Day 36 of the Feast
Dear One,

What a challenging time on our planet. I rarely watch the news because it is so disturbing. Instead, I keep on teaching peace. I pray. I meditate. I take inspired action. I try to remain peaceful because I know that peace is the way to garner the best perspective, to create a peaceful environment, and to access the wisdom and love that is inherent inside. It’s inside you too. And, believe it or not, it’s inside each one of us.

Sometimes in meditation, you are able to transcend whatever mental or emotional boundaries or limitations you are experiencing, whether you have anger, prejudice, resentment, or intolerance for a certain socioeconomic group, profession, political party, candidate, age group, religion, or people from another country. You connect to the deepest part of you, that part of you that knows that love wins. That part of you that knows that peace wins. That part of you that is love.

Meditation practice can cultivate and extend the feeling of peace; it connects us to the peace that exists, right here, right now, inside you. It's there even in the midst of sadness, grief, or overwhelm.

Then, when you come out of meditation, the contrast between the truth of this love and peace, and that of any interior intolerance you experience, is more pronounced. then you can take care of it, you can inquire into it and change your perspective.

Meditation will also help you to cultivate the strength to bear witness to what goes on in your life: not just the stuff you like, but all of it that you come across. And this will cultivate compassion, a compassion for all of life. Then as you stay present, love will call you into action. Love in action is compassion.

Albert Einstein once said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” 

All living creatures. I’m up for the challenge, are you?
Thank you for putting your attention on your spiritual practice. I during this time of deep practice. I am practicing with you.

Love, Sarah

Sarah McLean
Director, Feast for the Soul, Inc.
Sedona, Arizona
Meditation Teacher Highlight
Roger Gabriel was born in Liverpool, England and spent his formative years in the United Kingdom. He first learned meditation there in the early 1970s. It instantly became his passion and he soon trained to be a meditation teacher under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
 
After moving to the U.S., Roger studied Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of health care. In 1985, while helping to establish centers for Ayurveda and meditation, he met and became friends with Deepak Chopra. He has been assisting Deepak with training programs and has taught thousands of people to meditate; and helped to train hundreds of people to become teachers of meditation, Ayurveda, and yoga.

Roger has been studied with great teachers in India and the West, and he has traveled extensively in India. In 2006, Roger received his spiritual name Raghavanand from Shree Satuwa Baba Maharaji of Varanasi, India. Choose one of his meditations here
Spiritual Practice Tip
Sharon Salzberg is a best-selling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices for Westerners. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. She writes that meditation is sometimes described in this way:

Imagine you’re trying to split a huge piece of wood with a small axe. You hit that piece of wood ninety-nine times and nothing happens. Then you hit it the hundredth time, and it splits open. You might wonder, after that hundredth whack, What did I do differently that time? Did I hold the axe differently; did I stand differently? Why did it work the hundredth time and not the other ninety-nine? But, of course, we needed all those earlier attempts to weaken the fiber of the wood. It doesn’t feel very good when we’re only on hit number thirty-four or thirty-five; it seems as if we aren’t making any progress at all. But we are, and not only because of the mechanical act of banging on the wood and weakening its fiber.

What’s really transformative is our willingness to keep going, our openness to possibility, our patience, our effort, our humor, our growing self-knowledge, and the strength that we gain as we keep going. These intangible factors are the most vital to our success. In meditation practice, these elements are growing and deepening even when we’re sleepy, restless, bored, or anxious. They’re the qualities that move us toward transformation over time. They are what split open the wood, and the world.
Quick links
Facebook ‌ YouTube ‌