Today three children, two girls and a little boy, came from the village to play with Thanh Thuy. The four of them ran off to play on the hillside behind our house and were gone for about an hour when they returned to ask for something to drink. I took the last bottle of homemade apple juice and gave them each a full glass, serving Thuy last. Since her juice was from the bottom of the bottle, it had some pulp in it. When she noticed the particles, she pouted and refused to drink it. So the four children went back to their games on the hillside, and Thuy had not drunk anything.
Half an hour later, while I was meditating in my room, I heard her calling. Thuy wanted to get herself a glass of cold water, but even on tiptoes she couldn't reach the faucet. I reminded her of the glass of juice on the table and asked her to drink that first. Turning to look at it, she saw that the pulp had settled and the juice looked clear and delicious. She went to the table and took the glass with both hands. After drinking half of it, she put it down and asked, "Is this a different glass, Uncle Monk?"
"No," I answered. "It's the same one as before. It sat quietly for a bit, and now it's clear and delicious." Thuy looked at the glass again. "It really is good. Was it meditating like you, Uncle Monk?" I laughed and patted her head. "Let's say that I imitate the apple juice when I sit; that is closer to the truth."
...Without a doubt, Thuy thought that the apple juice was sitting for a while to clear itself, just like her Uncle Monk. "Was it meditating like you?" I think that Thanh Thuy, not yet 4 1/2, understands the meaning of meditation without any explanation. The apple juice became clear after resting awhile. In the same way, if we rest in meditation awhile, we too become clear. This clarity refreshes us and gives us strength and serenity…
- Thich Nhat Hanh, in "The sun my heart".

​Everything you do, every moment of your life is but a stepping stone to self discovery.

Alignment is a powerful sense of being connected to the Source of All Life. Alignment gives you an empowered anchoring system that helps you ground all your old, worn-out patterns into the Earth as compost for your new life. Alignment give you a foundation that can be likened to the spreading root system of a massive tree, anchored and safe in the Winds of Change. You can stay in balance when you are in vertical Alignment with the Light of Source energy working in and through your life.
​Shanta Gabriel 
February 21, 2017

I have expressed the difficulties in being a empath.  Know there is a beautiful balance within it also.  We experience the good vibes surrounding us =.  When in a room of joyous people we can be sent on a magic carpet of joy and elation. We empaths are filled with love and happiness. all around us.  Sometimes coming across as high or drunk but on a natural high.

 Working on addressing and honing my empathic ways these days. It is a time of healing and working on my relationship with my beautiful grown daughters. Hoping for their understanding about my short falls and stumblings of raising them when I was thought to be emotionally weak or disabled, before we knew what being an empath was. It is not an excuse, it is just who I am.
 As an empath, especially with my children, the emotions can become murky and chaotic for I feel their pain even at a distance.  Mothers intuition combined with being empathic can be overwhelming.
So I keep learning all I can so I am better equipped to help them now where I failed in their growing years. 

Let it go?  How often we hear this. Just Let it go. We can not let it go until we know what we are letting go.  We need to bring the issue festering deep inside to the surface first.  It is bubbling and stirring and wanting you to pay attention.  It wants to go it wants to be free also.  But you must first bring it out either written or verbally for this helps to sort it out. Once you have all the components, the emotions and self criticisms and blame in the palm of your hand brought to clarity then you are able to raise them to the heavens letting them go to be transmuted for the highest good of all.
​And so it is.

​For 40 years I looked for my Father.  He died when I was 11. He was the only nurturing person in my life. I had to find out where he went.  For several years I thought they may have put him in the secret wing of the hospital where JFK was supposedly kept after being shot.  I figured my Dad was just as important as JFK, and they only told us they were dead. 
I read every book I could find, I studied Life after Death at every turn.  I searched and searched.  One day, years later, I accepted the fact that he actually did die, but still, where did he go.
In 2004 I took on a job as a gravedigger.  One of the most honorable jobs I ever had, I loved it. We not only dug the graves we also maintained the serene grounds.. I did some of my deepest meditations there propped under a tree during lunch.
I even learned how to dowse as we did not have records for the older section of the cemetery due to a flood. Very accurate by the way.
Anyway, one night I had a dream.  In the dream I was sitting in the sextons office at sunset. Looking out the window I saw all the people rise out of their graves and walking towards the office.  I calmly opened the door and ask them "What are you all doing"  Startled to see me  they replied 
 "Oh, we thought you left, we use the bathroom in the office at night." 
When I awoke I chuckled and exclaimed "It is time to start focusing on the living" And I am..

I am sharing this because I just released long held anger and pain towards several people and events. And it has made me all the happier. Effervescent even, kind of like alka seltzer.
​
Jack Kornfield
"The practice of forgiveness grows through generosity and repetition. One of my teachers instructed me to practice five minutes of forgiveness for myself and others, twice a day for six months, which meant 360 times. Practicing with small misdeeds, such as my uncaring treatment of a friend, I repeatedly asked her forgiveness and gradually forgave myself. That experience encouraged me, but when I turned to my father, the process was much more difficult. Forgiveness took many years. It was only when he lay dying that I could look back and reflect on what had released me from our family suffering.  When, at age 75, ten years after his first heart attack, my father was near death from congestive heart failure, frightened and in pain. I sat with him over long days and late nights. He kept asking me to stay. Because I had sat with my own pain and fear in meditation, I was not afraid. Because I had sat in the charnel grounds and with others as they died, I was able to offer the steady presence he needed. By now I also knew enough not to blurt out that I loved him, but I also knew that he could feel that I did.
Years of meditation, therapy and forgiveness practices had come with me into that room. I’d worked with my rage at my father and my sorrow and frustration as a frightened, impotent child. One day I pictured the yellow linoleum floor in the backroom where my father was beating my mother. I wanted to beat him and to rescue her. I felt sorry for and angry at my mother for her weakness, and for her collusion with his brutal arrogance. I struggled to release my father and all his rigid, paranoid violence. I relived the nighttime scenes where his eyes would become glazed and crazed looking, and the old bastard would curse and hit and hurt us, his family."
read more

https://jackkornfield.com/the-practice-of-forgiveness-2/