Treasures of the Heart

Quote of the day: “Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

I am sitting in my favorite chair, a big overstuffed leather recliner, with my feet up, a lap blanket keeping me warm and cozy, and a fully charged laptop. Sunlight streams through the windows and the view outside my windows is one of winter wonder. White snow and a bright blue sky with just a few puffy white clouds.

I am enjoying the beauty of the day—sort of—but I’m also totally fed up with snow and cold. All of my intentions to embrace what is have fled and I find myself complaining about the weather.  Not feeling well adds to my dissatisfaction. I am needing to rest today after a challenging flare-up of symptoms yesterday.

It’s true that this has been an exceptionally cold winter with more snow than I remember in my almost 30 years of living in Minnesota. It’s also true that we have no control over the weather. And regarding my personal health challenges, it also seems to be true that I have no control over the ups and downs of my body.

So why do I complain or try to change something I cannot fix?

My mind wants to figure something out to fix or escape both the weather and my health challenges. I spend almost an hour using my laptop to check out the weather forecast of various warmer places. Next I search for cheap flights to these places. Hmmm… I wonder about Tuscon, Arizona.  No wait, maybe San Diego, or Corpus Christi, Texas, or….Cozumel.  Hawaii???

Anywhere but here, now

Oh, yes, I recognize these feelings and my desire to escape them. This is the way of the mind.

What’s your favorite escape or fix — eating? watching TV? shopping? escaping into a good book? socializing? traveling? taking a self-improvement class? exercising? internet?

I live in a world where I can escape winter, distract myself, or work on fixing myself until the cows come home, but in the end wherever I go, there I am (adapted from book title by Jon Kabat-Zinn).

I know this. Last winter I spent almost 3 months on the Big Island of Hawaii. As the cold and snow continue longer than I consider “reasonable” this winter, my longing to return there grows stronger every day. Yet I returned home last winter earlier than I had planned because I missed my home and family.

This is what the mind does. It is never quiet, rarely satisfied, and always grasping something or pushing something away. The only way to quiet the mind is to

Enter the silence of the heart

There are treasures in the heart.

Sit. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Focus only on the breath. When thoughts come let them pass through like clouds in the sky. Return to the breath.

In the heart you are enough, you’re more than enough.

Let Go.

“To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

The mind wants what it wants when it wants it—need it! want it! got to have it!

The heart knows that we have all we need, are all we want, and have and are connected with everything.