NOTE: Today’s newsletter is a lesson and meditation I sent to my students as part of one of their Daily Rituals during our month of focus on the physical body. Consider it my gift, as I work and play this week in Malaysia. 🇲🇾

>> Here’s the AUDIO for today’s Transformation Tuesday.

I’m not one of those “life is short” people.

Because you are eternal. Your soul is eternal.

And so are all the elements of your body: the carbon, the nitrogen. They’re not making any more of that stuff you know. In our Universe, matter just shifts form. It never dies.

So you can never, really die.

That said, some of us are in these physical bodies for a shorter season, and others for long, leisurely extended ones.

Yet I’m not a big fan of fetishizing death as a cudgel for motivation.

“Hurry up and get it all done!” that story goes. “Check all the boxes off on your bucket list!”

“Achieve, accomplish, life is short”!

Eh. That’s not my jam. Because that’s not why we’re really here.

We’re here for freedom, growth and joy. For connection. For love and wisdom.

Yet, all the same, we are only in these beautiful, intelligent meat-covered skeletons made of stardust for a season.

A precious and powerful season.

We can find love and energy, satisfaction with right now and eagerness for more, when we meditate on the impermanence of life.

We can find freedom from the fear of death during our lives when we follow the words of Ram Dass, who advises us to “keep death on your shoulder and identify with your soul.”

In preparing for one of my talks, I found myself re-reading the old Steve Jobs commencement speech, which had several passages about the brilliance of our mortality.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

He went on:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Everything else is secondary.

Inner peace lets you hear your own inner voice.

Another reason to release any inner struggles or self-judgment.

Another point in favor of lavish self-love, which reverses inner judgment and creates an atmosphere of inner peace.

Another argument to wholeheartedly engage with the subjects of your fears. To have the courage – the heart – to follow that inner voice.

So today, let’s take an Inner Retreat to become more at peace, more open and more at ease in your own beautiful, resilient and temporary body.

Take three deep, delicious, leisurely, grounding breaths.

Inhaling, filling your lungs all the way up, and exhaling, emptying them out.

Two more breaths just like that in your own time, as you allow your body to begin to ground down and sink in for today’s Inner Retreat.

Slowly scan down your body from the top to the bottom, just noting how it feels as you go.

Don’t try to change anything. Just note.

Today, I want you to do the exercise of focusing on your body’s different muscle groups, one by one, and shut the active energy in them down, one by one.

Start with your feet and your lower legs, shutting them off. Letting them sink in.

Then your upper legs and thighs, and your pelvis. Turn the power off. Shut the tension off.

Sinking in.

Now your belly and your chest, powering any active energy of holding or tightening down.

Next your lower arms, then your neck and your shoulders: power them down. Turn all activity in these muscles off.

Shut it down for these moments.

And finally your jaws, your face, your cheeks, your forehead and the crown of your head, even your eyelids and your gums, power them down. Turn any activity in those muscles off.

In this space, muscles fully relaxed and body sinking all the way in, all the way down, for the rest of your time this morning, focus on the word AT on the inhale, and EASE on your exhales.

Noticing how, even when you are fully unguarded, fully relaxed, fully deactivated, the breath of life still flows through you.

With no effort required from you.

Your lung still breathes.

Your heart still beats.

No effort needed at all.

The entire Universe continues to collaborate in your survival and thriving, even when you let yourself be in the state of ease.

When your mind wanders, come back to these words: AT EASE.

Allow yourself to hear the sounds and smell the smells around you, as you inhale and exhale, opening yourself to more and more ease.

REMINDER: If you’d like a little more clarity, freedom and spaciousness in your life, this is your last call to join my 10 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders and Creators.

>>>  Join us, here. It’s free. 

We started today and will close registration at midnight Pacific tonight.

But know this: Whenever you sign up is right on time.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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