by Karen Cumming | Aug 10, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Are you ever in such a rush with the day-to-day of life that you lose touch with you? Something feels off. You’re just not in alignment. You need to centre yourself.
Sure, it sounds good on paper. But how do you do it in real life?
Three words, my friends. Ring. Them. Bells.
Let me explain.
The nuns and monks at the Buddhist monastery “Plum Village” in France have a very famous boss. His name is Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s a zen master and Vietnamese monk who is one of the fathers of mindfulness. TNH is a very cool dude.
When he’s in residence there – and even when he isn’t – they ring a beautiful “Bell of Mindfulness” at predetermined times throughout the day. When you hear the bell, you stop.
You stop walking. You stop thinking. You notice what IS, what’s around you, what’s beautiful, what’s right in front of your eyes.
You come back to centre.
And here’s the best part. You don’t have to live at Plum Village to ring a bell. You can do it anywhere. The easiest way is to download an app that rings a mindfulness bell on your cell phone; there are lots of them to choose from. But guess what? You can also use the bells of everyday life as your signal to stop and chill: a baby’s cry, the sound of a fire truck or an ambulance, the chime of a church bell, the call of a bird in your back yard or the ringing of your iPhone when somebody calls.
You hear the sound, you stop and centre. It’s that simple.
Ding-a-ling-a-ling never sounded so good. 😀
by Karen Cumming | Aug 7, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Did you ever feel like you were doing everything you could think of to move forward, but you just felt stuck? The more you focused on where you were, the less you focused on where you wanted to go… the more you just kept treading water in the place you didn’t want to be?
I hear you, Sista.
I spent some time in Italy awhile back. Walking to the train station one morning in a cute little town called Siena, I got lost. I stopped all the sweet old Italian mamas and papas I could find, and asked each one in my beginner’s Italian: “Dov’é la stazione?” (“Where is the train station?”). All of them said the same thing: “Avanti! Avanti!” (“Keep going!”)
No matter how many people I asked, they all said I was only five minutes away. Okay, they were lying. It was kind of funny, actually. But they also said, again and again: “Avanti! Avanti!”
Sure, I could have focused on where I was, upset they I couldn’t find the train station, sitting on a curb eating gelato to make myself feel better.
But thanks to those sweet old Italians, I kept focusing on where I wanted to go. I kept hearing “Avanti! Avanti!” in my ears as I lugged my backpack to the station.
Did I ever once doubt that the train station existed? No. Did I give up because I wasn’t finding it as quickly as I wanted to? No. I just kept going. And you can, too.
Looking for something in life you just can’t seem to find? It’s there. It really is.
“Avanti! Avanti!”, kids.
by Karen Cumming | Aug 2, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
Years ago, a friend of mine and I were having dinner at a local restaurant,. As we waited for our meals to arrive, we began to talk about life… specifically, the idea of savouring it… noticing the little things and really enjoying them.
All these years later, I can still hear his voice. As I dug into my Fettuccine Alfredo, he asked me: “Are you tasting that? Really tasting that?” I had to admit that I was eating it, but I wasn’t closing my eyes to savour it.
His question really made me stop and think.
These days they call it “mindful eating”. And one of the fathers of mindful eating is a Vietnamese monk and Zen Master known worldwide as Thich Nhat Hanh. If you want to know more about noticing what you eat and how to savour it, he’s your man.
So what’s the secret? According to TNH, it’s being fully present in the moment. The more present we are, the more we can focus on the texture, taste and smell of our food. The more we focus, the more we appreciate… and ultimately, the more we savour.
How do we become fully present in the moment? That’s easy. By letting go… letting go of our thoughts about the past and the future when we sit down at the table… and focusing on the only moment we ever really have: Now.
Talk about an idea to savour.
by Karen Cumming | Jul 31, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
We humans are creatures of habit, you know? So often, our ways of thinking become a pattern that repeats again and again. We feel jealous when a friend gets a promotion; we feel hurt when someone says something unkind; we feel angry when the universe doesn’t deliver something we want on our timetable.
Our happiness is so often conditional. We are happy as long as we have… you fill in the blank: a great job, a wonderful relationship, lots of money.
But the point is to learn how to master your state of mind so that you are happy in any and all conditions. Really. Any and all conditions.
Sound like an impossible dream? Think again. Spiritual teachers Esther Hicks and Abraham say it all comes down to two words: the pivot.
Here’s how it works. The moment you feel your thoughts veering in the direction of jealousy or self-pity or anger or anything else unwanted, you immediately head the other way. You pivot in the direction of what you want in your life experience — what feels good.
And here’s the best part. Within seconds of pivoting, you actually will start to feel good. Really good. So much better than if you’d chosen your habitual ways of thinking, and wallowed in negative emotions instead.
It works. It really does.
Just pivot.
You’ll be amazed at where it takes you.
by Karen Cumming | Jul 26, 2018 | Earth Rocks Blog
My friend John and I talk every week on Skype. We’re each other’s cheering section, you know? We listen, encourage and ask good questions that always lead to great insights.
I thought I knew John pretty well.
What I didn’t know is that John lives just around the corner from the fountain on Danforth Avenue in Toronto where Sunday’s mass shooting began. You’d expect that he might be safe and sound inside his living room on a Sunday night watching Netflix, right? Wrong.
In fact, John decided to go and see his parents Sunday night. He left right around 10 p.m. and got into his car. As he turned onto Danforth, he immediately saw a woman on the ground surrounded by people, many of whom were on their cell phones. It looked to him like she’d been hit by a car. John’s impulse was to stop and help, but there seemed to be so many people doing just that, he decided to keep driving.
It wasn’t until the next morning that John found out what had really been happening around 10 o’clock that night on the Danforth.
By the grace of – what I’d say could only be a power bigger than you and me – he was spared at the exact moment in time when more than a dozen other people were being shot. Had John decided to leave home two minutes earlier, he might not be here right now.
I asked if the shooting has changed him. You know, does he want to “live every minute” now – the way people usually say they do after going through something like this?
John’s answer made me smile.
Turns out, the shooting hasn’t made him want to “live every minute”. That’s because he feels like he’s been doing that anyway. Yup. He’s been doing that anyway.
Which of course got me wondering… Have I ? Have you?
When you think about it, life is like a litre of milk with no labels on the carton. It has an expiry date; we just don’t know what it is.
Why should we wait for a shooting to wake us up? Why should we wait to be terrified into grabbing our life by the balls and living it?
We shouldn’t. What we should do is snap out of our complacency coma, suit up, get out on the field and get in the bloody game.
John and I are going out for dinner on the Danforth next week to celebrate the fact that he is still here. I think we’ll order some Ouzo and drink a toast to life. Yeah, that sounds good.
