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I have been surprised by the impact and change in how I think and feel after starting a new practice of centering prayer daily. I have a long way to go, but I’ve already seen answers to prayers and glimmer of hope and new intentions that have come to me.
That’s wonderful, Kelli Lynn.
My son scheduled a regular doctor appt and went today. This is huge to me. He tends to shrug off stuff like that but seems to be more on top of medical needs in the past year. He also bought a small motorboat with one of his buddies. I am hoping it will help him relax and enjoy life a little bit more.
Proud of your son, Robin. Health is everything.
My best friend has weekly dinners with her mom, and they invited me to a restaurant to join them this week. Everything about it was exactly what I needed. Good food, a margarita, good company, companionship. I’ve been laid up with an injury, my husband is out of town, and taking care of a strong, big, hyper dog with his own foot injury. So my days have revolved around pain management and dog management, besides working from home. I didn’t realize how cooped up and removed I’d felt until having dinner with these two wonderful people. It was good medicine.
I’m glad you had a nice time, Drea.
Very good medicine. 🥰
Thank you Mary.
Drea, it’s nice to be able to get out of the house every now and then.
Oh it is, especially when mobility is limited.
Oh, that evening out does sound nice. Much deserved, too! Wishing you and your dog a speedy recovery 🙏🏼
Thank you Sunnypatti!
What a wonderful surprise,
dear Drea!
I’m sure it got you out of your own head,
probably better
than any other medicine . . .
what a good friend you have. ♥
It did get me out of my head, where I didn’t even realize I was dwelling, ha!
I have surprised myself lately. I have noticed that when I speak kindly and gently to my Mom, speaking to her without impatience, I have found myself speaking kindly and gently to myself. I didn’t know that one would naturally flow from the other. One lesson here- Impatience helps no one.
My intention today is to be kind to everyone I meet, no impatience, and to be kind to myself.
Wow– I am so inspired by this sharing, Mary! I am glad that you have been able to be patient with your mom, and have then found it overflowing into patience with yourself. Perhaps this can be added incentive to me to be patient with my husband.
This happened so quickly, Elizabeth. I wasn’t even trying to be patient with Mom. I just decided to look at her with eyes of love and to be good to her. I also let go of my expectations that she do what I thought she should do.
Since then my relationship with her has been so much better. ( I think I had been stressing her out. She seems calmer now.) Better for her and so much more pleasant for me. Feeling irritated and impatient is no fun.
The kindness to myself was a surprise. My inner voice became kind and loving. I recognized it as the voice of love that I was using with her. I was not even trying to be kind to myself. It just happened.
Thanks Elizabeth for letting me know this inspired you. The main thing I would say was it really wasn’t about patience. It was truly about seeing Mom with loving eyes.
Thank you Mary! This is very helpful to me. I plan to save these words of yours where I can look at them often.
Sending love to you, Elizabeth.
I have been praying about feeling impatient and annoyed by my mother. Why can I be supportive and appreciative to just about anyone else, but my own mom? It hurts to even recognize it because I know it’s true.
Kelly Lynn, I just reread your response to me and thought about it again.
For me, I think my impatience with my Mom is related to identifying so strongly with her.
I think that being hard on her is part of my being hard on myself. If she is not doing well, I feel it so strongly within myself. My relationship with my Mom has a big effect on me.
♥️
‘Paciencia’ A word in Spanish I heard many times from Juan Lopez to me, in my early twenties, when lambing out a large flock of ewes. Patience.
Wishing you much patience today, Mary! (And wishing that for myself as well).
As I reflected on this more, Drea, I realized it’s not really about learning to be patient.
It’s learning to look at my Mom (as well as others and myself) with loving eyes.
Absolutely nothing is coming to mind. I will say that Richard Rohr’s meditation today did not surprise me but gave me much food for thought about my own life.
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/chasing-success-creating-shadow/
Dear Carol, Thank you so much for this link!
What this article tells me is that I am not -less than- for what I consider to be my many failures.
This can be life changing for me.
Thank you so much!
