Monthly Archives: July 2016

…But He’s Got Potential!

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(Reprinted from the Huffington Post)

RELATIONSHIP ADVICE FOR WOMEN FROM A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE

Portrait of smiling young couple in sunlight

 

“Everyone is gifted, but some people never open their package.”  ~Wolfgang Riebe

 

Everyone has potential. We are born with it.

But the big question is will we live up to it? Will we meet it?

Just because we have potential doesn’t mean we will express it in our life.

As women, one of the very best qualities we have is that we can see the best in people. We can sense what a person is capable of. This is an incredibly significant sensitivity. As a mother, for instance, it’s important to see our children’s potential. We want to help them foster and cultivate it to help them realize their potential in the world.

But when we take this skill into the dating arena, this very same ability may not always be in our best interest…and it can sometimes even prove to be our greatest downfall. Because we can sense what our partner is capable of, we may be too quick to throw all our eggs in that heart-basket whether that potential will ever be actualized or not.

We can sense that potential right there, just beneath the surface. But because of woundings from childhood, or just plain being thwarted by life, our partner may leave their most valuable gifts unexpressed, laying dormant in their inner-diamond-heart like hidden buried treasure.

We can fool ourselves out of our need or desperation and develop a fantasy about our man that seems, and feels true, but is not actually realizing. We may gloss over what we hope our partner can be, rather than what he actually is. We can even fall in love with his potential.

That inner part of you that is aware knows all of this though, and this is what you must call on as you navigate the dating minefields of love. It’s important to stay awake to reality, especially in a new relationship, and especially if you find yourself head-over-heels in love, where it’s easy to lose all sight of shore.

In life, and especially in regard to men, the proof is in the pudding. This means, it is by his action that you can discern his potential-into-reality-ratio. For example, when there is a problem or a challenge, what does he actually do? Does he show up? Does he keep his word? Do his words match his actions? Does he admit when he’s wrong? When he fails, does he try again? Does he do what he says? The answers to these questions are the beginnings of perceiving a man’s character and sense of purpose.

It’s pretty straight forward, really. For a man leads by his action. What he does doIS what he is thinking and feeling. So, if he is not doing something, if he is not showing up, if he isn’t coming through, then that IS how he feels. His actions will show you.

There is an old saying that says: behind every great man is a great woman. A man needs someone to believe in him. That is how his best will shine forth. It’s important to help your man realize his potential. That potential IS there. But it’s equally important that he lives up to it. That he shows you. That he tries.

And yes, many people have not yet fully realized their potential; it is a work in progress, is it not? However, it will still be being implemented in some way. Actionswill be being taken. Real efforts will be being made, with real results.

So, let him show you. Let him prove it. And while he is showing it to you, he will prove it to himself.

And, of course, we all need to ask ourselves the same question. Am I living up to my full potential?

From a spiritual perspective, not only do we need to live up to our potential; it is our responsibility to. It is a spiritual imperative. None of this is predicated on success, of course. It isn’t about winning, or making the most money, or getting an Oscar, though of course, you may. It is about living your life with passion and compassion, with creativity and curiosity, and letting that beautiful inner diamond within you be expressed, some way, somehow!

Diana Lang is a spiritual teacher and author of
OPENING TO MEDITATION – www.DianaLang.com

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Meditation in Real Life

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Diana in the Grass(reprinted from The Huffington Post)

Meditation is everywhere. Angelina Jolie meditates. Ellen DeGeneres meditates. Sting meditates. Dr. Oz meditates! Oprah and Deepak Chopra present live webcasts to more than half a million people from around the world in their 21-day meditation challenges. Even Clint Eastwood meditates!

In America, more than ten million adults have a daily meditation practice, and those are just the ones that participated in the poll. Meanwhile, many more of us are quietly meditating in our homes and offices.

Furthermore, scientific studies are showing, by testing yogis, meditators, and mystics of every kind, what has been long been known: meditation really works. It strengthens the immune system, lessens the effects of depression, and lowers blood pressure, just to name a few benefits. Meditating even improves the way we age.

Meditation is being used in every kind of setting, from hospitals to prisons. It is being used to help alleviate the effects of stress and chronic pain. Meditation is even being used to help people through the process of dying. Schools are using meditation to assist children with hyperactivity and keep them off drugs. It is being used worldwide by groups numbering in the millions to purposefully raise humanity’s consciousness to a new level. Meditation is sweeping the Western world!

So what is meditation?

Most of us imagine someone sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop in India. But for most, meditation doesn’t fit this stereotypical image. It is rather a simple daily practice, done at home sitting on the couch, or at the office on lunch break. We do it to keep our balance, to find our center, and to stay present – even when things are difficult – especially when things are difficult.

