Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Calm & Resilience


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Interpretations

The wind determines what I hear.

My eyes inform what I see.

The body interprets what I sense.

Thoughts form from what I hear, see, and feel as an experience.

Beliefs cling to these thoughts and this experience as truth,

setting emotions into action and reaction.

In reality, if there is such a thing, it is all just a choice, interpretation best when it comes not from my beliefs but in what I choose to believe.

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Hmmmmm…

This moment offers goodness,

a natural and positive power to know ease.

Selecting and sorting in order to fully digest and release the lessons of yesterday,

Turning tomorrow’s worries and challenges into nourishment,

Releasing the need for familiar patterns of action and behavior,

Staying curious, playful, and willing to feel good, happy, and harmonious,

no longer resisting,

no longer malnourished and waiting to be fed,

greeting each obstacle, each decision, each encounter as a tasty morsel fueling growth and expansion.

Engaging a soft “huhn” or “hmmm” as all is processed without categorization or interpretation,

all a source of nourishment.

An unconscious smile cannot help but form as the gas moves through the abdomen, bringing curious sensations,

prodding the goodness to surface.

With the sometimes temporary pain and discomfort of digestion

comes clearing, sorting, dissipation, and integration,

as the work of being is done by the experiences themselves,

turning each encounter into a delicious and complete meal.


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Healing Salve

I hold your broken heart,

recognizing the worn and chipped pieces

of injury, loss, humiliation, and dejection

and the pains of long ago never repaired or attended to,

grown over with patchwork scars and gaping cracks and holes.

I am sorry for picking at and reopening those wounds.

I am sorry for creating new fissures and further weakening your heart’s integrity and your ability to feel whole.

I only ever meant to hold your heart gently and sweetly,

but at times my fear of losing it made me grip so hard

and cling so forcefully

that I only added to its brokenness.

I never lost sight of its beauty and worth.

I never lost touch with its essence.

But as I began to doubt the essence of my own heart, I chipped away at yours.

I only hope now to heal my heart

and send ripples of unconditional love across the void of brokenness,

applying a healing salve and restoring integrity.

With the deepest love of my heart, I render this prayer for forgiveness.


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Seeds of Desire

Across the barren soil of imagination are strewn seeds of desire.

They float through the air like translucent orbs, barely noticeable.

Gradually, they land, softly burrowing into the jagged and uneven ground before them.

They are compelled to nestle in,

trusting that as they are swallowed up by the soil somehow this is what they need to grow.

And so they make themselves small, quiet and still,

compelled to sprout in time,

willing to grow slowly with care.

They will face the drought of unworthiness,

resistance as they break through and change the barren land,

impatience as they require much tending before they produce any flowers or fruit,

and fear that they may not survive at all.

The patient gardener knows this.

With an eye on the potential magnificence, beauty, and need for these seeds to flourish,

nurturing instead of forcing.

Waiting joyfully,

the gardener balances hope with knowing,

confident that with proper care, attention, consistency, and flexibility,

in due time these seeds will fully grow into their potential

and from them will come more translucent orbs ready to contribute to the wildest, most beautiful, richest landscape imaginable.


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Tap Root of Well Being

In between the mountains and valleys of thoughts,

Flows an inner resource deep within.

Its current runs through the deepest and darkest crevices of experience and rushes along the jagged and unpredictable surfaces of emotions.

It’s temperature, force, and direction make subtle shifts,

Navigating the terrain as it comes before it,

the inner resource remaining the constant in the ever-changing landscape.

It may from time to time be difficult to discern its presence, but with practice its presence becomes the familiar.

It’s consistent support and connection are unshakable.

All well being stems from and is fed by the inner resource.

The inner resource is the well of well being,

The inner resource is the taproot of our existence.

Can you feel it?


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Little sips of ease

There is not one giant awakening.

There is no detachment from pain.

There is not one moment of clarity that instantly falls upon the eyes or mind. There is not one instant one experiences freedom.

It happens bit by bit.

Awakening in the darkness,

in the suffering,

in the discomfort,

and in the dis-ease.

We begin to know it, like a dear and cherished friend.

There is a gradual unclogging, unfogging, and unraveling – that is the mystery of change.

That is the beauty of opening oneself to the potentiality of growing into something different.

Bit by bit, moment by moment, like pieces of a puzzle, thoughts and feeling, sensation and experiences, twist and turn and gradually find their way to fit together.

In that coming together, there is a sense of harmony and ease, perhaps even joy, that surfaces on the horizon,

not in overcoming the obstacles,

not in seeing the finished product,

but in feeling the creative process and drinking it all in.


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Be Happy

Hold happy,

Tenderly like a baby bird,

Freely like a paintbrush,

Opening like the ocean.

Let in roll and splash.

Let it rock and sway.

Let it ripple and toss

With laughter and lightness.

But most of all

Let it be fully expressed

Without letting it go.

Let happy be

A natural extension

Of all that you do

Until all you are is happy.


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Waxing

As the moon waxes,

so does my confidence.

I boldly embrace the lessons of the past,

peeling away the darkness,

revealing with wisdom, grace, and humility,

the path of mistakes,

missteps, and injury,

owning them all as

valuable elements,

as every lesson

forms the substance of

what fills in

as the shadows step back

and the moon softly shines.


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Acceptance

Witnessing

the immediate state of

the breath,

the thoughts,

the body.

Melting

conditionality,

quality,

quantity,

purpose,

direction.

Recognizing

perceptions of

loss

challenge,

failure,

imperfection,

and resistance

as a readiness

to be

seen,

felt,

and expressed

otherwise.

The next moment,

a transition,

a transformation.

Loving

and cherishing

what shows up

rather than what comes next.


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Perfectly Molting

A bird flies overhead,

magnificent in its form and grace,

perfection in flight.

So present in its existence, movement, and being.

So seemingly joyful and at ease, even as it efforts to ride the currents of air, finding its own way.

A feather lies on the ground,

long, lush, and of complex substance and form,

once essential to the bird’s form and function.

Even the bird,

relying so heavily on its feathers for form, movement, and survival,

molts and looses critical parts of itself to maintain its dynamic essence and functional existence,

growing into its fullest capacity.

It does not wallow in the loss of its parts.

It revels in the new found strength and skill that comes from letting go

and reforming with integrity

and wholeness

over and over again.