Work with Sandra personally, in-office or by phone/Skype.

Who are the new Spiritual Teachers?

Adapted from “New Paradigm Teaching” from the Silence of the Heart by Paul Ferrini.

New paradigm spiritual teachers claim no authority over others. They do not pretend to have the answers for others. They speak only of their experience. They invite others to share in what they have learned from their experience.

They do not preach. They do not try to fix. They simply accept others as they are and encourage others to find their own truth.

They empower. They see the light in others and encourage it. They don’t close their eyes to the darkness. They do not deny the darkness or go to battle against it. They know there is nothing wrong, no evil to oppose, no battles to fight. They just gently encourage the Light. They know the light itself will heal all wounds.

New paradigm teachers do not try to heal others. They encourage others to heal themselves through self acceptance and self love.

The old paradigm teacher wants to heal others and save the world. The new paradigm teacher knows that others are fine the way they are and the world is already redeemed.

Why is this? Has the new paradigm teacher closed her eyes? Doesn’t she see the suffering in the world, the environmental catastrophe, the endemic violence? Oh yes, she sees the struggle and the pain, but she has a different interpretation of them .She doesn’t believe that people are guilty or that the world is doomed. She sees the vast call for love. She sees the universal cry for acceptance and understanding. And this is what she gives.

Not fixing. Not salvation. Not intellectual remedies for physical problems.

Does she give food and medical supplies if they are needed? Of course, but she remembers to whom she is giving them. She remembers the call and she answers it.

She knows that food is helpful, but it is not the solution to the problem. It is not what is being asked for.

She looks in to the eyes of others and sees their divinity as her own, and asks how she can be of help.

What is asked for is love. Love is the only food. Love is what she gives.

Call or email Oriens to learn how yoga, meditation, spiritual counseling, acupuncture, massage or other mind-body therapies could benefit you!
212-213-5785 or info@oriensliving.com

 

I wrote this post last Memorial Day  -- and decided to re-publish it.  As high achievers, we can never receive enough encouragement to take a break!

Rest! It’s Memorial Day and I’m on my 4th glorious day of it!

Rest is a 4-letter-word in western culture. For high achievers, it often carries a heaping measure of guilt.

But Chinese Medicine sees rest as the necessary opposite of action—rest is yin to action’s yang. You have to recharge the battery or the device won’t work. You have to break between sets or your muscles will fail.

You have to have a time-out or your mind isn’t sharp, your body fatigues, your spirit starts wondering, “what’s the point?”

One of my mentors, intentional business guru/philanthropist Christine Comaford recently shared a Hawaiian surfing expression with me, “Don’t turn your back on the ocean.” That means, don’t pretend you are more powerful than the energy of Nature.

I love this! It is SO true! Most things that go wrong with us have at least something to do with us “turning our back” on the restorative powers within us. Whether that’s refusal to take a much needed time out from work, lack of commitment to nourishing food, unwillingness to value sleep, not finding forgiveness in our hearts for those we love….when we turn our back on natural law, things can get pretty overwhelming.

Rest isn’t for slackers. Rest is especially for those seeking to do extraordinary things in this Life!

Here’s a hokey acronym on rest I just made up right now while writing this blog:

Repair—downtime is when it all happens
Evaluate—perspective comes when you are off the playing field and sitting high up in the stands
Systems Off—rebooting begins by hitting the off switch and unplugging
Tune In—without the many distractions that the requirements of accomplishment impose, a sense of truer self and meaning emerges

So as I get ready for mountain bikes with my husband, having slept in ‘til 9 (4 days in a row!) and enjoyed a mind-relaxing hour of staring-into-nature meditation (just enjoying the wind blow and the birds talk over tea)…..I’m feeling mighty peaceful and deeply appreciative of a wonderful life…relaxed, recharged and ready to hit the ground running tomorrow!

  Simone Burgos, LMT

For the first thirty years of life, it’s likely that most of us don’t give menopause a second thought. We’re too busy growing – mentally, emotionally, intellectually, and certainly physically to spend much time considering what our body’s journey will be later in life. Somewhere in our late thirties, however, we begin to know in a deep way that menopause is part of our path. For many women this inspires worry … and fear. Fear around aging, around changes in our bodies and lives, in our sexuality and our identity.

