A reflective life means hitting the pause button from time to time. Today marks the start of Holy Week in the Western tradition, the most important week in terms of giving meaning to life.
Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius, born 551 B.C.
One should say before sleeping,
“I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved had sat upon my knees and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved.
Everything that has been shall be again.”
W.B. Yeats
Letting go of all the theories from the past frees us to go with how it is actually unfolding
Throw away the light, the definitions,
and say of what you see in the dark
Wallace Stevens
Your job may change, your relationships may change, your body may change, your beliefs may change, your desires may change, your ideas about your role in the world may change, but the essence of who you are is the continuity of awareness that has no beginning or end. Your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, goals, and experiences may come and go, but the one who having the experiences – the experiencer – remains.
Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga
Meditation is the natural process of becoming familiar with an object by repeatedly placing our minds upon it. Whatever we’re doing, we always have a view; we’re always placing our mind on one object or another. For example, when we get up in the morning and we’re anxious about something, anxiety becomes our view for the day: “What about me? When will I get what I want?” The object of our meditation is “me.”
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Today is the Spring Equinox – from the Latin “equal night”, when there is equal light and dark in our day – marking the beginning of Spring for countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
We, the older ones,
Call it Spring,
And we have been through it
Many times.
But there is still nothing
Like the children bringing home
Such happiness
In their small hands.
Mary Oliver, Children, It’s Spring
Mindfulbalance 