40 Days of A Space for Soul continues…
#sacred #heart #open #transform
I Am Love
every day is sacred
Advice to Myself – Choose Wonder
Each moment of life holds a choice; I can sleepwalk through my days or wake in wonder to this miraculous planet and all the beautiful beings I share it with. Through my meditation practice, I’ve learned that focus and awareness shift everything. Whatever I focus on, increases.
How much richer can day to day reality become if awareness and joy became top priority? Whenever I choose joy and wonder, the world seems to shower me with even more joyful and miraculous experiences. Learn more about being joyfully mindful here: Wake up to wonder.
I have a choice in every moment
I choose joy and wonder now!
A Blessing of Solitude
May you recognize in your life, the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone,
That your soul in its brightness and belonging
connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here,
That behind the facade of your life
there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride,
and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
~John O’Donohue
Anam Cara
Shadows and Joy
“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.
When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
~Buddha
Joy can seem as elusive and slippery as a soap bubble.
Yet once, years ago in meditation, I realized that joy and misery lie just a hair’s width apart within my mind. The image of joy and misery just micrometers apart within me, was so clear that I startled and came out of my reverie giggling. I remember that moment in vivid detail even now years later. And I know that I choose whether I will feel joy or misery or something in between in this moment. And the next. And the next.
It only takes a tiny shift in the mind to move from misery into joy; a micron of a shift; just a slightly altered point of view.
Breathe. And breathe again. Deep, slow breaths that fill your lungs. And feel whatever body sensations are present now; feel the sensations that joy is hiding behind. Breathe and feel your body. Then allow joy to step out of the shadows and be here now.
Can it really be that simple? Yes. Yes!
“A human being is only breath and shadow.”
~Sophocles
☯
Topography
Topography
After we flew across the country we
got into bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
by Sharon Olds
Will you hold me the way mountains hold the sky?
✧ ✧ ✧
Recreation Pants
~Nacho, AKA Jack Black
We have a “recreation pant” tradition at my house. What exactly are recreation pants, you ask? Think loungewear. Think pajama bottoms. Think baggy, comfortable and elastic!
Recreation pants go on at my house when it’s time to leave the problems of the day behind. We will even announce to each other that it’s time for recreation pants! It may sound silly to you, and it did actually start out as a joke. But the idea of putting on my recreation pants has come to mean much more to me.
The idea of recreation pants came to us after watching Jack Black ham it up in his irreverent and hilarious movie Nacho Libre. In the the movie Nacho, AKA Jack Black, wants to impress the hot young nun (yes, I mean nun). So Nach0 puts on his tight white stretch pants (think Saturday Night Fever pants). Then he poses against a pole and flexes his glutes for the nun. Seriously! It’s a bit of Jack Black comedy genius.
At my house, recreation pants still make us smile, but it’s not remotely about looking hot or impressing people. Just the opposite. Around here, recreation pants are all about being relaxed and comfortable and not needing to impress anyone. Besides, who can look hot and sexy in old, baggy pajama bottoms anyway?
Recreation pants signify that I can let my hair down and just enjoy hanging out with people I love. Doesn’t everybody needs peeps that they can wear their recreation pants in front of without losing face? I wonder if the problem with most politicians and public figures is that they NEVER think it’s safe to put on their recreation pants. Who among us can stay “on” 24 x 7? It is impossible. At some point we all need to stop worrying about looking the way we’re supposed to look and saying the things we’re supposed to say. Sooner or later, we all need to don our recreation pants.
My true home is a place filled with people that enjoy my company – even when I’m wearing my recreation pants. 🙂