ENCINITAS, Calif. If you're feeling stressed, anxious or just out of touch with your humanity, it might be the right time to try meditation.

Filmmakers Tom Cronin and Jacqui Fifer stopped by Morning Extra to talk about the power of daily meditation in both their own and others' lives.

RELATED: They found peace in a violent neighborhood through meditation. Now, they teach others.

"Through their unusual but powerful collaboration, personal story and ancient spiritual teaching harmonize with the future of technology, collapsing the past and future into a portal of now where an enlightened planet awaits," said the filmmakers.

You can watch "The Portal" a feature documentary, at La Paloma Theatre at 471 S Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas on Thursday, Nov. 21 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

RELATED: Mindfulness-based meditation does it really work?

Tickets are available here. Kids are welcome.

More here:

Feeling stressed? 'The Portal' introduces us to the power of meditation - CBS News 8

My cousin recently spoke with me about wanting to become more spiritual. A journey she knows Ive been on for quite some time. To help me work through my trauma. To improve my mental health. She was looking for book recommendations, tips, anything, really. As I began to respond to her, I realized there was so much to getting started that I had to write it all down. So here was my advice to her:

To me, the idea is to get your mind, body and soul synced and then your intuition should strengthen, which is what I always consider my connection to ancestors, Universe, God, spirit, etc. And to my own spirituality. Ive found the best ways to sync my mind, body and soul are throughdoing yoga, practicing meditation and journaling.

Yoga gets your mind, body and soul centered. I have developed my own routines, which you can do too once you know the poses well enough.

I initially started with a teacher, which I would recommend. A good yogi will teach you how to move with your breath and how to get the maximum benefit from each pose.

While there are many types of yoga, and I dont claim to be an expert on the terms, I know that the types I practice focus on breathing and movement, not sweat and weight loss, so if you look for a teacher, make sure to find someone who helps you with your inner self.

After I learned some basic postures from my yoga teacher, I started to do Yoga with Adriene at home. She has videos for different moods and ailments that are useful because they help target the emotion or physical issue. She also has yoga for beginners if you decide to start there.

I really recommend incorporating yoga into the beginning of your spiritual practice because it forces you to move through your issues, thus unleashing things in your body. Teaching you how to breathe. How to work through things (not to avoid them as we all tend to do). How to focus. And how to be connected.

Meditating is also a good way to get in-tuned with your center, soul, etc. My understanding is that you are seeking a calm, safe space inside yourself, and you are developing a practice to guide you to that place. Its taken me well over a decade to get into a daily meditation practice (hence, practice) that I can stick to, so just be patient as it unfolds. Ill discuss getting started with a meditation practice further in next weeks blog.

Writing down your experiences and how they make you feel helps your mental processing of emotions that arise during yoga and meditation, and in life in general. Making note of situations that trouble or interest you. That excite you. Basically just keeping an overall record of what youre experiencing and how youre feeling when youre experiencing it. Remember to focus on the feeling, not the issue itself. Though, writing about the issue can often be therapeutic too.

Also, write down your dreams right when you wake up. I often have things come up in my dreams that may take me a few days or weeks to understand, so writing everything down helps you look back and learn. Dreams are like glimpses into the psyche that way. Theyre pretty cool.

Learning to connect to my spirituality has been a long process, which I feel it naturally is a lifelong process. So while I hope I provided some useful ways to get started, keep in mind not to rush things. Dont force the process. Let it naturally reveal itself to you. And keep in mind your process may be different than mine, so always be open to what speaks to you. Keeps coming up. Draws you in.

Be curious. About yourself, your experiences. And be open to figuring out all that you feel the good and the bad. Even if its painful at first, itll lead to something healing if you continue to follow it. Without judgement. Like following breadcrumbs down the trail, take the path.

Also be curious about others and about the world around you. If theres something interesting to you, even if dont know why, do it. Research it. Write about it. Learn from it.Essentially, you want to do an ethnographic study of yourself. Connect, feel, reflect, record, observe, analyze. And most of all, watch. Listen. And be open to everything that comes your way.

I wish you light and love on your journey. Namaste.

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APA Reference Grace, J. (2019). Mental Health and Self-care: Doing Yoga, Practicing Meditation and Journaling to Connect to Your Spirituality. Psych Central. Retrieved on November 23, 2019, from https://blogs.psychcentral.com/neurodivergent/2019/11/mental-health-and-self-care-doing-yoga-practicing-meditation-and-journaling-to-connect-to-your-spirituality/

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Mental Health and Self-care: Doing Yoga, Practicing Meditation and Journaling to Connect to Your Spirituality - PsychCentral.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Meditation -- the mental practice of using mindfulness to focus attention -- might be a simple activity, but it isnt necessarily easy, Eliza Wing said.

