A Bit of Monday Wisdom From My Old Friend Pema...

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Every once in a while, I think we could all use just a bit of wisdom on Mondays to start our weeks off right. Mondays can be daunting (yes, we all know this) and even though I no longer work a normal, 9-5 work week schedule, I still wake up on Monday mornings with a bit of anxiety in my stomach and a feeling of pressure to get things done from who knows where. Um, can we say not healthy? So, for my own sake, I often like to read a calming passage from a Pema Chodron book to start out my week. This week, it's a passage from Comfortable With Uncertainty--an amazing reminder about embracing the now (and I know it's long, but I promise it's worth it!):

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is the feeling that the present moment is not good enough. We frequently think back to the past, which maybe was better than now, or perhaps worse. We also think ahead quite a bit to the future, always holding out hope that it wll be a little bit better than now. Even if things are going really well now, we usually don't give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.

For example, it's easy to hope that things will improve as a result of meditation [or yoga, or whatever it is that you do to "improve" who you are]: we won't have such a bad temper anymore or we won't be afraid anymore or people will like us more than they do now. Or perhaps we will fully connect with that awake, brilliant, sacred world that we hope to fin. We use our practice to reinforce the implication that if we just did the right things, we'd begin to connect with a bigger world, a vaster world, a world different from the one we're in now.

Instead of looking for fruition, we could just try to start with our open heart and open mind...By entering into this kind of unconditional relationship with ourselves, we can begin to connect with the awake quality that we already have.

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Right now, can you make an unconditional relationship with yourself? Just at the height you are, the weight you are, with the intelligence that you have, and your current burden of pain? Can you enter into an unconditional relationship with that?

And that's what I'm going to leave you with today. How can you begin to cultivate an "unconditional relationship" with exactly who you are right now? How can you accept and love who you are already? Definitely something to mull over...

Here's to a very present and awake Monday!

Namaste,
Mary Catherine

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