Inspirational quotes, poems and stories.

A lifetime is not what's between
The moments of birth and death.
A lifetime is one moment
Between my two breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That's all the life I get,
Live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret.

~Chad Meng

Ideal Self Meditation

To do this meditation, dedicate a space in your home where you can be peaceful and undisturbed. Once you choose a place, always meditate in the same place as your body will associate relaxation with that place, helping you to relax more easily there.

Anyone can meditate, especially meditations which utilise the imagination, and the more you practice, the better you get so the easier it becomes. So just try it and see what happens- it can only benefit you!

Make sure you feel comfortable, sit with a straight spine, feel free to lean against something if it hurts your back to keep it upright. Start by just noticing your breathing, with your eyes closed, and look at the patterns on the back of your eyelids as you breathe. Do this for as long as you wish until you begin to feel yourself relaxing.

If a thought arises, just let it be, try not to follow it and indulge in thinking, but there's no need to banish it away either. Just notice everything about the moment. Your breathing, any colours or patterns on the back of your eyelids, any sounds around you, the temperature of the room.

Start to imagine what you would be like if you were your 'ideal self', if you had all the qualities you wanted, such as confidence, calm, assertiveness, happiness. Everyone will do this differently and experience different things- you might see yourself in your minds eye, or you might feel inside you what it would be like, you might even hear yourself saying things in a confident way, or laughing because you are happy. Engage all your senses as fully as possible... what can you see, hear, smell, touch, taste? Of course not all of them may be active in your experience, but just see which are, and simply notice what you experience.

When you start to experience your ideal self, to make it more vivid, imagine yourself in a situation in which you feel confident and sure of yourself. Step into the experience, whether it's an image, or feelings, and feel how good it feels, to be sure of yourself, confident and in control.

After doing this, imagine that you are going to enter a situation which has troubled you, only you're going to imagine yourself reacting the way you want to react, with the feelings you want to have. So even though you may never have felt that way in the situation before, just imagine how wonderful it would be. To be confident... happy... feeling in control... an inner strength within you.

The more you do this, the more like your 'ideal self' you feel, and your wise inner mind starts to respond to that by undoing old ways of being that go against that.

Be vigilant with your thoughts too, and guard against any that undermine the new way of life you are imagining. Your imagination is like the key to the door that opens to this new way of life. But it is also the key that keeps the door to the past open. If you find yourself thinking of the past and projecting it to the future, by imagining things going wrong based on past experience- stop. Stop that thought, close that door, lock it up and leave it behind you. Open the way to the life you want to live by making it your habit to only use the key which opens the door to the best kind of life you want to have.

Remember Always

Light is the only true religion,
Love is the only prayer,
and kindess the only ritual.
From Light ALL was created
and Love was surely the birth
Of the very first awakening in a human heart.
Go with kindness, gentleness and understanding;
Firstly, for yourself and then for those
who stumble so helplessly through the darkness of their night.
Remember always,
In Kindness your hands become the hands of the One.
Use that hand to carry
A torch-light into their world,
Help them to accept their own self-worth
as you surely discover yours.

~ The Omano Oracle