“What if our religion was each other.
If our practice was our life.
If prayer, our words?
What if the temple was the earth
If forests were our church
If holy water - the rivers, lakes and oceans.
What if meditation was our relationships
If the Teacher was life,
if wisdom was self-knowledge,
If love was the center of our being?”
The struggle to be real
A sincere life
Holding nothing back
Unrehearsed living
Living with the sacred
Steering our way to center
The fact of our oneness
Befriending the whole
Practicing change
The gift of surprise
The life of expression
The song of relationship
The rhythm of kindness
The feather of truth
Everything just as it is
We become the earth.
From the Exquisite Risk by Mark Nepo
When each posture becomes a prayer, when each breath becomes a poem, when every moment of my practice becomes a celebration of the Divine, I am doing Yoga!
You have two ways to live your life. From memory or from inspiration, memories are simply old programs replaying, inspiration is the Divine giving you a message. The only way to hear the Divine and receive messages, is to clear your memories and clear your mind. by Dr. Hew Len
Our ears are the first organ to form in the embryo and the last organ to stop functioning at the time of death. This highlights the importance of our ears, some ancient cultures believe our ears are the ‘gatesways to our soul’. So when we slow down enough to really tune in to our ears; we learn how to listen more closely- not only to the conversations that we have, but also to the songs of nature, to the deeper more subtle sounds of the universe and ultimately to the very sounds of our soul.
So to improve your listening skills, take time out to be tranquil, try to live in the present at least some part of every day, observe yourself in conversations, become an alert but passive listener of others, nature and yourself. Then let the magic begin!
When I roam lofty mountains I feel like my soul is raised on high and covered like the peaks in never melting caps of snow.
And when I descend into the valleys I feel deep and profound like them and my heart fills with mysterious shadows.
The same thing happens at the edge of the sea. There I merge with the surging waves: they pound and roar within me. When I gaze at the sky I expand. I become boundless, unlimited.
When I look at the stars, silence permeates me.
When I see a flower the ecstasy of beauty overwhelms me.
When I hear a bird singing, its songs is an echo of my own inner voice, and when I look into the eyes of an animal I see no difference between them and my own.
Gradually my separate existence has vanished for the illusion that it was…. Only Peace remains.
by Unknown
The Buddha’s words; “Make your mind vast as the sky.” When you are spacious in your mind, the sense of space makes worries and conflicts workable. When you are spacious in your heart, all your feelings and emotions are held with greater ease. When you are spacious in the body, caring attention and flexibility grow, and rigidity and fear diminish
Gracious God, in the busy-ness of my day, I sometimes forget to stop to thank you for all that is good in my life.
My blessings are many and my heart is filled with gratefulness for the gift of living, for the ability to love and be loved, for the opportunity to see the everyday wonders of creation, for sleep and water, for a mind that thinks and a body that feels.
I thank you, too, for those things in my life that are less than I would hope them to be. Things that seem challenging, unfair, or difficult. When my heart feels stretched and empty, and pools of tears form in my weary eyes, still I rejoice that you are as near to me as my next breath and that in the midst of turbulence, I am growing and learning.
In the silence of my soul, I thank you most of all for your unconditional and eternal love.
Amen.
from prayers for living
Loading more postsGena Kenny, founder of Ohana Yoga & Wellness Centre, writes a weekly themed blog post about inspiration, creativity, and leading the life you want to live.
