Reading, Meditation, Gardening, Art

I love to read and quite often will have several books on the go at the same time. Right now its 'Being Peace' by 'Thich Nhat Hanh' , the '50 Best Ways to Simplify your Life' and 'Meditation for Beginners' by Jack Kornfield. I have read all of these books before in my usual speed read type of way but what happens when I do that is I fail to incorporate some of the really important stuff that these various persons wrote about. I picked these three because they compliment each other from a number of different directions. Mr. Hanh is very 'eastern' in his approach, Mr. Kornfield says the same kinds of things in a more western approach and the people who wrote 'the 50 best ways...' are very how to step by step and so its kind of interesting and cements the philosophies more strongly in the mind. I am doing a single chapter per week in each book and will work on absorbing the concept they are try to teach. This will prevent me from speed reading and allow time to process.

'Being Peace' by 'Thich Nhat Hanh'

1st chapter something important I forgot 'smile'

Breathing in I calm my body
Breathing out I smile
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment

I struggle with mediation so its been a challenge but I forgot to smile! I admit at first I felt kind of like the Joker in the batman movie looked .... rigid and pained but its getting easier.

Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield

1st chapter talks about being mindful, and developing the 'art of living'. It does not specify any type of meditation other than finding one that works for you and sticking with it. For me its something active, like gardening .... grubbing around in the dirt gets me away from myself and all the 'important' things I have to do, I am in the moment, loving the smell, the feeling, the giving, its pretty awesome in a weird sort of way.

Simplfy your Life by Fanning & Mitchner

Simplicity is not a state of rest, it is dynamic. The goal is not to arrive at a static balance in your life but to become skilled at the process of shifting the center point so that the whole asymetrical structure of your life remains in balance. Personally I don't work well with the word balance and will be changing it into 'harmony' in my mind. Balance implies some sort of measurement of equaility which I don't believe is fair or even possible most of the time ... however harmony can be achieved without always being in balance. If that makes any kind of sense. In addition there is a project for my art journal where I map out various aspects of my life which is supposed to assist me in finding harmony. Will be working on that this week.