When your mind is reeling in confusion,
breathe deeply into the centre of your chest.
Connecting to the core of your being this way extends loving kindness to yourself ,
even when there is none in sight.
Ezra Bayda
Tag: wellbeing
Looking Life in the Eye
I have heard it said that 90 percent of getting along well in life is in showing up for it. I’d add to that thought – showing up fully in each moment. Being present is not just present in body alone but in body and clear mind…We may acknowledge at some level that all the moments in our lives are teachers, but we don’t always want to meet the teacher., so we seek sometimes to control or regulate our experience in a variety of ways. If we have any hope of being free from the habitual swings of our reactions, if we have any wish to live more openly and freely, if we see to, as writer Barbara Kingsolver says “look life in the eye and love it back” then we need to take a look at what is clouding our view.
Diane Eshin Rizzetto, Waking up to what you Do
A gentle word to ourselves
Breathing is a means of awakening and maintaining full attention in order to look carefully and deeply to see the nature of things. But sometimes we try very hard to practice to remember to breathe. “Breathe, my dear” is like a gentle voice …reminding us to come back to ourselves with awareness of our breathing. It can give us comfort to practice to take it easy, gently, slowly.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Aware of the breath in the actions
The principle of breathing dictates that we are to be aware of every step of our breathing. Simply: be mindful and understand happiness. A person is able to sense more than one perception at the same time. Hence, being aware of our breathing – the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling – should be incorporated with our daily routines – sweeping, cleaning, walking. The person will then enjoy better health and a brighter soul – that is true happiness. Guided by this perception, the mind will simultaneously move in harmony with the actions.
Buddhadasa
Our work, this week
At a gathering in San Francisco, I met Marco, a careful and patient photographer from Santa Clara. When asked what surprised him during the last year, his voice began to quiver. He’d witnessed two breaths that had changed his life. His daughter’s first breath. Then his mother’s last breath. As his daughter inhaled the world, it seemed to awaken her soul on Earth. As his mother exhaled her years, it seemed to free her soul of the world. These two breaths jarred Marco to live more openly and honestly. He took these two breaths into his own daily breathing and quickly saw their common presence in everyone’s breathing. Is it possible that with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being.
Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen
Darkness and colour
Today is the Catholic Feast of All Souls, and there are a lot of traditions in these early November days – around the Celtic Feast of Samhain, when the gap between this world and the spirit world was considered thinner – in which people remember those who have died. Here in France – and even more so in Italy- it is a day for visiting the graves of relatives who have died, and the traditional plant placed on the grave, – the bright chrysanthemum – is everywhere to be seen. It is a burst of colour at the start of a period of shorter, darker days, a symbol of life on a day which could tinged with sadness.
Moment of darkness and moments of hope; birth and death; both are present in a life. Our culture today prizes birth and growth, dynamic, fast, forward movement and achievement. Periods of waiting or staying quiet are not valued as a process, and standing still is often seen in the same way as going backwards. However, rituals and feast days such as today, which link living and dying, take us back into a deeper, older, wisdom and remind us that even periods of darkness can have value. Moments when we may feel stuck, overwhelmed or lost, can be periods of rebirth. All that is needed is that we have the courage to wait until a new direction becomes clear.
You may be so influenced by the modern demand to make progress at all costs that you may not appreciate the value in backsliding. Yet, to regress in a certain way is to return to origins, to step back from the battle line of existence, to remember the gods and spirits and elements of nature, including your own pristine nature, the person you were at the beginning. You return to the womb of imagination so that your pregnancy can recycle. You are always being born, always dying to the day to find the restorative waters of night. Darkness is natural, one of the life processes. There may be some promise, the mere suggestion that life is going forward, even though you have no sense of where you are headed. It’s a time of waiting and trusting. My attitude as a therapist in these situations is not to be anxious for a conclusion or even understanding. You have to sit with these things and in due time let them be revealed for what they are.
Thomas Moore, Dark Night of the Soul
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