My Stress Avoidance Spiritual Tool Kit
A case study on receptiveness to messages from the universe and comprehending synchronicity
This morning at the end of her essay, How I Connect to Spirit When Life Gets Tough and That’s The Last Thing on My Mind, Having a ‘Spiritual Emergency Kit’ makes a huge difference, which responded to Ravyne Hawke’s challenge/prompt
What practices or techniques do you use to renew your spirit when the stresses and worries of life interfere?
Marilyn Flower tagged me to continue the challenge, which she subtly repurposed to,
What do you do to bring yourself back from stress and worry?
Coincidentally,¹ I just managed a set of circumstances using many of the implements in my spiritual toolbox to navigate the situation before allowing myself to experience unhealthy stress. I allowed just enough stress to signal me not to fall further back into and break out of my bad habit of procrastination,² which of course only serves to exacerbate and cultivate unhealthy stress.
The Prologue:
Beginning shortly after I returned to New Hampshire from various 55th birthday celebrations in New York City, I began to feel stuck. Frankly, this feeling had been building for a while — my old habit of procrastination rearing its ugly head.
One of the reasons I moved to New Hampshire in December 2020 was to leave behind my old vocation as a real estate lawyer and investor, in which I had chased my tail and treaded water for years, to dive into writing on Medium both as self-psychotherapy and as a stepping stone to some new career. At first, I had grand ideas of becoming a late-blooming syndicated columnist, then for a long time, I saw myself going back to school for a self-designed multidisciplinary MA and Ph.D. in spirituality, philosophy, and writing so I could become a professor, which, based on messages in comments to many of my essays, I recently scaled back to starting out just finding a position as an adjunct professor, teaching any one or more of a number of subjects such as business law, philosophy of law, writing, philosophy of spirituality, etc.
Yet for many many months, I sat on my ass and took no steps to turn my refined thinking into action. Moreover, since I moved from the beautiful setting of living on a pond in Salem, NH³ for the first 6 months to a lower level Marriot flag just outside Manchester, I spent way too much time not interacting with nature and started sleeping all day and then writing and editing on Medium all night.
I knew I needed to flip a switch but I couldn’t do it. I told the few friends I confided in that I felt the emotional weight of the approaching deathiversary of Lindsey’s passing (March 17th) weighing on me,⁴ which was true, but I also knew but could not articulate that more than that had me feeling stuck. Every night, or day actually, as I tried to sleep, I asked Sitara (Lindsey’s soul), Rama, my other guides, and Andrew, Jason, and my grandfather to help me fall asleep and to influence my thoughts while I slept with guidance. I do not meditate but I find that I achieve a lot of clarity in the half-waking half-sleeping state — I used to call this state medinapping — in this state I often find my mind writing my essays and poems.
Last Week I Received the Gentle Kick in the Ass I Needed
A week ago the hotel slipped a letter under my door — as of May 1st the steeply discounted and affordable daily rate that I paid of $85 from May through October and then $70 from November till now would increase to $159.
In other words, I need to relocate and I need to relocate quickly. I did not let this healthy stress overwhelm me. I began to run options through my head. I knew I would never be homeless. Worst case scenario, which scenario left me feeling icky in my stomach that meant I had to and trusted that I would find a better solution, I could return to NYC and probably temporarily live in a family-owned property. I thought about making that phone call to one of my cousin’s employees to see if a furnished apartment existed but again, my gut screamed I must and would find a better solution for me.
Spiritual Implement #1 — The Mindfulness to Spot Potential Synchronicities
When most people mention mindfulness, they do so in connection with a meditation technique. For me, mindfulness simply means awareness and I do not achieve my awareness through meditation. I spot patterns and potential messages in very awakened states.
Eight days ago, the day before the notice, a Medium editor posted in Slack that he had been on leave to house hunt. Another editor, who I know sometimes serves as both a witting and unwitting channel for me, Brooklyn Muse,⁵ replied to him:
“Come to Northern NJ. Lovely family life- close to NYC …farm country, organic foods, and beautiful quiet spaces for writing!”
I immediately saw that as a message from the universe to me. The other editor could not care less about being close to NYC, whereas my kids and friends all live there. I replied in the thread:
“I’ll keep that in mind. Northern NJ had been in my mind at one point.”
My dear friend Dr. Preeti Singh then quickly said:
“Hello @Marcus (aka Greg)”
That simple salutation meant much more than Pretty Preeti saying hello to me — that was the universe saying “Hellooooo Greg — are you paying attention??!!”
