The Practice: Relaxed, Appreciative Awareness
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
Daily Practice and Reflection:
So, what’s the secret to loving our lives? It’s stepping back, relaxing, and putting our hearts in charge. It’s the movement from our thinking minds and into our loving hearts. It’s developing a relaxed, appreciative awareness. As a wise being once shared, “We won’t know the gift of this life until we know our own hearts, until we practice gratitude and loving awareness.” The practices of heart invite us to soften, inspiring the goodness in our lives to be revealed.
Through relaxed, appreciative awareness, we are cultivating the conditions to make peace with ourselves and others. Through the heart qualities of compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and wisdom, we transform how we relate to others, to our experience, and more importantly how we relate to ourselves. These benevolent qualities point us towards hope and aspiration, bringing our perspective back into balance and harmony.
Practices of appreciation (i.e., gratitude and Metta) help spark the heart, opening and warming us towards friendliness and goodwill. We are invited to reconnect to what is already present in our lives: the abundance and privilege that we often overlook or simply take for granted each day. Through the heart, we create a sense of connection and belonging. We sense our shared humanity.
Taking time each day reflecting on the goodness in our lives trains and shifts the neural pathways in our brain to focus what’s right rather than dwelling on what’s not. Appreciative awareness is a quality of mind that we can strengthen and by doing so, we are engaging life in a wholesome, onward leading way, no matter what is reveals.
May we all be appreciative and peaceful.
“Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”
Meditation Practice:
“Hope inspires the good to reveal itself.”
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. ”
“Formal meditation is a radical act of sanity and a radical act of love; to not get carried away with the doing and drop into being.”
“Do not try to find happiness or comfort outside yourself; instead, you should try to become the commander of your own mind and utilize it at will.”
“Your body reflects your mind. When you feel love for all beings, it shows on your face. Seeing your honest, relaxed face, others will gravitate toward you and enjoy being around you.”
“Watch carefully the magic that occurs when you give a person just enough comfort to be themselves.”
“Without joy there is no enlightenment. Joy is the fuel, the nourishment, which helps our practice grow strong and stable.”
“Is happiness getting what I want or being okay with what is?”
“Everything ultimately depends on one’s own action. If you help others, if you serve others, you benefit. So altruism is a source of happiness.”