Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Peace & Resilience

Category Archives: Love


by Leave a comment

Love as one

Love everyone and everything around you as if it were an arm, a leg, an extension of you.

We are all formed of the same chemicals and the same energy as everything around us. In that way we are all connected – we are one.

So, when we love beyond the perimeter of what we perceive as our structure and identity, we exist in a pure space of love…of ease…of freedom.

Oh, but wait…that would require pure love for oneself! Perhaps the true challenge lies in forming a steady stream of love for ourselves in order to feel pure connection through love beyond us.

Love requires truth. Truth requires fearless looking. Looking requires unconditional feeling. Feeling requires objective knowing.

So what if we open our eyes to see without fear, our mouths to speak authentically and empathetically, our hearts to feel without labels and judgement, and our minds to accept unlimited possibilities?

What if we can each find the “coeur”age to unconditionally love ourselves, to bathe ourselves in love?

Then, could we live as one love?


by Leave a comment

True Love

There once was a bright and shining little girl who truly knew her path and her gifts.  Even at a very early age, contrary to her young counterparts, this little girl spoke her truth.  “I won’t eat that animal…I just won’t,” she would cry even when it was the only opportunity she had to be fed.  I will dance and run.  I will play on my breath.  I will have struggles and need experiences along the way to help me remember who I am, but I will make my own way.  What she didn’t realize was how many others she would touch with her shining light, like a glowing ray of sunshine.  And so she grew, in her own way, finding adventures far beyond the comfort of many others in her circle of family and friends.  Yet, she never stopped listening to that voice of her truth – she stood up as she needed, she walked away with forgiveness and grace at times when others fell into compliance and complacency, and she shared and shared all of who she was and knew everywhere she went.  She didn’t need a title or a label for what she spent her whole life naturally doing.  In fact, others took her guidance and called it theirs.  Others wanted to ride the wave of her knowing as if they could capture that spirit through study or association.  And routinely many prodded and questioned her, demanding validation and justification around the path she chose. Nonetheless, she carefully sifted through all the disingenuous tethers, all the glitter and temptations, and stayed on her path, flanking herself with friends, colleagues, and ambassadors of truth, of inner knowing, of love…and she let the rest melt away (not always without sadness, anger, or feelings of loss, but carefully on the rhythm of each breath returning to wholeness).  She is a daily reminder of the gifts of expressing, honoring, and living as authentic self….of living as love.

 


by Leave a comment

Growing with Grace

It’s not in the mistakes that we make where our lessons have value, but in how we recover.

Recovery without backwards glances laced with accusations, excuses or judgment is growth. Growth is the ultimate form of healing.

Healing is recovery made good by grace, love, and kindness.


by Leave a comment

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.


by Leave a comment

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.


by Leave a comment

Dive In

When you feel you need to run, to get away, you really need to dive in, go deep, and just sit with the feelings.  Let the feeling sit with you and in you.  The feelings will change … nothing stays the same … all is impermanent.

Engage moon energy — calm, cool, still — to remain steady in the current of feelings.

It is then that you will hear the soft, easy voice of inner wisdom reminding you that you are OK.

Dive deeper in… calm, cool, serene.

Most grateful for your inspiration and collaboration, Theresa Tovey.


by Leave a comment

Jagged Edges

Tucked into the crevices,

Buried between the rocks and sand,

Are little moments,

Precious little glimpses of life’s greatest gifts hiding just beneath the surface.

I could easily pass them by if not for the jagged edges that reach up, poking at my being.

This uneven landscape calls for greater awareness.

I draw upon my deepest core for balance so that the pressure and discomfort do not become too great.

Those jagged edges remind me that I have not chosen the easy path, but I am capable of walking this path just the same.

Those jagged edges belong to the moments that will require the greatest courage and persistence, but unquestionably will cause rise to the fullest form of me.


by Leave a comment

Finding Joy

I love finding joy in unusual places.

In the raindrop that pokes my cheek and the wind that tosses my hair.

In the pattern of seeds that accidentally scatter on the floor.

In the slow looking that comes with the crowd of cars extending my commute.

In the exhale.

Here I am in my natural state of being. I feel no urgency, only a sense of calm and strength. I begin to know the essence of love.

Maybe finding joy is my super power.


by 2 Comments

Awakening

Awakening

What if your daily experiences were really no different than your dreams – simply stories pieced together to provide information.  Stories intended to awaken in you parts that are dormant, numb, forgotten or that would otherwise go unnoticed.  Each of these stories placed before you to illuminate a potential to think, feel, and engage differently beyond what is familiar and routine.

When I move my body in a new way, I awaken unfamiliar yet exciting new connections with muscles and bones. When I move my thoughts with curiosity, not always believing I have the answer, I am no longer reticent but have rubbed the sleep from my eyes.  When my emotions flow freely, even to the point of creating discomfort, I welcome the new dawn of compassion, courage, trust, and forgiveness.

I awaken an inner knowing, like the sun illuminating the sky.  I am suddenly aware of something far greater than these dreams.  I rise from the darkness knowing my capacity to explore, play, experiment, feel and know, all the while aware that the stories do not make me.


by Leave a comment

Crystal Clear

My mind says the work shows my value.

My emotions say the work provides purpose.

But my body say the work is tiring.

When out of balance, my body knows suffering, strain and illness.

It goes along with the plan for quite some time until systems become so taxed that it begins to breakdown, accelerating the natural limitlessness of this container.

And still I push on, the ego shouting louder about value and emotions crying for purpose.

Desperate for ease and repair the body collapses.

Foolishly, I believe that this is the only way.

Until I start to listen.

I hear my body’s call for balance now long before exhaustion.

I put down the baton and slow the doing.

I rest.

And I rest.

And I rest.

Sometimes it’s hard to turn off the voices of the doing, the voices of the wanting.

But it is in the space of rest where the tiny voice inside of me reminds me that greater value and purpose is born of nurturing.

Of nurturing this body, this mind, this heart.

Not just feeding, but honoring and loving, all of these aspects of me equally.

In this space, the desire to do and be something blends with the peace and stillness and then it becomes crystal clear that I need nothing more.

It is in the quiet space of rest where I am most powerful, most beautiful, and undeniably most complete.