Insights for April 2023
Awakening Insights
Enlightenment is seeing the light. Enlightenment is simple. It is seeing the light of truth. Trust truth to see the light.
Remember: you want to be a little overwhelmed … you’re learning. You want to be learning. Growing. Stretching. Waylon S. Lewis
"Your body ages, your awareness/your soul, does not.
We are part of an enormous life force; and its ageless and timeless.
Our capacity to awaken is endless."
Who you are was born into your body; it is not your body." Jack Kornfield
"The stories we tell of our past are written on water." Jack Kornfield, "No Time Like the Present", pg. 102
More awareness
More acceptance
More forgiveness
How do you feel? Do you feel things intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or somatically (in your body?)
How much alone time do you need?
Know truth. Believe truth. Trust truth.
What if you release to existence?
Do you have a mentor? If you don’t you can use bits and pieces of mentors. You can look at one person for passion. One for creative vision. One for grit. One for compassion, One for determination, One for wisdom. Piece it together and pull from what you need when you need it - it is called modeling - and modeling teaches you he pathway to being.
Are you listening to your inner voice?
You haven’t found it until you find it.
You can stay true to your values, and you can’t control others’ values.
It's ok to put yourself first, 1. take care of yourself and 2. be thoughtful to others (not the other way around.)
We continue to breathe ourselves into existence.
"Your imagination is a doorway to your soul." Mark Jones
Tired of Being Courageous, a poem:
Perhaps, it's okay to be tired
of being courageous at times.
For sometimes,
you don't want to think about
doing something afraid
because you're tired of being afraid,
and you just want to know
what it feels like
to be okay.
Yes, there will be days
where courage finds you
in the deep waters of life
and propels you forward
with mighty waves.
And then, there will be other days
where all you want to
do is find a quiet place
along the shore
and let the waves of courage
remain at a distance,
allowing yourself to just be…
and longing for this
does not make you weak.
Yes, there will be times
where courage will be exactly
what you need…
and then, there will also be times
where you just need room
to be still
and breathe.
Morgan Harper Nichols
Meditation Insights
"It is because we're afflicted by the thorn of craving and attachment that we act unskillfully." Andrew Olendzki
The things that comes with Vipassanā meditation are more awareness, more seeing, deeper knowing, more letting go through seeing things with equanimity, peace, truth, transparency, release of resistance, and freedom.
Freedom is existence without attachment.
"Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please take an inventory of your life. There are things you’ve been hanging onto that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go." Thich Nhat Hanh
"…true nature of awareness is a source of lasting strength and resilience. Awareness is beyond conditions like pain and pleasure, suffering and ease. It is that which allows any and all experiences to arise, and yet is unchanged by them." Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
"Whatever arises concepts, feelings, your body, subject and object, everything-is like clouds in the sky," he said. "They come and they go. Your true nature, awareness imbued with love, compassion, and wisdom, is like the sky itself.? Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
"The basic teachings of the Buddha awaken us to who we are. They begin with learning to recognize the Truth of our experience by opening to life, just as it is. Then we discover how to awaken our inherent capacity to meet this ever changing life with Love. This unfolding of presence and love reveals the Freedom of our true nature." Tara Brach
"Since that long-ago evening when I faced the never-ending narrative of falling short, I have discovered that enoughness has absolutely zero to do with accom-plishing, nothing to do with achieving, and is not at all about trying to be good enough. Rather, the realization of enough is right here in the fullness of presence, in the tenderness of an open heart, in the silence that is listening to this life. These are the moments when the glow of gold shines through." Tara Brach
"The boundless mind is free of ideas, opinions, conceptions. It is fresh, open, and unmediated." Roshi Joan Halifax
"Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than a problem, we could see it as our karma ripening." Pema Chödrön
"Not only do we have a precious human life, but that precious human life is made up of precious human days, and those precious human days are made up of precious human moments." Pema Chödrön
"In any moment, you can put your full attention on the immediacy of your experience. You can look at your hand resting on your leg or feel your bottom sitting on the chair. You can just be here. Instead of not being here." Pema Chödrön.
