today I am just gonna be happy.
it takes too much effort to be anything else.
Category Archives: being present
Emptying
When I start with the exhale, I start with a release, emptying space so that I can fill it just so. Filling becomes not as urgent when I am no longer grasping for the next inhale but expanding intensionally to receive it.
Emptying allows the filling to happen with less effort, with the simple purpose of fulfillment as opposed to rescuing or catapulting me.
With intensional emptying comes graceful, careful filling.
For it is not the act of filling that carries me on as much as the emptying which provides the space and focus for me to move on more fully.
Slowing down and extending the process of releasing creates more emptiness, more space for nothing that in return leaves me more ready to fill with everything.
All Wrapped Up
There comes a time and space where each of us longs to curl up in a snuggly blanket, to feel the pressure on our skin, the cocoon of warmth and connection. This need for contact, pressure, and restriction is also the driver for the invitation of struggle, suffering, and conflict into our lives.
With difficulty pressing in upon me, I will always still find the same comfort and ease on the inside if I allow it.
It is simply a matter of the material of the wrap and the lens with which I see it that determines whether I feel it as nurturing or limiting.
The wrap is just a reminder to feel what’s on the inside – to know the true essence of me, undefined by the fabric of my experience.
Transplanted
Serenely, attentively, and lovingly I focus on cradling the dangling roots of a small plant as they uncoil themselves from the snug inside edges of their familiar small pot. I invite the plant to settle into a new place to live. Grace, peace, and fluidity guide the roots gently into their new home. The plant is ready to grow as this new pot offers room to branch out.
The transplanting has nonetheless been stressful and will require new resources and support from the inside and out in order for this little plant to thrive.
Planting complete, I hop up quickly, losing focus and in a furry of thoughts and feelings I upheave my own roots, tumbling down onto the ground right next to my newly potted plant.
I have lost my footing, my roots now tangled and exposed…some broken, others barely hanging on. The damage rocks my whole being.
And in that very moment, a little voice inside me says, “Be kind, attentive and serenely focused. Lovingly tuck those roots into new, unfamiliar soil and invite them to take hold, to uncoil in a new direction.”
Not without pain, focused effort, and belief that I will be stronger, I expand my roots. I find resources on the inside and outside to grow deep. I settle into a new space of being and in this nurturing of my roots, I realize an enhanced capacity to flower, bear fruit, and thrive in a way previously unattainable.
Every tumble, every root exposed is an opportunity to uncoil and lovingly replant, to be bigger and stronger than I ever was before.
My Story
There is a story in my body – a story of joy and a story of suffering, a story imprinted in my flesh of adopted beliefs and weathered patterns of being.
I have a belief. My body records it. With devotion to my higher good, my body informs me of my ways. It unfailingly wears my happiness, fears, pain, doubt, informing me through these tissues and bones in service to my heart, all knowing, all seeing.
My body hears my heart calling for a change in that belief, so it demonstrates the belief in physical form in order for me to transform it…on the physical level, the thinking level, the feeling level, the being level.
I pause to listen to the advice of this worn vessel and then almost as soon as I acknowledge the pattern in the body, the beliefs begin to dissolve, reshaping my existence, restoring my wellness.
The body lets go of tension, no longer gripping to accommodate the familiar. The battering patterns melt away, initiating a flow of healing…through the body, into the heart.
the donning of my awareness
I hear the birds calling.
I feel the rustling of the earth as outside the dawn awakens.
Sleep fell so swiftly upon me as the full moon watched over and with a new sense of soft inquiry my eyes flutter open. My awareness rustles with the sounds, colors and shifting environment around me. The morning presents itself to me, as my awareness awakens with the dawn.
In this moment, as my awareness shifts from my inner state of attachment to an interconnection with what is around me, I feel a different state of aliveness. An aliveness of knowing simultaneously what is happening on the inside and the outside of the container that I perceive as me.
This awareness is scintillating and soothing, clear and not completely definable. I am aware of all and nothing.
My awareness flutters and swirls like the newly arising birds that sing and dance just outside my window, tuned as well into the mystery of awakening.
It is in the awakening of the dawn that I can explore the awakening of my awareness. It is in the awakening of my awareness where I come closer to knowing the true sense of who I am…if I am who at all.
I begin to wrap myself in the dawning of this awakening. In donning my awareness, I welcome the awakening of this harmonious interconnection with all that is around me.
…nurturing the I iN All.
Green Flash
Green flash
There is a moment just as the sun sets on the horizon where light bends, refracts, and separates. In that moment, the colors that come together to create the hues we expect to see in a sunset step off to the side. Then, for just an instant a rare and dynamic flash of green lights the edge of the horizon.
The chemistry of the atmosphere, the geography of the planet, and our own awareness align to create this exceptional phenomenon.
In that moment, everything has its role, effortlessly and miraculously working together to make something special happen.
That same harmony occurs when our thoughts and feelings are congruent with our intentions and actions.
I long to live every moment as a green flash.
