Day 29: Cultivate

Welcome to Week 5 (!): Cultivate.

The seeds of this week’s theme come from the very, very central principle that underlies 40 Early Mornings: unlike SO much out there yelling for our precious attention, practice is not a self-improvement plan.

Rather than trying to efficiently optimize our lives or even something as specific as … make us more productive, practice is here to simply allow us to be and become and embody more of who we already are.

Each of us — I promise you — is a very specific conduit for the life that was meant to come only through you to this earth in this moment.

And yet, we spend so much of our time trying to make ourselves more like other people or more like what other people think we should be like and do.

Which is why meditation is such a precise tool for giving us a peak into what Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams calls “the junk drawer” of our mind. We get to a certain point in meditation — maybe right away, maybe 29 days in, maybe 29 years in and realize: “Oh my gosh, this is NOT my junk! This is my mother’s! My ex’s! This is society’s! Who put this in here? I didn’t even remember this was here!”

And that’s where — as Pema would say — “the tenderness comes in.”

So much of us need healing, permission, and self-compassion in order to allow ourselves to clear out that junk drawer and begin to cultivate the core of who we are and let our lives lead with that, every day.

Which is where Week 5’s meditation comes in.

The Loving-Kindness Meditation is one that crosses time and place, but this version came to me directly from the mindfulness meditation community, distilled from Buddhism.

A deep reminder that we are steeped in something much bigger than just you and me and these 40 days.

May you be healthy, may you be happy, may you be safe, may you know love,
Cath

Meditation: The Loving-Kindness Meditation. Do your best. Let it be enough.

Reflection: Week 5’s Questionnaire, linked below.