This hit home: “One of the great surprises on the human journey is that we come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing our own contradictions, and making friends with our own mistakes and failings.” Thank you Carol.
Drea, Richard Rohr has been in my life since the 1980’s. His books have been very helpful for me.
Richard Rohr’s meditation today,
spoke to me,
dear Carol . . .
thank you for posting it. ♥
I was pleasantly surprised when I recently found out I don’t owe the feds or the state any 💰.
I was shocked as I figured I would have to pay them something!!!!
I am grateful & thankful for this “surprise”.
All my fretting, stressing & nervous stomach was for naught.
Have a beautiful day All. Smell the roses along the way. 🌹🕊️🩷
I have heard,
dear PKR,
that most of what we worry about
never comes to pass . . .
do we remember that though,
when the next thing comes along? 🙂
A few months ago, I started a practice that when I open my blinds in the morning, I try to do that in the spirit of opening the door on an Advent calendar– ready to be surprised by what I see when I open the blind. I look until I can find something that surprises me. It has just been small things, like a flower that opened, or the way that the light is shining through my neighbor’s tree, or the shape of the clouds in the sky, but it has felt meaningful to me.
I love this, Elizabeth!
Oh, I love how you turned that into a ritual. I peek out of my blinds every morning when I get out of bed. I think I’ll add some curiosity to that peeking out now. Thanks, Elizabeth 🙂
Love this!
What a beautiful ritual! Thank you. Makes me think of the scripture that goes something like this: “May we have eyes to see and ears to hear so we can be healed”
Hmmm, well, I’m surprised and grateful that my little business is able to support two families. This was a long shot and it took a few years to get going, but here I am. Again. Making a living, or at least paying the bills, with something that my partner and I created. And they say old dogs can’t learn new tricks. 😁 woof!
Great to hear, Charlie!
Ain’t it grand when things fall into place Charlie?
Congrats!
Nice work, Charlie! Your little family-supporting business is an inspiration.
As my husband and I are both shifting into new careers at “middle age,” this is truly inspiring, Charlie!
Good for you,
dear Charlie . . . 🙂
I’m smiling, Charlie. Your gratitude is inspiring.
I’ll keep you all posted—restructuring at work looks to be leading towards a promotion…
Exciting!
My life remains the same. As the old saying goes, no news is good news.
I need to appreciate that about my life, Loc.
No bad news, is an especially good thing. 🌷🌷🌷
Life has surprised me in a beautiful as well as a not so beautiful way lately. The beautiful – the Yogini in charge of the yoga studio I attend and trade desk work for (as well as where I taught my 1st class last weekend) has offered me a regular Sunday morning spot! I am so honored and grateful. The not so beautiful – my mom got mad at me over something extremely silly and has not spoken to me for over 2 weeks now. She is actually giving my sisters the silent treatment as well, but I learned because of this that she’s done that to them many times over their lives… she has only done this to me one other time and that was years ago. Anyhow, what happened was truly a petty thing, although what she did initially caused my husband some anxiety (it was regarding forgiven student loans, of which he was a recipient). But me trying to keep things light tried to make a joke and she told me I insulted her… a friend of hers likes to be in everyone’s business, and I told her (via text) that “so and so could keep her conspiracy theories to herself” followed with a smiley face. I was truly joking, but she took it the wrong way. This hurts, but after talking with my sisters and doing some inner work, I realized that I had so much built-up trauma in my body that I was still holding on to. Not that I thought I was liberated, but I did think I had moved on from my “oldest kid of 4” stuff. Nope! Life surprised me by bringing it back to my attention. I can’t control the way my mom reacts to things, but I can still work on letting go of all that old programming and pain. My back was really hurting this past week, but I attended a special Mental Health Awareness yoga class last night, and we did some kundalini-style breathwork that involved some loud exhales to release some things. I was focused on this issue with my mom, and my back is not hurting this morning!! Still so much work to do, but I’m grateful to recognize it.
Sorry so long!
Does that old stuff ever go away?
Things can be going really well,
and then something triggers the old stuff.
