We are fascinated by words –
but where we meet
is in the silence behind them
Ram Dass
photo renatt stowe
Tag: wellbeing
Sunday Quote: No need for words
I like the silent church
before the service begins,
better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
photo jose luis filpo cabana
A good antidote to stress
Breathing regulates the nervous energy that the mind uses for its thinking, and calms the emotions that feed anxiety, impulsiveness and negativity. So mindfulness of breathing, literally keeping the sensations and energies associated with breathing in mind, is a great tonic. It also regulates energy and encourages the discharge of energy that is a normal aspect of healthy functioning and which gets overlooked.
…Energy has two modes: arousal – powering up to deal with a task or prepare for a challenge – and discharge – returning to rest state after the task is done or the challenge is over. The way it is for humans, especially urban humans, is that the lifestyle keeps presenting new themes for arousal – the next task or challenge, or the next aim or goal, or the new thing to get excited about and buy. And the opportunities for discharge – the recognition of ‘that’s enough’, or that there’s nothing to do or worry about – dwindle to zero. Furthermore, the ‘get-ahead’, ‘prepare for the future’, ‘pay off my student loan’, ‘save up for a place to live’ mental messages keep the mind leaping to the next task or challenge or trying to create a stable scenario for the future.
So … get interested in the energy involved with breathing down into the base of your abdomen as you breathe out. Don’t concentrate on the breath, but get interested in how breathing happens, how the body does it. And you’ll notice it’s involuntary, so there’s no strain in doing it, and no sense of having to be good at it. So how does that attitude feel? It’s stress-free. And as far as the bodily feeling goes, there’s a subtle pleasure in really letting go, down into the base of your gut, a ‘sit back and soak’ feeling, as the breath empties out.
Ajahn Sucitto, Discharging Stress, Recharging Life
photo aussiegirl
Non duality
Look at love – how it tangles
with the one fallen in love
look at spirit – how it fuses with earth
giving it new life.
Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known
why think separately of this life and the next
when one is born from the last
look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs
look at water and fire, earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the deer
far away yet together
look at the unity of this
spring and winter, manifested in the equinox
you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me
be like sugarcane, sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words
my beloved grows right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be.
Rumi, Look at Love
Little things today
In the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning
and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
Not always clear
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.
Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit theologian and scientist, died this day 1955
photo nathalia morelatto
Mindfulbalance 