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Dear Friend
When we want to fully experience something we immerse ourselves in it, we fully enter it, we open our senses to completely embrace the experience. That experience can be anything - sitting snuggled up reading to our child, the crisp beauty of an early spring day, melting into the arms of our beloved....
There are times when we feel more embraced by the experience, as though it was absorbing us without any effort on our part, and other times when we feel we're exercising the choice to let go of anything and everything that is separating us from the moment so we can boost our enjoyment of it. Meditative practices and mindfulness training cultivate those capacities.
The awareness we develop through those practices illuminates the moment-by-moment means by which the mind immerses itself in an experience, embraces it and knows it, even right now, right in this moment.
It does it by identification. Not a moment goes by that we aren't identifying with one feeling or another, one thought or another, one role we play in life or another. The mind likes to think it was fully immersed in an experience only when it is particularly intense - intensely painful, intensely scary, intensely pleasurable - and it is true that the brain boosts the neural circuitry for those memories making them stand out.
However, in every moment we are either consciously or unconsciously embracing and immersing ourselves in some fragment of what is possible and limiting our experience to that fragment.
What have you chosen to identify with in this moment?
What roles? What feelings and moods?
Without rejecting the presence of those feelings, moods, roles, thoughts and sensations, we can add the awareness of our boundless nature, our Infinitude. Feel the spaciousness of awareness, of simply being.
We don't have to give up the whole to know the part.
Watch your choices moment-by-moment. What are you embracing, identifying with, becoming?
You have the freedom to let it go, whatever it may be, and embrace your fullness in every moment.
Enjoy the play!
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Meditation Programs
Anam Cara Foundation, OH & NY
Everyone is welcome to our non-denominational meditation programs. No experience is necessary. We're located at 9380 Main Street, Second Floor, Montgomery, OH 45242
Cincinnati Monthly Meditation Sessions
First Tuesday of each month, 7:15pm
7:15-8:30pm. Fee: by donation, suggested donation is $20.
Mt. Kisco, NY Monthly Meditation Sessions
Saturday Evenings April 14 and May 12 . 7-8:45 pm
Fee: By donation.
Location: 100 S. Bedford Rd., Ste 340, Mt. Kisco, NY. Please arrive early.
For more information please visit our Events page (click here)
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Thank you all
for your notes of appreciation for our
newsletter. It's great to hear from you!
Everyone has
the heart to be a true friend of the soul, an
"Anam
Cara." By embodying that ideal ourselves we
may serve to help
others to find love and compassion within
themselves and the world.
Our highest nature is always
manifest in
relationship - to all other beings, to the
environment, in relation to our own body and
mind. Becoming mindful of the quality of our
relationships
allows us to learn where the light shines and
where it
needs to shine more. The ideal of Anam
Cara is to
continuously endeavor to expand the depth
and the
inclusiveness of the loving kindness we bring
into
every relationship, every moment, every breath.
If
you have any
suggestions, comments or sharings, for our
newsletter please don't
hesitate to e-mail me and I'll do my best to
respond.
The Anam Cara
Foundation is a 501
(C) 3,
non-profit
educational organization dedicated to
teaching
meditative practices. Our non-
denominational
programs are open to all. There are free
meditation instructions and downloadable
audio files of guided meditations on the
meditation page of our website.
Thank you for the many ways you have shown
support for The Anam Cara
Foundation. Because
of your gifts we can offer free programs and
instruction to thousands of people. If you
would like to
make a tax deductible donation please send it to the
address listed below or go to our website
where you
can make a secure online donation.
A special thank you to our generous supporters who gave donations. Even though you aren't in Cincinnati, you're in our hearts and sangha.
Click HERE.
That link will also bring you to our links
with Sounds True and purchasing gifts and
products from them will help support
The Anam
Cara Foundation.
I look forward to welcoming you
in person to our programs.
With
all my
appreciation and love,
I thank you all.
May all beings realize complete freedom from suffering and may all our actions reflect only wisdom, compassion, patience and love.
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