We read a short article by Jack Kornfield, titled "Wise Thought", in which he writes:
Often our fears don’t turn out to be accurate predictions of anything. As Mark Twain put it, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes—most of which never happened!” When we become mindful of fearful...
We read and discussed an article by Sylvia Boorstein, after meditation, on how we can bring our mind back to kindness. Boorstein writes:
Still, I consider my meditation practice a success because of one crucial and definite change in me in the thirty years since I began. I now trust that even...
After sitting and walking meditation, we listened to part of a Brene Brown talk on how we relate to one another and to ourselves. In it, Brown suggests the following about belonging and connection:
I don’t think — when we’re our best selves with each other — I don’t think that’s what’s possibl...
We took a three-week break from meeting in person start January 23rd, but held a virtual study group for those who were interested. The topic was Living and Loving Your Imperfect Life, based on a Mindfulness.org article by the same name. The author makes the following observation:
The concept...
Do you find that you spend a lot of time telling yourself stories? If so, you're in good company. After meditation, we read a Mindful magazine article about why this happens, and how we can work with that pattern. Here's an excerpt:
Why are these stories and personal narratives so important? B...
We sat in meditation, and then watched the second part of a video with Tara Brach (Two weeks in a row? Yep, it's that true :-) on how we get caught in a trance of unworthiness, and how we can come back to trusting who we are:
To have your religion be kindness, means cultivating the two wings...
We watched the first 23 minutes of a Tara Brach video called Kindness is My Religion after our meditation and a tea break. In it, she talks about how we often feel fundamentally wrong or flawed in some way, and the ways that kindness can reshape our life:
If we're acting in ways that cause oth...
We read Slow Down, You Move Too Fast, an article by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche that asks, "When we speed around, are we mastering our life or hanging on for dear life?". He notes:
Speed gives life a frantic quality. It is an anxious state of mind that keeps us from settline into whatever we are...
A full moon fell on October 5th so we had our chance to extend the meditation period this week on the nearest Tuesday to the full moon. We sat for a total of 50 minutes instead of 30, but kept the walking meditation to 5 minutes.
This week we were going to read this short article about the Inner Critic, but instead ended up in a wide-ranging discussion about what we're doing when we meditate, the different experiences we have while sitting, which external conditions tend to evoke a state of flow or being completely present...