Awake in the World

The kitchen offers one of the best and most creative places for practicing mindfulness. Many mindfulness practices are done in yoga studios or meditation rooms where everything is designed to be calm and peaceful. This is a nice way to begin the practice of meditation, but real meditation starts to take place when it’s intimately integrated into daily life. What better place to start than in the kitchen?!

Turning a meal into a meditation experience can be a beneficial way to observe the mind, explore challenges and also sow love into a meal designed for yourself, your family or a friend. When viewed as play, it can also bring fun into the practice and keep it light and joyful rather than dour and serious. But more than that it can be an opportunity to consciously cook with love.

Walter Danzer, founder of Soyana, a natural foods company located in Switzerland takes the ancient practices to heart. Food cooked with love provides nutrition for body, mind and spirit. It gives the added “soul nutrients” that don’t come from factory made, processed foods. Ever have that longing for mom’s homemade dishes? Baked, sweet yams, persimmon pudding, cheesecake or even simple corn on the cob? Sometimes the store brought varieties can be found, but they still leave an unsatisfied feeling. Danzer and his employees realize the importance of peaceful surroundings for food preparation. All of Soyana’s employees meditate regularly and consciously bring the energy of love into their work and food handling. The result has been a successful company that exports to Germany and continues to expand with new product lines and creative ideas.

In ancient traditions it’s said that the cook transmits subtle properties of his or her thoughts and emotions into the food. To avoid being contaminated by the world, monks would cook their own food or take something with them when they traveled away from the monastery. Danzer said he and his staff experienced this first hand when they all ate a meal at a restaurant and all of them awoke with nightmares. From that time Danzer dedicated himself to providing foods made in the most uplifting environment.

With these reflections in mind, try making a conscious meal and bringing in that delectable energy of love. Chop the zucchini with careful attention. The mind will want to wander to other things, but gently bring it back. Enjoy the creative joy of being present in the kitchen.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life. A visionary and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices at the Sophia Institute and other venues in the U.S. and Europe. Her mind/body/spirit articles, essays and stories appear in publications around the globe and were broadcast by BBC World Services Radio. She has spent over fifteen years practicing meditation, working with dreams and doing spiritual practices. Visit her online at http://www.awakeintheworld.com.

We make choices everyday to be a zero and make no effort or to become spiritual heroes to ourselves and those around us.Elevated souls like the Buddha, Jesus, Ramakrishna, Mohammad, Krishna and Guru Nanak were all spiritual superheroes. They approached life’s many challenges with love, compassion and Self-confidence. From the point of view of a spiritual superhero, they stood strong during the most terrible trials that life threw at them. Their lives tell stories of how attitude and divine inspiration buoyed them up. Buddha’s forbearance as he sought out enlightenment under the Bodhi tree reveals a solid, unshaking inner force. Despite demons, temptations and tempests, he remained unmoved until the light within rose and with it brought Self-realization.

Ramakrishna, an Indian saint who lived in the 1840’s held fast to a very simple life as a temple priest. As a worshiper of Kali, he also explored other ways including merging with Jesus. He became very sick with throat cancer. The suffering made his devotees cringe, but he continued to sing devotional songs to his beloved Kali and inspired many people for generations to come. Not once did he complain of the pain or lament of his physical suffering.

Women saints have also inspired. Mother Teresa is world-renowned for her compassionate service to thousands and thousands of India’s most sick and destitute. She fearlessly embraced the ill and shared her love with them equally. Her Nobel Peace Prize was the ultimate recognition of her spiritual superhero status.

We make choices everyday to be a zero and make no effort or to become spiritual heroes to ourselves and those around us. What kind of spiritual superhero would you like to be? What qualities will you need to develop? Go for it!

Bio: Debra Moffitt is author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life. A visionary and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices at the Sophia Institute and other venues in the U.S. and Europe. Her mind/body/spirit articles, essays and stories appear in publications around the globe and were broadcast by BBC World Services Radio. She has spent over fifteen years practicing meditation, working with dreams and doing spiritual practices. Visit her online at http://www.debramoffitt.com and http://www.awakeintheworld.com.

