Tuesday, February 9, 2010

spiritual Practice day 9

Compassion is my heart-preserver.
Kathy thank you for that wonderful word, heart-preserver. I have been holding an unnecessary and frankly unhelpful amount of anger toward a certain situation. However, in my thoughts and in my meditation practice today, I have been trying to invoke compassion. That is compassion in two senses. I hope to hold compassion for the person / situation that angers me, and understand that that situation arrises out of conflict and difficult circumstances. And, equally important, I try to sit with compassion for myself and my own feelings. Compassion has been my heart-preserver today and it made for some amazing meditation. I think the biggest part of what I noticed in my meditation is that compassion is mostly about being fully present to other people and ourselves. Being fully present, also the task of mindfulness and meditation. It's a great challenge, but somehow the notion of compassion has been a nice opening of the door for me.

What is your heart-preserver in the face of unhelpful anger?

2 comments:

  1. Have to spend all day in Traffic School today so I didn't do my exercise routine this morning. Did a difficult piece of writing yesterday which I posted on a literary website and received approval from a cyber-friend who graduated from Cambridge. Just completed a half hour walking meditation. Most of my thoughts were on my writing but I felt centered and ready for traffic school after my meditation.

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  2. Heart-preservers when angry:

    Ditto with using compassion to formulate my next communication about the precipitating event
    Call an uninvolved friend
    Journal away randomly with no sentence structure or grammar constraints
    Run for 20 min.
    Walk up a hefty hill
    Get busy with garden or potted plants
    Tai chi, chi gong or yoga (after I've settled down to a degree)

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