Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life.
Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever.
Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is.
Sylvia Boorstein
photo mate2code
Tag: Meditation
Quiet miracles
Two extracts from John O’Donohue for this Saturday in Autumn, when we reflect on the fact that life moves on, and yet we can relate to it fully in any particular moment:
We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark and become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty
John O’ Donohue, Beauty
May anxiety never linger about you. May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention. Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul. May you experience each day as a sacred gift, woven around the heart of wonder.
From For Presence (with thanks to Kathy Lewis for reminding me of these words)
Roots
The rooting (of trees, of our selves) is as important and as necessary as the rising. We have the opportunity to sink roots into soul and rise up with branches in heaven…..Growth is meant to go in both directions, toward the fertile darkness and the glorious light, each of us having the opportunity to bridge earth and heaven — the underworld and the upperworld — through the trunks of our middleworld lives…. There’s no conflict between spirit-centered being and soulful doing, between transcendence and inscendence. Each supports and enhances the other. Like Rilke, we discover we can have both:
You see, I want a lot
Maybe I want it all;
The darkness of each endless fall,
The shimmering light of each ascent.
Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft
Autumn work
A brief moment of reflection and gratitude. The blog started its sixth year this week. We recently passed 300,000 visits and over 1500 people who follow each day. As I have said before, I try to keep it simple – looking for words or ideas that help mindfulness meditation practice without me getting in the way too much, and hoping that they touch one or two readers in the same way as they help me. Thank you all so much for visiting. As Autumn deepens, we reflect and move on:
Here in Ireland the Gaelic word for October is Deireadh Fomhair, which means the “last harvesting” of what was planted earlier in the year. The weather system has changed these past few days, the leaves have started to fall in earnest, and it is clearer to see how Autumn signals a change in energy, a winding-down, as all of nature – and that includes us – prepares for the different tempo and darker days of winter. So we can use it as a season to find our balance between our past and our future, as our focus naturally turns more inward. We can use it as a time to look back on the work we have done this year, the way we have expended our energy. We can use it to take stock of what we are investing in and harvesting in our lives. Or we can use it to wind down and create space, recognizing the unwise busyness that only creates more anxiety in our minds, keeping us running a lot, but sometimes just making us feel more empty.
Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity,
so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.
Sogyal Rinpoche
photo Jeff Borden
An idea for a new month: Give up defining
Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others.
You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
Here, now
Our conditioned mind tells us that we are missing something grand
Images of delightful experiences dance seductively in our heads
“If only we had the time” we sigh “life would be so good and happy”.
And then our attention returns to the fullness of the moment
and we realize we are here, and there is nothing else to do and nowhere else to be.
All the tastes and textures of life are here to be experienced now.
There is no other time.
There is no other place.
William and Nancy Martin, The Caregivers Tao Te Ching
