Posted on

Lessons from trees

TreeAlt

Ever appreciative of nature, today when I let my gaze focus softly on the fall color around me I became very aware of the many lessons to be learned from trees. Now, I am aware that this is NOT a new topic. In fact, when I reached the end of my journaling about trees, I recalled one of my favorite books, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree:

TheGivingTree

If you are not familiar with this one, please check it out. It is one of the most precious gifts I think I’ve given.

That said, today’s version of tree exploration landed in a very different place than did The Giving Tree. As I let my awareness focus on the tree and all the ways I might align my life with that of the beautiful deciduous trees I so love, I discovered that sometimes a tree is just a tree, being a tree. Yet sometimes:

  • it is an umbrella giving protection from the rain or the sun
  • it is sustenance as the leaves it drops decompose and nourish the soil or its sap, nuts and berries provide food for animal and human
  • it is beauty – majestic, tall, strong
  • it grows, expands its reach each year with tender, small, vulnerable branches which, over time, grow stronger
  • it needs to let go, needs pruning, that what remains has room to blossom
  • it suffers greatly from the elements
  • it needs the help of mankind or other trees for support
  • it cycles annually through rich and visible outer manifestation and the outwardly barren yet inwardly alive winter hibernation

I am SO like that tree! Sometimes, I get to be just me being me. At other times I am helper or helped — beauty or barren — expressive or inward focused.

What season is your tree navigating now?

Posted on

Patience…

Is patience a 4-letter word for any of you? I’d like to say that it isn’t for me … but … I know it has been. While I grew up in another era where everything happened more slowly, the world of fast food and quick fixes and gotta have it now  has certainly had an impact on me.

Yet, this past month I have been practicing gentle, minimal but regular, stretching on some long abused muscles in my body. After two years of constant pain (interspersed with occasional relief followed by overdoing it – again!), I have finally practiced patience and seen the benefit in pain-free, flexible movement. I realize that I needed to stop stubbornly trying to “do it myself”, trust the physical therapist, stop evaluating progress daily and allow healing over time. I wonder:

What in your world needs a large dose of patience?
What happens when you hurry it along?

What is it worth to you?

Posted on

Meditate … why?

meditate

Yes, I meditate. But it doesn’t look like that! It has never looked like that. Yet, how I “sit”, how I “let go and be”, is meditation for me. And I know that you have your own “method” or “way of being” that is meditation for you.

Today’s short message is meant as an invitation especially if you have never tried – or have tried and think you have failed at – meditation. There is no such thing as failing at it, by the way! Though I did … I “failed” … over and over and over again! Once I let go of doing it “their way” and trusted my being to meditate in a way that honors me, lets me “let go and just be”, I have found immense value on the journey.

Why do I meditate? Here are just a few reasons:

  • It relaxes my mental grip on life
  • It helps me widen my perspective
  • It calms my emotional and physical beings
  • It helps me feel connected to other humans and other life forms
  • It helps me love freely, less conditionally
  • It saves me from myself

If you have never tried it or tried and “failed”, consider trying again. Meditation is a practice, a journey, for everyone. There are many sources of guidance available – spiritual communities, the Internet, retreat centers – to name a few. My current inspiration comes from Adyashanti and Mukti. You can find their library of recordings here:

Cafe Dharma

What have you got to lose?
What might you gain?
Why not?

Posted on

Simplicity … again: the Choice!

TheChoiceIsClear4By6

I suspect, like me, your day is filled with activities and interactions that were planned in the past. You chose them “then” yet here you are. Given the option, you might not have chosen them today!

The first and most important choice you make each day is this:

Will I follow through on today’s plan?

Sometimes, we need to respond NO. Perhaps illness or an urgent matter calls to us. Maybe we really need to change life direction and today’s plan no longer fits. If you are here with NO today, then make it a firm and powerful NO and set a new trajectory.

If, however, you responded YES, then make it a firm and powerful YES!

Whatever plan you are following, you have a second choice to make each and every day: How will I execute the day’s plan?

What energy will I bring to today’s moments?
With what spirit will I fulfill today’s commitments?
What will have me arrive at the pillow tonight
feeling fulfilled, grateful, whole, happy?

The Choice is Clear!

Posted on

Life’s Simple Pleasures

Nature4By6

I selected an inspiration card at random this morning. The Universe SO responded to my desire for clear direction. I needed only to read the very first question though I did take in a few:

What is the power in simple?
What stuns you into silence?
What would delicate feel like?

I read those questions and then looked out the window. Of course there was a hummingbird on the feeder! Nature’s delicate expression which always stuns me into silence, into awe.

Life’s simple pleasures are ever-present if we pause to notice, if we are willing to take them in.

Where do you over-complicate?
What simple pleasures await?