11 Days Of Love – Life Is Glorious!

Good Sunday morning lovers of love, seekers of happiness! Every now and then we need a hearty dose of inspiration. Known to some and felt by others, as a kick in the buttasana! Sundays are perfectly suited for encouragement; which often energizes and inspires us for the week ahead.  The following quote by Pema Chodron captured my attention while window shopping this morning. Consequently, I felt compelled to share. ""To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest…"

I also want to mention that I will be joyfully participating (by myself, upon a cushion, on my floor) in a very simple, yet powerful, 11 day Global Sadhana, "Open to Love"  beginning  Wednesday, February 27. Instructions can be found on Spirit Voyage.com – click away!  I'm serious when I say "simple!" Perhaps you'd like to join me?  This sadhana will open your heart more and more, each day. You will feel a freeing energy shift toward transcendent joy and deeper love.  Have you ever experienced 11 minutes of non-stop repetitive arm movement and chanting?  Well, it's truly amazing, powerful… and so much fun!  If you're at all skeptical about where I'm coming from with all this sadhana stuff, please read an article I wrote last spring about one of my first experiences participating in a Global Sadhana. Hopefully, it will clear up any confusion and hopefully, encourage you to give it a try!  There is everything to gain and nothing to lose...   Always love, Allison

Back to the quote…

"To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest…

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness–life's painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose–you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together."

Good Reading-

~Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chödrön

This blog first appeared at http://askinyourface.com/2013/02/24/11-days-of-love-life-is-glorious/ and is reprinted with permission.