Life can be so overwhelming. We can get distracted, distraught, confused and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of life. We are bombarded with information and stimulation. There’s so much to do. We are trying so hard to make money, raise kids, to be a good person. We get over-stimulated, over-amped, and finally overwhelmed.

There’s never been a time in history where ADHD and all kinds of other nervous disorders and immune system diseases have been more rampant. We eat too much; we work too hard. We swing from gung-ho exercise programs and massive dieting, to total lethargy and Big Macs. We are a bi-polar nation. We are desperately looking for meaning and simplicity.

We are looking for a way to get back to ourselves – to that part of us that is sacred . . . and it’s been right there all along.

Meditation reconnects us to that simplicity and meaning. It awakens that part of ourselves that is always already connected. When we meditate we have the actual experience of inner peace and a deep inner calm. It’s like the feeling after having returned from a long vacation; you return rested with a greater sense of well-being, but also a broader perspective of your life, and for a while we have a whole new outlook. With a meditation practice, you can have that experience every day.

People by the thousands are turning to meditation every single day, because we’re just plain overwhelmed. We’re stressed out and pissed off. We feel powerless, worried, unworthy, or worse, apathetic. All of these states are conditions of being disconnected – which creates pain. We are in pain because we are disconnected.

Meditation helps us to reconnect to our higher knowing. And the really good news is that it’s easy. It’s simple to do and as normal as breathing. Meditation gives you back your most true and authentic self. When we meditate we begin to feel more and more calm, more sure, and guided in every moment. Meditation takes you where you are, accepts you, and gently, lovingly, and in perfect timing, takes you back to yourself.

So, don’t be surprised if you find out your accountant meditates or your next door neighbor does. Wouldn’t you love to know that the nurse that is caring for you meditates? Or your lawyer? The more conscious we all are, the better this world will become. Where there is consciousness, there is compassion.

Meditation is a return to love. It is a return to your deepest inner knowing and that place within yourself you have always been seeking. Meditation literally makes your world a better place, and therefor, this world a better place.

Meditation will take you home. It creates a clear path to real peace and happiness. The place to start is exactly where you are, and the time is now.

Diana Lang is a spiritual teacher and author of
OPENING TO MEDITATION – www.DianaLang.com

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BIG RED

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url“Owwww, oww, owwwww,” I cried.

“It’s nothing.” said my friend. “It’s just a scrape.”

Meanwhile blood was spilling everywhere in an ever-widening pool around our feet.

Somehow, as I was showing my new friend how to ride a tricycle, which she had never done before, and I held the trike steady for her so it wouldn’t move out from under her as she sidled on, I had my hand precariously gripped tight around the big front wheel. As she got on she pushed the pedals hard, and before I was ready, my index finger caught in the spokes and chopped the top of it off. Blood was gushing out in great big bloops of deep shiny crimson drops everywhere.

I called my trike Big Red because that’s what it was, and my new little friend who had just moved in a couple of houses down from ours had seen me riding really fast down our little San Fernando Valley street in Encino, in those track houses that were built for the soldiers coming home from WW2 and Korea, and I would go tearing down the sidewalk with the white plastic streamers flowing at at least 5 miles an hour. And she wanted to do that too. And even at three and a half, I knew I could teach anybody anything that I knew how to do, so I was showing her.

“Come ooooon,” she complained. “I want to gooooo.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, tears in my eyes, holding the bike steady so she could get back on, blood pouring down the sides of the tire and my jeans.

I held my finger tight to slow down the spurting blood. I was starting to feel dizzy.

But here’s the funny part and what I most remember.  It was how embarrassed I was.

Embarrassed that I had hurt myself.

Shame that she had to stop what she was doing, and that she had noticed.

The stupidity of me that I had done something that I couldn’t hide.

And somehow that I had wrecked her first tricycle riding experience.

So I bit my lip hard and I took my little white t-shirt hem and wrapped it tight around my finger like a tourniquet ,so it would bleed into the t-shirt, and it wouldn’t be so obvious.

And this worked well enough.

She immediately began to pedal with a great big smile on her face.

I let go faster this time.

I remember her laughing and laughing as she rode my Big Red, round and round in big weaving circles in the driveway.

And I was happy she was happy.

I really was.

This is a true story.  The End.

DIANA LANG © 2016

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TWO-AND-A-HALF MINUTES – a little story about Concentration

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420177_3133879144375_457589213_nHer eyes were riveted on the rim of the glass she was carefully holding, as she practically tiptoed across the living room floor to bring her grandmother the very full glass of the special pink lemonade punch her mother had made and asked her to deliver.  She felt like she was practically hovering over the ground, her concentration was so deep.  “Don’t spill the punch, don’t spill the punch” she chanted as she crept across the snow-white carpet of the living room floor.

