Insights for April 2022
AWAKENING Insights
“Our breath is a reminder that we are connected no matter how lonely we feel.” Dr. Kamilah Majied
“When facing big life decisions, don’t try to figure out the answer by thinking about it. In thinking over a question again and again, we do not generally arrive at real wisdom, but we easily tire ourselves out and get even more confused or anxious. Thich Nhat Hahn
“These deeper life questions can’t be resolved at the level of the mind but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness. Thay [Thich Nhat Hahn] suggests we consider this big question as a seed, plant it in the soil of our mind and let it rest there. Our mindfulness practice in our daily lives is the sunshine and water that the seed needs to sprout so that one day it will rise up on its own, in its own time. And then we’ll know the answer to our question without a doubt.
But we must leave the seed down in the soil of our mind and not keep digging it up to see if it’s growing roots. I won’t grow that way! It is the same with a deep and troubling question. We ask our deepest consciousness to take to take care of it and then let go of our thinking and worrying about it. Then in our daily lives we practice calming, resting, and coming home to ourselves in the present moment, and that will help the seed of our question to ripen naturally and authentically. This process cannot be rushed or forced. It may take weeks, months, or years. But we can trust that the seed is “down there,” being tended by our deeper consciousness, and one day it will pour into a clear answer.” ~ Kaira Jewel Lingo.
“A big part of the journey is being aware of the journey.” ~ The Insight Center
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." ~ Viktor Frankl
“You will experience freedom when you yourself are free.” ~ The Insight Cente
“Reality’s ability to continually baffle us with what we don’t yet know, and our willingness to continually plumb the unknown for new truth and beauty, even as it baffles and terrifies us, is the loveliest thing about being alive. Being alive together, as members of this boundlessly inquisitive and imaginative species, is the loveliest thing about being human.” ~ Maria Popova, The Marginalian.
“Flowing will get you places forcing never could.” ~ spirit daughter @spiritdaughter
“Let go to let in.” ~ The Insight Center
“There is an attractive vibe that people who are willing to grow emit. Even if you are just starting on your journey, being comfortable with the fact that you are imperfect and are ready to move beyond old limits gives off a special energy that calls in emotionally mature people.” ~ Yung Pueblo
‘To study the way is the study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all living beings. To be enlightened by all living beings is to drop the barrier between oneself and other.” ~ Eihei Dogen
“Being willing to grow makes a difference…” ~ Yung Pueblo
“If you don’t get along with someone, is it ego or vibration?” ~ The Insight Center
MEDITATION insights
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering.” ~ Ajahn Chan
“Each moment can be a meditation. Whatever comes up, look at it with mindful equilibrium, and let it pass.” ~ The Insight Center
“Be in harmony with each breath, each moment, and know that in giving yourself this time to develop awareness and a steadiness of attention you are nourishing spirit, head, and heart. Let it be an adventure, and in the silence and the stillness that comes with practice you’ll discover wonders here for you, now.” ~ Elana Rosenbaum @tricyclemag
“The technique of the witness is to merely sit with the fear and be aware of it before it becomes so consuming that there’s no space left. The image I usually use is that of a picture frame and a painting of a gray cloud against a blue sky. But the picture frame is a little too small. So, you bend the canvas around to frame it. But in doing so you lost all the blue sky. So, you end up with just a framed gray cloud. It fills the entire frame.
So, when you say, “I’m afraid” or ‘I’m depressed; if you enlarged the frame so that just a little blue space shows, you would say ‘ah, a cloud.’ That is what the witness is. The witness is that tiny little blue over in the corner that leads you to say, ‘ah, fear.’” ~ Ram Dass
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ~ Haruki Murakami @elephantjournal
“Please don’t forget to do the practices that stabilize your mind, heart, and nervous system. It might be a privilege, but it’s not selfish to do so. You’ll be much more help to the world if you feel settled in your own being.” ~ @ethannichtern
“By opening the hand, we let go of whatever was in its grip, and refrain from grasping something new. With time, meditation practice makes it easier to choose what to focus on, let go of, linger with, indulge in, turn away from, enhance, or reiterate.” ~ Jill Satterfield @tricyclemag
GRIEF insights
“Most people, I think, are at least a little afraid of ceasing to grieve. I know that I was. However terrible our sorrow may be, we understand that it is made in the image of love, that it shares the characteristics of the person we mourn. Maybe there was a day in your life when you were brought to your knees by a faded blue ball cap or a tote bag full of knitting supplies or the sound of a Brahms piano concerto… Part of what makes grief so seductive, then, is that it seems to offer us what life no longer can: an ongoing, emotionally potent connection to the dead. And so, it is easy to feel that once that bleak gift is gone, the person we love will somehow be more gone, too.
