Author Archives: Diana Lang

About Diana Lang

Diana Lang is a spiritual counselor, teacher and author of OPENING TO MEDITATION, published out of New World Library. Based in Los Angeles, she has been teaching meditation and yoga since 1980 and conducts seminars in the United States and internationally on meditation, body awareness, relationship development, and other mind/body work of all kinds. www.DianaLang.com

INTERVIEW on 101 Ways to Save the World

A BEAUTIFUL INTERVIEW with my dear friends, and sweet co-creative sisters, Madeleine and Bonnie Culbertson on their beautiful new podcast, 101 WAYS TO SAVE THE WORLD.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1186820/5998399-saving-the-planet-by-connecting-in-love-with-astrologer-spiritual-counselor-diana-lang

A minute on the Autumnal Equinox 2020

How to Build a Crystal Grid

Full Moon Meditation of July 4, 2020

a Sunday meditation


VIOLET #2 – A Healing Meditation

A Mandala of Health MEDITATION

Full Moon Meditation for May 2020 – If you can’t go outside, go inside.

New Moon Thoughts

It’s Earth Day and a new moon tonight. Just happened at 7:26 pm, pacific time. It’s a great big grand square. No surprise there. We all know it’s been rough out there.

Here’s my advice for right now. Whilst all this disarray is certainly occurring, there is also a gorgeous trine from Venus to Mars in air signs. Stay up and above the fray of the very messy (and needed) reality that is changing everything. We are going to come out of this mostly ok, and hopefully different. The opportunity here is a real change in our world. It is happening. Now. What’s been talked about for a thousand years is happening. These are the times. And WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for. A new world is emerging.
🙏🏻

ASHRAM – Taking Care of Yourself during these Times

Full Moon Meditation – March 2020

Solstice Intention Meditation

With the New Year coming this is a good time to view the Winter Solstice Intention-Setting Meditation presented by Diana Lang, with performances by Hanna Haas and Aaron Goldberg.

One Minute on BIRTHDAYS with Diana Lang

One minute on the Emerging Feminine

THE WEATHER REPORT with Diana Lang – September 5, 2019

New Moon in Virgo

THIS NEW MOON is potent and powerful and HELPFUL. Think, “the Art of Tidying,” except it’s about every subject of your life. Clean out the clutter in your closet, but also clean out the clutter in your emotional one too. This is a moon that is earthy and real and manifest. This is a moon to organize your priorities and your philosophies. Simple, straightforward and true. Be ready for the changes that are happening, and coming, by putting your inner affairs in order, om~

Exact in Los Angeles at 3:37 pm, Friday, August 30.

THE WEATHER with Diana Lang – August 20, 2019

ONE MINUTE on Tonglen by Diana Lang

Should You Lower Your Standards? 

 

 

 

RELATIONSHIP ADVICE FROM A SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE – by Diana Lang

When it comes to relationships, we all have our standards. Standards are those ethical principles that we navigate our lives by. They are a kind of personal code by which we make choices, decisions and intentions. Fundamentally, they are the ideals that we hold dearest to our hearts. They are essential personal covenants that shape how we live our lives, determine what’s important to us, and effectively direct our motivation and direction. Our standards are foundational to every single thing we do.

The thing about standards, though, is everyone’s are different! By holding ourselves to our standards, we cannot help but hold others to them too. But because everyone has slightly – or radically – different ones, we can get in trouble when we try to impose our standards onto someone else.

In a relationship, having congruous standards are important. It is said that the single most important component that allows a relationship to last is similar philosophy. Our standards are based on our philosophies. They are corresponding and interconnected. Everything else can be different between a couple: where we come from, how much money we have, the color of our skin, our ages, our interests, but if our standards are in conflict, then there will eventually be philosophical differences that can become an immense obstacle to sustaining the relationship. 

This is why couples often find natural compatibility with a partner that comes from a similar religious faith, or from the same country, or even neighborhood! Where we come from influences and shape our standards. We are often naturally attracted to someone who inherently harmonizes with these standards . . .

. . . or, we can be attracted to the opposite.

If we are with someone who has different standards, and especially lower ones than ours, this can be very destructive. It can bring out the worst in us, instead of the best in us. If the discrepancy is great, it can turn out to be a match not made in heaven. This can do a lot of damage to our confidence and erode those things we hold paramount. If we start to doubt our own standards and lower them, each individual, and the relationship itself, will slowly be degraded. We can begin to doubt our core beliefs and values, and gradually, eventually, like the way water must flow downhill, our standards will devolve.

You never want to step down to someone’s lower standards. A standard is an ideal, something that we reach for and aspire to. And, if our standards are lessened because we are afraid to hold them up, then the relationship will suffer for lack of principle, and lack of depth. It will feel empty.

The good news is that we can evoke a higher standard from our partner. When we hold our standard up, they get to step up to it – or step out of it. Don’t let anyone stem your spirit or your principles. By holding to your higher standard, everyone will be better for it. When we hold to our standards we are actually offering our partner an opportunity to grow. By raising the bar in a relationship we all grow. By lowering our standards, we are diminished.

