Response on The Daily Love: http://thedailylove.com/in-a-connected-world-are-you-connecting-to-you/

http://thedailylove.com/in-a-connected-world-are-you-connecting-to-you/

Mastin, when you share, it inspires us to share!

I have allowed myself to struggle in not exploring my gifts, utilizing my gifts, and even resisting them sometimes when I felt like I did not know how to honor the gifts by enjoying the gifts. I have recognized many gifts in life, but in this case, the gift I speak of is pursuing art. I even went to art school and can honestly reflect on that time as the literal last time I felt like everything was going swimmingly and in sync. Mind, heart, soul and body were one in purpose and it felt like blessings were pouring in.

Even the problems that arose during that time were filled with hope, not hopelessness. I felt empowered. I feel nothing that I'd done then is regrettable today. Isn't it funny how we can have evidence of manifestation, such as a vivid goodness and a feeling of being synced up, yet we still allow challenges - often the little confusing things that build up over time into a limited world view - to cover it all up, narrow us and confine us?

I have struggled with meditating my whole life. I was exposed to it at a young age and while some guided visualizations brought fruit... for the most part, especially emptying out and letting the consciousness within rise, I kept falling asleep - quickly. I felt conflicted - am I resisting this and just konking out? Or am I passing out for a reason, could it be instant sublime? It was neither scenario for me, I just wasn't ready to really accept the gift of meditation.

Recently, it just clicked, it got easier. I still drift but I can bring myself back and if I manage to do that even once in a meditation, I grow in spirit. I think that other kinds of shifts that came with life had to happen in order for me to embrace meditation. Now that it has entered into at least the very beginning and very end of my day, and I can sustain inward attention with increasing richness... I have realized that finding opportunity to meditate was not for me in cramming it in, regimen style - but giving the meditation true space in my day, heart, and consciousness to "be itself" with me. I also had to value being "alone" with myself, to go within and find that I wasn't alone, but that deep inside the solitude is loving company.

I still have yet to have picked up a brush, even though it's been, as I keep telling loved ones, "too long, tooooooooo long." I started sketching in my diary, just simple line drawings. I wanted to draw abundance so I started to draw patterns of stars.

What I have really found in meditation, is that we have this endless opportunity to start over - from the beginning. In the beginning, there was darkness. At first when I meditated, behind my eyelids, darkness was all I could see. Let there be light.