The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you?
You hold on to things, causing your confusion.
Let nature teach you.
Hear the bird’s song, then let go.
Ajahn Chah
Tag: Joy
Four smiles: a practice for this day of work
This exercise is called the four smiles exercise.
Basically all you do is take a moment, let your mouth soften into a smile, then expand that smile for each of the next three breaths. First, expanding it so you feel your whole mouth, not just your lips, but your whole inner mouth soften and rise into a smile. Your forehead, your throat, and you keep feeling that smile expand until you feel it in your heart. That literally takes four breaths and you’re feeling a lot more buoyant.
Tzivia Gover
Switch off: Stay away from screens
A long weekend in Ireland. Time to switch off and nourish our deeper selves:
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.…
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly.
Live a three-dimensional life;
stay away from screens.
Wendell Berry, How to Be a poet
A new month: thresholds
At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.
John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
A dash of foolishness
Maybe because it’s the end of the working week, or people starting on holidays, or simply because its July….. but this post follows the same theme as other Fridays in this month: Let’s keep a capacity for play and for non-doing in our lives..
Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation
in which discipline and order
are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
May Sarton
with thanks to Ben Naga for this lovely quote
and for being one of the longest and most faithful followers of this blog.
Sunday Quote: A choice
We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves strong.
The amount of work is the same.
Carlos Castenada, Journey to Ixtlan