“The key questions for today’s managers and leaders are no longer issues of task and structure, but are questions of spirit.” – Jack Hawley, Reawakening the Spirit in Work

Most of us spend eight or more hours a day at work. What if anything does the job have to do with spiritual life? Everything. Many people say they would like to quit their jobs to find a more meaningful occupation. They feel that in their current professions they’re not making a contribution. They say that working for a charity or volunteering would bring more contentment. But every job can become meaningful and every individual can make a contribution and find satisfaction when work is perceived as a spiritual practice.

Consider the cashier at Earthfare who uses her job in a conscious way to uplift people. She greets them with a constant, serene and sincere presence. She doesn’t demand attention or shout out that her job is a spiritual practice (and she may not even consider it that way), but in action, her words of encouragement that come out as she bags kale and organic coffee, have the power to transform the atmosphere for the people who pass by her. How many hundreds upon thousands of people will be influenced by her calm, quiet presence? These same customers will take home some of her good energy and possibly share it with their families, colleagues and friends.

We tend to think that only jobs with big titles, lots of subordinates and high pay are important. But every person in every job can make a difference – if they turn work into a conscious practice for spiritual growth. In what way can you be more conscious in your job today? If you don’t have a job, then consider your roles. How can you use your role in life to be an inspiration to others? Every opportunity can open doors to new hope and ignite a spark of joy. In spiritual practice, the sacred and profane walk hand in hand, the sacred elevates the profane to turn the journey into one filled with meaning and purpose regardless of place, time or the activity involved.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life. A visionary and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices at the Sophia Institute and other venues in the U.S. and Europe. Her mind/body/spirit articles, essays and stories appear in publications around the globe and were broadcast by BBC World Services Radio. She has spent over fifteen years practicing meditation, working with dreams and doing spiritual practices. Visit her online at http://www.debramoffitt.com and http://www.awakeintheworld.com.

Who am I? Where have I come from? And where am I going? These three questions open doors to spiritual self-discovery. We often get so caught up in material life that we begin to identify with our possessions, our jobs and our roles in relationships. Whether we become aware of it or not, we often think of ourselves in direct relationship to our homes, our cars, our clothes, our partners and our families and jobs. Another way to look at it is that we unconsciously think, “I am my job. I am good because I have a good house. I am enviable because I drive a good car. I am a spouse, etc.” But what happens when we lose these things? We lose our imagined identity and we no longer know who we really are.

Ancient Asian wisdom traditions used a practice of inquiry as a way to discover who we really are. That is, the part of us which is Real and never changing. It’s a practice of self-discovery to help arrive at the spiritual core of one’s being. A guru (Sanskrit for teacher) would encourage students to ask, “Am I my body?” They were expected to answer “neti, neti.” “Not that. Not that.” My body changes perpetually and eventually will be shed like an old dress or a worn pair of jeans. So I cannot be the body. “Am I the mind?” My mind will lose its sharpness and its ability to think clearly. I may even lose my mind, so I am not the mind.

Am I my soul? Even the soul goes through periods of growth and change. In the ancient wisdom traditions, the Spirit or the atma, the unchanging essence that continues even when all else dissolves and changes, is Real. Therefore, they encouraged students to realize, “I am atma.” I am the eternal, unchanging absolute – and to identify with this. This is a powerful way to remain unaffected by the ups and downs of the life’s journey.

A good way to reinforce this is to repeat, “I am atma.” Or, “I am the unchanging, eternal Absolute.” Or “I am Love.”  This ancient practice anchors us in the deep wisdom of knowing our true nature and understanding ourselves as profoundly greater and wiser than what we may initially imagine. Give it a try and discover the depths and the power of anchoring in the Spirit as your true identity.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life. A visionary and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices at the Sophia Institute and other venues in the U.S. and Europe. Her mind/body/spirit articles, essays and stories appear in publications around the globe and were broadcast by BBC World Services Radio. She has spent over fifteen years practicing meditation, working with dreams and doing spiritual practices. Visit her online at http://www.debramoffitt.com and http://www.awakeintheworld.com.