It hasn't been easy but by doing my best to follow a daily routine. Going to work when I must & making sure I set time aside to meditate, clear my mind & relax.
What a timely released of this vlog Ven Nick. My material life and spiritual life is extremely off balance right now, especially towards the end of 2021. With covid cases on the rise again, people are getting haywire 🙄🤪 👽 Work has been super stressful. I try my best before bedtime to meditate even for 5 min. That way I don't lose my sanity. Thank you for bringing me back to earth 🌎 ✌🏻
What you said about being gentle with yourself while staying consistent in building a spiritual practice really resonates with me. When I tried to push myself to do long meditations, journal, etc., it was so hard. When you think of your new practice as a seed-starting out tiny and growing slowly as you nurture it-it helps you to establish a healthy and rewarding spiritual life. There’s nothing wrong with you when you get fatigued doing too much, you are just expecting a flourishing tree full of apples when you need to simply plant the seed, water it, and wait patiently for the fruit to appear. When you approach your spiritual discipline in this way, you suddenly look back in grateful surprise at how much you’ve grown, organically and authentically. Thank you, and have a healthy and prosperous 2022, everyone! ❤️
I started practicing meditation 🧘🏽♀️ over 14 yrs ago in the morning at4:30am and before going to bed at 9:45 pm and it has changed me in ways I can’t begin to explain I’ve learned not to worry and let go off everything that doesn’t serve me
The ambient sounds in the background were an especially good example that there's no need to wait for the perfect moment... just get started! Thank you for a beautiful and practical message for the new year!
I work full time helping treat people with cancer, and have 3 years old boy at home. Hard to find a balance but I have a rule to meditate 🧘♂️ 3 time per week and I have only 10 minutes for this but I appreciate what I have now. There will be a time when I will have more time for longer meditation:) I also every time when I can - I hike in our beautiful mountains to be with nature:) sometimes I feel like I have not enough time to be outside. Thank you for sharing wonderful videos ! 😊
Rejoice in the beautiful work you are doing. It's very important and yes just do what you can. Like you said, the meditation is key so please keep that up. Sending you my regards from Thailand 😊
Ven Nick, recently a severed flood hit many parts of my country ,in a few minutes water rise to the roof of houses and there was no time to save their belongings, things that were accumulate over years of hard work were destroy. After this tragedy I learn a humble lesson , I realized that nothing is permanent and all the material wealth Iwas craving for so many years was meaningless. Sometimes I wonder why divine intervention did not happen that day , I mean most peoples will pray to their gods in their hour of needs.
I’m a “I’ll get to it later gal” which means I don’t do half of what I plan. And it’s usually the most important things: exercise, practice, journaling etc. I will assign times for what is.
Thank you for your wisdom. I am at present trying to gain my balance in life that was lost in 2021. Being gentle with yourself l feel is the answer right now but to do something rather than nothing now matter how small is a start.
This video came at a perfect time. It was very helpful. Whenever I feel off or not centered I always put on your videos and I get back on track. Thank you for your knowledge and posting these videos. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thank you for sharing your beautiful knowledge and experience. My spirit agrees with your teaching and is willing, but my body is weak and lacks discipline, commitment and consistency. Please provide information on a monastery for women.
🙏 Thank you. 💚 I’m minutes away from heading back to my classroom to prepare for my students’ return from break. I asked my spirit guides last night to lead me to help with balancing it all - development of the sweet humans I share space with and my sanity mostly. I also asked for help with my own spiritual development. And then RU-vid sent me your video. Thank you for filling my heart and meddlesome-mind with hope, happiness and the exact ideas I needed. 💚💚💚 (My spirit guides kind of rock!!😃🥰🥰🥰)
Material vs Spiritual - love how simply you stated the goals for both: Survival & Purity. And keeping a balance in the energy we use for both goals and be aware that this very individual balance will change over a lifetime because life is constant change, constant adaptation, constant evolvement - always keep balancing :)
Ven. Nick, thank you, thank you, thank you! I want to let you know that watching this video has been my best start to 2022. I have always struggled with "balance" between the two worlds. Your warm words filled with hope, clarity and kindness is immensely encouraging. Words fail to convey how helpful this is to me! Sending you love and hugs with tears of gratitude.
Perfect timing for this video. My balance went out of the window in 2021 and I have been quite concerned about it. Just started, in the past week, a few ways to restore balance.