The mindfulness teacher and author has practiced meditation for more than two decades, using the activity to reduce stress. Shes been trained in mindfulness-based stress reduction approach, and has taught the practice for the past five years.

Wing and artist Karen Sandstrom have teamed up on a new book, Just Breathe: A Simple Guide to Mindful Meditation," which offers straightforward instructions to explain and demystify the practice.

The book walks readers through the process of meditation. Wing said she wrote the book to help with her teaching curriculums, and also as a way to concisely explain the practice to first-timers.

I wrote this book in particular for my niece, whos around 18, Wing said. She was questioning, What is meditation?, and I was trying to find a book for her. At the time, I couldnt find something that was really clear and straightforward.

Meditation has been used as a practice for centuries, and has recently been popularized in the United States. Medical studies have also shown that meditation can be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety and high blood pressure.

In the past five years, the popularity of mindfulness and meditation have sharply risen in the United States, according to CDC data.

It feels like mindfulness is having its yoga moment, she said. I think its because people are looking for meaning. The world is getting more and more chaotic. Mindfulness allows you to have a distance, but not an unhealthy distance it allows you to be much more resilient when things come up, and to be less reactive. I think people are drawn into that.

Wing, currently the chief communications officer of Cuyahoga County, had previously worked in various roles in Cleveland media, leading cleveland.com as the president and CEO for over a decade.

Wing first met Sandstrom during her cleveland.com years. At the time, Sandstrom was features editor at The Plain Dealer.

Sandstrom is currently the Director of Communications at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She is an avid artist, who recently finished a mural that will be on display in Public Square through Jan. 30, 2020.

Sandstrom agreed to do the artwork for the 32-page book, and also helped design the layout of each page. There is a drawing of a person meditating on each page, accented by a bird flying from the left page to the center of the right page. Some pages intentionally feature brief passages with white space dominating the design.

Getting it to work visually was probably the hardest part, Sandstrom said. The space on a spread was very important. You have a character and you have a bird traversing the space over time. You want air around the words.

Wing continued: You wanted it to live on the page and have space around it. Even looking at it is meditative.

Just Breathe: A Simple Guide to Mindful Meditation costs $14.95 and is available now at Loganberry Books, Macs Backs and the BAYarts gift shop. It can also be ordered online on Etsy.

To give a glimpse into the book, Wing shared give her Top 5 tips on how to be more mindful in everyday life:

Attention

Take one daily routine task, and really pay attention to it. Like brushing your teeth or drinking your coffee. Everything about it -- your body, your emotions -- all of that. If you do that every day, it makes it very interesting.

Catchphrase

Have a catchphrase that brings you into the present moment. Mine is Be here now. It helps. A lot of times, when youre in the midst of a difficult situation, the last thing you want to do is be there right now, but thats what you need to do.

Breathe

The reason we meditate and focus on the breath is because its always with us. It can anchor us. Anytime you need to, you can just go to your breath.

Language

A lot of times people think of mindfulness as just meditating. But it isnt. Its about being aware of the body, the mind and the emotions. The more vocabulary people can get around how theyre feeling either in their body or their emotions, the more particular they can get about their experience, [the better].

Intent

Intention brings a sort of alertness to the meditation practice. Theres a whole thing about striving and goals. Im not saying sit down and say, I will be calm after I do this, but its more like, May I approach everything with a calm heart today, or, May I feel gratitude for whatever comes my way.

Original post:

New book Just Breathe makes meditation simple - cleveland.com

According to the press release, researches recruited 200 participants that had never meditated before and placed them in a 20 minute guided mediation exercise (that you can try yourself below). Participants had their brain waves measured via electroencephalography and afterwards, took a quiz that was intentionally designed to distract them.

And what did they find? Improved focus and, crucially, a better ability to recognize a mistakes when they did make them, learn from them, which in turn helps prevent the same mistakes next time around.

While the research is still in its early days, its easy to see how something like this could benefit golfers.

Golfers constantly make mental mistakes on the golf course: mis-reads, missed putts, wrong club selection, a poor swing or tempo. Ideally, wed love to avoid them altogether, but thats impossible. The most we can do is learn from our mistakes, and not make them again.

