Sabbath rest: A meditation to develop peace within ourselves

Sit comfortably for a few moments, letting your body be at rest. Bring your attention into the present and notice whatever sensations are present in your body. In particular, be aware of any sensation, tensions or pains you may have been fighting. Do not try to change them, simply notice them with an interested and kind attention. In each area of struggle you discover, let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.  Breathe quietly and let it be.

Continue to sit quietly. Then cast your attention over all the battles that still exist in your life. Sense them inside yourself. If you have an ongoing struggle with your body, be aware of that. If you have been fighting inner wars with your feelings, being in conflict with your own loneliness, fear, confusion, grief,  anger or addiction, sense the struggle you have been waging. Notice the struggles in your thoughts as well. Be aware of how you have carried on the inner battles. Notice the inner armies, the inner dictators, the inner fortifications. Be aware of all that you have fought within yourself, of how long you have perpetuated the conflict.

Gently, with openness, allow each of these experiences to be present. In each area of struggle, let your body,heart and mind be soft. Open to whatever you experience without fighting. Let it be present just as it is. Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let yourself be at rest. Invite all parts of yourself to join you at the peace table in your heart

Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

Sunday quote: Listen


The first duty of love is to listen

Paul Tillich

The cycles in our lives

Walking in the hills this morning and saw a neglected meadow full of buttercups. It is lovely to see some fields just left “idle”, for wild flowers to then bloom, open for the bees and the butterflies. We do not need to add much to nature, just to let it be and it provides. If left to itself it grows and is fruitful. A bit like our lives. Even when times are tough and seem barren, they grow back and produce fruit even more  abundantly than before – we just have to trust in a cycle which often we cannot see but which is not made up by any one event. It unfolds at its own pace, with its own wisdom. If we have the courage to allow it do so,  it will lead us to what really matters.

……and find joy in them


When you do things from your soul,

you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Rumi

All starts with thoughts

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they lead to actions.
Watch your actions, they create habits.
Watch your habits, they build your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Upanishads


Everything that happens today is a blessing

It is not easy to be open to everything that happens in a day, either outside us or within us, still less to see them all as “blessings”. Here Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, reminds us to do so, maybe from the perspective of her work with people in the last moments of their lives, when they have let go of some of the things which assumed great importance during their lives. Her words remind us today that life has a richness to be experienced and is not just to be managed or gotten through. Every aspect of this day can teach us, if we have eyes to see.

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself, and know that everything in this life has purpose.

There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross