Now About Meditation

We spend so much of our energy and focusing on what we want—the things we don’t have.  What happens when we choose to focus on what we do have? Finding gratitude shifts our perception towards the abundance of gifts and blessings that are present for us in this moment. Especially during hard times, a moment of gratitude can remind us of just how much we’ve been given: love, support, simple pleasures, material resources, our health and safety, this breath, this moment, this life.    To take it a step further, we can give thanks not only for the good things in our lives, but for the challenges and difficulties that push us to grow and give us the opportunity to put our spiritual work into practice.  “We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with,” writes Acharya Judy Lief. “Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness , loving-kindness or ...

Life is full of transitions, big and small. We transition all of the time and don’t realise they are happening. Sometimes transitions in our lives might be as simple as going from sitting to standing with such without us realising have an effect on us. How?  For example, the flow of blood in the body changes through shifting our position, the amount of effort exerted to be upright changes, and even the breath and heart rate change slightly. Small body transitions change our perception and interaction with the world, so you can imagine that the bigger the transition, the more significant effect on us. And those big transitions aren’t always in the physical realm. They could be and often are in the realm of thoughts and emotions. Relationships change and evolve; comfortable things may need to be swapped out for things that are less comfortable and familiar. The nature of the entire universe is impermanent , and we cause ourselves to suffer by wishing things didn’t change. Noticing ou...