Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Peace & Resilience


Leave a comment

Bad and Beautiful

The Ackland Museum at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill just hosted an exhibit entitled “Good Object/Bad Object,” inviting visitors to examine works of art that defy customary decorum and could be called “bad” because they are unpredictably designed yet they achieve an emotional depth and resonant beauty equal to “good” art.

Bad objects are opportunities to explore the edge of our comfort zone and try on new ways of seeing the world.

When the role is taken on responsibly, a bad object can be the catalyst of change and inspire different thinking.

Isn’t it interesting how quickly we humans need to label things as good or bad when often those characteristics are circumstantial. Nature doesn’t operate that way.

In humans, often when a bad object occurs without sufficient planning and understanding, the artist might become defensive or even resentful, denying accountability for their creation. If they have not been provided the encouragement and freedom to create outside of traditional constructs, the artist might try to hide the bad object, its potential emotional depth and beauty lost.

More often than not these days I find myself stronger, more confident, and more accomplished when I step into the role of “bad object.” It is not that I am not good at these times. It is that I willingly take responsibility for non-conforming, breaking a patterned interaction, and inciting a shift in perspective to achieve a familiar level of resonance in an unfamiliar way.

There is a role for each of us as good objects and bad objects. The contrast reminds us of our undeniable ability to contain emotional depth and resonant beauty in the most surprising ways.


Leave a comment

Relying on my internal GPS

I may not always be able to see clearly,

But I can always feel clearly

When I accept that where I am is where I am.


Leave a comment

Reflections

I am an open landscape on which you paint your experience.

I mirror back to you just what you put out there.

If you aren’t sure of what you are painting,

pause,

step back,

clear your mind,

open your heart.

Come sit a spell in my grand, vast emptiness before you start to fill the canvas with elements that may not produce the landscape best for the both of us.

Tread gently on the rolling hills,

pause and watch the rising and setting sun,

see ocean…

flowers…

wild flowing grasses…

Deep wooded forests.

The landscape is yours in which to play.

Just remember that whatever you add to this landscape – the meeting of your choice of media, colors and textures – is yours to assimilate and accommodate, not mine.


Leave a comment

Stepping Through

Every change has a transition, a pause between what has happened and what is left to do.

This threshold offers a clear and open vantage point,

an opportunity to be fully present, not leaning back or lunging forward, but knowingly and confidently stepping into who we are now ready to be.

Whether recovering from an illness, overcoming loss, or realizing dharma, we come to this threshold not by accident or failure but as a reminder of our power to heal and know greater peace and ease.

In this doorway lies an intricate and yet simple network of universal connections fueling our every desire and supporting our every need, holding us, preparing us, reminding us we are ready to carry on. We are never alone.

We do not need to know what lies beyond this doorway, or to worry about being received on the other side.

We need only remember the full and unwavering choice we have to be here, to step in and step through to the wild and beautiful landscape infinitely sprawling before us.

Photo credit: Clifden Castle Ireland, gateway to the wild and beautiful, captured by my mischievous soul sister.


Leave a comment

At the center of my being

Right there, in between the meandering branches of my life,

the shifting sands of time,

the ebbing and flowing waters of my mind,

and the soft current that carries my heart,

there is a bright and constant light

that moves and shines through my existence,

the steady point that reminds and renews me over and over again,

guiding me back like a porch light,

to the warm, quiet, stillness of my eternal home within.

Photo credit: Brian Danahy (from the port of Mykanos, Greece)


Leave a comment

Luminosity

The sun typically illuminates the moon.

The moon relying on the sun to be seen.

On occasion they come into complete opposition.

The earth interferes with the sun’s capacity to light the moon.

For a moment there appears to be total darkness.

And then the moon emerges more strikingly in the sky than ever before, full of deep, rich color.

The moon becomes something new,

The dark more luminous,

The sun still shining.

Adversity the catalyst,

Throughout the darkness.


Leave a comment

A pebble in my shoe.

Here I am, walking along, awareness softly tuned to my surroundings.

Without any warning, the easy state of awareness suddenly funnels with precision into the soul of my foot.

A slew of messages instantly travels light lightening through my body alerting me to intense sensation.

There is a pebble in my shoe.

With each step now, I have a choice.

Do I immediately freeze, paralyzed by this unanticipated happening, shutting down, urgently driven to remove the discomfort?

Do I pause, taking notice, receiving the sensations with curiosity and kindness, quietly ascertaining my next step?

Or do I continue walking, noticing, and finding unique learning in every step, even through the unsettledness and unease?

Can I cultivate gratitude for the ability to feel, to move, and motivate, to decide with every step?

Whatever I do, it should be with care, not reacting but receiving, even when unexpected and uncomfortable, a constant reminder of my free will.


Leave a comment

Loss, Not Lost

Grief…it’s not about the loss as much as creating and being able to access a little warm place in your heart where you hold that connection forever.

I used to think that grief was the act of severing ties and throwing away something special because it was lost.

But now I know that grief is a process of storing the memories of the specialness of every experience regardless of its labels, conditions, and how it came to be or not be.

Grief is experiencing the loss without getting lost.


Leave a comment

Signs are Everywhere

Sometimes life really is as simple as following the messages around us to get back to the place within us to feel whole, loved, and enough.


Leave a comment

Devotion

Today I invite new consciousness,

Awakening to my experiences,

And clearing my mind of the familiar chatter.

I engage in devotion,

Not for the sake of routine or simple predictability and familiarity,

But because it fuels my heart and ignites my soul.