Being in the moment

The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness.
It is here in the present.
It asks of us a welcoming spirit
to greet all that life presents to us
with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.
We can bow to both beauty and suffering,
to our entanglements and confusion,
to our fears and to the injustices of the world.
Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.

~ Jack Kornfield ~

On being in a timeless state

a view from our back porch...I painted that picture up there....makes me want to get my
watercolors out....seems like I never make the time to paint anymore.....I can enter into a timeless state when I paint.
gotta do it!
love,
Michele

“Each state we encounter will succumb to the next. There is no way to avoid the transitions of our life. The chief means of entering them gracefully is to practice them mindfully over and over again. It is like learning to ride a horse: over and over again walking, trotting, cantering, over smooth and rough terrain, mounting and dismounting, starting and stopping, until it becomes possible for us to move through life in a graceful conscious way. In moving through the difficult stages of our lives, we can learn to trust our heart to these cycles and their unfolding as surely as we can trust roots to go down and leaves to push up through the earth in our garden We can trust each petal of a flower will open in the right order from outside to inside. We can trust that whatever calls our attention to practice – our body, our personal history, the community around us – in or out or retreat, it will bring to us what we need to live fully and genuinely in the timeless here and now."

Jack Kornfield

Moving towards life

Swamp Stomp with Ranger Roger
Sunshinedaydream
MarkO's camp art
My camp art

On Moving Towards Life....Not Death

and embracing life fully.....

Namaste! It is a little hard to come back from camping all week. I love camping and being "Unplugged." It is so beautiful and peaceful at Findley State Park....I could stay all summer. Last week, I was reading After The Ecstasy, The Laundry, by Jack Kornfield and came across the most beautiful poem (below)....I was very intrigued by it and kept reading it over and over......... it is about living and learning to love the mysteries NOW, but the author is unknown. I think the author wrote the poem at a meditation retreat and wanted to remain anonymous.

Hope you enjoy the below poem as much as I do!

Love,

Michele

REVERSE LIVING

Life is tough.

It takes a lot of your time,

all your weekends,

and what do you get at the end of it?

Death, a great reward.

I think that the life cycle is all backwards.

You should die first, get it out of the way.

Then you live twenty years in an old-age home.

You are kicked out when you are too young.

You get a gold watch, you go to work.

You work forty years until you’re

young enough to enjoy your retirement.

You go to college,

you party until you’re ready for high school.

You become a little kid, you play,

you have no responsibilities,

you become a little boy or girl,

you go back into the womb,

you spend your last nine months floating.

And you finish off as a gleam in someone’s eye.

Into the eyes of nonjudgement

When we have for so long been judged by everyone we meet,

just to look into the eyes of another who does not judge us

can be extraordinarily healing.

— Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart

Connection

mark in our art studio...hard at work.


Only in the intimacy of the timeless present can we awaken. This intimacy connects us to one another, allows us to belong, and in this belonging, we experience love. In this way we move beyond our separateness, our contaction, our limited sense of ourselves.
- Jack Kornfield