Opening to my Life

I sat this morning with my coffee cup in hand, staring out toward the pond and woods behind my home. Listening to the bird calls and watching the wind sway the very tips of the trees. I felt the natural scene beyond my window pulling at me, causing me to stop and contemplate what I was beholding. I tried to focus the thoughts, make sense of them so that I could read their message. No luck. Still my thoughts swirled and still the jumbled haze of all that greenery outside my window pulled at me. Finally in frustration, I got up to retrieve a notebook in order to write the fragments of what was entering my mind, and as I did so, the pages of the notebook fell away to reveal the words "Opening to Our Lives". These words were the title of a podcast I had previously listened to and taken notes on by Jon Kabat-Zinn when he spoke on the Science of Mindfulness.

Here are a few of the notes from the podcast I had written in my notebook:

-Mindfulness- a way of being awake, not about thoughts or sitting in your head.

-The ability to think gets all of the focus in the world. We have never been trained to pay attention, be aware.

-When one begins to become intimate with attention and awareness, it balances out thinking and then imagination and creativity comes out of the stillness.

-Mindfulness equals heartfulness.

-Wakefulness means resting in a kind of awareness that is so stable it is not thrown off by the coming and going of events. No matter if things are going your way or not.

-Be aware by dropping into your body. Thoughts carry us away from the heart of the matter.

-Choose life, awareness, rather than rushing.

-Find out who we are and live authentically in service of the world.

Suddenly, as I read the notes above, I discovered the message the universe was trying to deliver to me. To stop. Slow down. Pay attention and be aware. I have been rushing about too much lately as one obligation in my life has led to another, forgetting to take the time to be mindful. Thankfully, the call to me from the trees was very loud and thankfully I had enough time in my schedule this morning to figure out what was being delivered to me. A reminder to be open to my life by being aware which will in turn allow me to live authentically and in service to the world. A lofty goal I know.