close your eyes and live…

Close your eyes. Forget the realities, the obstacles, the fears, your mind, and just listen to your heart. What do you want right now in your life? What do you need?

photo by Ben Heine.

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You can give yourself anything you need in life. The thing is you have to know what you need rather than how you feel. Your feelings are not even a quarter of the picture; there is a story underneath them waiting to be seen and heard. You have to feel what you feel and then let your feelings go and move beyond them to connect with the heart, soul, and core of you — that is where the answers lie.

In Jack Kornfield’s book A Path With Heart, he quotes Carlos Castanenda: Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself… Does this path have a heart. If it does, the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.

If we are still and listen deeply, even for a moment, we will know if we are following a path with heart. — Jack Kornfield.

A path is every choice we make in our lives. The small choices we make throughout the day create our lives; those small actions determine how we will act in the bigger moments: choosing to remain silent when someone says something about us that is untrue, choosing to stay in rather than go to a dinner party where we won’t know a lot of people, choosing to go out when our body is saying all it wants is a night of rest… If we repeatedly make decisions that don’t honor what we need, will we then have the strength to leave an unhealthy partner or apply to that dream job we’ve always wanted?

For me, finding our path and following it is at the heart of the meditation practice. Sit with yourself, be with yourself, and give yourself what you need. Be aware of the parts of you that feel vibrant and strong and send more breath and prana to them. Be aware of the areas that feel hollow or tired or sad and send more breath and prana to them. Whether your form of meditation is asana, chanting, running, knitting, creating art, do not be afraid to leap into those moments of stillness for all of our truths lie in those moments.

—Lissa E.

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