The world offers itself to your imagination in every moment. And when we open to what is here, allowing it to stimulate our imagination, we create new worlds that invite others in. Sometimes we have to become aware of our expectations and learn to set them aside. Sometimes we have to bring to consciousness the hidden assumptions we have about ourselves and our place in the world…….Oriah Mountain Dreamer

never to be disrespected is the initiation into wise counsel with a new way of knowing…..moving toward a gentler way…..an inner space of one’s own…..

The powerful “doings” in meditation (naming our experience, mindfully scanning through the body, or focusing on the breath) help us to pause and open ourselves to the life of the moment. Yet because we can get so hooked by the need to do something more, we help ourselves most deeply by our intention to let go. I sometimes remind myself of a line by Rilke: “Let everything happen to you, the beauty, the terror….” Feel free to experiment with self-reminders. What word or phrase helps you to stop pedaling, to relax your habitual “doing” and simply be? The practice of mindfulness is a direct gateway to natural presence. “Coming back” guides you in returning to presence when you have become distracted. this will help you maintain a focused attention in this present moment……Tara Brach

seek the unexpected

Ah, not to be cut off,

not through the slightest partition

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner- what is it?

if not intensified sky,

hurled through with birds and deep

with the winds of homecoming.

….Rilke