de Llosa - Finding time for your self : a spiritual survivors workbook : 52 weeks of reflections and exercises for busy people

Patty, you have come up with a project that could genuinely help people. The exercises reflect your many years experience. The meditations, too, are profound and blessedly clear.

Jeff Zaleski, Editor & Publisher, Parabola Magazine

Finding Time for Your Self invites us to connect with our deeper longings for self-fulfillment as we navigate the stressful demands of daily life. Fifty-two thought-provoking reflections on familiar life situations help the reader stay inwardly alive and present to meet lifes many challenges. Each reflection is followed by daily exercises which can help us find a more balanced sense of ourselves in the midst of outer activity.

Most of us feel scattered a lot of the time. Like the dismembered Egyptian god Osiris, we are spread out all over our personal world. Finding Time for Your Self offers help to pull us back together again. We can learn how to re-member ourselves, not by withdrawing from the world but by being present right in the middle of our busy day.

The old Shaker song Its a gift to be simple tells us that the solution is in the turning, until by turning, turning, we come round right. When we turn away for a short time from activities, goals and commitments and toward the inner self we discover a world thats just as active and full of surprises as the outer one. Turning our attention to the world within allows us to reconnect with the person we essentially are, in the depths of our being.

Patty de Llosa is the author of The Practice of Presence: Five Paths for Daily Life. Her second book focused on C. G. Jungs Active Imagination exercises: Taming Your Inner Tyrant: A Path to Healing through Dialogues with Oneself. Patty has led group classes in the Gurdjieff work, Tai Chi and Taoist meditation, and the Alexander Technique, and worked with Marion Woodman in her Body/Soul Rhythms intensives. A consulting editor for Parabola Magazine, she is a life coach and teaches Tai Chi and the Alexander Technique in New York City.

Copyright Patty de Llosa, 2015.

Published in the Sussex Academic e-Library, 2015.

SUSSEX ACADEMIC PRESS

PO Box 139

Eastbourne BN24 9BP, UK

and simultaneously in the United States of America and Canada

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Llosa, Patty de.

Finding time for your self : a spiritual survivors workbook : 52 weeks of reflections and exercises for busy people / Patty de Llosa.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84519-671-4 (pbk : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-78284-199-9 (e-pub)

ISBN 978-1-78284-200-2 (e-mobi)

ISBN 978-1-78284-201-9 (e-pdf)

1. Spiritual life. 2. Self-help techniques. I. Title.

BL624.L6196 2015

204.4dc23

2014046810

This e-book text has been prepared for electronic viewing. Some features, including tables and figures, might not display as in the print version, due to electronic conversion limitations and/or copyright strictures.

Fifty-two weeks of reflections and exercises for busy people

This book owes much thanks to Canadian litterateur John Robert Colombo, who came up with the original idea of a spiritual survivors workbook when I sent him some blogs I had written. Many thanks also to editor Tony Grahame at Sussex Academic Press, who offered to publish it and held my hand through the process. Blessings on you both!

The bibliography that follows represents a small listing of the thousand minds and hearts who have shared their wisdom, whether via mainstream religions, Gurdjieffian, Jungian, Taoist or Alexander studies, or brilliant contemporary mind/body science. All have fed me richly body, soul and spirit, for which Im truly grateful.

As always, my best support has been my immediate family, parents who held up a mighty mirror of dedication to duty, truth, and love, and three adult children who have shared many of my adventures and taught me a lot of what I know.

Finally, the truest spiritual education is extended from person to personan experiential wisdom heartfully shared by living the teaching together. And in that regard I have been very lucky. First my mother, Louse Welch, then Jeanne de Salzmann, Pauline de Dampierre, Marion Woodman, and Peter Brook have held up to me, by their very presence-in-action, a mirror to the high possibility of being human. I had no choice but to attempt to live the teaching they represent as best I could, and in the process have learned to listen to my own inner guide, the Lord of the Heart.

Most of us feel scattered much of the time. Like the dismembered Egyptian god Osiris, we are spread out all over our personal world. Finding Time offers help to bring you back together again and learn how to re-member yourself, not by withdrawing from the world but staying right in the middle of the action.

Fifty-two thought-provoking reflections on questions raised by daily life are followed by practical exercises that will help you stay inwardly alive and present to meet lifes many challenges. The meditations offer a path to inner peace as they invite you to pause and reflect for a few minutes each day, while the practical exercises engage you in day-by-day experiences as you seek a more balanced sense of yourself in the midst of outer activity. You can start at the beginning and go through to the end of the book, or select the theme for each week that most touches the heart of your particular situation.

Remember the old Shaker song Its a gift to be simple? The lyrics express the solution as turning, until by turning, turning we come round right. When I turn away for a short time from my activities, goals and commitments and toward my inner Self, I discover a world thats just as active and full of surprises as the outer one that draws me into physical and mental action. As I turn my attention to the world within, I reconnect with the person I essentially am, in the depths of my being.

You may well ask: How do I find time for an inner life when Im too busy even to think about it? Well, the art of living deeply depends on learning to turn at those difficult moments, in the midst of our busy lives. Whats more, you will discover that as we re-connect with our inner rhythms, we will find true renewal and repose.

The stakes have never been higher in this increasingly dangerous world, full of unknown forces that act on us in unexpected ways: a faltering economy, dread of terrorism, increasing anxiety about our jobs, our family, our future. The word stress is on everyones lips, and we cant make it go away. Its hardwired into our nervous system. However, we can learn to manage stress before it turns into distress.

For that, a new attitude is necessary. Life insists on our participation and affirms us in many different ways, but as we hurry through our days trying to keep up with its many demands, we are starved for attention to our own presence, our sense of being here and now. As ancient Celtic tradition has it, expressed in the words of John ODonohue, If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person, or deed can still In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together.