Being a Sacred Observer

Yesterday, I was challenged to do something I had not done in a while and that was to be mindful of what I said and what I thought. Denise Linn calls this being a sacred observer. Miguel don Ruiz uses a similar exercise in which he has you write down all those thoughts that float through your head. So often, we are not aware of the language of our thoughts. Even when we do not speak language that is disempowering, we may think it. It is a humbling experience when you observe your speech and thought patterns. One of the things I wrote about in my process journal about being a sacred observer yesterday was how even others conversations can bring up disempowering and negative thoughts in our minds, especially when they trigger unhealed wounds.

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No more poison!

So if I asked if you would voluntarily eat or serve poison to someone what would you say? When I asked about two dozen people, I got all kinds of responses. The majority of them said no, NO, or #$@ NO! A few people asked me if I was okay. One person said maybe under extreme circumstances and of course, one person had to ask me if I was only asking about future, not past efforts. One person did confess to feeding someone dog food, but nobody said they would voluntarily eat poison or serve it someone else. I promised all those that I asked that it would all make sense when they read this blog. I hope that it will.

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“Word” and “word”

The first agreement in Miguel don Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, is to be impeccable with your words. It took me a few reads of his book, to notice this, but he uses both the word “word” and “Word.” For me, there is a real difference between being impeccable with my Word and being impeccable with my words. My words are what I say. They are the things that come out of mouth when I am speaking to others or myself. They can be also be words that I write, or probably more accurately these days, type. They come together to form sentences, paragraphs, and pages. They are what I use to express my opinion, to comment on a situation, to express what is going on in my mind, and to communicate to my students what it is that I want them to accomplish in a course. Sometimes, I use my words to come together in writing of poetry. I make up words such as sistahpastahhomegurl, which worked well in a poem I wrote for a friend and colleague of mine a few years ago.

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