Bloom Principles:
A vacation from disempowering habits
I suggest that during our work together, you give yourself permission to take some space from behaviors that you know draw you away from your true self.
During sessions, we will be practicing and refining the process of ‘being with what is’ real for you in the moment. That is, fully feeling your sensations and emotions, and the rhythms of the body. This is a way out of the loops we often get caught in. Sometimes fully experiencing an emotion once can free us from a lifetime pattern. I’ve seen it happen. Usually, they fall away in layers. Either way, clearing the past requires an excavation of what is buried within us.
As we practice these new levels of awareness during sessions, they will follow you into your life. This is not surprising.
Presence is our natural way of being.
But when it happens, it can feel like a miracle. It enriches life and relationships. We feel more, and so we feel more alive.
Everything between us and that aliveness is artificial. We lean into the artificial out of curiosity, and then it becomes a tool to numb... to lean out of what is real. We will continually challenge that paradigm until, eventually, indulging in the artificial becomes much more painful than engaging the real. Eventually, you’ll find joy in cozying up with your emotions and those ineffable sensations. The flow.
It takes time… usually a few weeks. Sometimes longer. Sometimes great insights show up in random moments. You’ll notice your body while talking to someone, for instance, in a deeper way than you ever have before. You’ll notice a host of new sensations while you’re walking in the grass or feeling the sun on your skin.
It can feel like breathing again, after a long time without breath.
You may still notice and perhaps give in to the desire to numb, with foods or digital stimuli or a chemical, or whatever has been your drug of choice. The important point is to be gentle with yourself around that, do as little damage as possible, and lift yourself up and come back onto the path.
Watch the stages of your mind and body as you descend into the artificial. There are many points in the sequence of events where you can take a slight turn, and everything changes. You are getting to know yourself, and that is a beautiful thing. There is no way around it.
If you can take a break from social media, and news in general, that can facilitate the process. We take in so many programs unconsciously through these channels.
During our work together, you’ll be getting more and more in touch with your own truth, so closing some of the doors to information coming in will support the process. It’s hard to decipher between fact and fiction when we’re continually inundated with information (mostly mis-information) from all sides. The mind has a difficult time discerning what is familiar from what is true, and advertisers and others use this to their advantage. You can choose to opt out. In Buddhism this is called ‘guarding the sense doors.’
You can cut all media off completely for a time, and even refrain from watching movies and shows for the course of our time together. Or you can put time limits on how often you indulge. I think of some of these activities as willingly plugging into the digital matrix, so people can download their messages into our brain. In order to plug in, we leave the real world. Screens change our brain waves, so we are more susceptible to hypnosis, and actual life experiences and real emotions get replaced with replacements that pale in comparison. After a while, the body requires more and more intense stimuli, and it dulls the senses around the simpler pleasures in life.
The point is to begin to experience how the things you are taking in are impacting your life experience. They are impacting it profoundly. These things you believe… where are they coming from?
You may be attached to the ritual of going into a digital, chemical, or gustatory matrix. If so, I encourage you to begin to replace ‘disempowering’ stimuli with more empowering ones. Watch or read things that stimulate love and compassion; that create wholeness and foster unity. (Most of what we see is the opposite). Smoke chamomile instead of weed. Indulge in grape juice instead of wine. Etc. Think ahead of time and plan for when the cravings strike. Often they strike during the hours when the mind is tired, or when there is an abyss with nothing to do. In those moments, you can dig up your plan, and use the guidance you found when you were clear.
Isn't it irresponsible not to watch the news?
No. For one thing, you are practicing this for a limited duration (probably). For another thing, no, the world needs more and more people who can discern truth from fiction, and that requires not being ‘plugged in’ to the storytellers, every one of which has an agenda, and few of the agendas are in your best interest.
I also recommend avoiding frightening or violent movies and imagery. Many of these register in the system as traumatic. I know because I’ve spent a lot of time in sessions releasing scenes from movies from various body parts of clients.
The world is being overtaken by screens. Walk in anywhere, and notice the people, sullen and hunched over, generally lacking vitality, staring into a digital device. Screens of all kinds throw off our natural brainwaves. They’re naturally addictive. In order to enter deep meditative states, we need to spend more time away from screens, and face to face with nature, flowers, people. Not to mention the radiation emitted by wireless devices and cell phones being highly toxic and carcinogenic. For instance, sometimes when a male has a low sperm count, not carrying a cell phone in the pocket for just a few weeks will often cause it to shoot back up dramatically.
Bloom Practice Suggestions:
Put your cell phone in airplane mode as often as you can. Just use it when you need it.
Remove addictive apps from the portable device, including social media apps. Use them from the computer; begin to reduce use where possible.
Spend one day per week in simplicity, away from screens, or certain apps; meditating or praying; walking in nature. One day per week of disconnection. In ancient days, Saturn-day was used for this (Saturday).
Reduce or eliminate exposure to violent and /or frightening imagery.
Practice eating and drinking out of hunger and thirst, rather than out of boredom or entertainment, as much as possible.
Reduce exposure to the opinions of others for a time, so you can come into contact with your own truth.
We want to keep your energy channels as clear as we can for the time being. So that more of what you truly are can begin coursing through you.
The way to support others in their addictions, is to notice and conquer our own, and to replace disempowering addictions (alcohol, for instance) with more empowering ones (fitness, for instance), until there are none left.
Often those of us who carry the deepest judgements about people’s addictive behaviors struggle with our own in some way. Some are more socially accepted in our culture than others, but still, they often thrive at the expense of our living life fully.
I hope this supports and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Love and Bloom,
Steven Budden
Budden Enterprises