There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we’re stuck in our thoughts. We’re out of touch with the open space that is always right here.
Charlotto Joko Beck, Nothing Special
Unconditional love does not require a passive acceptance of whatever happens in the name of love. Rather, in the real spaces of our daily relationships, it means maintaining a commitment that no condition will keep us from bringing all of who we are to each other honestly.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
photo aallen
I first heard the phrase “just start over” from Sharon Salzburg….who told us about her own struggle with learning to meditate – how she would become lost, distracted, and discouraged and would constantly second-guess herself and her teachers. Gradually she learned to pay no attention to the mental and emotional chatter and to just start over by meditating on her breath as she had been instructed. “Just start over” became her mantra, which she now teaches to her students.
As you know if you’ve ever tried to meditate, the mind is constantly being pulled away from its object of concentration by bodily sensations and mental activity, causing you to lose awareness of the present moment. In this same way, when strong feelings arise during your daily life, you get swept up in the story they create. You lose the awareness that enables you respond skillfully to events and that gives you peace of mind in the face of difficulty….. You have the mistaken notion that you must know why you have a problem and must get rid of it before you can act in a more self-empowering manner. “Starting-over” practice takes a different approach. It switches your focus away from dwelling on those characteristics that limit you and redirects it toward recognizing your strengths from which you can realize your potential…. In so doing, you free yourself from your judging mind that thinks it can control results and creates the grandiose expectation that you can do more than you can do in the present moment. You become a more effective person by simply learning to use your time and energy to do what you can do right now.
Phillip Moffitt
photo serge melkei
“Ain’t you thinkin’ what’s it gonna be like when we get there? Ain’t you scared it won’t be nice like we thought?”
“No”, she said quickly. “No, I ain’t. You can’t do that. I can’t do that. It’s too much – livin’ too many lives.
Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes, it’ll on’y be one”.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
If your relationship to the present moment is not right,
nothing can ever be right in the future –
because when the future comes,
it’s the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle
If I had my life to live over again,
I would ask that not a thing be changed,
but that my eyes be opened wider.
Jules Reynard, French Author, 1864 – 1910
