Today I begin again…not as a punishment or starting over but launching from a new starting line.
To begin again is to feel into an experience in a new way and invite…and then allow… an unexpected outcome.
To joyously and curiously invite variety, spontaneity, and change in such a way as to begin again and begin again, freely cultivating an openness to the unknown while at the same time feeling stable, connected, confident, and grounded.
To begin again is to be fully present, wildly open, and happy in every moment.
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.
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.
Have you ever noticed there is a natural rhythm to the flow of things? When you are in sync with that energetic rhythm there is no resistance – everything flows.
Try to push or pull against the natural flow of your experience and it causes turbulence, imbalance and the potential for unnecessary suffering.
To reduce the discomfort, increase the pause. Slow the looking and the feeling. Sip it in until you can interpret the rhythm.
When I connect with my breath – the rhythmic pattern of inhale and exhale – it shows me the resistance, the tension, and where there may be imbalance. I can chose to ride the breath as it is or invite a shift. Either way, I am getting into the flow, balancing on the crest, and engaging a more comfortable and sustainable way of being.
When I pulse instead of push – on the breath, on sounds, on tastes, on interactions with others, or my experiences – there is a symmetry and unending sense that all is OK.
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.
All is well.
Monday Mindfulness 