I have a simple mantra for remembering the laws of nature: life is not personal, permanent, or perfect.
I [have] discovered that awareness can ride the energies of persistent and disturbing thoughts and emotions without interference or personalization.
Reminding myself that life is not personal, permanent, or perfect has kept me from falling into sinkholes of despair and destroying rooms with rage. It invites me to pause and turn inward.
Ruth King, Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter
Strength is our willingness to stay present in the face of uncertainty
Elizabeth Mattis‑Namgyel, The Power of an Open Question: The Buddha’s Path to Freedom
Rain falls without asking permission, without apology, without concern for our plans. We are invited – challenged – to meet life and the weather — not by resisting, but by allowing. This is far from passivity; it is intimacy with reality.
For after all, the best thing one can do
when it is raining
is to let it rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863),
A bit far from our experience here in Ireland these days with constant rain and flooding. However, it is not a bad practice.
Try this: Think of a current “drought” in your life.
For 10 minutes, just trust that it will all be okay. Trust that you’re being guided.
Trust, against all odds and evidence, that you are safe. When I use this exercise on my drought fears, the strangest thing happens: I feel it raining inside myself. I become a microcosm of the life-giving rain that, someday, will bring California back to life. Or so I trust.
Martha Beck
The Universe conceals its workings, and the underlying meaning of things is not immediately evident;
Nature loves to hide
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
Heraclitus, fragment B123
The second time I have posted this insight from Ram Dass, but I like to be reminded of it.
When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it.
You just allow it.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying “You are too this, or I’m too this!” That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
Ram Dass
Mindfulbalance 