Deanna Lohnes dot com

Not everything should go digital

Deanna — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 13:46:46 +0000

I’ve been on the edge of getting really sick all week. When an opportunity to go on virtual retreat came up, I jumped on it. My plan was to be on virtual retreat all day yesterday. In a virtual retreat, you stay home and meet the other participants by phone every few hours. Three calls for spiritual practice, two calls for Q & A. In between calls, there’s spiritual practices on your own: prayer, writing, mild fasting, napping and gentle exercise. Mild fasting means eating small amounts and stopping before you’re full. Writing is longhand, you don’t use your computer. You only use the phone for retreat calls. Like a live retreat, it’s a day of rest and connecting with the Divine (Source, God, The Creator, whatever word you’re comfortable with)

”So? How was it?” you ask. Short answer: it didn’t work.I’ve been on retreat before. In the past, retreats involved going to a place where there’s nothing to do but be on retreat. It’s a fabulous experience: restful, hidden away from the world in the mountains, meditative hikes, gentle yoga, massages. If that experience had an opposite, it was being on retreat at home.

I was laying on the floor during the first spiritual practice call, listening to chanting and noticing that my rug needs to be vacuumed. Not noticing my heart opening or other sorts of retreat-y things. Noticing clumps of cat hair. So I chalked it up to resistance and kept going.

I tried to walk in nature as suggested as a between-call activity. I live in a city, so I walked on the beach and tried to ignore the airport and the financial district skyline. Not sure there was much heart-opening or connection-to-Source going on there.

I told the people I have ongoing projects with that I wasn’t available because I was on retreat. I forgot to tell my friends and family not to call me. My nap got interrupted with text messages and I missed the 3rd retreat call because I was on the phone debating the pros and cons of changing my cell plan. My own fault, I suppose, for not setting better retreat boundaries.

I was afraid I would be bored. I was right. By 1 I wanted to work. I wanted to find out who got eliminated on Top Chef the night before. I wanted to watch Project Runway All Stars and think uncharitable thoughts about Kara. I wanted to vacuum the rug. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, so a clean rug is a spiritual practice right? I chalked it all up to resistance and tried again.

I attempted one of the spiritual practices. It was nice, there was some Divine connection there. But it wasn’t nice enough to keep me from worrying about whether the citrus in the fruit bowl was still usable. And worrying about the expiration date on the chicken in the fridge. Nothing like a mild fast to create food obsession.

I finally gave up on the retreat around 3-ish. I hated on Kara. I vacuumed the rug. I returned my text messages. I juiced the citrus and checked the expiration on the chicken. I had a run of the mill day off.

Technology opens up so many opportunities for us. Most service providers I know have clients all over the world. They meet by phone, Skype or video chat. People hold conferences by webinar. Most of the time, it works. We don’t need to be in the same room anymore to exchange information. We live in a digital world, but retreats are one of those things that will have to continue to be analog.

If you’ve had a different experience on virtual retreat I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Channeling: Guide’s advice for 2012

Deanna — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:55:07 +0000

I’ve heard people talking about channeling but I didn’t know what to expect until I participated in a guide-led meditation for 2012. Birdy and Mike Diamond channeled their guides for us. We were able to ask questions about the upcoming year. (Click here to check it out and participate in future mediations). It was the perfect way to kick off a new year.

Birdy from A wesome Audacious Abundance describes channeling as,

… the fine art of allowing another spirit entity to temporarily share your body for the purposes of communication, then accurately translating that communication for a human audience.

Scary, but intriguing, right? I asked the entity speaking through Mike how I can get in touch with my spirit guides. He suggested I ask to have my high-level guides to be known to me.

Just ask is the first step. Then they suggested we watch for symbolism and be aware of the learning period. A lot of the guidance we receive won’t be visual, so we should expect some weirdness. I can definitely vouch for the weirdness.

I asked to meet my guides. They appeared. One looked like a gold ball of light, kind of like the Golden Snitch in Harry Potter movies. The other was a white ball of light. Much to my chagrin, this is very much like the way Gary Busey describes angels.

One of them told me that I am safe and I am loved. Then I felt a release of tension. it was a deeper sense of relaxation than I’ve had in a while.

Some other things the guides said about the upcoming year:
Do you want to participate in 12/21/2012 as apocryphal or paradigm shift? Make it a conscious choice. You choose which universe you participate in.
2012 will be a time of greater concentration of change and personal choice
Take action, but don’t abuse yourself in the name of action.
2011 was foreshadow of whats to come, especially big changes.
Let things happen, don’t tie your energy up with anxiety. Outside forces don’t define your success or failure. It takes your unique time on your unique path.
There are big opportunities with the energy happening now, big opportunity to get what you want. This year is charged. It will be easier to get things done.

Tips from the guides for making changes:

Start with the small. It doesn’t have to be a huge change Small adjustments build up change muscles.
Be nice to yourself
It takes the time it takes. Have patience.

I’m looking forward to the next guide-led meditation on February 2nd. If this kind of thing piques your curiosity, I’d love to see you there. If this talk of changes has you excited, take a look in the pantry at my shiny new ebook Footwork.

Out of the broom closet

Deanna — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:48:24 +0000

I have a lot of woo-woo beliefs and habits. There I said it, out loud and in public. And I’m bracing myself for backlash. Short list of woo street-cred:

I frequently make decisions using runes and tarot cards.
I meditate
I practice yoga and shiva nata
I celebrate pagan holidays
I love the law of attarction
I listen to advice of my guides
I’m fond of NLP and hypnosis

And I’m a business owner. The short story here is that I’m doing what works. If meditating and doing the dance of shiva are working, then I’m going to keep it up.

There seems to be a resistance to all things woo. Woo isn’t serious, not good business. I disagree. I want to DO WHAT WORKS because at the end of the day the goal is TO GET SHIT DONE. Why would I ignore tools that help?

I’ve resisted “coming-out” because I don’t want to be lumped in with the crazies and the lookitme’s. As time goes on, I’m finding more and more “normal” (I’m woking on better vocabulary) people, more business people and more rational left-brained people who believe in in the unconventional. To all of those folks: More power to you. Drop me a note. I’d love to chat.

Stay tuned. I want to talk about the New Year’s guide-led meditation next week.