At times, everyone faces the darkness of the unknown. Practicing presence can help us connect to our personal power. Once at the Rubin Museum, I was asked to talk about power. And not just power but a specific embodiment of power. The image that was to illuminate my talk featured the Fifth Dalai Lama ofContinue reading “Standing (or Sitting) in Our Personal Power”
Tag Archives: Waking Up
Be Like Scrooge
This path of awakening is a process. The truth we seek is not a concept or philosophical formula. It is a felt experience of living, of consciously joining our experience, whether it is grief or laziness or anger, feeling it and seeing it from the inside. The truth begins to appear in those moments whenContinue reading “Be Like Scrooge”
Finding the Path
Among the tasks or “yogi jobs” a participant can volunteer for during silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, a Buddhist meditation center in rural Massachusetts, the most resonant in every sense is that of bell ringer. Before dawn and before every meditation session during the day, the bell ringers walk around the grounds andContinue reading “Finding the Path”
Boats Against the Tide
It never stops being wondrous and strange. Your brain can be boiling, your heart breaking, your fate like being wrapped and locked in chains. And then you sit down, give up thinking and straining and striving, just being with the breath and the sensation of sitting there—and you discover who we were truly meant toContinue reading “Boats Against the Tide”
Be a Lighthouse
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Anne Lamott How different it feels to just sit down (or stand) and be still, just allowing the light of attention to shine. When we meditate, we practice a double movement: there is a movement of returnContinue reading “Be a Lighthouse”
One Day This Will Happen
One day this will happen to you: life will surprise you. Life will show you that you have been dreaming, and it will wake you. We each have countless examples. Here is one of mine. Once many years ago, I took my young daughter on a meditation retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh—a retreat thatContinue reading “One Day This Will Happen”
Tracy Cochran 