I have really struggled with balancing these to different lifes, so this video was really helpfull. I really feel like I have to fight (everyday), not depending on the material world to fulfill me. It can be so hard to convince yourself, that this is just your ego, that never will get satisfied. But then there are those beautiful moments, where your soul shines trough all the layers of betrayal, and you can be fully present and life seems so simply and authentic. Those moments, where you all of the sudden find meaning in a very lonely world. Balance will be my mantra for 2022. I'm sending everyone so much love. I hope that you find truth within yourself. I hope that you will remind yourself, that you are so worthy of good things. You are worthy of peace, love and abundance. You are worthy in this very moment.
Wonderful lesson! I am struggeling to balance my material and spiritual life and your message gave me some clarity. Blessings to you and all the best for your life
I do struggle with balancing material vs spiritual. Financial stability worries me these days. I need to continue to be simple. Thank you for your sharing 🙏🏻
Your calm and helpful words are now an important part of my spiritual and mental routine, together with yoga, meditations and walks outside in nature. Thank you for all you share with us, Nick 🌸
Dear Nick, thank you for your wise words and your refreshing perspective onto life. The balance and structure you are talking about is exactly what I am trying to establish in my daily life. I found that meditation is a real blessing, but in the last weeks of my meditation practice a for my daily life unsustainable problem occured, which made it impossible for me to continue with my practice. Since I know this problem from various past attempts at developing a meditation routine, I no longer just want to drop meditation but try to find a way to follow through. I have talked to many people, but no one really understood what I am talking about, so perhaps you can help me understand a little more with what is going on. So here is my little meditation story: For the last six months I meditated for 10 minutes every morning after taking a cold shower. Therefore I sat down in a cross-legged position and counted my first 25 breaths and for the rest of the time I just observed the breath in my body. Due to being too goaloriented regarding meditation in the past, this time I was, just as you described, satisfied with the fact that I meditated every day, despite the outcome. During my mdeditation sessions I felt quite well and relaxed and open to the experience. But in the last weeks directly after my meditations there occured an ever stronger feeling of thightness in my chest, where I get the feeling that I can't breath in fully into my chest. As a consequence my nervous system ramps up and I feel that my inner energy is stuck at several points within my body. Other consequences are an lower overall energy level, an increase in compulsive behaviour (more eating) and a greater restraint when interacting with other people. After several hours the tension relieved and a euphoric feeling and relaxation occured. Since the intensity of these symptoms depends on my meditation time, I have tried to adapt my meditation time, but even after reducing each meditation to just 2 breaths (this feels almost like classical conditioning) I still felt these symptoms for most of my day, which made it impossible to arrange with my work as a teacher and life in general. Despite the negative effects of my meditation practice, I would love to continue, since there are many wonderful things that are cultivated by it and influence my life in a positive way, but right now I feel like I have to drop it again. I know this comment is quite long and maybe too much to ask, but perhaps you heard of something similar or you know a strategy on how to tackle this hurdle. Nevertheless, I want to say thank you very much for your well put and thought out videos. I recently came accross your channel and I like it very much! Thank you and have a wonderful 2022! Best wishes!
Thank you Nick, great job as usual. The guard rail metaphor is wonderful. I will add it to my kit in working with newcomers I sponsor, very helpful. As always, stay safe my friend!
Thank you ven. Nick for your advices, sharings, teachings. You are an anchor for us, lay people. Regularly to listen to your spiritual teachings helps us to practice regularly, to set a routine. This video about material life vs spiritual life shows one the most difficult task for lay people. Again thank you and happy new year to you and everybody your followers! 🙏 Catherine from Switzerland
Br. Nick, Thank you so much for sharing small and practical ways to balance modern day and spiritual life. The message is clear, concise, and eloquently communicated. Staying grounded will certainly help reduce suffering during life’s ups and downs. With much gratitude
Another beautiful, insightful, and personal video. Thank you Nick! My nine year old daughter and I have started taking a few minutes at the end of the day to reflect on everything we are grateful for, plus one thing we can do better tomorrow. The results are truly eye-opening! Peace and love from Toronto to you and everyone!
Thank you once again, Venerable Nick. A lovely insight into the monastic life and how one cannot just “escape” the material and thought processing life by entering a monastic life. We are built to think and to fight our thought processes is futile.
