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690th Week: Meeting Challenges
I had an experience recently where a colleague brought to my attention that three years’ worth of postings to one of my websites had never actually shown up for the pubic. I mentioned last week that I post a daily inspirational quotation and photograph to the Devadana Sanctuary Facebook page, and I also post it to the Devadana Sanctuary website. What I discovered is that the posts to the website were incorrectly programmed by me and never appeared… Read More “690th Week: Meeting Challenges”
2025 April Meditation
Settling into timeless stillness; notice if it’s becoming easier and easier to access this state of being and the frequencies that arise within it; bring to mind the quality of compassion, the frequency of this state of mind and being; radiate compassion to your whole body-mind being, offering your awareness and care to the whole community that is your body; to the complexity and richness of your emotional life; to the active presence of your mental life; to the deep quality of your spiritual life; then radiate compassion to your environment and to your world, including humans, other forms of earth-kin, and the earth itself. Imagine yourself moving into your everyday activities resonating with the quality, the frequency of compassion.
Here’s the audio version:
Here’s the YouTube version if you’d like to see images of nature while listening to the meditation:
722nd Week: One Person Can Make A Difference
I recently saw a brief video about a man in Brazil who, through his focus and efforts over many years, restored a rainforest to an area that had lost its vegetation and water. As I watched the video, it reminded me of something that many people think is only fantasy but that, for me, is an ever-present reality. In my mind, this man was guided by Nature’s Intelligence to plant vegetation in a process that spontaneously returned water to the region where he lives. Here’s a link to his brief, inspiring documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndWyBU9mWlM
The other thing this video brought to mind is how powerful one person’s daily commitment and activities can be. During all the years this man planted vegetation on his land, his neighbors didn’t understand why he was doing so, and yet—through his persistence in heeding the call he felt from the land—he restored an entire ecosystem one small act at a time. For me, this speaks to the ways in which each of us can play an active role in caring for, and restoring, our world. Read More “722nd Week: One Person Can Make A Difference”
November 2018 Meditation
If you’d like to experience this meditation with nature images, here’s a link to the youtube version:
852nd Week: Wholeness and Shifting Foreground to Background and Background to Foreground
As I prepared to write this week’s practice in conscious living, it became clear that I needed to take two of my three feline family members to an emergency vet on different nights during the week. One of the things related to being in an emergency facility is that there is plenty of time to wait. It’s first come, first served and there’s no way to rush the attention needed in emergency visits.
To help keep my feline friends calm, I needed to draw on the calm part of myself—to bring the calm aspect of my wholeness into the foreground of my experience. This got me to thinking about offering a practice around the importance of embracing our wholeness so that we are able to remember that all aspects of being can shift from foreground to background and, also from background to foreground. In these emergency experiences, I remembered that I’ve developed a much deeper relationship with being calm and centered and that, even when this aspect of being drops into the background of my awareness, it’s always there to invite forward when I’m able to do so.
It’s helpful to remember that trauma can add an energy “punch” to some aspects of our wholeness so that when they move into the foreground of awareness we may find ourselves activated in ways we hadn’t expected and which we may have a hard time managing. A year-and-a-half ago, when one of my feline family members had a dental emergency, I found myself catapulted into a very young part of my wholeness. What I noticed this time around was that the efforts I invested over the last year dealing with what got pulled into the foreground last year made a noticeable difference, for which I have been very grateful. I was calm in a way I wouldn’t have predicted, given my previous responses.
Read More “852nd Week: Wholeness and Shifting Foreground to Background and Background to Foreground”