So take 20 minutes and give it a try below. See if it helps your game.

Continue reading here:

New study shows this 20-minute meditation exercise could help you play better golf - Golf.com

Momentarily I had fallen deep into a pit of complete and utter self-doubt and criticism, so deep that I wasnt even really able to identify that I was in a pit. Does that make sense?

It was a time that I had stepped into a very new space of vulnerability, leading my first yoga class and womens circle, all in the same week.

It was such an incredible privilege to have the opportunity to guide people in this way that I put my everything into the preparation.

My morning time of meditation became time to practice my sequence. Evenings became so squeezed for time that more often than not sleep was prioritised over meditating.

This is the thing with evenings. They can become so busy.

And this is why I normally routinely meditate in the morning, as I know how crucial it is to my overall well-being.

Oh the beauty of hindsight to see that the thing I didnt make time for was the very thing that should have been my priority. Prioritise over sleep you say? Well. Maybe

In my experience a steady meditation practice can lessen the mental and emotional disturbances, meaning I truly need less sleep. I also find that the sleep I do get is more rejuvenating.

Scary to think how much energy we can expend on mind-created conflict and internal drama!

At the time, skipping my regular meditation practice didnt seem like a big deal. It was only for a few days here and there. I figured, whats the harm?

It was only on reflection that I could see the damaging impact of these seemingly insignificant missed practices.

As the days passed by, I began to fall back into an old, familiar place of high insecurity and selfdoubt. Following both the yoga session and the womens circle (although I enjoyed them both, deeply), I was flooded with a strong sense that I had somehow failed people.

I hadnt shown up enough for people, I didnt know what I was talking about, who was I to have any authority on this, I simply wasnt good enough.

Reading this, it may seem obvious to you that I was in a bit of a spin and that these bullying thoughts werent true. That they were just the result of negative mind patterns.

But when were in the middle of it, it can be so incredibly difficult to see and separate from these destructive thoughts.

As the days without my meditation practice progressed, my inner demons resurfaced with avengence.

Old habits of thinking and behaviour returned.

I unconsciously poked and prodded at my stomach in the mirror with thoughts running through my head that I needed to get back to the gym, that Id let myself go, that my stomach was sticking out too much.

And it was as I caught my eye in the reflection of the mirror, crying and pulling at myself that I woke up.

I was able to sidestep the emotional turmoil and observe the patterns for what they were.

With each conscious breath I realised just how far back into that pit I had slipped.

These were old thought patterns that I had been able to separate my sense of self from years prior.

It was in this moment of recognition I was able to see that the other thoughts too were a part of the same insecurities and self-doubt.

It was then in this moment that I realised I had let my meditation practice slip.

It was so easy to forget what a medicine meditation is for me. Until I stopped.

For most of my life these destructive thought patterns had dominated my life.

My relationships.

My decisions.

And it was only when I started to meditate that I was able to separate from them and begin to make changes.

I share this with you not for any sympathy, but to invite you to consider whether you have negative thought patterns that could be quieted and separated from with the support of a daily meditation practice?

What does your mind tell you that might not be true?

On reflection it was scary to once again feel the negative impact of these destructive thoughts, but Im grateful for these small slips as they act to remind me just how very crucial my daily practice is and how far Ive come.

Even just ten minutes.

Ten minutes to sink into you.

Creating a buffer between your sense of self and the thoughts.

Quietening them down enough to be able to see them for what they are.

And so as I reflect back on that pit, that I fell so deeply into, I am able to recognise that I am grateful for that time.

I am grateful as sometimes it isnt until we slip back into old habits momentarily, that we are able to see and celebrate how far we have come.

The practice isnt in the perfection, but rather the practice.

Recognising the value of our practice and committing day after day to return.

So that we might just be able to catch our own eye in the mirror and be reminded when we have fallen.

Claire Rowden is a Somatic Therapist, Meditation Teacher and Emotional Freedom Educator based online. Check out her website https://www.embodhii.com/welcome to sign up for her free meditation course and learn more about bodymind based therapies.

Original post:

I Was Engulfed By Self Criticism And Doubt- A Blow By Blow Account Of What Happened When I Stopped Meditating - Thrive Global

Cheryl is teaching her toddler son Bear - who is two - to meditate with her before bedtime after falling in love with an app.

The Geordie sweetheart, 36, who shares her son with ex flame Liam Payne , 26, revealed she loves to use the app Insight Timer for herself and Bear in his nighttime routine.

