Inner Sky

19/05/2024

My very special guest on The Art of Mindfulness Program this week is the wonderful Novelist, Screenwriter, Director, Painter and fellow traveller, Mark Lamprell
Tune in to Eastside Radio 89.7FM Monday 20th May 10.30 for a deep dive conversation, on writing, painting, and the creative life.

26/09/2022

Cartoon: Charles Schulz

If we step back and consider the "big picture," the inevitable changes in life are less likely to overwhelm us. When we have a sense of humor about the whole dance of life, everything becomes easier & lighter.

Excerpt/adapted from “The Wise Heart”

02/02/2022

22/01/2022

“This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies All manifests from the basis of consciousness. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear

13/01/2022

You're invited.

19/10/2021

Some ideas that might make a difference to the week ahead.

I’ve downloaded the Insight Timer app which is free and allows you to pick the time (5, 10, 15+ minute) exercises, guided meditations, breathing, well being and general inspirational audios. I’m loving Jack Kornfield, Kota Webb and also Vaz Srihanan audios.

11/10/2021

A Charm Against the Language of Politics

Say over and over the names of things,
the clean nouns: weeping birch, bloodstone, tanager,
Banshee damask rose. Read field guides, atlases,
gravestones. At the store, bless each apple
by kind: McIntosh, Winesap, Delicious, Jonathan.
Enunciate the vegetables and herbs: okra, calendula.

Go deeper into the terms of some small landscape:
spiders, for example. Then, after a speech on
compromising the environment for technology,
recite the tough, silky structure of webs:
tropical stick, ladder web, mesh web, filmy dome, funnel,
trap door. When you have compared the candidates’ slippery
platforms, chant the spiders: comb footed, round headed,
garden cross, feather legged, ogre faced, black widow.
Remember that most short verbs are ethical: hatch, grow,
spin, trap, eat. Dig deep, pronounce clearly, pull the words
in over your head. Hole up for the duration.
by Veronica Patterson.

06/09/2021

Be your best self today.

26/08/2021

Save one starfish, metaphorical or otherwise.

Compassion is most real in the particulars, in our response to the immediacy of this moment. Every conscious act contributes to the healing of the whole. Small acts can be important, as seen in the story of a man who was walking along a beach after an unusually strong spring storm. The beach was covered with dying starfish tossed up by the waves, and the man was tossing them back in the water one by one. A visitor saw this and came up to him. “What are you doing?” “I’m trying to help these starfish,” the man replied. “But there are tens of thousands of them washed up along these beaches. Throwing a handful back doesn’t matter,” protested the visitor. “Matters to this one,” the man replied as he tossed another starfish into the ocean.

Excerpt: "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry"

25/08/2021

17/08/2021

When our efforts to help seem futile, we can trust that in another time and place there may be unexpected results. When we’re trying to address a problem, improve the state of the world, help a struggling friend, comfort a grieving child, it might all appear to be going nowhere. Yet our actions are like planting seeds in the ground. We don’t know for sure when they will bear fruit, and what looks like failure may be a time of gestation. Our work toward the good can be sustained if we don’t harshly measure the success or failure of our actions by the immediate, and superficially apparent, results.

Excerpt from "The Kindness Handbook"

Art by Sky Banyes