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

First published for the Huffington Post.

a poem by me

MATTERING

I think therefore I am
this is what I have learned
that my mind defines me
it makes parameters and structure
and great long avenues of delineated thought
that flow upon logic freeways and take me where I want to go
and that are in step and in synch with the global cultural experience.
We agree upon that.

And so my Mind has been my spiritual path
it was the agreed upon road to follow
the quickest path to the consensus goal of “achievement and success”
and so I learned it
I learned to reason
I learned to be reasonable
I learned to be creative within the parameters of structured thought
and I became slowly, but surely, confined by it.

I became slave to it.
My mind became my keeper
It became the Golden Calf,

a false idol that weakly tried to emulate divinity
a  cheap copy of God.I think therefore I am.

But what I am realizing is that I am God.
I was God all along.
I am materialized God in form.
We all are.
And my little innocent light
the one that has no brain 
the one that just is
the one that doesn’t even try
and, in fact, trying would make it less so
the one that asks for nothing
and knows that it is everything
the part of me and us that wonders 
and simply lives and breathes 
and loves and lives
AND yes, thinks
without any strategy
without a plan or a five-year goal
without botox or a diet
without a new car or the internet
without any language even

is the one that matters.

And it is this innocence, this natural reflection of God
this gentle response to Light
the simple holding a butterfly on our finger’s grace
that matters most of all.

And so I am knowing, these days, that I matter

And I can move thru this world, on this road less traveled
the one that is impulsed by my inspiration
a direct reflection of my light,
or be on the crazy 405
and still, 
just be me

and that is enough
in fact, not just enough,
but a grace upon the earth
a gift unto the world.

And we are all of this,
that.

We matter.

© Diana Lang 2019

sky news

As many of you know, I am a lifelong astrologer, and there is some good news in the sky these days, and I wanted to share. Mercury has been retrograde for the last 3 weeks and it goes direct tomorrow evening, a semi-minor occurrence, as this occurs at least three times a year for about 3 weeks every year. (Though, it gets interesting when the retrograde crosses important points and planets on your chart, and in that case, it can be a very big deal!) Mostly, however, these things come and go like a little frisky wind moving through the life. It is always good, in a wake up and smell the coffee kind of way. Tomorrow, Thursday, Mercury goes direct. If you have noticed little miscommunications or misfires of efforts, the tides will begin to turn now. Wonderfully, it’s also a new moon. Think of this like a little breath of really fresh air. Like a morning where the house is warm and you open up the windows to allow the cool fresh air of winter to come blowing through, brisk, revitalizing and renewing. There is, as always, so much I could say about all of this, but see if this little celestial weather report opens up a corresponding window in your awareness for a new beginning and some bright, clear, clean, forward moving energy in your life.

love, Diana

A new YouTube piece by me, SHARING YOUR GIFTS

SHARING YOUR GIFTS – Diana Lang

ON GENEROSITY

ON GENEROSITY with Diana Lang

INTENTION MEDITATION – a meditation on pattern changing

INTENTION MEDITATION – Pattern Changing

 

THE VOW

THE VOW

THE VOW I took at my first breath
was the one about survival
That one I couldn’t really resist because it was instinctive
but i have to admit that it feels like a vow

It needed to be a vow for me,
not just an instinct
because i needed to survive
my delicate mindedness was too refined for the coarseness of this experience
and i fought this vow with fists up and a sarcastic posture
so that i could take the easier way
and just let go
of this experience

But my soul knew me too well
and made me take a vow
so that i would survive
and make me stay here
despite myself

Okay, that makes sense.
the vow to survive so i wouldn’t give up before i was done

But then a secondary vow was made
this one was i made voluntarily
and that was love
I think I’ve made that vow every day of my life since i could think
not love in the sense that most think of it
not mushy love
dreamy love
romantic love
but love as the action
as the pursuit
as the living breathing experience of my life

to love as a discipline
to love through confusion
and discomfort
to love the unlovable
in me and in others
to love when my own heart is broken
to love through thick and thin
to love through hell and back
to love to heaven
to love with all the meanings of love
the ascension of love
the devolution of love
to keep loving
open eyed
standing there as a witness to love
to dissolve into love
to evolve into love
a pillar of carbonite crystal
that doesn’t move
that doesn’t hesitate
that only discerningly poignantly exactly and generally
keeps choosing love
in the face of not-love
that is the vow i take

And now, my new vow is take that big love of mine
and aim it at myself

So that i can complete that circle of love
and not just pulse and pulse and pulse
out
with no return
but to let it return
love to me
love for me
love as me.