We can have confidence though, because one thing that women experience all of our lives, is change. Our bodies are NEVER stagnant. Our hormonal bodies are always shifting – and menopause is just one of those shifts. In fact, peri-menopause and menopause are a gift of change for women.  If we are at our strongest and most confident, we will know that menopause is not a loss at all – rather, it is the recall of the self.

As we hit puberty, our bodies naturally prepare for motherhood – and they sustain that role for a long time. This is embodied – built into our DNA – mapped into us genetically. There’s no judgment about whether we have a family – or a child. It is simply how our bodies guide our journey. Our bodies (and perhaps even our souls) have a map that says that the years in between puberty and menopause are focused on the “nature” of mothering – to be loving and caring – to be focused on others. We see again and again that this is true for us, whether we have children or not. We are the growers of humanity.

Later, when we reach menopause and begin to experience the end of our menstrual periods, we are at an age where our identity begins to shift away from “others” and back to our own process. Our bodies themselves are no longer focused on “mothering” (or finding mates) – our map shifts – and we are once again connecting with self. THIS TIME in our lives is a huge opportunity for a renewed spirituality. Why?  Because spirituality takes TIME and focus. Two things we do not have when we are focused on being the growers of humanity and mothering the universe around us.

Trust me, menopause and peri-menopause should not BE frightening. Yes, this is a period of change (no pun intended), but it can be a time of great laughter and freedom. Our autonomy and power become very apparent to us. As empowered women, we have a renewed freedom from the “roles” that are put on us by others or society. While we might have been tied down by approval in our 20’s and 30’s, this is definitely released as we approach menopause.  We are attractive for US.  We are alluring for US.  We are engaging for US.  It is no longer about others:  a mate, a partner, our children, our obligations.  

Don’t be fearful – be THRILLED! We often achieve great things in the years of menopause. Gifted with time, a renewed focus on self, and LIFE EXPERIENCE, we soar to new heights in life – we begin our own businesses or create amazing new careers, we finish (or even start) our education, we write that book, we take that trip.

USE this time to claim your life and spirituality anew. Rediscover your body. In peri-menopause or menopause our bodies need a new kind of tender loving care and respect. Consider yoga to stay peaceful and fit at this time especially – and Maya Abdominal Massage to gently guide your body through its process – increasing vital blood flow to organs and maximizing hormonal health. Most of all, embrace this time. It is YOUR time – and while every moment in our lives IS ours, we are finally empowered enough to know it – body and soul. 

Maya Abdominal Massage

Simone Burgos is a Certified Arvigo Practitioner, bringing the wisdom of the ancient Mayan tradition to the West.   

 
 Need help hearing your own inner wisdom? Want to have more love, joy and appreciation in your life?  Speak with Sandra! 212-213-5785

The Song of New Beginnings

This morning, I awoke to the song of the robins. When the robins show up in our fields, we can be assured that spring is definitely here. I love their clear, bright song, their chesty, zesty gait, and the way they tilt their heads in the hunt for worms.

Those rockin’ robins strike a chord in me that sings the song of the promise of this season, the opportunity for new beginnings. Spring explodes in its myriad of ways and I am reminded again and again of the mysteries of our Mother Earth and the promises of new beginnings she offers us.

What a celebratory way to start my day! After coffee and meditations, I made my way to the computer and came across this following quote that inspired me. I share it with you.


The robins sing a love song of new beginnings to Mother Earth and to all of Life.

 I, too, will sing my song.  What is the song of new beginnings that you will sing to your Life today?

I often wondered as a child growing up in a vitally Christian home, why a Super Bunny cooked, painted and delivered chicken eggs along with chocolate images of himself...all on the holiest day in the Christian calendar.  We always had an Easter egg hunt and built a bunny hutch out of pine tree sprigs for him to rest and restore himself in...complete with carrots--tops on.  I was one of those children that was particularly devastated to learn that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were fictions.  I had totally bought in and clung on as long as I could.  Today I find Easter's stories moving, meaningful and inspiring:  death and resurrection, fertility and new life.

