Daylesford Tarot and Healing

19/07/2022

Tired indeed! (-a passage from my book, ‘Love it Forward’)

20/06/2022

The humanism bypass. I did it for years. I saw glimpses of someone’s potential, their beautiful soul, their loving heart, and told myself that this was who they... truly were, ignoring all the rest. But the rest was what destroyed. The rest is where they lived most of the time. The rest was no illusion- it was them, too. This self-destructive pattern was birthed in two places: (1) my deep desire to see the best in my difficult parents. Not for them, but for me. I needed to believe that there was something kind and caring living inside of them; (2) a misplaced projection from my own self-concept work. I held the belief in my own potential, as a way of overcoming the shame I carried. But I made the mistake of assuming that everyone else was just as eager to find their light. Of course we all have glowing potential. At the core, we are all magnificent beings with profound capacities. But how many of us fully actualize it? At this stage of human development, not so many. The trick is to hold the space for two things at once- a deep belief in everyone’s possibilities, and a deep regard for your own well-being. It’s okay to pray for everyone’s liberation without joining them in prison. Pray from outside the prison walls, while taking exquisite care of yourself. It's okay- you can't do the work for them anyway. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries… don’t leave home without them.

11/06/2022

What do we whisper to ourselves?

💛 credit:

05/05/2022

Ahhhh, the zen of it all.... 🤣

Cartoon: David Sipress 😃
Often when people start to practice , they hope to become calm and peaceful. Usually they are in for a big shock. Initially practice can reveal the opposite, bringing an unseen stream of evaluations and judgments into stark relief. As minutes pass, we may cycle between agitation and boredom. We hear a door slam and wish for quiet. ("I'm meditating—it should be quiet!") Our knees hurt, our back hurts, and we try to avoid the pain. (Maybe we need a better cushion?) We can't feel our breath and get frustrated. We notice our mind won't stop planning and we feel like a failure. ("I can't stop thinking!") Then maybe we notice how many judgments there are, and we feel proud of ourselves for noticing, then judge our pride.
We can begin to put aside our judgment. We can become mindful. When we are mindful, it is as if we can bow to our experience without judgment or expectation. “Mindfulness,” declared the Buddha, “is all helpful.”

Excerpt adapted from "The Wise Heart"

26/03/2022

24/03/2022

Healing is not easy...

08/02/2022

"It has to end..."

Hearticulations: On Love, Friendship, and Healing

08/02/2022

From "The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace"

08/01/2022

The key to wise thought is to sense the energy state behind the thought. If we pay attention, we will notice that certain thoughts are produced by fear and the small sense of self. With them will be clinging, rigidity, unworthiness, defensiveness, aggression, or . We can sense their effect on the heart and the body. When we notice this suffering we can start to relax, breathe, loosen the identification. With this awareness the mind will become more open and malleable. With this pause we return to our Buddha nature. Now we can think, imagine, and plan, but from a state of ease and benevolence. https://jackkornfield.com/the-key-to-wise-thought/

03/01/2022

Your lack of readiness is an illusion. Get to it brilliant being! We need what you have to offer desperately...

16/12/2021

"A yogi, a practitioner, is an artist who knows how to handle their fear and other kinds of painful feeling or emotion. They do not feel they are a victim because they know there is something they can do.

You listen to the suffering in you and you get in touch with it. Breathe in and out deeply to see, “Why am I suffering? Where has it come from?” Your suffering, your fear, may reflect the suffering of your parents, your ancestors, and the planet. It also contains the suffering of your time, your community, your society, your nation. It’s very important not to cover it up with music, movies, or computer games. To have the courage to go home to yourself, to recognize and hold the suffering inside and look deeply into it, may be the most important thing for you to do as a meditator.

The meditator breathes in and says, “Hello, my fear, my anger, my despair. I will take good care of you.” The moment you recognize the feeling and smile to it with love and care, embracing the fear with mindfulness, it will begin to change. That is the miracle of mindfulness. It’s like morning sunlight shining on a lotus flower. The bud has not opened yet, but as the sunlight pours down, the photons pe*****te into the bud, and after one or two hours of being pe*****ted by the light, the flower opens itself.

We have the energy of mindfulness generated by mindful walking, sitting or breathing. With that energy we embrace our fear gently as the light embracing the flower. When the two kinds of energy encounter each other, there will be a change, a transformation. The energy of tenderness pe*****tes the fear, anger or despair. You hold it as dearly as you might hold a wounded child."

Thich Nhat Hanh in “Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet”
(HarperOne 2021, available: https://smarturl.it/zenartofsavingplanet)

18/11/2021

Yes, "What if one day..."

What if one day.... (~from Susan Frybort's book, 'Open Passages')

23/10/2021

18/10/2021

You can’t really run away from home... (-an excerpt from my new book, ‘Hearticulations’)

14/10/2021

It's always up to us...

Grounded Spirituality

11/10/2021

Source: Wholehearted Counseling