Unfolding

Tic toc, tic toc,
close to dawn;
magical moments.

Amazing love,
Tender care,
moves slowly from my heart
where it was safely stored,
to my awakening awareness
 

My mind bathing
in this lovely care;
a gentle wave of joy
washes over my spirit.

The first orange sun rays are coming in,
in my room, in my eyes, in my soul;
and my mission for the day becomes:
to share the love and care in which I bathe
with every soul, I will meet 

A morning reflection (written in Dec 2016)

When I manage to make time for a small morning reflection

it feels so good and so useful for the rest of my day,

that I invariably plan to make every single morning

the time for a nice morning reflection,

but then too often the next morning already I fail

to live up to that wonderful plan. :)

Today, let us make the intention together to make 

every morning a bit of time for a small reflection 

 

Poetry

So many days go by, without me reading any poetry
So many days go by, with me getting so absorbed by negative news
So many days go by, without me listening to sounds of nature
So many days go by, with me living a life almost on autopilot

I have made a decision
that I will read a poem every day.
that I will try to write a poem at least every week,
that I will pay more attention to nature
that I will give more love and more kindness to the world.

I hope you are with me on this.
I have read today a wonderful poem by Rabindranath Tagore and
I want to share it here with you:

Where The Mind Is Without Fear 

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Rabindranath Tagore

All connected

Gratefulness, Mercy (forgiving) and Loving Kindness . They are all connected so intensely.

Just giving thanks for the sun, for all the good things in our life. Giving up the grudges or any hatred that resides in our hearts. Living a life filled with kindness and bliss. These things are connected so tightly, so intensely.

Giving thanks will keep us focused on positive things. This will facilitate forgiveness. Both of these will create so much love and kindness in our heart.

Oh, yes thanks and mercy are so tightly connected to kindness. And kindness to thanks and mercy, and mercy to thanks.

Let us plan now, to make the next hour more filled with thanks and mercy and kindness than the previous hour.
Let us plan now, to make the next day more filled with thanks and mercy and kindness than the previous day.
Let us plan now, to make the next week and year and decennium filled with thanks and mercy and kindness.

Five steps

Two activities really can improve the levels of chemicals in our mind that result in huge peace of mind. They are gratitude and forgiveness!

We will look a bit closer at forgiveness. It is something we often refuse to do because we do not want to free the one who caused us harm (physical, emotional or any form) to be free of the guilt of hurting us. And it is true, somehow by forgiving the person, we set them free. But what we forget is that the person suffering most from our grudges, from our hatred, from our anger, is not that person that harmed us, but our very selves. (See *venom below)

If we forgive whole-heartedly, we do a favor to the perpetrator, but a 100-fold bigger favor to ourselves. We set ourselves free from continued suffering, from continued negative emotions. I heard recently a talk (online) by Michael Beckwith who proposed five steps of forgiveness:

The first step to forgive someone, is to be willing to forgive. This is often the most difficult one. Since they harmed us, we have the right feel hurt. By forgiving truly that hurt will be no longer ours. Somehow we see our hurt, our grudges as a retaliation for the wrong that was done. It is not! It is something we can free ourselves from and whatever was done, we will no longer allow it to hurt us anymore, we will get it over with; we will stop perpetuating the effect of the nastiness that we encountered.I think sometimes we have to sincerely pray for the strength to forgive. It is somehow the way of our Creator and when we ask for help in going that way, we do get the help.

Once we find in ourselves the willingness to forgive, we can move on to the second step and that is actually do the forgiving. Saying to the person in real life on in our own thoughts world, I forgive you. Saying it, living it, feeling it. 

The third step is to try to understand why the person was so nasty to us. This is compassion, empathy. Trying to imagine what the person must have gone through to reach this level of nastiness. How much must that person have suffered him or herself for them to feel the need to make others suffer in such a way. If we try to put ourselves for a short while in the skin of the person we have forgiven we will come to a compassionate understanding. 

The fourth step is to wish the person we forgave well. Sometimes we forgave but still rejoice in the feeling of the bad karma that will come over him, or the punishment he may receive in hell. The fourth step is to give up also these thoughts and truly wish him or her well, even if the person is no longer on earth, wishing them eternal peace in the hereafter. 

And the fifth step was to really do something nice for that person. That makes forgiveness truly complete. Could be an anonymous note or send an anonymous present in the mail. Or just meet them and have a nice conversation. Or just praying for their well-being. 

I liked the proposed process here in five steps. I have experienced the benefits of true forgiveness myself and have read and heard so many stories about the liberating effects of forgiveness. I hope we all can think about this for a while and consider forgiving all our fellow humans for all small and big wrongs done to us. 😊


PS:*venom
I read once that nobody dies from a snakebite. After a snakebite, we could die of the venom that circulates in our blood after the bite. It is the venom that circulates causing the major harm. Can be compared to someone causing us emotional harm. The insult can be painful , but most suffering and pain comes when we allow the grudges, the hatred, the negative feelings to go on and circulate through our veins. Forgiveness is like removing the venom after a bite 

Up there

Most of my life I have been living down here.
Meaning: trying to get what I want
Trying to earn more
Trying to get more recognition
Trying to be loved, to be appreciated.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the above.

Whenever I manage to live up there,
I am delighted beyond imagination.
The days I manage to just ask: how can I serve?
The days I try to give love rather then to be loved
The days I am confident that the universe and God are on my side
The days I am living from soul rather than from ego,
are so different from the days down there when I mainly live from ego.

Let us all try to connect a bit more to our soul,
have more days or even hours or minutes up there,
rather then down here. :) 😉

Love and care

When I think about my late mom and
the superb loving care she gave us,
there is a soft spot in my heart that jumps up of joy.

Shortly after her death, that same spot used to weep
when thinking of my mom and her fantastic loving care
she gave to her children and husband at all times
and especially at times when we were ill or did not feel well.

Surely I miss my mother still very much,
but the bitterness of grief and missing her
has given way for gratefulness, for thankfulness.

Somehow she has planted in my heart and soul
a loving and caring seed that spouts and grows
and blooms and blossoms, whenever I manage to give it space.

Her care, her love lives on in my heart, in my soul.
It is that care and love, that I manage to keep alive,
which gives me peace of mind and job satisfaction.

I am sure most of us can think back of a person
caring for us in a special way when we were young.

Let us just do that today. Think of the love and care we received.
Let us feel the presence of these seeds of love and care in our own heart.
Let us 'water' the seeds and give them lots of light and space
so they can spout and grow and bloom and blossom into
a wonderful forest of love and care.  

As we do so we will become the planters of seeds
in the hearts of our own family, friends, neighbors, patients, clients,..