What Does it Mean to Be in a Good State, Anyway?
If our first responsibility is our own state, before we go fixing others’, then what does it mean to be in a good state?
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Clear Sky Blog
So That Happened – Now What?
How different do your days look recently? Even without the backdrop of a global pandemic, it’s an uneasy feeling to suddenly have
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What I Never Asked My Dad – And Why it Matters Now
I don’t have full recall of that evening, and yet obviously either I didn’t ask, or he didn’t give much of an answer. So, something in me doesn’t expect much of an answer, doesn’t expect to get to the bottom of things. It might be family or cultural conditioning, of course, and yet the why is no longer relevant.
As a spiritual warrior, having seen the pattern, the idea is to see what happens when we consciously try to do something different.
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How I Stopped Being a Workaholic (and Realized Why I Started)
When you’re caught in a spiral of overworking, you might want to have a good look at how this started and whether it’s really working for you.
Interrupting such strong patterns takes courage.
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Learning To Speak Up for Myself
Partly from seeing the different effects of these experiments, I’ve noticed how powerful words can be when we’re in conversations.
Now, I try to be more skillful and flexible when talking with other people.
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I Don’t Have Time to Be Compassionate
I admitted that I find myself walking through the school halls, head down, hoping no one will talk to me – not because I don’t like them, but because I’m thinking “If I talk to them I won’t get to what I need to do to start my day”.
When I’m in this mode, I’m not being kind to myself and I don’t notice what others need, whether it’s just a smile or a few minutes of my time.
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Why You Should Zen-Up Your Space
There’s another benefit to a well-honoured space: it brings out all of our hidden fidgets, shining a light on our inability to sit still. When there’s clutter, anxiousness can hide under the auspices of needing to clean and tidy and organize.
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Two Views on How Dharma Heals Us
Here we share two of the shorter pieces from our Great Healing series, written by Maureen Smith and Richard Nathaniel.
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How I Learned Greater Self Love
Over millennia, spiritual guides have been saying the same thing, that love comes from within and we’re not lacking – for anything.
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How I Stopped Being an Anxious Person
My default state used to be anxiety, with some fear thrown in for good measure. I don’t know why. For whatever reason,
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Healing my Confusion
I now feel empowered to follow the advice of one of the teachers at Clear Sky, to “Take action, and let the chips fall where they may.”
After all, a pattern of confusion stems from and continues a hurt. Being empowered to act brings joy.
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Fear and the Great Healing
Even as we heal and awaken ourselves, then, we affect all of humanity. So go do the work, for the sake of all sentient beings.
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Dharma and healing
Heal your mind – and expand your consciousness – and your body comes along for a much more easeful ride, despite still being subject to death, decay, and impermanence. And the interesting thing is that it works both ways – when we change the body, we also change the mind.
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Living with Grief and Uncertainty
When dealing with something intense, like the loss of a relationship, it can seem as if that feeling completely dominates our reality. To a degree this is true. Yet at the same time, the feelings of pain or hurt or confusion are really only present when we allow ourselves to focus on them.
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How to Get the Best out of a Three-Night Cabin Retreat
If you’re wondering why we require a three-night minimum in our cabins, it’s to honor the process of retreat time. Three nights is still a very short retreat, but it does allow for the possibility of something magical to happen between arriving, settling in, and the “I’m leaving soon” thoughts.
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Why I do regular retreats
One of our regular blog contributors, and the Secretary of our Board of Directors, Dan O’Brien, has just completed another cabin retreat
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Is it selfish to meditate?
Not everyone will agree with our priorities…
Sometimes it helps to remind ourselves why meditation is a consistent priority in the midst of our own busyness, or the opinions of our loved ones.
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What is it Like to Be Alone in a Cabin Retreat?
Being by ourselves in a solo retreat creates the opportunity for three important explorations or insights:
Alone in a crowd: We can examine the concept of being alone
Who is alone?: We can explore the fear of abandonment and death
I’m dancing as fast as I can: We can see our habitual patterns of avoiding connecting with our inner depth
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Are You Using Transitions as a Meditation?
Do you find it tough transitioning from your working day back into your home life? Or going into work on Monday morning after a weekend with friends and family?
It’s a whole other shift of gears to transition into the energy of a retreat center.
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What is it Like Being Silent for Two Weeks?
It’s always strange being asked where I’ll be going for my two week Christmas holiday, because these past few years it’s always
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Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared To Do A Personal Retreat
Even someone who meditates is sometimes nervous about going on retreat. Yet, there is no replacement for this extended period of simply being with our arisings to see that they are merely patterns. They come and go, so long as we don’t hold on to them.
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