youtu.be/E2VCwBzGdPM Yesterday, I did something I rarely do. I ate an orange in complete, unhurried, silence. I took the time to smell the inside of the peel, to feel for the seeds with my fingertips and work them out of the pulp, to taste the juice, and to hear the sounds of the orange breaking down into something new. The orange practice was a reference to a story told by Thich Nhat Hanh about gratitude for the present moment. Sometimes our plans and our memories distract, worry, or excite us – so much that we forget what we are actually doing right now. In the story, Hanh’s friend becomes so immersed in talking about his imagined future, that “he was hardly aware he was eating a tangerine.” Distracted from the present, he was popping sections of the fruit into his mouth, completely cut off from the sensations of the moment – “it was as if he hadn’t been eating the tangerine at all.” Thich Nhat Hanh’s friend was missing his own life, just as it happened. Today, allow yourself the time to do something very small, something you might do anyway in the course of your normal day – like eating a tangerine – consciously. Focus on nothing else but that one thing. Pay attention to one of your senses: taste, touch, smell, sound, or sight. Explore that one sensory experience of the one thing you’re doing. Let it happen. Be done with it when you’re done with it. Then think about where gratitude showed up for you in this experience. What did you discover or notice about yourself, and the world around you, that you can be grateful for? Hugs and Blessings, Jenn ❤️
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 10:51:39 +0000
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