Easter is named for the Anglo-Saxon lunar goddess, Eostre--also the root of the female hormone estrogen.  She was celebrated on the first full moon after the Spring Equinox (March 22).  Fertility festivals and rites celebrated the fecundity of the earth, its ability to give forth life.  Animals were in estrus (heat) or bearing offspring.  Myth has Eostre mating with the sun god to conceive a child that would be born 13 moons later, at the Yule, or winter solstice (December 21).

Eostre was symbolized by the egg (potential for new life) and the hare (fecund breeder) that appeared in the full moon. 

Other parts of the Easter story hark to death and resurrection of a hero, child or lover (Osiris, Dionysis, etc.) and other principals of the mystery cults that were popular competitors in Christianity's early years.

Like the Christmas tree and Santa, the integration of Easter's pagan and other symbols is not particularly well explained.  And many rail against it.  But I find it wonderful.

To me these juxtapositions and layers are great call to experiencing meaning in our lives.  I find the invitation to align ourselves with the energy of spring quite compelling.  Spring is very much a heightening of our fertility whether that be conceiving children, beginning a new life chapter, birthing a project, climbing out of the restful introspective energy of winter or any other progression or metamorphosis.

The idea of resurrection is strong in the 5 Phase cycle of Chinese cosmology, one of the founding theories of Chinese medicine.  The winter season of water represents death and descent into the depth.  Unseen activities, deep nourishment of internal waters, make the pushing through, birth-into-being energy of spring possible. Spring arrives as a miracle, seemingly out of nowhere, a radiant infusion of new life.

I am also energized by the celebration of intervention. The notion that something greater than ourselves--the moon, nature, God, The Great Mother, Universe, Source... whatever one's spiritual alignment is--is active in our lives, plotting a rhythm we are wise to fall in with. I find this both challenging and reassuring.  Everyday as I observe my own life and the lives of those that trust me with their health, I notice that fertility and well-being lie in aligning ourselves with these greater processes and forces. The cycles of our bodies, the cycles of growth and aging, the cycles of relationships, the cycles of nature.  The opportunity to let situations and parts of ourselves die only to give birth to something better, more of who we are, more of what we are capable of, more of who we are called to be in this precious short time on earth we call "our life."

I don't really eat those marshmallow chicks anymore, with the yellow #5 dye, but I always look forward to the homemade chocolate peanut butter eggs and if a dark chocolate bunny appears, I won't say no.

  Need to talk or work something through?  Rev. Sandra can help!

I've been thinking about a play I saw last summer, which blurred the boundaries between art and life. The play, Guest Artist, by well known actor Jeff Daniels, focused on the relationship of a seasoned Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and the young playwright who idolizes him.

Predictably, both characters learned about their life and their art from each other. Through twists and turns, the elder writer taught his student the subtleties of being a great playwright, while the youth had the courage to question his elder’s motives and lifestyle. Fear, risk taking, and having the courage to speak your own truth, all of these were explored in the truly moving performances. But what was most striking to me was how both characters were uncompromising in defining their lives through their art.

At two different points in the show, both characters stood on bus seats, (the whole play takes place in a bus station) holding a manuscript, proclaiming at the top of their lungs, THIS IS MY ART! THIS IS MY ART! THIS IS MY ART! Both characters were exclaiming that their art defined them as people. So this got me to thinking… Our art isn’t just our manuscript, or our song, or our dance… but OUR LIFE.

What does it mean to think of our lives, themselves, as art? To consider every moment we live art?

The passion that these playwrights exclaimed about their work is the very way that we, as humans, need to proclaim the creation of our lives each day.

All of our life, each choice that we make, and each action we take – every moment is like brush strokes on a canvas. We are 100% in control of the art of our lives – we are the sculptor, the painter, the singer. Our lives are creations of ourselves. How do we choose to appreciate this? Do we choose to believe that we are in creation of our own life, having the courage to tell our truth? Or do we perceive life as something “being done to us” – allowing fear and attachments to what others may think to dictate how we paint on our life’s canvas?