"When you are completely wound up about something and you pause, your natural intelligence clicks in and you have a sense of the right thing to do. This is part of the magic: our natural intelligence is always there to inform us, as long as we allow a gap. Just do it over and over. Allow a gap, gap, gap. Allow yourself the space to realize where you are." Pema Chödrön
"Awakening is not a destination, and meditation is not a bus ride. Awakening is the unfolding of an ability to see what has always been there. To see, more and more reliably, what is actually in front of you." Joan Sutherland, Roshi.
"Meditation comes alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness.
As we let go, our innate freedom and wisdom manifest. Nothing to have, nothing to be.
Every for. Of genuine awareness is liberating. Each moment we release entanglement and identification is selfless and free." Jack Kornfield
"Aversion is just the other side of the coin. We have an aversion to what we don't want because we're trying to hold on to the way we want things to be. And ignorance, in order to sustain itself, requires a kind of contraction around our current view of what reality is, or what it should be, or maybe what it can't be. It's a closing of the fist around a particular story.
So the question at the start of the Buddhist path, and at every step after, is simply this: of the things you are grasping, which are you afraid to put down?
Whatever you say, your answer reveals who you think you are.
What you're holding on to is not a problem in itself. This is about what you think you need, what you're afraid to let go of. Nothing you are holding on to right now is something you can't put down. Nothing. Your hopes, fears, beliefs-you think they make you you, but until you liberate them, you'll never be liberated from them." Koun Franz
Grief Insights
"All meeting ends in parting, said the Buddha. This is an inescapable-and heartbreaking-fact of life. Whether it is someone we love, a good situation, how we define ourselves, or life itself, there is nothing we can hold onto forever. Everything eventually changes, ends, falls apart, breaks, dies. How we react when things fall apart is the single greatest challenge in life-and its greatest opportunity. In it is the choice between suffering and awakening. So when things are falling apart, when we feel groundless and uncertain, we only create more suffering when we try to put them back together - to make them solid again." Melvin McLeod
Relationship Insights
Mutual respect is one of the foundations of a healthy relationship.
Pure love is truth. Pure love has truth. Pure love knows truth.
What does each of us want as we age? Where are the intersections and where at the canyons? Where do we merge and where do we separate? How do we see our future, envision our lives, and plan to do what we want and need to do and also be partnered?
Astrology Insights
You get to know yourself better and better and better through astrology. And when you know yourself better, it is easier to be you.
REMINDER:
Pluto is currently in CAPRICORN and is moving into ➡️AQUARIUS. It retrogrades ⬅️and ➡️until 11.20.24:
Mar. 24, 2023, Pluto ➡️AQUARIUS
June 12. 2023, Pluto ⬅️CAPRICORN
Jan. 22, 2024, Pluto ➡️AQUARIUS
Sept. 3, 2024, Pluto ⬅️CAPRICORN
Nov. 20, 2024, Pluto ➡️AQUARIUS - Pluto in Aquarius for 24 years.
As I said above, Pluto has left Capricorn and moved into Aquarius. It will not leave Capricorn without every effort to demand your attention to letting go of Capricornian ways.
Nothing will ever be the same. There is no going back. #plutointoaquarius
The future is now.
The Saturn return (at age 28 - 30) is not over until it is over. This is the same with all transits - when a planet transits around your chart to align with one of your birth planes and brings upheaval, new awareness, and transitional changes, the energy of the transit is not over until it is over - until you can have merged with the energy and manifested the changes.
It won’t reign down on us but arise in us [Pluto in Aquarius.] Steven Forrest
I am not enslaved. Saturn has gone through my 6th house and eliminated all of that.
Aries mantra: I greet the sun, me - shining, and my destiny.
Healing Insights:
Healing: find someone who is similar to you in many ways who is going through the same challenges - and process it all out together. Bare your souls to each other. Listen. Take notes. Reply. Share insights. And you’ll move through it. Make new plans. Support each other. It works wonders.
"GATHERING AND GROUNDING BREATH: This is way to get out of your head and into your body. Sitting or standing, find an upright pos-ture. Close your eyes and tune into the feeling of your natural breath coming in and out. Slowly begin to lengthen your inhalation and extend your exhalation, just a little bit at a time. When you breathe in, imagine all the scattered parts of your mind collecting together in one spot at the edge of your nostrils. As you exhale, let that soft ball of energy drop down into your body, giving you a feeling of earthiness and stability. You can also do this during a challenging conversation or meeting or even while you are walking down the street." Cyndi Lee