One time, last year, at her sister’s birthday party, she had spilled the bright red kool-aid on the carpet as she hurried to quickly across the room in time for the birthday song, and she had gotten in so much trouble.  Her mother had had to call the carpet cleaner, and when her father got home she got in trouble again, she could still feel his disappointment in her.  That was seventy-five dollars they didn’t have to waste.  She was humiliated and embarrassed.  She would be more careful next time, she had promised.

So now, as she made her careful way across the wide expanse of the living room floor, the punch gently swashing from side to side, just edging up to one side of the lip of the glass, then gently to the other, she hoped fervently she would not spill this drink.  But boy, was it full, she thought.

The worst part for her, she was realizing, was that the more she concentrated the more the punch seemed to slosh closer to the brim.  She wondered if she was noticing that it appeared closer to the brim because she was concentrating so hard and so it was magnified, or was she noticing it more because it really was sloshing closer to the brim?  Both, she knew.  She continued to creep her way across the what seemed ever-widening distance between the kitchen and the living room, concentrating with all her might, to where everyone sat laughing and talking.

“Don’t spill the punch, don’t spill the punch,” she repeated silently to herself.

The back and forth sloshing of the punch in the glass became greater and greater.  Her hand was practically shivering from the muscular contraction that she held the glass with to hold it still.  The more it moved, the tighter she held it.  The tighter she held it, the more her hand shook from the exertion.  It really was a physical conundrum.

This is not going well, she thought to herself.  Her fear of spilling, the embarrassment, the punishment, flooded her mind, but also equally, the goal of bringing her beloved grandmother the punch created a chaotic condition in her mind that almost had her in tears, which of course, just made the tension greater.

It was just then that her grandmother’s gaze caught her eyes – and held her.

She used her grandmother’s eyes to right herself.  She relaxed her hand.  Her grandmother saw her concentration and she gently smiled.  She relaxed some more.  Okay, okay concentrate, concentrate, she told herself.  I can do this.  She held the glass steady, and looking directly at her grandmother’s eyes, she let her grandmother’s gaze carry her the rest of the way across the white-carpeted floor like a tractor beam.  She never even looked at the glass.  She just concentrated on her grandmother’s soft, knowing smile and aimed for it.  And before she knew it, she was there.  Her grandmother took the glass from her hands.

“Why thank you, darling girl.  My, that’s a full glass.  And you didn’t spill a drop!”  She laughed and took a deep swig of red punch, then put the glass down, and swept me into her lap, where she held me good and deep into her big bazooms (that’s what she called them,) laughing and hugging me hard, and put me back together again.

DIANA LANG © 2016

 

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LETTING GO OF LOVE with love

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Dandelion blow ball

Reprinted from Huffington Post

The step-by-step, and very abbreviated, metaphysical guide
to breaking up and moving on

Letting go is not so easy to do. When we have made a heart connection with someone it can be difficult to release that heart string. And, from a metaphysical perspective, it really is a kind of string – an etheric string, a connection from heart to heart, that is vibrationally measurable. That’s why it takes so long to get over a past romance, and why we can’t just pick up and move on. That love string is still attached!

We call this getting our heart broken.

But really it is not knowing how to loosen our heart string from theirs.

Even just knowing this little known esoteric fact will help you if this happens to you. You’ll find yourself recalling it at the perfect moment. And this will help you remember to release your side of the string.

Energetically, that is all that is necessary – to let go of your end.

But out of loyalty, or hope, or guilt, and even sometimes anger, we keep that heart string connected, and we become bound with that person.

Until we let go!

There is an adage that says:

If you love someone, set them free.
If they come back, they’re yours,
and if they don’t, they never were.

Love is a contract, a heart contract. When we declare our love, it is like a promise, and we become loyal to it, and to them – even if it’s not mutual anymore. Sometimes we are clinging to a wish, hoping that they will love us too – when they don’t. Or, that they will somehow fall back in love with us again. Or, that maybe they will change. Or…or…or…

All of these scenarios are just different ways of holding on. Not letting go. Not letting them, or YOU, be free.

So, here are the 3 important spiritual steps to letting go of a relationship:

1. ACCEPT
First and foremost, you must accept. The more you keep hoping that maybe it can work out again, the longer it will take for you to be free. If it’s truly not working, then ultimately it’s not right for either of you. Don’t force or cajole your partner into staying. It will fall apart in the end anyway if it’s not based on a real connection.