Do we have the courage to honor the creation (read: the choices we have made) of our lives? Do we have the courage to tell the truth about which choices truly serve us? Do we have the courage to admit that we may be hiding behind our fear, anger, blame, and judgments?

Can we stand up on the proverbial bus seat and proclaim, MY LIFE IS MY ART!?

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader

I’ve always loved cardinals. They are one of the few birds that stay north the winter time. When the landscape is gray and white, the bright red color of the male cardinal is stunning and exotic and always takes my breath away.  At my home in the Catskill Mountains, we’ve had a gorgeous pair hanging around our home for a few years now.

In February, I watched as the male started to feel his mating mojo and began a very curious ritual. He would sit in the bushes by the kitchen window and fly into the window, over and over again, banging his beak into the glass.  Amazed that he was not hurting himself, my husband told me Mr. Cardinal may be seeing his own reflection in the glass, and, thinking it was another male, simply defending his woman – and his little piece of the world. Every morning we would awaken to the thumping of his beak into the kitchen window.  It was loud! As time went by, his little ritual expanded to include flinging himself into the window by our bed and then, even more creatively, the rear view mirrors on not only my car, but our next door neighbors’ car as well. This bird was crazy!

Well past mating season, and babies fledging, he is still engaged in his daily rounds.  But now, when I hear the thumping on the window, I am oddly comforted. Somewhere over the last months, the bird morphed from being a symbol of crazy confrontation and destructive willfulness, to becoming a symbol of endurance, and therein the power of perseverance.  Rather than seeing his bizarre behavior as a mad response to competition with attack, I began to see this ritual as Mr. Cardinal meeting himself, over and over again, with perseverance, determination and patience.  He went from wacko warrior to Spiritual Warrior. Yes, the beat, beat, beat of his beak reminds me of the beat of my own Inner Amazon Warrior.

Physically, I understand endurance. The “no pain no gain” theory.  But I’m talking about a much larger sense of endurance – the spiritual quality of endurance. When I stumble and disconnect from my own sense of endurance, I can become mighty impatient and confrontational, mostly with myself

If we view life as something to willfully confront, to control and manipulate, then we are like my Crazy Cardinal, banging into a perceived illusion of competition and attack.  When we accept our life as it is, though, we awaken endurance, and we begin to use this new found sense of determination to strengthen our self-respect and self-love.  We become like my Warrior Cardinal, perpetually coming back to Self, meeting ourselves where we are, with perseverance and loving patience. It is from this place of self honoring that we can begin to make the choices needed to change our lives.

This is how we transcend our limitations.

Endurance is enhanced by a deep sense of gratitude for Life, for the gift of your Life and for the gift of being You.  Yes, gratitude…and patience.

Rev. Sandra Bargman
Spiritual Counseling
Meditation & Guided Imagery
Oriens Community Leader


Need to talk or work something through? Rev. Sandra can help!

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of Spirit.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability---and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually--let them grow,
Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only Source could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give the Divine the benefit of believing that her hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (with minor adaptations)

 

Oriens founder, Elizabeth Carpenter, MS, L.Ac. & and Oriens Community Leader, Rev. Sandra Bargman

We gather together during the Holiday Season, in celebration and with a sense of the sacred. It is these very things that we most desire for ourselves always -- a sense of joy that celebrates our life, a sense of the sacred. Each of us desires to know that life, our life, has meaning and purpose, that it is grounded in peace and possibilities.

We find that the key to experiencing this lasting hope, joy and sense of peace begins with GRATITUDE. Gratitude supports us in trusting life – as it is. Gratitude connects us to our deepest wisdom and opens the door to self understanding. Gratitude wakes us up and calls us into community.

Gratitude is the crux of the Winter Holidays. Indeed, gratitude for the miracle of life IS the story of Hanukkah, Christmas and the Winter Solstice. Our rituals around them tell us the stories and bring us together in awe and celebration—into community. For it is here, together, that we experience ourselves in a way that gives each one of us a sense of the greater, of purpose.

Though we all lament, and yet participate in, the distraction of commercialism around the holidays, we also all receive the call to this sense of wonder!