It sounds like the kundalini breathwork
could be a great tool in working through this.
Sending much love, Sunny Patti. 🥰
PS So great that you impressed the yogini
and now have your own Sunday spot!☀️☀️☀️
You are doing so well, Sunny Patty
I think if we do the work, it will at least not have such an impact. We can learn to recognize triggers and do what we need to for our nervous system. At least I am at a point in my life where I want to heal instead of just ignoring things and expecting them to go away. I tried that method very unsuccessfully most of my life! I have a lot of tools these days to help me hammer thru the old stuff, but I do also believe that we will always have something to work on. We just (hopefully) get better at dealing with it as we grow and learn.
Thanks for the love & kudos! My path is really opening up quite beautifully 🙂
After so many years I learned that my father “shamed” us children and the silent treatment came along with it. I called him out on it and he said he does do that. Perhaps it is something they learned from their parents. I certainly dislike it but I am glad I know so when it happens it no longer affects me or I acknowledge that he is doing it etc.
Very brave – and inspiring – of you to call your father out on giving the silent treatment. Thank you, Robin Ann.
Unfortunately,
dear Sunnypatti,
growing pains . . .
I wish you well
as you make your way through this. ♥
Yeah… life, right?
Congrats on your regular spot teaching! Re: silent treatment, sounds like a family pattern with its own magnetic pull. That’s hard to deal with, and I’m sorry this is happening. If you are the one to *not* act out the pattern, you’re breaking an entrenched pattern, and that takes doing heavy lifting. You deserve congratulations for that, too. Not easy! Good job.
My sisters and I are all working on breaking the pattern, and I’m grateful that we can talk to each other openly about what’s going on. They do not want to pass this stuff on to their kids, and we all want to heal, so I’m proud of all of us 🙂
What a beautifully vulnerable and real response to today’s question. Your sharing of your path with us is inspiring. Thank you.
Thank you for your kindness, Carol.
Congratulations on the regular Sunday spot, Sunnypatti! And I am sorry about the misunderstanding with your mom ♥️
The regular class is such a blessing! I’m not teaching this weekend, but starting the 8th and looking forward to it. The mom stuff will work out… eventually.
Trauma lurks in the body. My husband’s mother gave him a silent treatment for years. Yours doesn’t seem like it will last that long; regardless, it hurts when loved ones are unkind. You are doing all the right things to move through this. Be the example of grace for your mother. It’s interesting when get opportunities to parent our parents.
” It’s interesting when get opportunities to parent our parents.”
Yes,
dear Avril . . .
it was quite a switch
and a very important lesson for me as well.
We never understand this stuff
until we get to be a certain age.
Oof… years of the silent treatment sounds rough. What’s also frustrating is that when I saw my mom about a month ago, she was complaining about a couple of her sisters who are currently giving each other the silent treatment. There are 6 of them, and I know they’ve done it throughout the years. But mom was talking about how childish it was, and here she is doing the same thing. While it hurts, I’m definitely using it as an opportunity for healing, and hopefully I can pass some on to her as well.
Life has surprised me in so many ways. For example, migraines seem to come and go like the weather!
Today I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to do the things I had planned. But now after teaching yoga class the migraine seems to have lifted again .
After I used the meditation method of letting of my illusionary mind world full of wants and expectations of how things need to be or must be- it was a relief.
I prayed/yeses the meditation method and for whatever reasons the pain is mostly gone . If I have to go in and get help like I have before then so be it . The hospital is there and my doctors are wonderful people . Km truly blessed .
What really surprises me about my life right now is the more that I surrender and disappear. The more I surrender and disappear. This false self dissolves and dies is exactly what we are doing in this meditation method. This is me who has once, desires, fears, anger, all of the minds that I have that are false, and they dissolve because of the fact that I was able to do this method and all of the levels I am now truly disappearing my wants and my greed are truly disappearing.!
