Daily Mindfulness.com

Please sign and forward, to help support the these indigenous people from being expelled from their traditional lands.

Maasai elders: We need your help now Urgent: Tens of thousands of us could face eviction from our ancestral lands. Please help!

Please read this and absorb it into your heart.

Be careful the words you use to describe who you are. Be aware of the speech you whisper deep inside yourself, like a witch casting spells.
Your strength, your tenderness and hope is listening, is feeling those words.
And over time, with each word, each sentence, each spell you cast into your heart, you weaken yourself from the very center.
Remember that beautiful little child you were, remember that hopeful tender heart, you can come back to that place and allow the essence of it to grow, you can start whispering spells, good words, kind words, forgiving words until it grows and fills you up.
Your inner voice, the one you have learnt to speak, is one of the main food sources for your growth.
Let that food be good nourishment, let it be like wild medicine weeds rather than poison.
Stop and listen to yourself. How do your words make your heart feel? How does the way you treat yourself make you feel?

Beautiful insight by Brigit Anna McNeill
Photo: Katie T Parker Photography

Savouring is a practice that we do on purpose when developing a Mindful life. It helps a lot, as this research shows, particularly in times of greater uncertainty.

One Upside to the Feeling of Uncertainty A new study finds that feeling uncertain may lead us to savor the small things in life.

my brain and
heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about
how big of a mess
have become

eventually,

they couldn’t be
in the same room
with each other

now my head and heart
share custody of me

stay with my brain
during the week

and my heart
gets me on weekends
they never speak to one another

– instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week

and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:

“This is all your fault’

on Sundays

my heart complains
about how my

head has let me down
in the past

and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future

they blame each
other for the

state of my life

there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying

SO,
lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of

time with my gut

who serves as my
unofficial therapist

most nights, sneak out of the
window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine
and collapse on my

gut’s plush leather chair
that’s always open for me

~ and just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up

last evening,

my gut asked me

if was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head

nodded

said didn’t know
if could live with
either of them anymore
“my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow,
lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

‘just can’t live with

my mistakes of the past

or my anxiety about the future,’
sighed

my gut smiled and said:
‘in that case,

you should

go stay with your

lungs for a while,’

was confused
– the look on my face gave it away

“if you are exhausted about

your heart’s obsession with

the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath
and in that breath

you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out.’

this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves

and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs

packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs

before could even knock
she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me
she said
“what took you so long?’

~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)

So true for me and for us all.

When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.

This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Co. Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

What a blessing John O'Donohue was and still is. He shows us the way.

Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one's own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yourself and you can spend years lost in the wildernesses of your own mechanical, spiritual programs. You can perish in a famine of your own making.

If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more importantly, it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara
Ordering Info: https://www.johnodonohue.com/store

Co. Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill