Elisa's Green Scene

Cooking with love

All to often in today's busy world, we tend to eat on the run and slap together meals in the shortest possible time.  When prepared with care and attention, food can provide emotional as well as physical sustenance to those who eat it.  Before you begin cooking, ritually wash and bless your hands, and clear your mind with three deep breaths.  As you prepare the meal, keep in mind the image of those you are feeding, and visualize love passing outward from your heart, along your arms and into the food.  Serve it with due ceremony.

Behind the masks

Throughout our lives we perform various social roles.  If we're not careful we can find ourselves identifying too closely with a particular role, which then becomes limiting. What are the roles you currently associate with?  Visualize yourself in each of these roles.  What masks and manners do you adopt?  What lies behind these masks?  Who are you really?

Evergreen love

Meditate on the evergreen tree as a symbol for the constancy of your love.  Visualize an evergreen standing in the midst of a forest of deciduous trees. As autumn arrives, watch the other leaves lose their leaves, while the evergreen remains green.  Practise the meditation to help sustain the love in your relationship through good times and bad.

Finding the core of light

We often find ourselves complying with the will of others against our own wishes, because we fear the rejection that might result if we fail to cooperate.  However, in doing so we betray ourselves, thereby further damaging our self-esteem. Whenever you feel subject to such external pressures, close your eyes and visualize a core of golden light running from your feet, through your body and out through the top of your head.  Experience the light as a source of strength, radiating though every fibre of your being.

Travel light

The Buddha said that on life's journey some gather wisdom, some gather stones and some gather nothing.  To gather wisdom one must follow your own path.  If you rely solely on wise teachers, their wisdom may weigh you down, like stones in your pockets, and impede your way.

The diamond meditation

Like a diamond the spirit has many facets, which radiate light into the world.  Each facet is an essential quality - for example, love, peace, compassion, acceptance and patience.  During the course of a week, choose one essential quality each morning and meditate upon it, allowing it to shape your consciousness.  Each evening reflect on how that facet of your spirit expressed itself during the day.

Tap your spiritual wisdom

The purple, "third eye" chakra (also called ajna, meaning "inner eye") is located in the middle of the forehead, just above the eyebrows.  It is the center for spiritual vision and rules our intellectual thought processes.  Meditate on this energy center by visualizing a purple sphere spinning in the middle of your forehead.  This will sharpen your mind and strengthen your connection to the wisdom of the cosmos.