Monday Mindfulness

Cultivating Strength, Joy, Calm & Resilience

Tag Archives: monday mindfulness


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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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Emptying

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.


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Doable

passion and common sense (2)

When passion and common sense come together they bring with them a whimsical assuredness.  Their rhythmic dance is reverent and focused, yet meandering and joyful.  Together they carry me forward with comfort and ease.

With a balance of passion and common sense, life seems quite doable…anything seems doable…everything is doable when we walk this path together.

 

 


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All Wrapped Up

All Wrapped Up

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.


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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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Choices

There is always peace.

There is only joy.

Unless you choose otherwise.

It is always your choice.


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Next

I am meant to evolve, to ever branch and expand.

So why is it that change is so hard?

When change feels like it is coming for good, I embrace it. When change feels put upon me, I resist and shut down.

Fear may be coloring my relationship with change. Fear creates the illusion of pain, loss, or failure tied to change.

Take away the anticipation of loss or failure and change is just what comes next.

Change taken moment by moment, even when not chosen, is simply what comes next.


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The Real Heal

You can’t fake healing. It’s gotta come from the heart, filled with love and kindness and an unconditional knowing you are worthy of wellness.

You must believe that you are worthy of wellness…always you are worthy of wellness.


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Pulsing

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 exist in the pulse rather than the push.


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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.