This past weekend in Canada we celebrated Thanksgiving.
I enjoyed the time to reflect on how much I have to be grateful for, including my passion for self-discovery which brings meaning to everything.
The longer I am on this path the more peace I discover within.
And to be clear, peace is not my goal. My practice is to be present and find acceptance with 'what is' and when I do this - it brings peace.
It wasn't always this way...
I remember very clearly when a teacher once said to me, “In order to find peace, you need to stop searching for it”.
In my mind I was thinking “Stop searching for it…what are you talking about?! You clearly don’t understand how I feel inside.”
I was desperate to find peace and not experience what it was that I was feeling. I did everything to try and find it – well, everything EXCEPT be present with the feelings I was feeling.
At the time I didn’t understand that, in order to have more peace, what was required was to be present with how I was feeling in the moment – rather than avoid, resist, or judge my experience.
When I was sad, feel the sadness. When I felt fear, feel the fear. Don’t run away from it.
This was completely new for me.
A lot of people tend to believe that when we are feeling anything other than happy, we aren’t doing well.
“There is something wrong. I should be beyond this. How can I fix it?”
Do you ever feel this way?
From my experience, healing happens when I respect myself and the process, allowing myself to feel what I am feeling.
And as I have shared with you, I have had many opportunities this past year to do just this.
It’s not always easy to do, but there is more peace, resilience, and freedom in allowing rather than fighting.
What if we were open to being our own best friend?
If our friend was feeling down, what would we say or do?
We would probably support them with love and kindness.
When we are struggling how do we usually treat or talk to ourselves?
With love and kindness?
Not usually but learning to love ourselves – all parts of ourselves – allows us to heal and feel whole.
The gift of our mindfulness practice is it allows us to explore who we are. To practice being present with our feelings and trust that whatever we are experiencing is not happening to us, it is happening for us.
I love this message from Spiritual teacher Almaas:
“When you love somebody, you want to find out everything about them, don’t you? When you love something, what do you want to do with it? You want to know it. Love always translates into awareness, into knowing. If you love somebody, you want to see them, you want to know them, you want to be as completely familiar with them as possible. If you are really interested in being yourself, that interest begins with the awareness of where you are at this very moment. Being who you are can only arise from the love of being where you are…"
As we inquire with curisousity, and shine on the darkness, we begin to see the truth about your experience and deepen connection to our True Nature. We are no longer running away or searching. We are fully embracing 'what is'.
Wherever this Thanksgiving finds you I send you my love. And please know how grateful I am to connect and explore this journey with you. It means the world to me!
With gratitude,
Diane.