Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Calm & Resilience


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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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Befriending

It is easy on some days to feel like my body had betrayed me or is out to get me. There is weakness, soreness, or illness. I could see this body as unattractive or failing. I could label it as the enemy. Instead of interpreting the condition of my body as messages intended to inform and perhaps even inspire me, my mind perceives threats, expresses disappointment.

When I experience my body as misaligned with me is precisely when I need to remember that my body is less like a vulture and more like a little baby bird simply needing to be nourished and loved.


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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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Pulling for Us

Feeling the tug on the visceral thread that connects us all…riding the wave…knowing we are all so bravely in this together.


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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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We Are The Journey

Lighten up on yourself, my dear friend.

You have not veered off the path.

Every apparent curve, every jagged edge, and every soft shoulder belongs to the path.

It’s all the path.

So, pack extra love and the balm of forgiveness and grace in your backpack

and set off

not for the journey

but as the journey.


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We Are The Journey

Lighten up on yourself, my dear friend.

You have not veered off the path.

Every apparent curve, every jagged edge, and every soft shoulder belongs to the path.

It’s all the path.

So, pack extra love and the balm of forgiveness and grace in your backpack

and set off

not for the journey

but as the journey.


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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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In the Lead

It is a lovely and intricate dance this dance of the head and heart.

The heart leads with what it knows. The head leads with what it believes it knows.

The heart lets the music guide its movement. The head responds to the beat.

The head counts the steps and searches the archives to apply with precision each detail. The heart feels every past movement, every tumble just the same and invites imperfection in its flow.

The head seeks the answers…the road map.

The heart sets down its notes and score card, turning its attention to the winding road before it.

The head consults the master plan while the heart embodies it.

Both are wickedly talented on the dance floor. Together their dance is spectacular.

But I do often wonder why it is that the head takes the lead so often.