Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Peace & Resilience

Category Archives: creativity


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Learning to Knit

So much of this past year was spent retracted, curled inward, huddled up against myself. Darkness, distractions, and attempts to keep things all the same occupied much of my thinking. Circular thoughts woven into fears. Captive in this castle, spinning my time into the yarn of “what if.”

I imagined I was suffering, experiencing punishment of some sort. Separate from my routine, separate from others, separate from much of what I knew as familiar.

Now, a year later, I am being asked to do something with all the yarn that I have spun. I am being asked to go back to some form of the way things were, to put the yarn away. But I have rather come to enjoy the spinning and might just want to sit and spin some more.

Ah, but it could be time instead for me to learn to knit. There are endless possibilities of where I can go from here and what I can create. If I can only see that every moment is an opportunity to learn and create something new. How fortunate I have been to have this time to spin this yarn.

In this re-emergence as the gates slowly open, it is lovely to see what others have woven. Some have acquired new skills. Connected and inspired from within, they are already knitting. Some have rolled the yarn into balls to store away for another time. Some have just begun to make the yarn. In this experience, I have learned that I can resist the weaving, stumble and climb over all the yarn, or I can learn to knit.


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Seeking

So focused on the work,

on striving to be something, someone…

The joy has slipped away.

But there is no need to run after it, seeking it.

You see, luv, the joy is always right here in your heart. Your heart just beats more loudly to the rhythm of some things, like walks in the park, playing in the woods, cooking delicious foods and wrapping up in snuggly blankets.

Include those rhythms in your daily routine and you will not need to seek joy for it will already be there dancing with you.


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Mine

What’s yours is mine and mine is yours — at least that’s what we learn as children, right?

But sometimes it’s hard to share, to let someone have something we treasure…a favorite object, a delicious treat, our time, or our work product.

It sometimes makes me want to stop creating, contributing, doing and having!

But we know that renunciation — refraining, withdrawing, doing without — or non-action does not eliminate the fears and attachments. In fact it may even make them grow as in the unknown still lurks the possibility – even in doing nothing – that I might have something to share.

Instead, I think I will listen more, align myself with actions that fulfill me as I do them, and find such joys in the doing, creating, and connecting that I can unconditionally share anything of mine knowing that I am satisfying the tenants of pure love and that in giving to you I give to me.


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Illumination

There lies a place in me that has grown numb and is forgotten, a place that in the cool darkness has fallen asleep.

The every day routines of existence have turned off the spigot of kindness, creativity and possibility. Even many of those rituals established to keep me awake and alive are void of meaning, passion, and connectivity.

I must step out of the sleepiness, the lethargy, and the isolation. I can no longer await the awakening. I must create it.

In the darkness I will dance until the vast potential and possibility within me are moved and my heart connected to the fullness, freedom, and gift of my essential self.

In the daylight hours and through the night, I will stay alert to those parts of my life that have fallen asleep, that are passing me by…and I will sing and dance and engage in such revelry and play that no part can remain unmoved, I cannot escape the awakening.

There I will find my essential self, my capacity to joyfully meet my needs as well as yours, and celebrate the wonder of life.

Special thanks to Greg Young of RGY Photography for the beautiful photo accompanying this post. See more at http://www.rgyphotography.com or on Instagram @randygyyoung.


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Tiny Seed

It is here in the cool darkness that I harness the energy to grow, that I am held, and bravely take on the task of seeing myself as something I’ve never been before.

It takes great courage to stay within these confines and not feel restricted or inferior. The darkness gives me time to be a tiny seed – tight and small, contained in my protective shell —nurtured by all that is around me.

This time in the dark is essential for growing on the inside to support expansion on the outside.

Isn’t it fortunate that we all at some point or another have the opportunity to go inside and revisit our magnificence as a tiny seed…time and time again.


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Awakening

Why is it when something good happens, I assume I am dreaming? Good fortune couldn’t possibly come to me just because it is a way of living.

Our dreams allow us to live out endless possibilities, to experience great joys and work through sufferings. Yet it is more often the sufferings that we bring with us into the waking world. It is the sufferings we expect to find in the daylight hours.

As we settle into the darkest time of the year, let us awaken in this darkness to the fact that we are intended to live in joy and peace, and to thrive in the living more than in our dreams.

It is the suffering that is the illusion, not the success. It is the discomfort that we can relinquish to the dream state.

In the darkness, I awaken to know that this being is intended to be miraculous, exuberant, joyful and abundantly filled with ease.

It is time to give ourselves permission to celebrate our successes and well-being, fully awake and aware in our right to thrive.


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Contain It or Let It Roll?

These days are like scooping mercury. Chasing after it can be so exhausting as it beads and evades more with each attempt to contain it.

Feeling the need to clean it up, but might just have to sit here for a bit and just watch as it glides and rolls around making beautiful patterns and shapes.

Remarkable how something so potentially harmful can have such valuable purpose and be so beautiful.


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Feeling in

Through your accomplishments I gain confidence in my ability to move the world.

In your mistakes I recognize your willingness to be my teacher.

In your humility I lay down my need to fight for my existence.

In your weakness I see the most incredible power.

Each time I pause to notice, I cannot help but shed tears of incredible gratitude and honor in feeling into life through your heart and eyes.


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Settled in the Ocean of My Unsettledness

The ocean rolls in and out, finding a rhythm in the irregular beat of its waves on the shore, a consistency in the inconsistency.

It asks that I bend more, stay more still, listen more closely, find my entry, consider a way to dive in while still feeling my feet.

Restless…rejecting…beautiful…inciting…matching breath to motion.

Sometimes steady and full, sometimes roaring in…sometimes barely there.

Here together, a push and pull of synchrony.

Even in the struggle you connect me with my breath.

You awaken my senses.

You remind me what it means to exist and give me permission to settle into my unsettledness.


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Just My Thinks

There are thinks I follow through on and thinks that follow me.

There are thinks that motivate and thinks that discourage.

There are thinks that build me up and thinks that crumble me to the ground.

There are thinks I think of doing and thinks that do on their own.

There are thinks I engage and thinks I avoid.

There are thinks I want to have and thinks that seem to taunt me.

There are thinks I hope to have and thinks that linger long past their usefulness.

It seems my thinks are here to stay.

Thankfully, I know they are not all that is me…they are just my thinks…just resting in a small crevasse of my being…

…and it is okay to let some get away.