Former Girls Aloud star Cheryl told The Sun : "I like to meditate, I actually use an app called Insight Timer. I really love it."

Talking about her new experience with their meditation routine, Cheryl confessed the updated version has a kids section which reads stories to Bear and she admits he's hooked.

Chezza, a judge on upcoming BBC1 talent show The Greatest Dancer, stated she wasn't pushing her son into the showbiz world, despite him having famous parents.

Speaking on RuPaul: What's the Tee? podcast, after she appeared on the panel of BBC3's RuPaul's Drag Race UK, she said: "We don't check in enough. Intuition. I'm preparing him. I hope he becomes an earth boy rescuing turtles in Barbados."

She added: "You look at every child star and they're all f***ed up. Name me two who aren't, you'll struggle to find them."

Cheryl's co-star Nadine Coyle is currently on I'm A Celebrity.

She has been accused of 'lying' about her 'friendship' with her former Girls Aloud bandmate.

The Irish singer opened up about her time in the girl band during an intimate chat with Adele Roberts and Jacqueline Jossa.

When the ex-EastEnders star asked if she got on with everyone in Girls Aloud, Nadine said: "Yes."

Digging deeper, Jacqueline admitted she had heard Nadine "didn't get on with Cheryl".

Tense Nadine insisted it was "fake news" - but I'm A Celebrity viewers pointed out this went against what she had claimed before.

Nadine previously blamed the rest of the girls for splitting the band - and even insisted there was never any friendship with Cheryl.

Despite having been a bridesmaid at Cheryl's lavish 2006 wedding to footballer Ashley Cole - Nadine insisted they'd never been friends at all.

On Celebrity Juice in 2018, Nadine said: "There was no falling out, there was just no friendship to begin with."

Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at webcelebs@trinitymirror.com or call us direct 0207 29 33033

Excerpt from:

Cheryl teaches son Bear to meditate as she handles life as a single mum - Mirror Online

Michelle Zarrin (Courtesy of The Mindfulness Expo.)

Michelle Zarrin felt a bit unmoored after her divorce and having to start over. She began meditatingfirst for 10 minutes a day, then going to longer stretches, sometimes 11 hours at a time. She realized along her journey that her path would involve teaching meditation and mindfulness to others, and that's exactly what she's done. Today, she's a globally renowned inspirational speaker, meditation teacher and spiritual guide whose meditations on the Insight Timer app have been downloaded more than 1.3 million times.

How do you get some of what she's having? You can attend the Mindfulness Expo Zarrin founded, which happens 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 30 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The day is divided into fourteen 50-minute workshops held in two rooms; your $35 ticket gets you into as many as you'd like, all day. There are no add-on fees with your general admission ticket. Areas of focus are meditation, transforming your life through the outdoors, Kundalini yoga, sound healing, nutrition and Reiki classes. There will also be vendors on hand with relevant offerings for a more mindful life. Workshop session highlights include:

All are welcome, no matter where you are on your meditation and mindfulness journey. And if you're just beginning, this is an amazing launch pad to learn about what works for you.

The Mindfulness Expo

Excerpt from:

The Anaheim Convention Center Mindfulness Expo Is The Weekend After Thanksgiving - LAist

You are here: Home / Entertainment / Health and Wellness Events / Kirtan, Astrology & Guided Meditation at Temple of Peace in Haiku

November 20, 2019 by Alex Mitchell Leave a Comment

Theres a Kirtan, Astrology, and Guided Meditation Workshop at Temple of Peace in Haiku on Monday, November 25th. The event will be led by Juliet Butters Doty and Neeraja-ji. Attendees can settle into one-ness while listening to astrological updates with their individual charts, and delving into palpable meditations. $20. 4pm. Temple of Peace, (575 Haiku Rd., Haiku); 808-280-2833; 808-359-8676; unwindthesoul.com

photo courtesy of Facebook/Juliet Butters Doty

For more up to the date events go to mauitime.com/events

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Filed Under: Health and Wellness Events Tagged With: haiku maui, maui astrology, maui Guided Meditation, maui healing centers, maui kirtan, maui retreats, maui wellness, north shore maui, Temple of Peace in Haiku

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Kirtan, Astrology & Guided Meditation at Temple of Peace in Haiku - Maui Time

ROSTREVOR, Northern IrelandThe most powerful moment in the new Mister Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, is when, for a full minute (60 actual seconds, I timed it), nothing happens.

