meditation – Page 3 – twenty-one words

Jetty views

July 27, 2015July 7, 2015Posted in sand, solace, staying humble, staying true, Taperoo, the beach, the sea, What I love about ..., WinterTagged meditation, sea, the beach, Winter1 Comment

Taking a walk along a jetty is all about the view, isn’t it?

The sea.
The sand.
The land behind us.
The horizon ahead of us.

♦

But —
there’s the view from the jetty …
… and then there’s the view of the jetty, too.

It’s worth a look.

Anticipation

June 8, 2015June 4, 2015Posted in a thought, anxiety, meditation, on writing, poetry, reading, solace, staying humble, staying trueTagged anxiety, meditation, mental health, mindfulness, Ralph Waldo Emerson4 Comments

Sometimes, when we fear something,
the fear we anticipate experiencing is what makes us most anxious —
rather than the thing itself that we fear.
Psychologists call this ‘anticipatory anxiety’,
which, as technical terms go, is all very well.

But here’s how a man who lived more than a century ago put it:

Some of your hurts you have cured.
The sharpest still you have survived.
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-82

I’ve taken to murmuring these words to myself when I feel afraid.
People can speak in psychobabble and jargon —
or they can use timeless words.
Which do you find more healing?

It’s time

May 14, 2015May 9, 2015Posted in anxiety, health, life, meditation, rituals, solace, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged anxiety, meditation, mindful in may, mindfulness1 Comment

The only constant in life is change …

This month, I’m participating in Mindful in May, a one-month meditation challenge to raise money to provide clean water to people in developing nations.
I know.
I know!
I don’t meditate!
But life changes.
Partly, I like the idea of helping other people whilst also helping myself.
And partly, I’m ready for change.

Lest this all sounds terribly earnest and self-involved,
let me finish by alerting you to ‘Anxiety Girl’, the comic by Natalie Dee.
No matter how anxious you’re feeling,
Anxiety Girl will make you smile.

Note:
I’d like to thank my friend Allayne for first alerting me to ‘Anxiety Girl’. She thought it might be relevant to me … and she was right.
Oh, and if you would like to support my efforts, leave a comment here and I’ll send you the link to my fundraising page.

More notes to the anxiety-prone

January 12, 2015December 27, 2014Posted in a thought, anxiety, health, life, moments of beauty, nature, rituals, solace, staying humble, staying trueTagged anxiety, mantras, meditation, mental health, nature, solace5 Comments

— A mantra for the bad days —

I don’t meditate.
But here’s my bad-day mantra:

♦

I give thanks for sun:

sky:

sand:

sea:

birds:

flowers:

trees.

Somewhere to sit

December 8, 2014December 5, 2014Posted in Aldinga Scrub, anxiety, Australian bush, moments of beauty, on writing, remnant scrub, rural notes, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, Uncategorized, What I love about ...Tagged bush, meditation, mental health, nature, spring2 Comments

Just down the road from our house south of Adelaide,
in the scrub,
is my favourite place to sit and ponder:

Note:
My friend Anne has a bit of a ‘thing’ (should I say ‘penchant’, since she is French?) for taking photos of benches in lovely spots. Check out all her posts labelled ‘The Bench Series‘.