Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Peace & Resilience

Tag Archives: happiness


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Witness Healing

My body is a part of me. It tells me when it needs nourishment and rest.

I can manifest the most horrific diseases by ignoring the signs in my body that are saying slow down, ease off, make a change.

There is no way my body can stop being ill until I care for it.

It is time for me to take responsibility for the way I feel. I do not need to be sick to care for myself. Sick is a reminder that I have neglected to care for me.

These are real symptoms – not of some outside force taking over, but a means of communication from the inside – me sending a message to me that something is out of alignment – the schedule, a relationship, nutrition, work…my connection with me.

Each of us has ignored signs that our bodies needed more care until we were really sick, feeling that powering through is a sign of strength. We don’t need to go there.

True strength lies in respecting myself enough to rest, eat well, choose to receive kindness and love from others and to forgive and let go of those who are in a position to diminish my sense of worthiness.

My body should be held and loved by me as a baby bird that has fallen from its nest. Given a chance to be seen, heard, and to heal.

When I carry my body as it carries me, my body allows me to witness the capacity I have for deep love and profound peace and healing.


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less effort…more happy

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today I am just gonna be happy.

it takes too much effort to be anything else.


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Evergreen

Trees loose their leaves. The moon falls to pieces. So often I take these happenings as signs that something is lost or missing.

I see someone else’s fullness as my empty. When I stand in their shadows, instead of relieved and protected, I feel smothered in darkness.

And yet the moon while it looks at times to be a fraction of itself remains whole. The shadows cast upon it by others are simply opportunities for it to buff up and then shine again. It’s light always returns, often even more brightly than before.

The tree that looses its leaves is storing energy to grow into something more, recognizing that it needs not retain its flamboyant exterior to maintain its grandiose stature.

And so the fractions, the pieces, the loss and the darkness are not thrust upon us as indicators of our own lacking or shortcomings, but as an opportunity to be something we have never been before.

Each of us ebbing and flowing with change at different times and paces to remind each other that we can be greater than we have ever been before if we lose our fear of someone else remaining evergreen or someone else shining a bit brighter today.


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Here We Are

All is well.

We will never get it all done.

It will not be easy.

It will get messy.

It will not be perfect.

It may get ugly.

We will have fun.

All is well.


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Transplanted

Serenely, attentively, and lovingly I focus on cradling the dangling roots of a small plant as they uncoil themselves from the snug inside edges of their familiar small pot. I invite the plant to settle into a new place to live. Grace, peace, and fluidity guide the roots gently into their new home. The plant is ready to grow as this new pot offers room to branch out.

The transplanting has nonetheless been stressful and will require new resources and support from the inside and out in order for this little plant to thrive.

Planting complete, I hop up quickly, losing focus and in a furry of thoughts and feelings I upheave my own roots, tumbling down onto the ground right next to my newly potted plant.

I have lost my footing, my roots now tangled and exposed…some broken, others barely hanging on. The damage rocks my whole being.

And in that very moment, a little voice inside me says, “Be kind, attentive and serenely focused. Lovingly tuck those roots into new, unfamiliar soil and invite them to take hold, to uncoil in a new direction.”

Not without pain, focused effort, and belief that I will be stronger, I expand my roots. I find resources on the inside and outside to grow deep. I settle into a new space of being and in this nurturing of my roots, I realize an enhanced capacity to flower, bear fruit, and thrive in a way previously unattainable.

Every tumble, every root exposed is an opportunity to uncoil and lovingly replant, to be bigger and stronger than I ever was before.


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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.


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When the gates are open

I certainly don’t claim to have any part of this whole dying thing down. But I have seen enough family and friends make that transition to understand that it is not in the clinging to this life or the wallowing in the departure that brings peace. It is not in the anointing or in the fighting that we pass on but in the releasing…the letting go of the story, the belief that we are only of value in this living physical form, the fear we have somehow not been or done enough, and the pressure to continue on in something that has drawn to a close.

I believe we always have the choice. There can be fanfare and drama or quiet and stillness. Those left behind can wail and wrestle with their loss or

be happy for the soul that returns to the light, which I believe allows the departed to float more freely, untethered to the strings of our emotions, fears, and needs in this temporal space.

We need not believe in “life” after this body, but we can be sure that we are more than this body. We can be grateful for the space this body provided for us to play and learn – whether just hours or days or many, many years.

We all have within us a mysterious longing to be free, yet we spend little time preparing for the opportunity to run freely when the gates are open.

One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me is that it seems the way to die may be to live in love, to surround ourselves with those who are willing to hold the gates open for us, and let nothing hinder us from feeling whole, content, and ready to run.