So when I got the notice the next day, I did not freak out from the unsettling prospect of not knowing where I would live. I saw it as the opportunity to get unstuck. Coincidentally, a week earlier my dear friend jules, as she has written about,⁶ received a 60-day notice to vacate her house. While the lawyer in me advised her to seek local counsel as landlords and management companies often fuck up the various legal requirements for notices, I had taken note of what our mutual dear friend Ravyne Hawke had advised her about looking at this next stage as an opportunity for adventure.
Next, I knew I needed to vocalize to my family what had transpired. So that evening I had the following text conversation with my ex-wife and mother of my kids:
I didn’t realize then that the universe had just planted a kernel of thought through Liz.
The next night I texted my mother:
“I have to move by 5/1. I just found out yesterday that the hotel is doubling the rate. I wasn’t expecting that. I don’t have any idea yet where I will go. I’m not upset. I think a change will do me good. Not upset but also not without some stress from the uncertainty, which I can also embrace.”
I did this just to vocalize my thoughts to the universe — I didn’t expect my mom to reply and she didn’t until over 4 hours later when she told me that she was in a taxi from JFK to her apartment after having visited with my sister and her kids, which trip I hadn’t even known about — anyway this is her way of acknowledging that she got my text without having any idea what if anything she should say.
The next day I received a group email from my friend Kyle in NYC announcing his birthday celebrations for the weekend. He had no reason to include me in the email as he knows I am not around…
That same day I had Slack DM’d Brooklyn:
“Would you please give me a few towns in North Jersey that fit the description of what you posted in the thread the other day? I found out yesterday that the hotel I’ve been living in is doubling the monthly rate as of 5/1 so I need to move.”
She asked me what I was looking for and I replied the next day (4/3):
“As far as area, ideally an area with accessible nature/parks for walks, and where one can generally get by on foot and bike to get to stores and places to eat. Near a bus line to NYC would be good as well. If you could identify towns like that then I could look on the internet for housing that I could afford. Close to local colleges where I could look for work would be a bonus.”
That night I called Kyle to wish him a happy birthday. I asked him how many bedrooms he has in his weekend-used farmhouse in Pennsylvania — five. I told him I needed to move and as a fallback, would he rent me a room (the Liz kernel). He said just come and stay for a few months.
We spoke again yesterday, and his area offers everything that I had described to Brooklyn that I wanted.
Result — I will move to Kyle’s in two weeks.
Additional Spiritual Instruments I Pulled Out of My Toolbox
- Embracing uncertainty⁷
- Finding serenity through emotionally intelligent responses to stimuli⁸
- Practicing acceptance⁹
As requested in the challenge, tagging a few friends for participation: Rebecca Romanelli, LM, Rayna Pummel, Carolyn F. Chryst, Ph.D., Kim Petersen and Christine Graves
In Rama I create, with soul-energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,
Endnotes:
- My readers need to understand that the word coincidence is often misused and misunderstood as meaning happenstance as evidenced by phrases like “no mere coincidence” and “I don’t believe in coincidence.” When the user understands the proper definition of coincidence, the speaker of the latter phrase absolutely believes in coincidence. When I moved from NYC to New Hampshire in December 2020, I found a huge dictionary in the house I rented, the 1968 Edition of the Webster International Dictionary, which contains this definition of coincidence: “Noteworthy event, circumstance, or series of such, which occurs in conjunction, or synchronously, with others, and is of such a character as to suggest a connection of cause and effect, although apparently no connection of the kind exists.” In Craig S. Bell’s book, Comprehending Coincidence, he cites The Third Edition of the Webster New International Dictionary for this definition: “the concurrence of events or circumstances appropriate to one another or having significance in relation to one another but between which there is no casual connection.” I don’t know if “casual” was a typo for “causal” but either work. Casual connection means by chance so “no casual” means “causal.” If “not causal” was meant, that means no physical (as opposed to metaphysical) cause and effect, what Jung describes as “acausal” in his definition of synchronicity as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, “acausal parallelism” or “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”
- https://readmedium.com/carpe-diem-a323490fe3cc
- https://readmedium.com/splendid-isolation-923be403a8d2
- https://readmedium.com/toasting-lindsey-with-tankas-f738272aed7c
- Synchronized Energies, A story of how incarnated souls interact with each other and the cosmos across the Mediumverse
- https://readmedium.com/extra-shot-of-expresso-please-72e80b1f87f3
- See Patrick Paul Garlinger’s https://readmedium.com/embracing-uncertainty-267f3b2c309b
- https://readmedium.com/of-emotional-intelligence-ffa90d946d59
- https://readmedium.com/638b5ad7f2e1