Like clouds moving in water, problems make me forget I am clear. Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when, in fact, it has no color. Amazingly, while soft and flowing, water - as ocean or lake or even as the smallest puddle of rain - takes on the image of the entire world without ever losing its essential clearness. Of course, it is not so easy for us. As emotional beings, we are constantly losing ourselves in the image of everything we experience. But, regardless, the nature of water can help us understand our very human struggles. I began, like so many of us, in a household where it was somehow my job to be the lightening rod for the family's tensions of unexpressed emotion. In this way, I learned to be a problem solver, a rescuer, a caretaker. Through one marriage and countless friendships, I loved by taking on the clouded emotions of those I loved. The tension of other people's unexpressed emotions kept me from feeling my own depth and clarity. My life became one of turbulence, always struggling to keep my head above the cloudy surface. But the water has taught me that we are MORE than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are. It's an endless and nearly impossible task. But, though we can never be as clear as the water, it helps to remember that while the very real problems we face are the living things we must handle, they are not the essential current of our lives. Beneath the clouds, water desires only to flow, and beneath our tensions and problems, the human spirit wants only to embrace and soften. ❤️ Meditation/Reflection: ✨The next time a loved one voices frustration, disappointment, or pain, notice your reaction. ✨Are you problem solving or accepting what they are saying? ✨Are you trying to cheer them up or bear witness to their experience? ✨Are you left holding their pain or deepened for what is shared?

✨Birds don't need ornithologists to fly. We spend so much time wanting to be seen and named: as intelligent or good or handsome or pretty or successful or popular or as nobody's fool. Yet the spirit doesn't know it's being spiritual anymore than water rushing knows it's a stream, and the heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its wings knows it's being a hawk. Nor does someone acting out of love often realize they are being kind. From an early age, we are taught that to live fully is to be accepted, and to be accepted, we need to be seen. So we base success and even more love on the effort to be seen, on how much we stand out. However, the often painful truth we discover along the way is that to survive in an inner way that matters -- that keeps us connected to all that has ever lived and is living -- we sorely need to know to be accepting. By this I don't mean being passive. By this I mean inhabiting our capacity to see and affirm the common pulse of life we find in others, no matter how different they may seem from us. When we do this, we no longer need to be different to be valued and no longer need to be accepted to know love. In short, we no longer need an audience to fly. We simply have to extend our sincerity to each abiding day and we will be in accord with all that is valuable. Like flowers waiting on rain, our hearts wait on love. As much as we want to be seen and known, it is the giving of attention that keeps us awake. For giving attention opens us to love. And accepting that deep things wait like seed between us is believing in the world. So wake me by accepting me, and the world will sprout us up like grass. --The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo ❤️Meditation: ✨Be still, close your eyes, and quiet your mind until you feel the air as you breathe. ✨On the inbreath, open yourself to what it feels like to get attention. ✨On the outbreath, open yourself to what it feels like to give attention. ✨As you breathe, allow yourself to feel how the two merge -- in and out -- get and give.

This is my favorite way to get out of my head and meditate! I do scrapbook journaling... What is your favorite way?

"If you can't cross over alive, how can you cross when you're dead?" -- Kabir The need to step into what we fear and, in doing so, disperse its hold on us is powerfully brought to life by a moment in the film "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." After searching everywhere within reason and memory for the Holy Grail, Jones stands on an enormous precipice, a deep chasm before him, the Grail waiting on the other side. His father, wounded and depending on the Grail to heal, cries out possible interpretations of the clues Jones has been given to reach the Grail. After what seems a lifetime of inner debate and escalating fear, he dares, against everything he knows, to step into the void above the chasm, and as he does, an enormous stone foundation appears beneath his feet, a bridge that was there all along. This is a moment of risk and trust, a wisdom moment that repeats itself in our lives in both small and large ways. Over and over, the cup we need to drink from, the ancient ever-healing cup of wholeness waits beyond some deep chasm we are afraid to cross. Often we are driven to the edge by the cries and clues of elders and loved ones, only to find that nothing makes sense, that there seems nowhere to go. And then the atom of risk begins to replay itself in those brought to the edge. Then, when all known ways of seeing have failed, we sometimes dare to step into the void. Whether that void is a chasm of purpose or self-esteem or a ravine in relationship or a canyon of addiction, this crazy-wisdom step -- that begins with risk and lands in trust -- reveals a foundation that was there all along, but which is only made visible by our risk to think and see in new ways and our trust to step into what we fear. ❤️ Meditation to try: ✨Breath deeply and know that even the smallest moment of risk and trust is difficult. ✨Center yourself and meditate on a chasm of your own making. It might be a trench of stubbornness or pride that no one can cross, or the echo of your own pain that isolates you, or the vastness that builds when you are afraid to tell someone the truth of your heart, or the absence of belief that you deserve what waits on the other side.

➡️ So many times we suppose ourselves out of existence, imagining that if we speak our heart we will be rejected or ignored. I once watched a woman reach to call a friend, excited to share a deep idea that had overcome her. But as the phone was ringing, I saw her imagine a cool reception, saw her try on the pain of not being heard, and quickly, with a sigh of deflation, she hung up before the fourth ring. Still, the expression - whether misunderstood, well received, or rejected - matters. For the cost of not making the call is that a piece of us dies. Consider how fish swim and birds fly. They do so because it is in their nature. For it is the swimming and the flying that makes them fish and birds. Likewise, it is the speaking of one's heart that makes a human being human. For even if no one hears us, it is the act of speaking that frees us by letting the spirit swim and fly through the world. --From the book "The Book of Awakening" by Mark Nepo 🧘Meditation for your Throat Chakra (blue energy center): ✨Sit quietly and allow yourself to be as still as lake water when there is no wind. ✨Breathe slowly and look into yourself. Look to the bottom layer of yourself. ✨Inhale deeply and feel whatever rises from your bottom. ✨Exhale cleanly and , though you are alone, speak what you are feeling, aloud to yourself. 📩 What thoughts and feelings arose within you? Did you have anything come up that surprised you?