Insights for November 2023
Awakening
“A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going. Grounds for despair, anger, and sadness are, of course, all around. But the healthy mind knows how to bracket negativity in the name of endurance. It clings to evidence of what is still good and kind.
It remembers to appreciate.” Alain de Botton
“The Path is your truth.” The Insight Center
“Feel your power. All of it, without limitation. Let it flow, work to become comfortable with it, regardless of how intense and overwhelming it may seem.” Philip Sedgwick
“Tell the truth about yourself to yourself.” Philip Sedgwick
“Inquire: is it sparking to your truth?” The Insight Center
“Intuition is neutral, it has no agenda. Anxiety is destabilizing and makes you feel out of control.” Jessica Lanyadoo
“There is an important difference between an attachment and an aspiration. An aspiration is a goal we are putting effort into, something we can work toward without making our present happiness completely dependent on its attainment. Attachments are created by cravings; they are a refusal to accept reality as it naturally appears – only wanting particular outcomes and feeling misery and serious mental tension when things come out in unwanted ways. Attachments cloud the mind and lower the creativity and energy we need to obtain our goals. Learning to work in a detached manner not only makes us more effective but it supports our inner peace and happiness.” Yung Pueblo
“It is not about having perfect and kind thoughts all of the time. It is about not feeding the heavy and mean thoughts. Literally letting them pass without allowing them to take root and control your actions.” Yung Pueblo
“If you don't like something, just take away its only power. Your attention.
The next step is calling your energy back. You reclaim your own magic when you stop tending to someone else's garden and start watering your own.” witches.of.insta
Vipassana Meditation
”Meditation is a lot like cultivating a new land. To make a field out of a forest, first you have to clear the trees and pull out the stumps. Then you till the soil and fertilize it, sow your seed, and harvest your crops. To cultivate your mind, first you have to clear out the various irritants that are in the way – pull them right out by the root so that they won’t grow back. Then you fertilize: you pump energy and discipline into the mental soil. Then you sow the seed and harvest your crops of faith (confidence from what you observe within yourself), morality, mindfulness and wisdom.” Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
“Wisdom is really the goal of practice. Mindfulness is the tool to arrive at wisdom. It's the clarity of mind that allows for wisdom to arise. The Buddha taught that there are three essential insights that constitute the whole of wisdom: the insight of impermanence; the insight of contingency or interconnection; and the insight of suffering and how it arises or disappears depending upon the ability of the mind to accommodate change.” Sylvia Boorstein
“The transformative power of Buddhist meditation occurs when the stability and vividness of Samatha is unified with the penetrating insight of Vipasanna.” B. Alan Wallace
“No matter how intense the storm is, it doesn’t change the nature of the sky.” Mingyur Rinpoche
“You really see your true nature, the fundamental quality of the mind, that is the union of emptiness and luminosity.” Mingyur Rinpoche
“Now you are unceasing like the sky, totally beyond storms and pollution, beyond any kind of cloud, because you know clouds do not, cannot, change the nature of the sky.” Mingyur Rinpoche
“As we see more with awareness, automatically we go beyond that sense of me, into shunyata, emptiness. When the sunlight of awareness appears, the darkness is automatically eliminated.” Mingyur Rinpoche
“Consider the term 'bardo.' It signifies an intermediary state, a pause that resides between moments. In this sphere of existence, one uncovers an abundant opportunity to truly comprehend oneself, to delve into the depths of reality, and to explore the intriguing crevices of these transient moments.
This moment, while daunting, holds an invaluable purity and significance.
The impending void can indeed induce fear, yet it's this very gap that transforms the perceived problem into a solution, cultivating joy in the process. The key lies in acceptance and the courage to navigate through this bardo, embracing it as a pivotal moment in one's journey. Armed with the right guidance, one can metamorphose these moments into adventures, opportunities for self-growth and transformation. Thus, the bardo, in its essence, becomes not a void to fear, but a threshold to cross with awakened consciousness.” Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
“Meditation allows me to connect to somethings bigger, repeatedly, so that I have the energy to keep acting.” Sharon Salzberg
Astrology
Uranus/Jupiter conjunction 2024
Uranus is about awakening, and Jupiter is about expansion. How will you awaken and expand? A LOT. Where will this conjunction be in your chart?
