William Blake wrote: “I dare not pretend to be any other than the Secretary; the Authors are in Eternity.” Maybe he was talking about art, but his words apply to our lives and personal stories. We act on the dictates of fate and do our best to create the life that has been mysteriously ordained for us. Like the artist, we listen to the muse and live by inspiration, experiment, and improvisation. So, in the end, we realize our authority doesn’t really belong to us after all. It comes from within — and yet it’s also mysteriously deep and “other.” It’s a complicated business, authoring our lives. If we can do it, we can find deep joy in our capacity to create something, someone, new. But we may have to insist on our authority, because someone will always appear who wants that enjoyment for himself — a parent, a spouse, a business partner, a spiritual teacher. Remind this person of Blake’s insight: the authors are in eternity. You and I — our job is to listen.
Thomas Moore, Are You the Author of Your Life’s Story?
The reason why silence is so disturbing to us [is this]: As soon as we begin to become silent, we experience the relativity of our ordinary everyday mind. With this mind we measure our space and time coordinates, we calculate probabilities and count up our mistakes and successes. It is so useful and familiar a state of mind that we easily think it is all there is to us: our whole mind, our real selves, our full meaning.
When we learn to be where we are, we gain perspective on life. Yesterday loses its hold on us and tomorrow loses its allure. Where we are becomes the ground of our salvation, the reason for our joy and the acme of our salvation…..Mindfulness calms the storms of life and gives them meaning. [It] makes the present, present and gives us back the energy that endless worry and countless calculation drain. It concentrates what has become scattered and brings us home to ourselves. 
Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
We can only make one choice. Throughout our lives, we do only one thing – again and again, moment by moment, year by year. It is how we live our days, and it is how we shape our lives. The choice is this: what is the next right thing for us to do? Where, in this moment, shall we choose to place our time and attention? Do we stay or move, speak or keep silent, attend to this person, that task, move in this or that direction? …Our choices are small, quiet, intimate things that flow from us as water from a mountain spring, simple, endless, each thimble of water tumbling into the next, creating a small stream that somehow…inevitably, finds its way down the mountain to the sea.
Mindfulbalance 