From Pinterest and Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page.
I am uncommonly joyful these days. There’s always more to evolve and grow, places to be challenged and changed, but I seem to have found a sort of sweet spot. I note areas for this same growth, yet feel little struggle at the discoveries that are causing me to let go of old ways. My heart pumps steadily and even my breathing seems the easiest it has ever been. I have engaged many new strategies for living lately that I can clearly see are working. On a broader level, I can see it is not just these few things, but an odyssey I’ve been on to let go of old versions of myself that no longer serve. I look back and see I’ve been opening up windows drawing in the freshest air for now on seven years. My latest mantra that simply rose up in my mind now makes sense to me.
“I am open to fresh ideas, fresh thinking and all manner of newness to my soul. Show me, Source Energy, what I have never seen in this world or in myself before.”
Freshness as a quality, a way, a manner of looking at things seems to have pervaded every corner of my life. I take clothes from the closet and put them in new combinations I have never worn before and suddenly feel I have a new wardrobe. I take off down side streets not caring the way home will be longer, as I feel an eagerness to see new paths to the same place. I walk into work and feel the lightness of my step. The day cannot be the same as it has always been, because I am not the same as I have always been. I cut open a tomato and really look at it. The pulp, flesh and seed. What an amazing miracle something so common really is. The cat meows hello for the millionth time and I am completely taken with the look of love on her face, as if she had never spoken once before.
Even as I laugh more I grow more quiet within. The chatter of my mind seems at an all time low. I am certain something will arise to get it clambering again, but for now I relish its gentle murmur. I realize I am no longer afraid. Afraid of life, other’s thinking, myself, the future, the past. I am no longer afraid. I could write that sentence a thousand times and it would be no less wondrous to me. I am no longer afraid is as fresh an idea as cut lemons and spring rain.
Fresh. New. What I have never seen before.
Now to milk this moment for all that it is worth. Really indulge in the joy and the peace, as a child would a huge, autumn leaf pile. Isn’t that the true glory? The moment you feel free enough from yourself to actually enjoy the present moment meeting yourself, as if it were the first time.
Meditation Travelogue 
wonderful that fresh
calm, joy
is your new
norm, Noelle 🙂
My norm for now, anyway!
well deserved
achievement 🙂
The ability to cherish the moment is a wonderful gift!
I often think of meditation as simply a reminder. I am reminding myself that this moment is all that there is or ever has been. Thanks for stopping in, my friend.
Noelle, I love your observations. I have said this before on Insight Timer: we can dwell on the past and speculate about the future, but we can only live in the present. Right now, this very moment has never happened before, nor will it happen exactly like “this now” ever again. So it IS fresh, unique, brand new. The cat has meowed hundreds of times but never before in this now.
I have brushed my teeth thousands of times but it is the very first time in this now. Every thing we do in every unfolding moment is an opportunity to see that thing with wonder in a fresh new light, with wonder, with the awe of a child, with Beginners Mind.
Very, very true, my friend. There is immense freedom in that simple idea. I am brand new right now.
It is the only way to live Noelle. Freedom in this precious moment. 🙂
And really, it is the only place we can be free. Now. Just now, because everything else is the illusion. Lovely to have you stop in, my friend.
Lovely to connect 🙂
Noelle, May you embrace your inner child and find joy every day 😍
Funny, Val, I had a private practice for many years, work as a life coach and a social worker now and inner child has a very specific meaning. Having heard the term many times since the 80’s I find I have this clinical view of it. Now, though, reading it in your commentI realize that I want it to mean something wholly new. Not some inner wound I’m trying to heal and nurture back to life, but rather an inner spirit that I open myself to because it is life giving and whole. Thank you for that.
There is such exuberance and untapped potential to discover with her 🙂
What a wonderful and rich entry this time, Such a beautiful time and timeless it is as are you timeless and eternal. I especially like the new mantra. I picture you on a mountaintop enjoying your new view of life. Other mountains are around and higher, but you have reached this one. Bravo!
I try to live always in the Now, but at times I fall into the past or what’s going to happen, and I become anxious or start feeling guilty. What has happened to me lately is that I realized that those feelings are options. It’s my decision to feel gloomy. Last week, while walking down the street feeling gloomy, I began thinking I shouldn’t be feeling that way, Suddenly I realized it was an option. I stopped fighting against the feeling and jumped into my gloominess like a kid jumping into a heap of leaves. It seems Gloominess can be fun! (If not, why most people dwell in it most of the time?) This is my new freshness in life. Enjoy the ride!
There is a therapeutic technique called prescribing the symptom. Where you ask the client to intentionally indulge for a period of time the negative emotion they feel they can’t stop feeling. Say, be angry between 7 and 9pm tonight. Just for those two hours, but really indulge the feeling. Invariably, most people find that when they intentionally try to do it they can’t, which of course, shows them they have control over the feeling. So you just gave yourself a little therapy, my friend!
I knew I was going to love this post from the first sentence. 🙂 Amazing indeed, how there is always something fresh and joyful to discover in the moment.
Thanks again for the story prompt — I enjoyed turning it into a short story, and I feel that my writing has had an easier flow this past week.
Thank you, my friend. It’s good to stretch ourselves.
Such a deliciously poetic beauty to these thoughts, and a lightness of touch in their elegance – superb writing Noelle.
You’re lovely. I take it as quite the compliment after our exchanges on Don’s post.
You are most welcome Noelle; those words merely conveyed my honest and heartfelt reactions to your work. All best wishes, Hariod.
May your fearlessness increase without end, and lead to unceasing eddies of joy and connection. Life without burdens is astonishingly joyful… I appreciate the reminder. I was starting to pick things up again… 🙂
Peace
Michael
As long as we are alive we will never be wholly free of what I like to refer to as ‘The Stubbed Toe’. Hardly a disaster, but certainly annoying when it happens. I like to think my problems when they arise are like that stubbed toe. Not really dangerous or disastrous, just annoying. Once I stop whining I can go about the business of healing and a stubbed toe isn’t so bad to recover from. And in my recovery I gain a little more wisdom and a little more strength….. until the next time.
I’m loving your new mantra and your descriptions of the way it’s been playing out in your life. Wishing such lightness of spirit and joyful engagement with the world to you all your days.
Fresh ideas…. Doesn’t it just sound like you’ve brought the laundry in off the clothes line, fresh and clean?
And have many more wonderful days ahead.
You cannot stay up all the time. If you did you’d lose it’s beautiful quality, but I would say I’m getting so much better at never dipping too low for too long.
Your freshness is intoxicating dear friend ….thank you so much , love , megxxx
A thousand blessings.
I weep for joy. Your joy, my joy, our joy. Afraid no more. True love expels all fear. Bless you, my friend.
Don’t know how I missed this, Pieter, but lovely comment. So full of joy.
Children teach us to drink and savor the milk of the moment. They give free rein to their joy. I hope it was all a good month. =)
Has been a lovely month. I seem to be enjoying a remarkable inner silence I am letting play out. Many blessings, my friend.