When I am truly present, I feel each experience within my body. I receive it with my breath. I prod it with my thoughts and explore it with my feelings. Then, as I peel away these aspects of experience, these many layers of me, my inner wisdom welcomes that experience, absorbing it like a sponge, until that experience becomes me.
When the layers dissolve, all that I experience is me.
Brave hearts do not express courage with reckless abandon, fearlessly, wildly lunging forward. Rather, with discipline, wisdom, and awareness they intentionally explore a space that feels unfamiliar, unsafe, and with trust in themselves they willingly go there anyway.
How quick I am to judge, to impose my needs and perspective on others.
I see what I label as short-comings, inadequacies, and things I want to change in them.
Oh, life is such a magnificent mirror.
When I look to change others, I am seeing in that mirror all that I wish to change in me.
But I forget that what I see is simply a reflection.
Perhaps instead of looking at what needs to change, I can see all the beauty that lies within them and in me, all the gifts, all the talents, all the goodness, just as they are.
If all I see in that mirror is the goodness, then that is all that there will be.
Meek is not to be cowardly, rather it is gentle, patient, non-violent, and creates a soft space from which your power emerges in its most natural form – one of compassion, vision, abundance, and joy. Be meek.
As the sun rises, it is not our task to seek what is missing but to marvel in all that is there.
Can I open my mind without thoughts rushing in? Can I clear the path and feel expansive and light when all my thoughts and feelings seem so dense and heavy? I focus on my breath — its softness, its calm and gentle assertiveness as it moves through my body — and I begin to notice the light, to feel the freedom, to be the quiet…to know the peace of just being. On my breath, the fog lifts and I expand beyond.
Lonely or peaceful…longing or inviting…isolated or surrounded…empty or full?
It’s all in the lens you select.
Practice peace, love, and joy…not just in the ability to restrain exterior actions, but in every word, every thought, non-harming. Love, truly love, within and let the peace begin.
With each exhale, I let go with full gratitude. I empty spaces, create hollows and clear out the residue of all that has created and sustained me.
Then, with effortless ease, the inhale comes swirling in, creating the next new vibrant moment, filling the gaps and hollows, adding onto the full, rich, and vital being that is me.
And so it is that I welcome every exhale with delight, knowing that I am creating the very pathway for my next new beginning and welcome every new beginning as it rides in upon my next breath…again and again and again.
Every breath a new beginning.
Monday Mindfulness 