Thus, our strange relationship with the pain of grief. In the early days, we wish only for it to end; later on, we fear that it will. And when it finally does begin to ease, it also does not, because, at first, feeling better can feel like loss, too. Contemplating how our deepest losses might be so painful “not because they defy reality but because they reveal it,” she adds:
“One of the many ways that loss instructs us is by correcting our sense of scale, showing us the world as it really is: so enormous, complex, and mysterious that there is nothing too large to be lost — and, conversely, no place too small for something to get lost there… Like awe and grief, to which it is closely related, loss has the power to instantly resize us against our surroundings; we are never smaller and the world never larger than when something important goes missing.
It is this harsh corrective to our sense of being central, competent, and powerful that makes even trivial losses so difficult to accept. To lose something is a profoundly humbling act. It forces us to confront the limits of our mind… It forces us to confront the limits of our will: the fact that we are powerless to protect the things we love from time and change and chance. Above all, it forces us to confront the limits of existence: the fact that, sooner or later, it is in the nature of almost everything to vanish or perish.” ~ Kathryn Schulz
“Everything that has passed between this moment and the last moment you were present is as insubstantial as a mirage. Everything between now and now slips away like last night’s dream, leaving you nothing but a mind full of fading fragments and maybe the solace of forgetting.
I am already with you. I am here, and I see you. Everything is fine.” ~ Lama Karma, “A Letter from My Future Self, Encouraging Me to Practice”
HEALING insights
“How I Stopped My Panic Attacks” Mingyur Rinpoche
https://www.lionsroar.com/how-i-stopped-my-panic-attacks/amp/ “~ The Insight Center
“I believe in the power of awareness to heal.” ~ Mark Epstein
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light.” ~ James Baldwin, Nothing Personal
“Dear co-dependents. You can’t hold everything together. Nobody can. “~ The Insight Center
“Be a diligent soldier for the benefit of your soul. Nobody else will do this for you.” ~ The Insight Center
“May your struggles and sorrows be eased.
May you Hold yourself in Great Compassion.
May you be Safe and Protected.
May your Heart be at Peace.
May your Life be at Peace.” ~ Spirit Rock
“Forgive yourself. Healing and growing require self-forgiveness. You are human. You will make mistakes, you will backtrack, and, at times, you will fail. Refusing to give yourself grace when you drop the ball or get it wrong is not helpful. Holding yourself hostage to your past can keep you stuck there. Give yourself permission to love yourself through the hard stuff.” ~ Alex Elle
“Once you have genuinely, fully, and tenderly touched your own brokenness, place a seed in the crack. Make a wish in that fissure and share with yourself the aimless kindness of your own presence.” ~Lama Karma, “A Letter from My Future Self, Encouraging Me to Practice”
BULLETS by Brayden
“Sit down, world and relax so you don’t have tornadoes.
Trees, color your leaves.
Relax, people. Go to sleep.
Relax, wolves. Lay down by the trees.
Relax, bullets from guns. Stop shooting people.
Fire, eat wood.”
ASTROLOGY insights
“It is the skill and extent of the consciousness of the astrologer which determines the
limits of its use.” ~ Alan Oken. Rest in peace Alan Oken and thank you for your incredible contributions to astrology.
"The astrological symbols are quantum fields of possibility and probability. With consciousness, you can influence how these energies manifest - but there is one choice that is forbidden to you: you cannot choose to have the energy disappear and become irrelevant." ~ Stephen Forrest
“My assumption is that life is inherently meaningful. That we have been born for a purpose. That there is nothing random about anything.” ~ Stephen Forrest
SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC
Aries: "I am"
Taurus: "I have"
Gemini: "I think"
Cancer: "To nourish"
Leo: "I will"
Virgo: "I analyze"
Libra: "I balance"
Scorpio: "I create"
Sagittarius: "I perceive"
Capricorn: "I use"
Aquarius: “I know"
Pisces: “I believe” ~ The Insight Center
“Why did we choose to incarnate at this time? For a crash course in authentic operational mysticism.” ~ Hunter Reynolds Astrological Counseling http://astrodharma.org/2022/02/the-dharma-of-failed-regimes/
RELATIONSHIP Insights
“Love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.” ~ Lama Karma, “A Letter from My Future Self, Encouraging Me to Practice”