Tag: Present moment

Use breathing to ground yourself in stormy weather

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Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in. Regardless of our internal weather – our thoughts, emotions and perceptions- our breathing is always with us like a faithful friend. Whenever we feel carried away, or sunken in a deep emotion, or scattered in worries and projects, we return to our breathing to collect and anchor our mind.

We feel the flow of air coming in and going out of our nose. We feel how light and natural, how calm and peaceful our breathing functions. At any time, we can return to this peaceful source of life.

We may like to recite: “Breathing in I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out I know that I am breathing out.”

We do not need to control our breath. Feel the breath as it actually is. It may be long or short, deep or shallow. Conscious breathing is the key to uniting body and mind and bringing the energy of mindfulness into everyday life.

Thich Nhat Hahn

A simple practice for when you are anxious today

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Just the wind blowing: allowing life to move through this moment:

Take a comfortable position,

Now imagine you are in a beautiful place in nature. Surrounded by beauty you can feel the wind blowing around you

Let all of your conscious experience — sounds, sensations, thoughts, emotions, everything — become the wind.

Feel all of it moving and changing, arriving, moving around and over you, and then going.

Notice how the wind takes on different qualities — soft, strong, harsh, gusty, gentle.

Relax as the wind blows around you.

Let it come and go in all its forms. You remain here, in calmness, abiding.

Jeffrey Brantley  and Wendy Millstine, Daily Meditations for Calming Your Anxious Mind,

At peace

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Externally, if you let go of  fame and profit, your body will be at peace. 

Inwardly, if you let go of over-thinking and rumination, your mind will be at peace.

Anonymous Taoist, late Qing dynasty (1644-1711), Secret Records of Understanding the Way,

The Journey

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Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.

Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything.

that really isn’t you

so you can be who you were meant to be

in the first place.

Paulo Coelho

Hard to believe

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All truth is a paradox.

Grief,  friends, time and tears will heal you.

Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate you and the ground on which you walk. The first thing God says to Moses is, “Take off your shoes.”

We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know.

Anne Lamott, 12 Truths I Learnt from Life and Writing

Sunday Quote: We think we know

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Every time you make sense out of reality,

you bump into something that destroys the sense you made.
 

Anthony de Mello, s.j.