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Posts tagged ‘Mindfulness’

Jul 14

Sunshine Swimming

“When you regain a sense of your life as a journey of discovery, you return to rhythm with yourself. When you take the time to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you. Moments of beauty begin to braid your days.”― John O’Donohue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

“Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
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.” – John O’Donohue

May beauty braid your day.
Wonder wander in, take your hand, come follow me.
Awe rise inviting reverence in.
Open hands, soft heart, quiet mind.

“When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”― John O’Donohue, Beauty: A Study of Beauty in Celtic Spirituality and the Human Spirit

Jul 8

Emergence in the Pause

“There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. ”
― Elizabeth Bishop

“Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.”― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

In the pause, stillness
Gaze
Abide
Release
Reset
Slow
Mindfulness spilling into grace, gratitude
Anchoring
Patterns reshape
New stories emerge
Narrative wanders off path
Peace, delight, anticipation
In the paragraph on the blank page of this day.

“In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives. ”― Sharon Salzberg

Jul 7

Slight Shift, Quiet Eyes

“look at the world with quiet eyes.”― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope – a slight change, and all patterns alter.”― Sharon Salzberg

Summer the stage
Slow and savor
Kaleidoscope of color
Bountiful beauty
Vibrancy and growth
Quiet eyes
Soft heart
Travel light
Lovingkindness, peace, ease.

“Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you’re doing.”― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

Jul 6

Carried by Surprise

“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”― John O’Donohue

“That the soft overcomes the hard, and the yielding overcomes the resistant, is a fact known by all, but practiced by few.”― Lao Tse

Softening
Yielding
Pause
Grounding
Flowing
Slowing
Response rather than reaction
Unfolding
Unhindered
At attention
Witnessing and participating
No rearview mirror
No crystal ball
Anchored
In this day alone.

“May today bring us simple things in simple packages. Easy-to-use things. Things we can tuck into our hearts and don’t require instructions or batteries. Simple things like love and peace, like comfort and joy.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

Jul 5

Stay Here, Full Presence

“May I give the gift of talking less and listening more.”― Mary Davis, Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace

“Should we have stayed home and thought of here?”― Elizabeth Bishop

To be present in, on, through this very day.
Not to be somewhere else, someone else.
No counting, comparing, calculating.
Letting others be who they will be.
Self too.
Changing perspective rather than others and circumstances.
Responding with presence, inquiry, love.
In the here, in the now.
Open to delight.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Jul 2

Beeing

“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind.” – Ashley Smith

“Mindfulness is not chasing the moment but sipping the nectar of the moment.”― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment – Living in the Breath

Put on summer.
Soak in slow.
Put down doing.
Pick up ease.
Sit in being.

“Let July be July. Let August be August. And let yourself just be even in the uncertainty. You don’t have to fix everything. You don’t have to solve everything. And you can still find peace and grow in the wild of changing things.” — Morgan Harper Nichols

Jul 1

Lavishly Scattered

“There is poetry among the wildflowers.”― Rachel Irene Stevenson

“How lavishly are the flowers scattered over the face of the earth! One of the most perfect and delightful works of the Creation, there is yet no other form of beauty so very common. Abounding in different climates, upon varying soils -not a few here to cheer the sad, a few there to reward the good but countless in their throngs, infinite in their variety, the gift of measureless beneficence wherever man may live, there grow the flowers.”― Susan Fenimore Cooper

The daily call of noticing
Practice of wonder
Rigor of reverence
Discipline of awe
All the beauty lavishly scattered
At our feet, in, on, throughout this very day
Sacred ground
Common, ordinary hours
Alive and flourishing
Pay attention
Linger and loaf
Soft heart
Open arms
Awake and aware
Poetry and prose
Lens of love

“But to live is to be conscious. To walk through a field of flowers and stop to feel the softness of each petal, to inhale the perfume of each blossom.”― Terah Shelton Harris, Where the Wildflowers Grow

Jun 29

The Blessedness of Things

“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”― Blaise Pascal

“Now I will do nothing but listen.” – Walt Whitman

Summer calls us again and again.
Pause.
Sit.
Look. Listen. Linger.
Longer. Often. Rigorously.
There is a blessedness woven through each day.
To partake requires attention, reverence, yielding.

“the blessedness lying at the heart of things.” – Aldous Huxley

Jun 27

Mindful or Mind Full?

“Overthinking is not a sign of intelligence – it’s a thief of clarity.” – Arsalan Yousufzai

“A crowded mind
Leaves no space
For a peaceful heart.” – Christine Evangelou

The job of play
Of no place to be but here
Now
Losing track of time
Checking nothing off the list
Not running ahead
Nor lagging behind
Present, awake, spacious
Resting mind, peaceful heart
May you dance here today.

“Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business,
Why not find a better job?” – Hafez

Jun 26

Nectar of Peace

“Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

“On the windless days, when the maples have put forth their deep canopies, and the sky is wearing its new blue immensities, and the wind has dusted itself not an hour ago in some spicy field and hardly touches us as it passes by, what is it we do? We lie down and rest upon the generous earth. Very likely we fall asleep.”― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

Beauty and grace aplenty.
Pay attention.
Gaze.
Wander.
Lie down.
Transcend.
Flow with the river.
Floating with delight like the butterfly.
Peace.
Seek, offer, receive.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

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