In the scene leading up to the moment in question, Fred Rogers (played with winsome virtuosity by Tom Hanks) and Lloyd Vogel (the character played by Welsh actor Matthew Rhys and based on journalist Tom Junod, whose 1998 Esquire profile of Rogers was the catalyst for the film) are sitting in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Pittsburgh.

Vogel is in crisis. Existential, relational, spiritual, mid-life. All of the above. Its fueled in no small part by his estranged relationship with his alcoholic, abusive, often-absent father (played by the brilliant Chris Cooper) who has walked back into Vogels life just as his own is coming to an end.

Over lunch, where we discover that Mr. Rogers is a lifelong vegetarian I just cannot imagine eating anything that has a mother, he explains Vogel says he believes his dining companion likes people like me broken people. Rogers is having none of it.

I dont think you are broken, Rogers begins, speaking slowly and deliberately. I know you are a man of conviction, a person who knows the difference between what is wrong and what is right. Try to remember that your relationship with your father also helped to shape those parts. He helped you become what you are.

Then Rogers asks his struggling friend to join him in what is essentially a contemplative exercise.

Well just take a minute and think about all the people who loved us into being, Rogers gently suggests.

I cant do that, Vogel responds.

They will come to you, Rogers assures him. Just one minute of silence.

The camera slowly pans the restaurant, where we briefly glimpse Rogers real-life widow, Joanne, sitting at a nearby table. After a few moments, the lens comes to rest on Hanks face. He turns his gaze ever so slightly until he is looking straight at the camera, at us.

A full minute goes by when no words are spoken. It is profoundly affecting.

Finally, Vogel exhales.

Thank you for doing it with me, Rogers says. I feel so much better.

I did, too.

As I watched an online screener of the movie with my husband in our living room last month, I imagined theaters full of people exhaling in unison, perhaps unaware they had participated in a minute of mindfulness, a meditation.

I love that Rogers doesnt ask Vogel (or the audience) to be grateful for or to the people who come to mind in those 60 seconds. He simply asks us to be open to whoever comes. Without judging them or ourselves.

Mr. Rogers and his meditation came to my mind this morning as I hiked a steep, two-mile path through the forest to the Cloughmore Stone An Chloch Mhr in Irish, meaning The Big Stone. Its a massive granite boulder that sits in a clearing about 1,000 feet above the village where Ive been staying since completing a 200-mile walk along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with a small group of peace activists last week.

The Big Stone, which, depending on who you talk to, was deposited here by a glacier 10,000 years ago or was tossed here from the Cooley Mountains on theother side of Carlingford Lough by the mythical Irish warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill, is also believed to have been the inspiration for Aslans table in C.S. Lewis Narnia stories.

That part of Rostrevor which overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia, Lewis, who spent part of his childhood in Rostrevor, once wrote in a letter to his elder brother, Warren. The landscape here makes it seem possible that a giant might come bounding over a hillock or that youll find Mr. Tumnus playing the pan flute next to the narrow river that flows through the Fairy Glen, so named for the little people who live along its banks, according to local lore. (Its an actual place; I can see it from my rental cottage, though I havent spotted any fairies. Yet.)

How I long to break into a world where such things were true, Lewis said of his Narnia and the actual geographic place that inspired it.

Throughout his life, Lewis often returned to this idyllic village nestled between the Mourne mountains and the lough, a glacial fjord that forms part of the border between the North and the Republic. Climbing the steep mountain paths toward the Big Stone, I pictured young Jack Lewis rambling through this land, imagining mythical creatures and creating stories that would someday shape the imaginations of countless other children, including mine.

Standing next to the massive stone, the wind howling and temperature dropping, I could almost hear Mr. Beaver answering Susans question about whether Aslan is safe:

"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.

As I schlepped up the mountainside and on the much easier descent an hour later, I practiced Mr. Rogers contemplative exercise from the new movie, letting my mind wander to the people who have loved me into the person I am today.

There were dozens of names and faces. Family (biological and chosen), friends, teachers, professors, pastors, priests, rabbis, yogis, musicians, writers, artists, and even the odd face of a stranger whose name I never learned but whose love left its mark on me all the same.

The person who came most often to my mind, however, was the woman whose ashes I am wearing in a locket around my neck: My mother, Helen, who passed away in August.

Before I could read them on my own, my mother read me fairy tales, fables, and Dr. Seusss whimsical rhyming stories, and later pressed a boxed set of Lewis seven Chronicles of Narnia into my hand.

