Map of Love

​Meditation is not just about sitting and doing the formal practice - it is also about how this is influencing every aspect of our daily lives from the moment​ we wake up. So the informal practice throughout the day is also important: 

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Mindfulness is a way of being in relationship with reality and we can explore several doors into awareness.

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Here are some points that may be helpful for us to remember:

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• While waking up, going into the corpse pose (when it feels comfortable for you: lying down on your back, legs stretched out, feet falling away from each other, arms alongside your body, palms open towards the ceiling), sensing your breath, focusing on different areas in your body, for example left leg and left hand, being playful - tuning the instrument before getting out of bed

• Getting on the floor every day and doing something with your body -  your body loves to be in movement and to find stillness in the movement

• Mindful Hatha Yoga to nurture your body in a gentle way - listening to your body and playing the edges of where it's creaking and doesn't want to stretch 

• Practicing Body-Scan Meditation

• Sitting, eyes open or closed - placing meditation cushions around the house

• Recognizing and sensing again and again throughout the day in a playful way: What's on the mind right now, how is it in the heart, how is it in the body?

• Mindful working in the kitchen, cooking dinner and listening e.g. to the mushrooms: "The mushrooms tell you what to do."

• Thich Nhat Hanh: Washing the dishes as though you are bathing an infant

• Jigsaw puzzles  - can be pure meditation

• Mindful listening and talking

• Stepping out of the doing into the non-doing - not reacting, rather responding

• Being sensitive to your own intuition

• Doing out of being - attending - not being attached to the outcome

• Taking care of ourselves and taking care of each other, knowing how to do that and trusting our capacity to do that

• Putting out the welcome mat for whatever is unfolding and allowing the heart to become the welcome mat itself

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It's about falling awake, and not falling asleep.

Being aware of what's unfolding moment by moment.

Recognizing what's unfolding right in this moment and being aware of judging when we are judging. 

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What will stay in our hearts is that life itself is the real meditation practice and that whenever we find ourselves in a difficult situation to think of Jon‘s words that "this is the curriculum right now."

Also to be fully awake to the full catastrophe that is happening in our lives.

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