Here are the dates – mark your calendar:
Starts February 10, 2024
Exact April 20, 2024
Powerful until May 24, 2024
“North node/nodal work is really challenging and triggering. When you know the story of your nodes and keep it in your awakened consciousness - it will manifest into healing and transformation. As your life transforms you will see it happening and know it is true. Each step in this process is challenging and each incremental step moves you toward karmic resolution.” The Insight Center
I took a great webinar by Mark Jones about the transiting nodes.
A transiting nodal square is a time for action and may be initiated by problems. We are to discover a new way to arrive at developmental growth.
A transiting nodal return is about reexamining our original purpose - what is still of use and what must be discarded. It is a sorting.
A transiting nodal opposition exposes old issues that haven’t been adequately addressed. We stop, contemplate, and try to accept what has been done and how to move forward in a more integrated way.
“True fundamental evolutionary change typically happens at the pace of a glacier.” Steven Forrest
“The (progressed) Sun relentlessly and everlastingly chips away at our ignorance, our rationalizations, and our attachments.” Steven Forrest
“But in order to maintain vitality and engagement, we must be true to the ever-changing values indicated by the position of the progressed Sun. They don’t erase your natal Sun; nothing but death can do that.” Steven Forrest
“We can make course corrections if we sleep through an activation. The soul is resilient – but it is much easier to get it right the first time.” Steven Forrest
See the planetary retrogrades for 2023
Relationships and Parenting
Relationship and Parenting Insights
“Do you know, admire and honor your partner's truth?” The Insight Center
“Reminder for co-dependents:
Healthy relationships are reciprocal
Healthy relationships are reciprocal
Healthy relationships are reciprocal
Healthy relationships are reciprocal
Healthy relationships are reciprocal
Healthy relationships are reciprocal
Healthy relationships are reciprocal” ~ The Insight Center
"You have to realize that your children are not containers you put things into. They are flowers that are emerging, and if you till the soil and keep it soft and fertilized, it’s amazing what comes up; because inherent in all of us is deep wisdom, which gets lost in the shuffle of socialization.So the question is, are you just an instrument of socialization as a parent, or are you somebody that respects the inner beauty of that person, that lets the child’s intuitive understanding of things lead, rather than leading out of ought or should or must or so on. A person learns a skill much faster when they want to learn a skill than when somebody else wants them to learn a skill. It’s pretty clear. So to that extent, you and your child are collaborative beings..." Ram Dass
Healing and Anxiety Insights
Margaret offers a free 11 minute Grounding exercise here. You can do this exercise daily or more often to help you be grounded. "Pain helps us inhabit our divine nature. Ask yourself, how does my pain serve my soul's journey to move from fear to love? Acknowledge pain and look at the higher perspective of how can this possibly serve my journey? And bring love to those painful experiences. You are learning that you are stronger than pain and pain empowers you." Tom Jacobs
"To be free of your past, you must recognize what happened and feel its hold on you.It is here, consciously or unconsciously, held in your body, feelings and mind. It is critical to honor the loss before you can take the next step of letting go. Then you can practice forgiveness and with it use meditation, therapy, trauma work, art and intimate support to help touch and heal the betrayal and trauma." Jack Kornfield, “No Time Like the Present.
“Breathe in and bring earth energy up through your root chakra and the bottom of your feet and into your whole body.
Breathe out and bring cosmic energy down through your crown chakra and into your whole body.
Keep repeating.” The Insight Center
"Learn to trust your body. Begin by mindfully and lovingly feeling what is going on in your body. Sense the state of your body today, its signals and needs. Listen carefully to what your body has to say to you. What healing does it want? What care? What wisdom does it have to offer you? Your body has been waiting for your attention. Trust it. Even if you have been out of touch for a long time, you can regain confidence step-by-step by trusting your bodily experience." Jack Kornfield, No Time Like the Present
“No matter how hard you try, you can’t please your inner critic. There is an alternative to the critic. It’s found in the movement from judgment to discernment. Discernment makes space, helps is to have perspective, and allows more of our humanity to show up.” Frank Ostaseski, The Five Initiations, pgs. 135,143.
Grief Insights
“We know that everything changes, that everything passes, transitions from one state to another, from one stage to another — and yet, in our irrational longing for permanence, we try and try to hedge against change, denounce it as deterioration, dread it as a prelude to death.” Maria Popova
“Life includes a lot of little deaths - each one is a letting go. Life includes a lot of letting go - each one is a little death.” The Insight Center
“Sometimes letting go involves a lot of crying.” The Insight Center
“It is incredible how deep weeping releases pain.” The Insight Center