From small pangs of loneliness to heaps of glee, the holidays arouse in us the longing AND the possibility of connection, purpose and peace….which begins with gratitude, as our holiday stories teach us.

This season, we celebrate you. We are grateful for you. Thank you for choosing Oriens and being part of the wisdom and wellness community we create here.

Happy Holidays!
Elizabeth & Sandra and the entire Oriens Team

  Need to work something through?  Speak with Sandra!  212-213-5785


My husband and I were just visiting some old friends, whom we had not seen in quite a few years, in fact, long enough to be meeting their second child, now 5 years old, for the first time.

Stuffed from a lazy, delicious brunch together at their home, we were putting our coats on to leave, and said second child demanded to put on a performance for us…she was going to sing her new song and accompany herself on the standing banjo. Apparently she had been way too shy to do this before and now, completely emboldened and dripping with passion, she strummed on that banjo, singing her sultry lyrics about “having strange days”. Mesmerizing.
“She’ll grow out of her shyness”, says one parent. I say, “Maybe. Even if she doesn’t, I understand, I still am that way.”
Laughter. “YOU!? Shy!!? ”

Yes, me. I am at home onstage in front of large crowds, bold and outgoing, and at more intimate gatherings, I generally prefer one on one, the loner in the corner, shy and quiet. It took me a long time to embrace both of these aspects of myself, because it didn’t make sense for me to feel both. It just didn’t compute. More to the point, I made a judgment that one was better than the other.

The truth is I am both, the extroverted introvert. My boldness helps me to move forward with gusto. My introversion nourishes my inner landscape. Both express my deepest passions. I have come to understand that I have many of these paradoxes and contradictions. Madly organized Free Spirit, Nurturing Warrior, and Glamorous mountain dweller.

I no longer try to define myself in any direction. These are the distinctions of the ego, and as a spiritual being, I know that I am far vaster. If I allow myself to express the paradoxes, then I get to know much more of myself.

And Life, just like Humans (for we are Life) is no different. Life is full of contradictions. As much as we want life to be organized and to maintain distinctions, it does not flow that way. One of my favorites … “Life isn’t fair, but Life is good.” There are no absolutes in life, except, perhaps Absolute vodka. Cheers to Holy Paradox!

The sooner I can get on board with this deep spiritual understanding and find the sacred space within to hold these paradoxes, the quicker I can get on board with what is happening in my Life. It is all One after all, isn’t it?

Do you have the courage to hold your personal paradoxes? How about the paradoxes of Life?

  Work with Sandra personally, in-office or by phone/Skype.

“Happiness is a choice.”

That is the quote I have as part of my email signature. It’s my quote; although I rest assured I am not the first person to utter those words. I wish I had a buck for every time someone commented on that quote.

I think happiness IS a choice. But I’m not talking about the Hallmark version of happiness. I know a lot of times we confuse happiness with pleasure. We focus on the externals in our life, such as “When I finish this project, then I will be happy. When I get my new car, then I will be happy. When I finish school, then I will be happy.” I know, I’ve said them all. These are the musings of the personality and the ego.

The problem is there is always something more to want, when the reality crashes in that what you thought was going to make you happy, only made you happy for a short amount of time.

So…what I’m really talking about is JOY. I think joy is similar to happiness, but is a deeper and broader experience.

Happiness feels a bit “me, me, me” – which is just fine, but keep in mind that “me, me, me” doesn’t take you through the tough times. And you can be sure that there are always going to be tough times in life. Happiness is emotional and is fleeting, joy is an attitude about life, your life, and can remain even when happiness seems elusive.

The experience of joy brings us out of Self and into other and a sense of something “Greater” than ourselves, God/Goddess/Source/Awareness, whatever you want to call it.

We know full well that chaos and spirit crushing events happen in life…and it is our internal reaction to these things that dictate whether we are having a joyful and peaceful life.

Therefore JOY is the deep abiding serenity and poise we experience when we are grounded in our willingness to know the good that we have and that we are, to know the Universe’s power for good.

It is our power  to choose how we feel. It is our choice to profoundly know that our Life is in complete support of us.  In making this choice, we open our hearts to Hope!