Good morning Nick I really appreciate your video to keep myself first like you said be gentle with me thank so much little by little is helping me to change have a blessing day 😊
Thank you so much Nick💎Life Empowering Gems received at the right time . Appreciate your kindness and caring teaching for all who want to better oneself. Such a reassurance that one can have grounding to gain strength and most importantly To Be Gentle and Kind To Oneself💛As I began to listen and continued to listen the weight on my shoulders began to vanish as I realized Hey I Got This🙂✨2022✨🎁received such a Joy to see your video and the landscape so Beautiful ✨
8:30 is my lockdown mood... Always. Constant feeling right here. Being bored by life. The exhaustion of it all. Journaling and meditation has helped. And you are so right in that sense. The practice and routine becomes wonderful. But, it is hard to stay motivated when you are struggling. Isolation and the loneliness is getting to me constantly. How do you fight that or get past it?
Just know that in this moment, that is normal. Just honor that moment and allow it to pass. Also having a spiritual friend and community can be helpful also 😊
Happy New Year Nick and everyone! I'm am so happy right now. I've come so far since last year when I was under so much anxiety I was in tears. Today, as the pandemic rages once again, I am at peace inside. I am going to hit the road this spring, and tour all 50 US states starting in Florida visiting recording studios, music stores, museums, and national parks and scenic places I've never had the time to visit. AND!!! I will be visiting any Buddhist monestaries I passby. I intend to continue to work on my meditation, and if they want, put me to work with chores!!! lol. I'd love that. Cheers and thank you again. 2022 will be a beautiful year. Peace.
I am trying exactly to too this since about 2 weeks. To keep the Routine up, I send my girlfriend bevor I go to bed, a text message. Of course I like to tell her, that I made it 🤗. Thank you so much for this Video. It is a great help to me still. Gabriela
Thank you Nick for sharing your knowledge and experience. It's so easy to get out of balance in your day-to-day life. Your words reminded me about the need to ground yourself every day. Will give it a go. Thank you again! Happy New Year!
My New Years resolution for more balance is to be consistent with exercise, yoga and meditation, 11 years of Vegan lifestyle, I can accomplish my goal..Thank you for knowledgeable advise, Namaste
I’ve allowed my meditation practice to slip recently and have noticed the negative impact this has had on me. I bought your book and did the spiritual detox on New Year’s Day to set a new intention. Thank you for your videos (which I shall get back in to watching) and the wisdom that you share 🙏🏼
Nick Thank you for this .This is such a selfless act what you are doing.You have touched my spirit and awakened me forever.I feel at peace when I hear your words.Your vedios keep me grounded make me realize from time to time my purpose of life.I am forever grateful to you for this.
Greetings Nick I feel humble and blessed when I watch your channel 🙏 Please keep on uploading more videos Blessing to you & everyone there at the retreat 🙂
Happy New Year Nick! Thank you for this video. Your videos are always helpful and encouraging! I will try to be more grounded and not be so materialistic this year. Thank you so much!🙏
Thank You Nick. This is a question lingering on my mind in recent years. I was looking for a structure to incorporate spiritual life amidst material life. This video would support me to accomplish that.
Thanks LP Nick. Great ideas and hints to ponder about. But one thing you might not be well familiar with is that living outside a monastery and keeping to a spiritual life is not that easy. Lots of differences, and the biggest one which is almost irreplaceable is community.
Love this video for the start of the new year. My goal for this year is to continue to have and maintain balance. I have some tried and tested ‘gutter guards’ in place to assist me with this. The gutter guards are a wonderful idea and if you can find some of your own to implement it’s a big help in staying grounded and present. Thanks once again for your invaluable insights Ven. Nick. ☺️🙏🏻
I just started following your videos a few days ago and just subscribed! I love listening to you speak. You have such a calming voice. And I love learning about how to adapt the practices you live by and place value in. I'm in the midst of a spiritual reckoning (so to speak). I am re-evaluating what I want out of my life as a person who is: living with chronic illness and disability; working in the medical field (a total of 24 years), having been extremely taxed over the past two years by the pandemic; and seeking greater balance, authenticity, self-awareness, minimalism, self-reflection, and connection to spirit. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I look forward to learning more from you!
Thank you so much for this message! I struggle with balancing my spiritual “side” with my material “side”. They are not sides but all one, and I forget to apply that in my life often. In the morning I will meditate, do puja, and journal a bit, but go on to live the day out in a way that does not align with my spiritual self. It is hard.
Thank you for your words Nick. It’s always interesting to hear your insights and consider how we can adapt them to our own lives. Peace to you and those amongst you.
How do you know there is a spiritual world? It seems my logical know-it-all brain can't understand the whole concept of spirits / souls and I would like to understand. Thanks for your videos =)
Thank you so much for such wisdom words Im so lost everyday that how and what I'm living for why the purpose ........how can I make myself live a life which I can asure myself to stay spritual and grounded thanks for showing the path I'm thankful to you 🙇
