Category Archives: toexport

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How to achieve monkey mind | The Daily Stillness Today you get to find a quiet spot and read this Medium article by Sarah Buttenwieser. A 4 minute read how can you not have 4 minutes to invest in your well being? Well, it may be 10 after you do your task: select from the article and/or add to it and make your very own list on how to achieve monkey mind. You will smile and also remind yourself that you do already know ehow to achieve stillness – do the opposite of one item in your list each day! Tell us what is in your list?

The linked article gave me a good few smiles.

  • Wake up in the middle of the night, worry about lack of sleep.

  • Check blood pressure, wondering what effect checking blood pressure has on blood pressure.
  • Bookmark and tag articles to learn from, reorganise said bookmarks.
  • Fill your devices with PDFs on learning JavaScript. Never read them but think about them often.
  • Automate things don’t look at end result. Occasionally recall you have automated something.
  • Distract yourself by making lists.

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View from Ben Chaluim. Green hills and a cloudy sky.

My wish, my encouragement is just taking these ten second breaks. OK. You know. You know I can’t carve out a regular meditation practice every day and every morning, but ten seconds? Can you carve out ten seconds? And just do it, you know. You know when you’re going to work or something, you come
downstairs and you go to open the door. You stop. Particularly in doorways and other thresholds where the tendency is to rush through… what is happening to my feet, shoulders back, ten seconds, breathing out. Where am I? How am I? Where am I going? There does not even really have to be an answer, it’s just this touching the earth. Touching the earth.

Ajahn Sucitto

I guess this exercise is supposed to help with a busy working life, I tried it today far from work off in the hills.

Often when walking alone in the quite of the hills, I think over work, wonder about ideas, remember past sadness and even tell my self stories about walking.

This exercise, seems to physically open my view, expand the horizons and create quiet.

The sensation fades pretty quickly too but I’ll repeat the exercise in different places and see what happens. If it works when I am puffing up a slope it might work in the middle of town or work.

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On a walk today, and when I reached the reservoir I though about:

Go outside and walk in the direction that is the quietest. Continue until you’re in the quietest place possible. Take a moment to absorb it.

from: Follow the quiet | The Daily Stillness

still waters

 A sheep started bawling, not so quietly and I moved into the larch to take the moment.

 

How loud the burn,

Birds snatch my eyes, swallows skim the water and a robin bobs in a lower branch.

As I listen bird song quiets the water, as I focus on one song the others fade.

A baby wren trills along a branch, shouting for food.

The first midge bite moves me on, out of the trees and into the wind.

 

 

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I’ve been taking a day a week off work this summer to go hillwalking. Yesterday I didn’t really feel great so decided to give it a miss. After a morning looking at screens I changed my mind and though to go for a short walk in the Kilpatrick hills.

 

This is 15 minutes drive from where I live, just about countryside and no more, but a great place for a walk.

There is a metalled road all the way to Loch Humphrey from Old Kilpatrick closed to traffic. It is a favourite walk for lots of folks.

I’d not been for a couple of weeks setting off from the Gas Works things had changed, the hedge had a Presbyterian short back and sides, brambles are is flower and meadowsweet was blooming.

Up the path I usual cut up a field leaving the road, today the grass had shot up to about a foot and a half high wild flowers everywhere:

The lesser spotted orchids, mostly gone, but there was:

Buttercups, hawksbeard, bedstraw, selfheal, clover, eyebright and lots more. Ringlet and Small Heath butterflies all over the place. I spent a while trying to catch slo-mo videos on my phone. I wonder if a selfie-stick would help?

Through the few trees and the edge of the moor is fringed with purple from the bell heather, lots of Tormentil too. Once on the moor common heather took over, not in flower yet, but there were patches of purple, yellow and white from the bell, bedstraw and tormentil everywhere.Â

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I’ve been finding camera+ on the phone pretty good for ‘macro’ photos.Â

sexton beetle

 

I was hoping to see some ravens or even a peregrine. Ravens are common and I’ve seem a few peregrines recently, one close in hot pursuit of a kestrel. Caught a quick glimpse of ravens and heard some nice croaking but no peregrines. I did see a nice kestrel hovering at my eye level.

Slacks Trig Point

I usually rejoin the Loch Humphrey path but today went round the moor to the Slacks trig point, before heading back down. Away from the road I didn’t meet anyone else, a beautiful couple of hours.