Monday, December 23, 2013

Worth Reading

As a gift for the Holidays, I'd like to introduce you to a couple of blogs with which I've been spending a lot of time.  The first, Mantra Wizard, is full of information and research about meditation and its effects.  The writer linked to my blog, which was a tremendous compliment and enabled me to discover this wonderful source of information and reasons to keep practicing.

The second is from Mia Hansson, Spiritual life in the real world.  She writes from a Zen Buddhist perspective and breathes mindfulness into many of the struggles, conflicts, and opportunities that each of us face.  Caught up in the maelstrom of the holidays I typed Zen Christmas into Google and fortunately found Mia's blog.

I haven't been posting a lot lately.  I've been spending much time alone on the cushion, leading meditation groups, and helping to raise my wife's and my three year old daughter.  The bipolar disorder has been a bit active lately, also.  But I still have a few things to say, and I hope to always be learning.  So I'll have more to post soon.

Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

State Your Intention


(repost from May 2013)

Mindfulness Meditation, or working with the breath and releasing thoughts as they arise, has been very helpful to me for many years.  The health, cognitive, and emotional benefits of this practice are well documented.  But sometimes, to the horror of my teachers, I pull out a notepad and start paying closer attention to the thoughts skipping through my mind during meditation periods, turning each meditation into a period of contemplation on goals and intentions.  Meditation has demonstrated that it makes us more open to more ideas, and more noticing of novel thoughts.  So why not put this to use every once in a while?