The Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center hosts 100-200 people each year for our Thanksgiving potluck and day-long celebration. The Thanksgiving celebration starts with a group meditation. Meditation is a perfect way to start a day focused on gratitude. It allows us to be present to the abundant, overflowing blessings in our lives. Not only that, meditation returns us to the place prior to thought and form, the “nothing”. Gabriel Cousens, a spiritual teacher of mine, teaches that the nothing is where the “something,” all that exists, comes from. On a day where our gratitude is usually associated with situations, people, things, and circumstances in the “something”, it is profound to touch in with the place prior to all that, to its source. “Everything comes from the Divine” and “everything the Divine does is for the best, for you” are profound teachings to meditate on for Thanksgiving.

This last week has held some fun community happenings at the Tree of Life. This last Friday was Gabriel Cousens’ 67th birthday. Or, as Gabriel likes to say in his very eternal kind of perspective, no one has birthdays, but our bodies have birthdays. Nonetheless, we held a meditation on Friday in honor of Gabriel’s birthday, and enjoyed a peach cobbler at the Tree of Life Cafe. Gabriel was in Japan, but here in spirit 😉

Something in my body has been shifting a great deal in the past 7 months or so. Primarily, my work with the Tree of Life involves my sitting down, and spending lots of time on a computer. Additionally, I have this blog to update, and my personal computer work with emails and such, which are all sitting activities. Prior to the Tree of Life, I have never had an office job. In high school, I coached a youth swim team, during which I was always standing up, walking around the deck, or I was in the water giving stroke and technique demonstrations. In college, I worked at a raw food restaurant and was also always standing and walking around.