Posts Tagged ‘Journey’
2014: The Year of…
Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
Happy 2014! As each New Year begins, I take time to sit quietly and set intentions for the coming year. I listen to silence. I listen to nature. I listen to my heart. One clear intention is to follow the map of my heart.
As I started to meditate, I gazed at my bookcase. Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, jumped out at me. I had read this book a few years after my mom passed away. (I highly recommend any Joan Didion book!) As I stared at that book, I felt like there was a message for me for 2014. I randomly opened to a page and read, “As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs…The way I write is who I am, or have become…” I returned the book and felt the rhythms of the words as it matched the rhythm of my breath.
I wrote the words: 2014 is the Year of Magical Being
This year will be about following the sacred path of the warrior and living from a place of being. It will BE a year of allowing serendipity to replace certainty. It will BE a year where I live from my heart. It will BE a year where feelings will be the map that guides me. 2014 will be a year of Magical BEING.
As a part of that beingness, I am also honing in a word for 2014: Metta.
The Pali word for lovingkindness, metta, means unconditional friendliness, warmth, love or care, and the Pali word for compassion, karuna, means to “feel with,” to bear suffering with an active sympathy. In his wisdom the Buddha realized that by purposefully awakening lovingkindness and compassion, we invite the alienated hurts and fears into consciousness, and free ourselves into a wholeness of being. (Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart)
My year of Magical Being will be tuning into loving-kindness towards myself and others. This loving-kindness will allow me to consciously stay awake in the world and turn shame, fear, and doubt into wholeness.
It’s a big journey and I know I don’t walk alone. I have many holy witnesses with me.
You are invited to take time and listen for your intention, your word, and your heart.
What does 2014 feel like for you?
We Have What We Need
Thursday, January 17th, 2013
“This is a work in progress, a process of uncovering our natural openness, uncovering our natural intelligence and warmth. I have discovered, just as my teachers always told me, that we already have what we need. The wisdom, the strength, the confidence, the awakened heart and mind are always accessible, here, now, always. We are just uncovering them. We are rediscovering them. We’re not inventing them or importing them from somewhere else. They’re here. That’s why when we feel caught in darkness, suddenly the clouds can part. Out of nowhere we cheer up or relax or experience the vastness of our minds. No one else gives this to you. People will support you and help you with teachings and practices, as they have supported and helped me, but you yourself experience your unlimited potential.”
~Pema Chödrön, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears
{Photo by Mary Anne Flanagan}
Daring Deeply on a Path of the Heart
Thursday, January 3rd, 2013
I came across this poem by Carlos Castaneda that reminded me of living a path of vulnerability with heart.
You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path.
Each path is only one of a million paths.
If you feel that you must now follow it,
you need not stay with it under any circumstances.
Any path is only a path.
There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path
if that is what your heart tells you to do.
But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it
must be free of fear and ambition.
I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately.
Try it as many times as you think necessary.
Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question.
Does this path have a heart?
All paths are the same. They lead nowhere.
They are paths going through the brush or into the brush
or under the brush of the Universe.
The only question is: Does this path have a heart?
If it does, then it is a good path.
If it doesn’t, then it is of no use.