June Love Letter to Life by Teresa Taylor

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain — to just be with it all.

~Ram Dass

Greetings to our friends and community,

This June we have plenty to ‘be with’, not only globally but in our own backyard—the heartbreak of an oil spill on shining shores, the struggle of a vegetable garden in a drought.

I will admit there have been a few days recently where I found myself in resistance to just being with it all. “It all” seemed like too much. There was a jittery, jangled kind of energy about--earthquakes, floods, no Monarch butterflies in my garden. I was getting jumpy. Natural disasters. Human disasters. Anyone else a bit jangled from it all?

Looking in my 'toolbox' I pulled out an old practice I hadn’t used in awhile, metta mediation. "Metta mediation is unconditional, inclusive love, a love with wisdom. The practice is the softening of the mind and heart, an opening to deeper and deeper levels of the feeling of kindness, of pure love."

There are many versions you can find or create for yourself, but the basic structure is sending concentric circles of loving kindness starting with oneself and your immediate surroundings, moving onto a good friend or loved one, expanding to a "neutral" person, a challenging person until you envelop the entire planet and universe.

My current favorite is adapted from Steven Smith:

May I be safe from harm. May I be happy just as I am. May I be peaceful with whatever is happening. May I be healthy and strong. May I care for myself in this ever-changing world graciously, joyously. May I dwell in the heart.

Expand and include your concentric circles until your spaciousness includes…

May all beings in the air, on land, and in the water be safe, happy, healthy, and free from suffering.May all living beings everywhere, on all planes of existence, known and unknown, be happy, be peaceful, be free from suffering.

After a few days of returning to this practice, I settled. I could take a clear look from an open heart and move into action from stillness and loving kindness. The energy of the season began to empower me and flood me with light and the power of possibility was reborn.Loving kindness is magic.Teresa, spirit of Thule, Huxley and all at Paradise Found