally, as I mentioned before, I have the urge to cleanse and flush my physical body while meditation is clearing my energetic body. I bring either organic herbal tea or fresh water with me when I meditate, and I often add liquid chlorophyll to the water to help my body detoxify.

* There Is No Wrong Way to Meditate

As I work with clients to teach them how to run their energy, a number of common reactions are predictable. I'm going to run through some of them here. This list is based on the work of Christine Agro and Joan Borysenko, and on my own experience.

* I Can' t Get My To-Do List Out of My Head!

If meditation is a new practice for you, you may find that the first thing that occurs in the meditation space is your mental body running a list of all of the jobs you need to remember to take care of when you are done meditating.

As I am writing this, there is a thought in my head that has bounced in and out of my brain for several days, since I have neither taken care of the action nor written it down to remind myself to take care of it later. Ironically, my brain is reminding me to put a section into chapter 4 about writing that doesn't connect to the mental body. That's funny—my brain is reminding me to write about avoiding the brain while writing! So I just stopped typing in this section and added a subheading in the right place to remind me about that topic when I hit chapter 4. I feel much better now.

There are two things I recommend doing when the to-do-list worries strike. Sometimes what floats up is something I really need to remember. In that case, I find it helpful to actually emerge from the meditation space long enough to jot it down. If I am meditating in my studio, I grab a sticky note. If I am elsewhere, I usually have my meditation journal with me and I write it there. The act of writing down an important task, especially one that I have been remembering and forgetting for several days, is liberating, as I no longer need to use my mental energy to keep track of it.

The other thing I recommend, and I use this technique with most of the thoughts that intrude into my meditation space, is to observe the thought or anxiety neutrally, and let it float away. I release the errant thoughts as if they were leaves falling into a creek and floating downstream, or balloons lifting off into the sky. If the worry is an especially big one, I put it in a bubble and send it out of my space, which you will learn to do in chapter 2. But for little worries, random thoughts, and other things that float into my meditation space, I choose to simply see them and release them, or if they are important enough, jot them down and then release them.

* When I Was Meditating, I Fell Asleep!

As you are learning to meditate, you may find that you fall asleep during your meditation session. It makes sense that your body might confuse meditation with sleep. After all, when you close your eyes and relax, it's often the prelude to falling asleep at night. So in the beginning, you might find yourself drifting off during a meditation session. Over time, your body will learn the difference between your intention to meditate and your intention to sleep, and the problem will solve itself.

If I am very tired when I sit down to meditate, I sometimes enter a state somewhere between sleeping and meditating. While this is a relaxing place to be, it's not a particularly productive state. When I am fuzzed out with fatigue, I tend not to do my work of clearing or to receive insights. I just zone out. If you find this happening to you, try meditating earlier in the day.

Finally, many people in today's world are chronically sleep deprived. If you consistently fall asleep during meditation, maybe you just need to sleep more! Having said that, I will add that, most of the time, an hour's meditation does more for my energy level than an hour's sleep.

Overall, don't judge yourself for nodding off while you are "supposed" to be running your energy. Instead, see what adjustments you can make to your daily routine, and hold the clear intention to run your energy when you sit down to meditate.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Tapping the Well Withinby Alix Moore Copyright © 2011 by Alice A Moore. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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