Tag: Meditation

a grateful life

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Picked some ripe blackberries beside the woodland path I walked along yesterday evening. Freely given, like all of life, and not to be taken, as we say, “for granted.” The only real response is gratefulness.

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

Mary Oliver, The Gift

Underneath

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The peace that is the nature of being is not a state of the mind; it is the nature of the mind.

It is the peace that passeth understanding –

the peace that has nothing to do with what is, or what is not, taking place in experience

Rupert Spira, Your True Home, A Meditation on Experience

Control

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To think we can control the world is an illusion.

But we can control how we relate to it.

Jon Kabat Zinn

The missing piece

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I spent many years looking for the perfect place to live, the perfect spiritual teacher, the perfect path, the perfect career, the perfect community, and so on, before realizing that no such lasting perfection exists except as an imaginary idea.

The only real perfection is Here / Now, and it’s not about the content, it’s about the awareness and the presence that is here regardless of the content, not because of the content. I also spent many years chasing some final enlightenment event, some happy ending, believing that there was some Finish Line that I had not yet crossed.

Finally, that whole fixation and search for enlightenment fell away, not in any Big Bang event, but gradually and quietly and imperceptibly, and not because “I” became permanently enlightened at last, but because that very idea became transparently absurd.

Joan Tollifson

Offer ourselves care

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In the rhythm of nature, ripening is not rushed. It happens slowly, quietly, under the warmth of the sun — a patient unfolding from within.

Ripening, in this sense, is not about striving for self-improvement. It’s about relaxing into the fullness of who we already are.

During the summer, I have often found myself appreciating the blackcurrant bushes where I live — watching, day after day, as the berries shift from small and green to dark and full. It’s a transformation that unfolds over time, without any effort. There’s a quiet wisdom in the way summer ripens things: not all at once, but steadily, given the right conditions.

These moments remind us that our inner growth is often the same. When we soften, slow down, and offer ourselves warmth and care, something begins to open on its own.

Antonia Sumbundu

Rest

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There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes. In wild silence the channel bursts.

Rest is the mother of wisdom.

Rumi