As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
You have to learn to get up from the table
when love is no longer being served.
Nina Simone
photo mrfinch
Here is one simple exercise to help us discover what we love. Looks to see where we give our time and attention. Attention is the physical manifestation of love. If I keep pushing my children away when they want me to play with them, they do not feel loved. I may have love in my heart; I may feel joy when I see them, and want only the best for them. But they will feel my love only when I turn around and give them my undivided attention. Through my attention, they experience my love. Attention is a tangible measure of love. Whatever receives our time and attention becomes the center of gravity, the focus of our life. This is what we do with what we love: We allow it to become our center.
Wayne Muller, How then Shall We live: Four Simple Questions that Reveal the Beauty and Meaning of Our Lives
photo joao pimentel ferreira
What shuts down the heart more than anything is not letting ourselves have our own experience, but instead judging it, criticizing it, or trying to make it different from what it is. We often imagine there is something wrong with us if we feel angry, needy, dependent, lonely, confused, sad, or scared. We place conditions on ourselves and our experience: “If I feel like this, there must be something wrong with me. . . . I can only accept myself if my experience conforms to my standard of how I should be“. Psychological work, when practiced in a larger spiritual context, can help people discover that it is possible to be unconditional with themselves — to welcome their experience and hold it with understanding and compassion, whether or not they like it at any given moment.
John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening
photo Sheila Sund
We often prefer talking about something, rather than actually doing it, and the mind continually produces good ways of running away from the present moment:
Speech is born out of longing, true description from the real taste
The one who tastes, knows,
The one who explains, lies
Rābiʿah al-Baṣrī, c 713 – 801 AD, Sufi poet and mystic
photo alex yosifov
Tibetan monks frequently practice a moment of mindfulness each and every time they walk through a door. Sometimes they do this by remembering to recite a certain verse or mantra as they do so. Try this yourself for a day. Every time you walk through a door, pause, take a moment, breathe in and out. Bring yourself back to the moment. Then cross the threshold and walk on.
Lama Surya Das, Awakening to the Sacred: Creating a Spiritual Life from Scratch
photo joanbanjo