She introduced me to Mr. Rogers on our black-and-white living room TV set as a child in the 1970s. One of Moms graduate degrees focused on early childhood development and she understood what Rogers was trying to do through the show, which is why she preferred Mr. Rogers Neighborhood to Captain Kangaroo, School House Rock, and even Davey and Goliath.

I recently rediscovered a tape recording of her interviewing a 3-year-old me for one of her graduate classes about my feelings after having been gently disciplined by my father, whom I adored. She listened (actively), mirrored what she heard back to me, and affirmed that what I was feeling was OK. Just like Mr. Rogers did on the show.

In his Neighborhood of Make-Believe, with simple hand puppets with complex internal lives such as Daniel Striped Tiger, Prince Tuesday, and Ana Platypus, he did something profound. Rogers and his collaborators on the show listened intently to children, created routine and a safe, sometimes magical place where they might be understood, affirmed, and cherished.

For those of us who perhaps didnt always get the emotional support we needed at home, it was a gift that helped shape who we are as adults, parents, and grandparents.

My mother was Irish my grandmother, Nellie, who died when my mother was just 4 years old, left her village not too far from here in 1920 before there was a border between the North and the South. A year before she died, I brought Mom to Ireland for the first time and we saw a lot of this storied island, though we never made it to Rostrevor. She would have loved this place and Im hoping she got a kick out of tagging along in the locket as we trod through the troubled and thin places of the borderlands at 3 MPH. Richard Rohr might have dubbed it a walking meditation for its holy goallessness.

The thought of it makes me smile. And yet, like Vogel and his father, our relationship was profoundly complicated. For much of my life, my mother was my fiercest critic and chief antagonist. We fought nearly to the bitter end, but made our peace before she left this side of the veil. Thanks be to the God Who Listens.

Junod says his real-life relationship with his father was fraught but not as dramatic as the Vogels volatile, sometimes violent rapport in the film. (Poetic license was taken with the facts of Junods story for dramatic effect in the film on several occasions, which in part was why the decision was made to change the characters name for the film, Junod told me recently.)

Junod and Rogers (who really was a vegetarian) did in fact have lunch in Pittsburgh, but it was at an Indian restaurant and there was no minute of silence although that was something Rogers was known to do often with people, Junod said.

Rogers saw Junods woundedness and reached out with an ear of grace, as he did with so many others, he said. Fred never told me what to do or how to do it, but I absorbed so much from him without him having to say a word.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which opens in theaters nationwide today, makes a point of not descending into hagiography as perhaps other projects celebrating Fred Rogers have. He was a real person with real faults and real feelings who made an extraordinary impact on the world through great effort, discipline, faith, and collaboration with others.

Early on in the film, Vogel asks Mrs. Rogers (played by Maryann Plunkett) what its like being married to a living saint. She balks at the suggestion.

Im not fond of that term, she says, kindly but firmly. If you think of him as a saint, then his way of being is unattainable. He works at it all the time. Its a practice. Hes not a perfect person.

To me, the power of the film and Rogers legacy lies in the tools and practices they offer us for how to be more present, connected, and loving people. How to be both safe and good.

Link:

Meditating on Love and Connection with Mr. Rogers and C.S. Lewis - Sojourners

This mortal world is constantly chasing one thing or the otherworldly wealth for many, nirvana and moksha for some. Bhutanese monk Namgay Rincha, 47, belongs to that minority trying to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha. His lean frame, hermits robes and endearing smile betrays no signs of anguish for the path he had chosen to tread.

Rincha from Thimphu is in Bodh Gaya since late October and will stay for three months before returning home. He is among millions making a pilgrimage every year to the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment.

He adheres to a simple philosophy. I dont want to become somebody big. No matter what you become, itll all come to grief. The soul should be good and pure. Predictably austere, his day is spent meditating and praying. He wakes up at 3 am every day, prays for two hours, and when you still cant hear the birds, he walks to the Mahabodhi Temple.

Till the time he goes to bed at 9 pm, he keeps meditating and chanting hymns. The sole interruptions are meal and tea breaks. He prefers the Tibetan varietythe salty, butter tea from the mountains. The Buddha renounced wealth and property for knowledge, he says. We just try to follow him.

Read the rest here:

24 Hours In Life Of Namgay Rincha: Meditation And Hymns, In Buddha He Trusts - Outlook India