Noticing the Pleasures in our Lives

"Notice what gives you pleasure", someone said to me recently. 

It is quite easy to be aware of our environment, what is happening around us, but often we forget to see the impact it has on us, our bodies and our emotions, not realising, perhaps, that to do so heightens the experience and makes us more the participant rather than just the observer. So, I have been practising.

Since moving here, every day, before I prepare for work and to write my daily blog, I pause to look out of my office window to watch the birds, the mountains, the river, the trees and the sky with appreciation for the beauty before me and my good fortune in living in this wonderful sacred place. Today leaves are tumbling around as the wind gusts, flocks of fieldfares are flying through the trees in search of berries and the autumn colours of the turning trees are breathtaking. As I look before me, remembering my new practice, I can feel how my heart is responding as I experience this pleasure.

It is often the little things which give us pleasure, isn't it? It may be the contentment of sharing a cup of tea with a good friend, listening to a bird sing, having a warm bath after a cold journey home, helping your child with his homework. If we are able to notice when it happens as it happens, to feel and experience consciously, those simple but special times will be all the more precious, and our lives truly enriched.