When your mind is reeling in confusion, breathe deeply into the centre of your chest.
Connecting to the core of your being this way extends loving kindness to yourself , even when there is none in sight.
Ezra Bayda
Tag: heart
Today, send out goodness
If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.
John O’Donoghue
Do not try to become anything
Sometime go outside and sit,
In the evening at sunset,
When there’s a slight breeze that touches your body,
And makes the leaves and the trees move gently.
You’re not trying to do anything, really.
You’re simply allowing yourself to be,
Very open from deep within,
Without holding onto anything whatsoever. Don’t bring something back from the past, from a memory.
Tsogni Rinpoche
Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything.
Do not be a meditator. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be.
Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.
Ajahn Chah
Teens Day 17: Take care of yourself.
Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself – if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself – it is very difficult to take care of another person. To love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Where we choose to focus
Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities.
It is always our conscious choice which garden we will tend … when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present — love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure — the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
When we get hurt and damaged
Another post on working with the past. Typically, after tidying the garden over the weekend, the wind rose last night and scattered bins, leaves, twigs and nests, reminding us – and the birds – that it is not quite Summer, despite the warm temperatures. And coincidentally, the reading for today in Mark Nepo’s lovely book The Book of Awakening is about damage and hurt in our lives, so I thought I would share it here. Dealing with the past sometimes means moving on and letting go and at other times means healing what has been wounded or repairing what has been broken:
Stones loosened by storms cover paths, and uprooted trees break newly formed nests, and crisis after crisis throws us into each other. It is inevitable. Stay alive and you will be hurt, and you will also hurt others. Unintended hurt is as common as branches snapped in wind. But it is the unacknowledged hurt that becomes a wound.
Being human, we are subject to many ancient and powerful opposites found in life. Among those that impact us constantly are light and dark, yes and no, and especially fear and peace. For it is out of fear that we feel the need to isolate ourselves or to control others, and it is often in the act of elevating ourselves that we hurt one another, not to mention ourselves.
Still, as no one in daily life is exempt from both sleeping and waking, no one can escape feeling both fear and peace, and so, no one can escape being both hurtful and loving. But the world is kept whole by those who can overcome their fear, however briefly. The blood of life itself is kept vital by those who can simply and bravely repair their separations, time and time again.
Mindfulbalance 