Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, I'm going to invite you to

take a moment to contemplate the

miracle of life all around us.

And as we go about, you know, our daily

life, we spend a lot of time busy and

distracted with all of our concerns.

We're often so focused on our problems

and our plans and our life story that we

really rarely pause to ponder the bigger

picture and the fact that we are part of

a living, unfolding, mysterious universe.

But when we do take a moment to become

aware of the beauty and the boundlessness

of the universe, we're often left

with a feeling of awe and wonder.

It humbles us and yet it also reminds

us that we are a part of something

so much larger than ourselves.

Seeing our own life as part of this

much bigger picture can be a wonderful

thing to contemplate because it helps

us see our worries, our fears, and our

desires from a much larger perspective.

So often we wake up in the morning and

we just kind of go through the motions.

But today I invite you to pause here with

me for a moment and remember that right

now, the entire cosmos is unfolding in

ways almost too incredible to believe.

On the micro scale, subatomic particles

that provide almost all the massive

ordinary matter are flickering into and

out of existence at lightning speed.

Now it's a mystery where they go

when they go and how they come back.

But they are what we are made

of, what everything's made of.

And you're sitting here right now, held

steady by the force of gravity on a

planet that is hurtling around the sun

at something like 65,000 miles per hour.

Our sun that sustains all life

on this planet is just one of

hundreds of trillions of stars

that exist in billions of galaxies.

Research now suggests that we may also

be only in one of potentially millions

of universes, that were part of a

multiverse, a huge interconnected web

of life unfolding moment by moment.

Think of all the miraculous ways

that life is unfolding right now.

Your heart is beating, your lungs

are breathing and all the animals on

this earth are sharing that together.

We're all breathing together.

Food is growing in the fields.

Rain is evaporating and then flowing

back down in cycle after cycle

while the blood is rushing through

our veins, nourishing our body.

Planets are spinning.

Stars are being born while

others are exploding.

Time is moving.

The universe is expanding.

And perhaps the greatest

mystery of all, we're conscious.

We're able to experience what it is to

be alive in the midst of all of this.

The miraculousness of all of

this triggers, such a sense of

wonder that it's almost too deep

and profound to put into words.

So perhaps every now and then today,

you could pause again, take a deep

breath and pan out to remember the

miracle and the mystery of existence

all around you, and then just let the

appropriate awe set into your bones.

Wishing you a wonderful

day of practice with this.

And as always, thank you for your

practice and your presence here with us.

And let's settle in now

for today's meditation.