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This
month marks the debut of a monthly column by Karen
Deborah Farris. Each month, she'll offer her
spiritual insights and techniques for "being
present" in all aspects of life. We're
very pleased to have her joining our Soulful Living
Community!
The MESHE Concept - A Path to
Soulful Living
The MESHE Concept teaches a simple practical plan for
enhancing soulful living. Starting with something as
basic as your kitchen, I’d like to show you how you
can begin to make soulful choices which will, over time,
add up to a more nurturing experience of life.
MESHE (MEE-SHEE) is your "you." Everybody
has one. If you are living in MESHE, you are living a
soulful life. You are nurtured and centered. You are
caring for the little moments, as easily as you care for
the grand and important ones.
Many of us try to live our best life, by trying to
get it perfect. But "perfect" is not something
that comes from our center. It is an idea, which comes
from the mind. Being in MESHE, is living from the center
of your "you." Trying to get everything right,
is living from your mind.
The mind can be useful - for adding, subtracting,
multiplying and dividing. It can help us think through a
tough situation, but it can also cause us to think
ourselves right into a rut. When the thinking starts to
repeat itself, and no longer bring in new information--I
call that ORBIT (OR-BIT). Our mind can be inspiring, or
it can be repeating itself. When it is inspiring, it is
glorious and we can feel a strong sense of MESHE. But
when it is repeating itself, it is in ORBIT. Whenever I
catch my mind in ORBIT, I realize that that is where my
mind is and I stop it by naming it, ORBIT. ORBIT is like
telling the mind to stop now. Thank you, but stop
now....
There are many things that keep us out of MESHE.
Thinking we need to be perfect is merely one of them.
Worrying is another. My mind repeats a daily list of
things that can go wrong, will go wrong, could go wrong,
should go wrong. And when I realize I am tense or
distracted because of my worries, I name it - ORBIT. And
the litany stops.
So, if we can name the mind, ORBIT, as it begins to
take us into its world, we can stop it from happening.
Then we can see the time we have--the day laid out
before us, the evening ahead--as our time, our day, our
evening. We can move from ORBIT into MESHE as we need
to. And we can choose to live the moments of our lives
in a richer more fulfilling manner. We can choose to
live more and more of the moments of our life in MESHE.
Being in MESHE means taking all of our moments and
being present in them. Awakening within the moments. Not
controlling them, or expecting things from them, but
rather waking up in the middle and discovering ourselves
in what we are doing. The next time you wash your
dishes, for example, or rinse them to place them in the
dishwasher--wake up in the moment--take in the warm
running water on your hands, the silky finish of a wet
porcelain plate, and be alive inside of the task. That
is what it can mean to be in MESHE with something as
simple as washing the dishes. Imagine what it could mean
to wake up in the middle of dressing your daughter
before daycare, greeting your husband when he comes home
from a hard day, or sitting on a mountainside after a
long well-earned hike.
I don’t know about you, but I much prefer to stand
over my sink in a surrealistic journey of what I am
doing right now, than to stand over the same sink
hashing out the negativity I picked up from my day. I
name the negativity that goes on in my mind, ORBIT, and
I let those kinds of thoughts slip away. I choose,
rather, to drop my breath all the way down to the heels
of my body, exhaling fully, and drawing my next breath
deeply, so that I can watch the movements of my hands,
as the bowl of the sink empties, and my dishwasher or
dish drainer fills with my energy. My light, present,
MESHE-filled energy.
In my home, I strive to be in MESHE with everything
in my kitchen. I’ve spent time putting things where I
need them and getting the utensils that work for me. I
have a cookie jar that makes me smile, a different
spatula for flipping eggs than I have for flipping
pancakes, and a garlic press that makes cleaning it
easy. I am passionate about my dishes, my glasses, my
tableware. These things are not expensive, they are
simply appreciated by me, each time I use them, because
they have expressed some centered part of me from the
first day I brought them home. Some things I love
because, though money was tight when I bought them, I
choose carefully and made sure to buy from my budget
something that I liked, something that I was in MESHE
with. Many things came later, than when I first needed
or wanted them, because I practiced early on, buying
only when I was in MESHE with what I was about to
purchase. The same is true for everything that I let
into my life--relationships, activities, commitments. It
feels better to be in MESHE with not having, than it
does to have a lot that I am not in MESHE with.
My kitchen is an easy place for me to be present,
because everything in it has been placed there with
awareness. Even the areas of my kitchen which are too
cluttered, or in disarray, are areas that I am in MESHE
with, because I have chosen to be in MESHE with them--I
have put them consciously on a to-do list, which gets
done from a special allotment of time that I choose on a
regular basis. This special allotment of time is very
important to building my MESHE. It is a time when I take
myself seriously, and tend to the incomplete areas of my
life.
Being in MESHE with your kitchen is as easy as going
through every nook and cranny and being open with
yourself enough to find out what you need and don’t
need, what you like and don’t like, what you want and
don’t want, and then taking that list to heart.
Today, walk through your kitchen and see if you are
in MESHE with everything in it. Are there utensils in
the drawer or utensil stand, which you never use?
don’t like? or that are always breaking? Are the hot
pads you have near the stove thick enough for you, so
that you never get burned when you have to use them? Are
the hot pads even near the stove? Do you wish you had
new hot pads each time you use them, but forget to buy
them before it is time to use them again?
Maybe it is not your kitchen that needs transforming.
Maybe it is your office, your bathroom, your
relationships? If you were to go through your
relationships with the same attention, would you also
find a certain lack of proper tools which are causing
you to get burned more often then you like? Think about
it. Being in MESHE in the whole of your life can be a
graceful way to wake up and create the necessary changes
your soul is crying out for.
Let us go through not just our kitchens, but our
entire lives, transforming every task we must do this
week, every thought that we think this week, every
memory we hash out this week, month or year--until we
are in MESHE with all of it.
In an excerpt from my book, "MESHE, HESHE, MISON
& ORBIT, What My Grandmother Taught Me About the
Universe," young Kaydee describes the experience of
getting into MESHE with everything in her life as,
"giving every day a chance to be a day that could
change some bad thought or memory into something I could
easily forget--or forever fondly remember."
What may start with a new set of hand towels, could
just turn into a new outlook on life....
Take care of yourselves!
© Copyright 2001 Karen Deborah
Farris.
Read
Karen's Current "Being Present" Column
Karen Deborah Farris is a successful counselor, healer, and bodyworker. For more than fifteen years she has taught extensive workshops based on MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT as well as many other self-discovery topics.
Farris began developing her integrated bodywork and counseling techniques in 1984 under the tutelage of many prominent doctors and healers throughout the United States.
Her education into the spiritual and physical aspects of the human experience served as the foundation for her own private practice and the development of a new philosophy. She combined her techniques into four guiding principles, which she shares in her book,
MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT: What My Grandmother Taught Me About the Universe. She is currently touring with a companion workshop series, where she creates an interactive environment demonstrating the material from her book with tangible, life altering effects. In these workshops, individuals discover a deepening of their relationship to self, others and the world around them.
Through individual counseling and group workshops, she has taught her results-oriented programs to many different types of people
including those confined to mental institutions, substance and food abusers, and generally, people in life transitions, struggling with intimate relationships, or who lack direction in their lives. Karen lives happily with her husband in Southern California.
Visit www.MESHE.com.
For more
information, contact Karen at: info@MESHE.com
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