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
Hundreds of open flowers
all come from the one branch.
Look, all their colours appear in my garden.
I open the door, and in the wind
I see the spring sunlight.
Already it has reached
worlds without number.
Sekiso, Worlds without number
Everything inside and everything around us wants to reflect itself in us.
We don’t have to go anywhere to obtain the truth.
We only need to be still and things will reveal themselves in the still water of the heart
Thich Nhat Hahn
Somedays, one realizes the truth of this more than at other times….We can see that we are not just “visiting” the world. We should not underestimate how we can support one another when we are there through good times and bad, and how our lives affect each other and have value.
I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.…..
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver
Today we had a beautiful early Spring morning, and it was a lovely background for the second session of the MBSR Programme where the majority of participants are volunteers for the new Hospice soon to open in Geneva. I was reflecting on the type of presence we have with others, and how to create a space to tune into them, especially when they are weak. And later one I was reflecting in my own life how the fundamental lesson is learning to accept our own weakness and what a freedom it is when we see that we are accepted and loved. Sadly, we often pick up the opposite message when we are little, that our worth comes from our competence and what we can do for others. It is great to let go of that and realize that we are accepted even when we are at our worst, when we make mistakes, even when we let others down. That is the greatest joy, a letting go and an end to striving.
Our lives are a mystery of growth from weakness to weakness, from the weakness of the little baby to the weakness of the aged. Throughout our lives we are prone to fatigue, sickness and accidents. Weakness is at the heart of each one of us. Weakness becomes a place of chaos and confusion, if in our weakness we are not wanted; it becomes a place of peace and joy, if we are accepted, listened to, appreciated and loved.
If we deny our weakness and the reality of death, if we want to be powerful and strong always, we deny part of our being, we live an illusion.
Jean Vanier Becoming Human