© Diana Lang 2018

Come to the Solstice 12*21, om~

SOLSTICE MEDITATION GATHERING in Woodland Hills – This is a free event. All are welcome

Full Moon Afterthoughts at Meditation Mount – Dec. 3, 2017

FULL MOON AFTERTHOUGHTS at Meditation Mount December 2017

1 Minute on COURAGE with Diana Lang

Play video to watch >

On COURAGE with Diana Lang

One minute on ACCEPTANCE with Diana Lang

Follow the link to watch.

ON ACCEPTANCE with Diana Lang

An interview with Kim Corbin on NEW WORLD NOW.

Full Moon Meditation – SOUL HEALING

A Minute on Grace

on GRACE by Diana Lang

A minute on compassion

A minute on Compassion with Diana Lang

A Minute on Truth

A Minute on Truth by Diana Lang

A one-minute video on Love

on meditation

meditationMeditation is fundamentally and etherically practical.  

Meditation is an ancient discipline designed to help you learn to be more present in your life. It is an art that is practiced. It is something that we keep growing into, discovering, unraveling, and expanding to learn the gorgeous difference between thinking and mindfulness. Meditation resets your soul compass and reconnects you to your inner guidance.  

Meditation works best when you least want to. Part of the discipline of meditation is to sit whether you feel like it or not. It is a training of the ego, to learn what I call, “sit and stay.” In the stillness that this discipline entrains, a space of deep and growing awareness can be known. This is an enormous gift because you inner knowing will never lead you astray. It always leads you to the soul’s next step. By setting up a daily practice, you are opening up a dialogue for an ongoing conversation with your soul.

www.DianaLang.com 2016

INTUITION is Your Superpower

intuition

(reprinted from the Huffington Post)

Your intuition is like a superpower. We use it every day in a thousand ways. We use is it in every transaction, negotiation and relationship we engage in.

Intuition is a deep inner listening.

And we all have this ability.

Intuition is a faculty of higher mind. It is a kind of extra sensory perception, as it were. Intuition allows us to discern between the billions of information bits that we are thinking, to discover by filtering through all of this sensory data, the common denominator, which is: the truth of something.

There is often so much mental clutter around certain subjects, especially ones that are important to us, that we sometimes cannot cognize what we think. That’s because we are thinking everything at the same time! When we’re afraid, and especially when we feel our lives depend on it, we can be thinking thousands of thoughts simultaneously with no conscious prioritization. This can put us into utter chaos!

But just behind the veil of the pros-and-cons list of our life, and all the myriad information that we pick up along the way – behind all that data – waiting patiently for us, is our personal inner knowing. Not what the world would say, not what someone else thinks about a subject, but our very own precious knowing.

Intuition helps us sense our way through life’s problems. We can sense when to move and when not to move. We can feel the intentions of another. We can intuit if something is right for us or not. It is literally our “inner sight.” It is insight!

Your intuition is the most accurate gauge of someone’s intention and heart. Your intuition can tell you what something really is. By heeding this deep inner listening, the truth of it can shine through. Because we really do know, or I should say, we can know. We just need to stop, and consciously ask ourselves…

…and then, listen.

Like this:

Become quiet inside yourself. This is very like a little mini-meditation. Sit perfectly still and empty your mind. When you think ofthe decision, the person, or the situation, what do you intuit? (Not, what do you think.) For the moment, put aside your opinions, judgments, or preconceived ideas. What does your heart know? What is your intuition?

Really, deeply listen.

Does your inner self give you a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down? Is there an internal nod of YES, or a squeezing contracted feeling of NO? You will feel it. It is very definite.

Here’s the thing, if you are listening with your intuition, you will know. We can be fooled by the external information of things. We can be overloaded by the sheer density of the concerns that are connected to our question, or overwhelmed by the fears we have of the potential domino-consequence of it. The problem is that the answer we think is right may look great on paper but not be good for our life. Intuition includes logic, but logic doesn’t necessarily include intuition.

It’s important to remember as you are gathering impressions to not be tempted to manufacture reasons to substantiate these impressions while you are receiving them. Listen to your intuition. But don’t try to justify your intuition. If you need to “prove” what or why your intuition is telling you something, you are already out of the intuitive state and back into the ego’s limited fear-logic. This is why intuition is intuition, not deduction or analysis. It’s a whole different faculty of mind.

There is no greater insight than what your intuition senses and offers – if you’ll listen.

It is how Einstein was able to conceive E=mc2. He intuited it first; then he proved it.

Your intuition is a powerful tool. It is like having a secret power, and in time, and with practice, you will learn to trust it more and more. It will guide you seamlessly through life. It will nudge you left when left is exactly the right move for you. As you become more adept in listening to your intuition, you will find yourself navigating your life more and more deftly, decision by decision, choice by choice, breath by breath, moment by moment.

And what is extraordinary about this inner knowing, this intuition, this superpower, is that it is adaptable and ever-responding to the ever-changing circumstance of our ever-changing reality!

Like any superpower, you need to cultivate and develop your intuition. Practice trusting your inner knowing. Get good at it. Let your intuition guide your life, for it will always lead you true.

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