2. FEEL
Let yourself mourn. This is a quiet and introspective period you need to let yourself have. Don’t rush this process; it will pass soon enough. This is an exceptional time for extraordinary awareness and real change. Practice meditation. Go for walks. Write down your thoughts. Respect this sacred time of letting go.

3. LOVE
Start with you. Take that love that you had been offering your partner and give it back to yourself. Re-fall in love with you! Take excellent care of yourself. Make yourself feel beautiful. Do beautiful things. Think beautiful thoughts. Meditate. Clean out the house – your inner house and your outer one! The more love you begin to flow, the more love will start to magnetize all around you.

As you begin to heal, you can re-enter your life with an open heart. You will have come full circle, except that you will have healed, and changed, and grown!

Then, get back into your life. Talk to your friends, visit family. Step by step, start to reengage with life.

The greatest act of love you can give your partner is to truly wish them well.
See them happy. See yourself happy.

Anytime your partner comes to mind, release them while wishing them true happiness like a blessing. Imagine doing this as easily as blowing a dandelion.

And, know that as you do, you will both be blessed.

Diana Lang is a spiritual teacher and author of
OPENING TO MEDITATION – www.DianaLang.com

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The Power of Telling the Truth

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divine marriage

 

RELATIONSHIP ADVICE FROM
A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE

It can be scary to tell our partner how we really feel sometimes. Out of politeness, embarrassment, shyness, avoidance, or just not wanting to hurt their feelings, we can find ourselves not sharing our innermost feelings. We may find ourselves inhibiting and censoring our truest, deepest worries and fears with the people we love the most. And, our relationships will suffer for it – from the lack of depth, from lack of real connection, and from the shear superficiality of inauthenticity.

Here is a spiritual rule of thumb: the more someone matters to you, the more you owe them your Truth.

But, what is our truth?

Truth is how you actually feel. Not how you are supposed to feel. Not what society says you should feel, or how you think you should feel. It is what you do feel – in your heart. For in our hearts, we all know what those truths are.

When I am talking with a client and they tell me how they really feel, I will ask them if they have shared this with their partner, and invariably they will say, “Well, I can’t say that, can I?”

And I answer: Yes, of course you can.

And you need to.

If you want your relationship to deepen and grow, then you have to trust the love that the relationship is built on. You need to bet on love. Even, in the worse case scenario, if you discover that the relationship cannot handle deeper feelings, then that’s good information to know. It tells you something of the depth and durability of the love. So, you really have nothing to lose in finding this out. And, potentially, everything to gain.

But how do we speak these fragile vulnerabilities, these hurts and pains, when our fear is that if we do, it will just make things worse?

This brings us to another spiritual principle, which is: the truth will make you free. Truth is a precious commodity. Your innocent and uncensored truth, the truth of your heart, is valuable to your relationship. By telling the truth to your partner, you are opening up the possibility for more intimacy in your relationship.

So often, this can be difficult. We can be afraid to say the most important things in our heart for fear of being rejected or abandoned. We can be afraid that they will never understand.

How you share your truth is a delicate matter. People’s feelings can and do get hurt. It’s hard to hear that there may be a difference of opinion or a problem. But not sharing your truth doesn’t allow anything to change at all.

So, how do you share your feelings without hurting, scaring, or upsetting your partner?

The answer is by expressing your truth in vulnerability.

You need to be vulnerable so your partner can hear you. Otherwise, they likely will feel attacked, disparaged, unvalued, belittled, criticized, and mostly, unloved.

So, how we say it really MATTERS. I’m not saying you should be manipulative or strategic – I mean the opposite, in fact. I am saying to speak your vulnerable truth without righteousness or design, without tactic or need to win, but simply, to speak your unguarded, vulnerable, ever-loving truth.

Which means, speak your truth with love.

– Because truth by itself can be brutal and without mercy.

 – And, love by itself can be too tolerant, ambiguous, and possibly codependent.

When you put these two principles together, truth plus love, you have power. Now your truth makes an arrow that pierces through, to the heart of the matter – safely – because it is founded on love. You then are gifting your partner with loving truth.It’s like lancing a wound. Now, it can heal.

This is not so easy to do. It takes courage – heart courage – partly because we have to first face our own demons and realize what we really feel, and how we really feel. We must take ourselves into our internal laboratory and be really, reallyhonest with ourselves. By doing this, we are taking responsibility for what our own truth is, without blaming, without harming, and without rancor. It is simply how we feel.

By looking at ourselves first – with compassion – we can begin to heal our lives and everyone in our lives.

Because from a spiritual perspective, when one person gets it, everyone can get it.

We all benefit from your inner awareness. We are all healed by truth.
And, the truth will make us all free.

Diana Lang is a spiritual teacher and author of
OPENING TO MEDITATION – www.DianaLang.com

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