Promises Made To Yourself

“Our creative emotions are not subject to command and do not tolerate force. They can only be coaxed. Once coaxed, they begin to wish, and wishing they begin to yearn for action.”  – Konstantin Stanislavski

I promised myself the months of November, December and January. I dedicate these upcoming months to completing the first draft of my fiction and to deepening my meditation and spiritual practices. I give myself these months to fulfilling the promise of my creative and spiritual life.

 

 

 

What promises have you made lately? What promises still lay dormant somewhere in your psyche waiting to be plucked out and renewed? What do you need to do in your internal and external environments to make room for the fulfillment of this promise?

 

All promises to others are also promises made to our self. Every good story, poem and song offers us a promise. A good novel makes a strong promise to the reader in the first paragraph. Marketing experts suggest, “branding” yourself and will tell you to make a promise to your clients (or readers) and then make sure you fulfill it. Your promise is your trademark.

 

 

Some promises are meant to be broken but the wiser we get the more discernment we use when we make our promises. This Monday Musing gives writing prompts that help you remember forgotten or misplaced promises, renew ones that need a bit of a jump start and to let go of those that no longer match the life you are creating. I assure you a stirring of promises made to your writer’s life when you try this meditation and the following writing prompts out for your self.

 

 

A Meditation that helps us tap into the Promise of Love –

 

Give yourself ten minutes for this meditation. Sit with both feet on the floor. Place a hand on your heart chakra (in the middle of your chest). Rest your awareness in the sensation of a nurturing touch. Bring your awareness to both the breath and the hand on heart. Rest your mind for a few moments in the sensation of breath and hand on heart center. Bring your attention to the rise and fall of the breath and your hand on your chest. After a few moments bring to mind a loving memory. A time you felt loved, appreciated and safe. This could be with a loved-one, a pet or even a time in nature. Sit in this memory as you keep your hand on your heart center. Consider the object of your meditation this loving memory you’re your awareness moves away from it, bring it back to this time. You can even go over the same event. Then after a minute or two take a deep breath and bring to mind simple and recent things you are grateful about. Keep these simple, like your cup of tea this morning, or the easy traffic into work or how your clothes feel, or, the beauty of the sunrise. Then take a couple more deep breaths and open your eyes.

 

 

This meditation helps your psychophysical system retrieve loving memories instead of automatically taping into the pain story and it’s habitual responses. This makes room in our internal landscape for keeping our promises.

 

Writing Prompts 

 

Write your Loving Memory Story (from the meditation above). Then after you have written it out choose five words from your story (like, house, gentle, etc).  Write them in a list. Then across from them write their opposites. Think outside the box – you are the inventor here, invent whatever opposite you want. For house it could be sail, or pit, for examples.  Next write the Opposite Story of your loving memory using the opposite words. Let it take you where it wants to. It may begin as a fiction and then an actual memory may surface. No rules; just write and discover.

 

Write a list of promises you made to your self (start with as a young adult). Repeat the sentence, I promised myself . . . Don’t stop your pen; repeat this sentence instead of stopping to think. (The thinking mind is not the writer’s friend.) This allows you to access the subconscious storehouse. Attempt to fill up several pages. You can do this several times.

Take one of the promises and turn it into an intention. (See Wheel of Initiation for the writing and scripting of intentions). Write about the promise of this intention on a regular (ideally daily), basis. What will happen today to fulfill this intention, this promise? Script how this intention will look, feel be for you when it is 100% actualized. 

Write about a broken promise (a pain story) using the following words:  repeat, lie(s), missing, Jesus, avoid, stone, walk, prepare.

What mistaken promise have you made? Write about that. Create a small ritual or prayer to undo the promise and then move on.

“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.” ­–Steven Wright