This is exactly how life has surprised me right now that actually going to truth in this lifetime is exactly the birthright of all humans to become truth and truly be free is what is surprising me about liffe. In fact if we do not have life then we are only death. But life and death exist at the same time in order to be truly saved we must be free and go to truth- become Truth while alive ! What a great opportunity! 💯🙌🌱
I’m so very grateful, thank you.
Antoinette, you, Sunnypatti and I all teach yoga. It’s no wonder we’re well represented in this community. I also teach meditation, too. What is your meditation method?
This method is the method of discarding your false self in Oder to u cover Truth within you while you are alive. To become Truth here and now .
https://youtu.be/B952Ivq0D18?si=K9NJohHmWPRBbcKt
All the videos are really good on this channel. They are all about Truth and are directly from the books written about this meditation.
Here are links of the more than 350 centers around the world : we do meditation on zoom for easy access and convenience, however you are welcome to go to any center you like even when you are travelling. I have been fortunate enough to visit many of them in the USA, Korea and all over Europe 🌱💓💯.
https://onlinemeditationevents.com/locations/
Your pathway,
dear Antoinette,
is very interesting . . .
thank you for sharing a bit of it. ♥
It’s a clear path to letting go of the false self which is an illusion. All the centres around the world use the exact same method so it’s easy and consistent. I have studied many different meditation practices and have not found one that is close to seeing clear results. 🙌🌱💯
thank you for sharing.
Meditation is on my list to add as an offering eventually as well! I’m interested in both of your methods.
https://grateful.org/daily-question/how-has-life-surprised-me/#comment-192344
This is going to Truth while you are alive and can actually access Truth within .
😊
https://onlinemeditationevents.com/locations/
Sorry I guess I attached our gratitude link by accident. 😊
Above is the link to different centres all which practice letting go of falsness- our thoughts, worries, fears etc .
Not any surprises of late. The most meaningful thing is watching the growing season unfold. Potatoes, onions, radishes, spinach, lettuce. peas are sprouting. I will plant corn, green beans this weekend and transplant some herbs, a couple tomato plants into containers, pumpkins and yellow summer squash on about the 10th of June. I am still babying these frost intolerant plants. The Blue and Engelman spruce seedlings I panted some 26 years ago have just about shed all the brown sheaths that enabled the new growth to follow its own inner intelligence. So soft and green are those new needles. The red headed sparrows and yellow warblers enjoy those 20’+ tall trees. Peace, love and enough to all.
Your land sounds beautiful, Joseph.
Wishing peace, love, and enough to you!
My big surprise the other day,
dear Joseph,
was a ground hog nibbling on my lettuce,
followed by one this morning,
when I found him or her in the hav-a-heart trap.
We drove him off to the quarry
and hope the lettuce comes back.
Isn’t it a joy
to see how those spruce seedlings
have grown into those magnificent adults?
There’s nothing like it. ♥
ps. ‘My’ robins fledged this morning.
The robins fledged!
How wonderful, Sparrow!!!
I’ll miss them . . . 🙂
Ah, that sounds so peaceful. Thank you for bringing us there.
I so enjoy hearing about your garden, Joseph. Thank you for always bringing me back to an appreciation for Mother Earth.
I can envision everything—thank you for sharing.
I enjoy finding laughter every day when I can – people surprise me sometimes with their sense of humor.
I just love it when someone unexpectedly says something really funny!
Yes, may we all laugh more and stop to smell the roses!
I love this, Michele! I often get in too much of a rush to appreciate others’ senses of humor. You are giving them a gift by being present enough to enjoy and be surprised by it. I aspire to be more that way.
You already are so good Elizabeth.
It is a time of change, as this month of May draws to a close, life has brought transitions and introduced new roles. Mother / daughter has revealed new meaning. My daughter graduated, her life is blooming. I as her Mom, I feel so very happy to see her reach her goals, grow and becoming. Now I have to let my former child/ mother relationships go, she has been and still is my daughter, but now she is a sister to the world. New role, college graduate ready to give to the world her passions, she will leave our home and make her own. I see her in new ways and I see myself new as well, living the lesson of letting go.
All true, but you will always be Mom to her
and nobody can replace Mom.
I love to see my son adulting!