1 Stop Hello and welcome back to a week of peace and day four,
Apple.
Let's begin as we always do with step one.
Notice,
Just notice how you're feeling.
Move your focus from up in your head down into your heart to your emotional center and just hold the question,
How am I today?
And see what comes back and just notice the open,
Spacious noticing.
And now let's move to step two.
Breathe.
Bring your focus now to your breath.
Notice how it moves in and out.
Notice its path all the way in through your nose or mouth,
Down,
Down into your heart and trace your exhale all the way out.
And start to tune your breath's natural rhythm.
And now let's weave together the rhythm of your breath and the rhythm of your heart.
They are old friends,
Greeting each other,
Creating that space of peace and warmth for you to drop into now.
So just be here for a moment,
Breathing and being.
And now let's move to step three.
Activate.
Our modern lives are so dominated by ideas of lack and scarcity.
We all seem to be running,
Striving and surviving.
And it's hard to escape the mindset that goes with that.
We all have bills to pay,
Responsibilities to meet,
And these things are a big factor in our daily stress levels.
But for the next few minutes,
I really want you to put those concerns aside and just consider an apple seed.
When you bite into an apple and find a pip in it,
You might spit it out because they taste really quite bitter.
And normally we wouldn't give it a second thought.
But that one pip,
If it falls into soil on common land,
Will grow into a plant.
And in time,
That plant becomes a tree.
A tree from which hundreds of thousands of apples will grow.
And anyone can go and pick an apple from that tree.
It doesn't insist on money or credit cards in exchange for its apples.
It doesn't offer its apples for something from you.
And it doesn't make a stockpile of its apples to create a market.
That tree is unconditionally generous.
It makes no discrimination about who can have the apples,
Whether you are human or animal,
Bird or insect,
Whoever or whatever you are.
You can help yourself to an apple.
And this lesson in unconditional generosity and peace is all around us in nature.
If we just open our eyes and look,
A rose gives up its bloom and beauty for anyone who looks on it.
The sun shines on all of us,
Just the same.
Smile when you think of this.
And now let's move to step four.
To peace beam is to wish unconditionally and from the very deepest part of your being unrestricted good for yourself and others.
It is the basic building block of peace.
Each peace beam is like an apple from the apple tree.
Every time you do this,
It is an act of unconditional generosity,
A sort of radical kindness that is also in our deepest nature.
So be your natural self now and beam out this wish for unrestricted good for everyone and everything around you.
And to anchor your practice today,
Write down the words radical kindness on a note and stick it somewhere that you can see it as a reminder of what you are capable of.
Thank you for listening and have a beautiful day.
