Day 115/366 days Towards Self-Mastery. Mood: slow and gentle
Our sense, the 5 we most commonly speak about, have both a physical role and a more subtle role.
Take our sense of smell, it took the limelight yesterday. We physically smell fragrant scents and offensive odours, and we also smell a rat when someone is being untruthful. We sniff around if we are trying to find out information.
Taste of course, is very similar. We have taste buds for a range of delicious and pungent flavours and as I have often been scolded, a champagne taste on a beer budget. Taste is also about touch. Do you recall that babies have a tendency to put everything into their mouth to explore them. Taste and touch is exquisitely sensitive in your mouth.
Explore your sense of taste.
Try a range of flavours and textures today.
Sarah suggests exploring deeply into your spice cupboard to see what's hiding there.
Quite often in the mornings as I walk around my garden I take a leaf from the edible herbs, wrap them together and enjoy a fresh, mini, though pungent salad. Basil, mint, pineapple sage, gotu kola, shiso, dandelion, nasturtium. I'm pretty sure there's a whole lot more nutrition in those leaves than in the mini-spinach leaves I get from the supermarket.
Ayurvedic spices, mustard, panch porhan, garum masala, tumeric and ginger from my garden, pipali, coriander and cumin are favourites for everyday to enhance my digestion and add a delectable taste to my cooking and scent to my kitchen.
There's a selection of native herbs that delight the senses and challenge my cooking skills. And of course my lifelong companions from my Italian heritage, the dried remnants of basil, parsley, oregano and rosemary should my garden fail to product the fresh and lively varieties.
There's one more discovery that comes to mind. When I am truly present to my cooking, my food preparation, stirring in my love as well as my spices, my food tastes absolutely delicious. At this time of isolation, when things have slowed down, there's time to prepare my food with soul.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.