Words to inspire: “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape… the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ~Andrew Wyeth
Continue reading...9. February 2009
Cold, starry night—bright full moon orb rises over the ridge, gleaming onto the bay. So slowly that I must look away then back again to measure it, an orangey glow spreads across her face. Her light fades to one bright spot on the edge, like an eyeball bouncing rays off its cornea. Then the moon simply darkens and becomes a mystical peach—glowing, rising between her acolytes Saturn and Regulus.
Continue reading...7. February 2009
While I do value each day as it unfolds and enjoy the special beauty each confluence of weather and season provides, by February it’s difficult not to yearn for spring. I purposely pause to applaud each glimpse, as when this morning the sun made a brief appearance, pushing wisps of fog away, transforming the bay back and forth from gray to blue to steel to an azure reflection.
Continue reading...5. February 2009
Late on a winter day: the sun has dropped behind the snow-covered mountains and the Strait slaps the rocky shore at Tongue Point. This is where the Strait of Juan de Fuca turns and angles northwest, following the wild, vacant edge of Vancouver Island. Even the low hills there are frosted white.A steady breeze shoves the temperature near freezing. An eagle circles above me then lands on the small island in Crescent Bay. The tiny dollop of land is home to fir trees growing straight and tall, and it reminds me of a birthday cake with candles. Perhaps because I have cake on my mind, since I am here with my friend and it is her birthday.
Continue reading...4. February 2009
The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) reports today that Zen meditation may help reduce sensitivity to pain. Researchers in Montreal compared pain responses in people trained in meditation and those who are not. In the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, Joshua Grant, a doctoral student in physiology at the University of Montreal and his colleague Prof. Pierre Rainville looked at how or why mediation might influence pain perception. Scientists recruited 13 Zen meditators with a minimum of 1,000 hours of practice to undergo a pain test. Their reactions were contrasted with 13 non-meditators.
Continue reading...3. February 2009
Do you know what it’s like to forget the sun? To live someplace so dankdrippingwet that the gentle palm of the sun against your back cannot be summoned even from memory? To dwell only in shadowless montone light which flattens mountains into torn paper collages? To waken yet keep your eyes closed, for there is no reason to embrace another grimgrayday?
Continue reading...
Click on any of the following links for more information:
What Is Meditation?
How To Meditate in 5 Easy Steps
Setting the Mood to Meditate
Benefits of Meditation
Expanding Your Current Meditation Practice
Why I Meditate and How It Affects Me
11. February 2009
0 Comments