Paddling down a slow moving, deep part of a river, the paddler is relaxed in her canoe. Mind drifting. It's a beautiful day.
She notices that a few hundred feet ahead now are rapids. She hears them first. The sound brings her back to the moment. Rapids are a delight, part of the reason she loves being on the river, but also can be treacherous. She slowly stands. The river at this point is picking up a little speed but still slow so standing for her is no trouble; she still moves deliberately, staying balanced, to her feet. She gazes at the rapids ahead.
A feeling of excitement and a little trepidation washes over her. She acknowledges these feeling, lets them go, and turns her attention back to seeing the rapids, seeing them as they are, accepting them and asking herself "what is the best way to effectively shoot these rapids?" She knows from hard experience that just winging it, hoping that she hits the right angle, is not particularly useful and often leads to capsizes and worse.
She's noticed two possible entries. And now she takes a moment, letting her emotion and her reason come into balance. She's an experienced paddler , despite some reasonable caution, her wise mind tells her she can take these rapids.
What's the lesson?
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Mindful Gratitude
The medieval German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart said,
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
So here we are in this moment, reading this post, and I’m inviting you to do a 1-minute practice of the things in life you’re grateful for.
If your mind is restless and wants to skip past this short exercise, check-in and see if there’s any discomfort.
Sometimes we actually have discomfort when considering what we’re grateful for. In fact, this discomfort can even cause us to skip over the practice of gratefulness altogether.
The result is that we may be denying ourselves the benefits of a practice proven to aid in the experience of life satisfaction and the encouragement of comfortable emotions.
If you experience discomfort, sense into it – allowing this awareness to also become a part of the practice.
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
So here we are in this moment, reading this post, and I’m inviting you to do a 1-minute practice of the things in life you’re grateful for.
If your mind is restless and wants to skip past this short exercise, check-in and see if there’s any discomfort.
Sometimes we actually have discomfort when considering what we’re grateful for. In fact, this discomfort can even cause us to skip over the practice of gratefulness altogether.
The result is that we may be denying ourselves the benefits of a practice proven to aid in the experience of life satisfaction and the encouragement of comfortable emotions.
If you experience discomfort, sense into it – allowing this awareness to also become a part of the practice.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Mindfulness quote
"Cultivating mind’s inherent capacity to stay put is called mindfulness training. Mindfulness is like the rope that keeps the wild elephant from destroying everything in sight. The rope of mindfulness bring us back to our immediate experience: to our breath, to our walking, to the book in our hands."--Pema Chodron
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