Pink Cereus

My pink cereus is blooming. The flower is very similar, though much smaller, than a night-blooming cereus. And the pink cereus flower lasts for several days instead of just a few hours.

Notice how the mind compares one cereus to another, one person to another, one situation to another. While this comparison is very handy for categorizing--families of flowers, for instance--it is not so kind when we compare our meditation practice to someone else's or compare our yoga pose to someone else's. This tendency to compare hooks up with the Negativity Bias (The mind is like Velcro for the negative, and like Teflon for the positive.), and creates an icky stew of unworthiness and self-hatred.

Focus on the positive for 30 seconds. Let your eyes rest on a blooming flower. Relax. And smile.