Simple. Powerful. Links.

The smell of lemons. The sunset over the city, seen from our living room window. The feeling of petting a cat. The colors of plums. My husband’s face when he walks through the door at the end of the day.
 
I call them links – immediate, finite connectors back to our souls —there for us if we are available and paying attention. Links are the sensory experiences of beauty, wonder, and vitality that grace our lives moment to moment. They are often every day things, and they are present even in the most difficult of circumstances. When we mourn, when we struggle, when we face oppression or tragedy, links will continue to be available to us, to lift and transport and ground us all at once.
 
Links make life more gorgeous, pleasurable and vivid. Links give us a kind of homecoming to all the things we want to come home to – the beauty and abundance of the life, the simple facts of our breath and our bodies. They give us access to the peace and perfection of the present moment.
 
This week, notice the links that are available to you in your life. Begin a list. Go for at least a hundred. I promise you; it will be very easy once you start. Note those that show up in your life this week, as well as some of your favorite links from all time.
 
Here are a few of mine: the smell of chamomile tea, babies’ shining eyes, curling up with a book and blanket, the feeling of tree pose in yoga, when a great idea or a solution to a problem comes to me while doing nothing, the feeling in our living room after everyone’s gone home from a dinner party at our house and we know they had a great time, the quality and intensity of the silence in the air early in the morning
 
Answer three questions about your links:
 
1) What is the impact of my links on me, when I fully experience them?
 
2) How can I notice them more, and get more juice from the links that already exist in my life? (For example, I could slow down and take a breath at the grocery store and just notice the beautiful produce.)
 
3) How can I increase the amount and frequency of links in my life? (I could buy flowers for myself on occasion.)
 
When links show up in your life, just for that moment, join them fully, be with them and in them fully. Rest in the momentary pause that reveals beauty, enoughness, balance and peace.
 
Let me know what you discover.
 
Love,
 
Tara