Connecting to the Stillness Within

“The breath is infinitely interesting because it can be taken for granted, it can be frenzied, it can be passionate, it can be sweet, it can be energizing, and it can be soothing.

Breath can wake you up and put you to sleep. Breath can be dignified and it can be wild. If you keep paying attention to breath, you will discover all these feelings in yourself.

Breath is a love affair you are having with infinity, and the purpose of any meditation technique is to lead you into being a little bit more in love with life day by day.”

~ Lorin Roche, Meditation Made Easy

“Great Blue Heron” by Louise Purcell

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Three Stillness Circles This Fall 2019

Here’s your invitation to our next event, “The Stillness Within.” This series of three stillness circles will replace our usual fall retreat at Maison Trestler.

Attend as many or as few as you like. They are loosely connected with the common theme of “entering the stillness.” See below for more details.

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.

He says keep looking, stay curious. 

He says  there is no end to seeing

He says look forward to getting old. 

He says keep changing,

you just get more who you really are.

To Be Free

The present moment, this one happening right now, is when your life is lived, when you can make choices, and when you can tune in to love.–Sarah McLean

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

Mindfulness in Daily Life

The final step in integrating meditation into your awareness is to use the stuff of daily life as part of meditation. There are ways of perceiving the world and the way you live in it such that each experience brings you more deeply into the meditative space. —Ram Dass

To increase your open and joyful sense of life, see if you can use a part of your everyday routine as a meditative experience.

What to Remember When Waking

What to Remember When Waking

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other,

more secret, movable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

Illuminations

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.”

—Helen Keller

Each Illuminations podcast offers a selection of prose, poetry, and meditative practices chosen to stimulate your own deep knowing.

An as you listen, when something touches you—a word, an image, a phrase—just pause the audio and open to whatever is arising within you in the moment.

This is the stillness of your own inner  peace, wisdom, and joy.

This is Illuminations.

A Simple Breath Meditation

The Breath Is A Love Affair

The breath is infinitely interesting because it can be taken for granted, it can be frenzied, it can be passionate, it can be sweet, it can be energizing, and it can be soothing.

Breath can wake you up and put you to sleep. Breath can be dignified and it can be wild. If you keep paying attention to breath, you will discover all these feelings in yourself.

Breath is a love affair you are having with infinity, and the purpose of any meditation technique is to lead you into being a little bit more in love with life day by day.

~ Lorin Roche, Meditation Made Easy

What You Seek Is Within

I will never forget that day; it was then that I found what I had been searching for in those far-off places, and I didn’t even have to leave the country. With my eyes closed in meditation, I felt the most profound peace and connection. I felt as if I had found my real home, and it was inside of me. It is a place of deep silence, comfort, and love. —Sarah McLean

We have  what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time it will make itself known to us. —Thomas Merton

A Meditator’s Guidebook

The Journey Home

I will never forget that day; it was then that I found what I had been searching for in those far-off places, and I didn’t even have to leave the country. With my eyes closed in meditation, I felt the most profound peace and connection. I felt as if I had found my real home, and it was inside of me.  It is a place of deep silence, comfort, and love. —Sarah McLean, The Power of Attention