Notice how much of the day you hold tightly to your fears, especially the fear of the loss of control. All of our “what if” thinking falls into this category: “What if I don’t do it right?” “What if it’s painful?” “What if I look bad?” These thoughts are based on wanting to control some imagined future more than on what’s happening now. It’s crucial to see and to label them with the question: “What is my most believed thought right now?”
Ezra Bayda
A phrase that dominates much of the self-help jargon of our society is “take control of your life.” To be in control of one’s destiny, job, or finances is an unquestionable moral value today. It even sounds mature and spiritual. On a practical level it is true, but not on the big level. Our bodies, our souls, and especially our failures, teach us this as we get older. We are clearly not in control. It is amazing that we have to assert the obvious. This is not a negative discovery but, in fact, the exact opposite. It is a thrilling discovery of one’s fate, divine providence, being led, being used, one’s life having an inner purpose, being guided, having a sense of personal vocation, and owning one’s destiny as a gift from God. Learning that you are not in control situates you correctly in the universe. You cannot understand the joy and release unless you have been there.
Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return
How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
It is the imperative in the mind that this moment somehow be different, that causes suffering. Peace is possible, here and now, in the middle of the world, in the middle of a life, in the middle of a body, in the middle of however you are and however the world is. Change may or may not happen in a way that we like. But the mind has a capability of saying “It’s like this, and I can manage it”, without creating extra difficulty. There is a path to peace. The path is a doable, cultivable skill of awareness in the mind.
Sylvia Boorstein, Greet this moment as a Friend
Today is Bloomsday, the day that James Joyce set for his novel Ulysses, a story of a journey across the city of Dublin, based on the wanderings of Ulysses sailing home after the Battle of Troy. It reflects the ancient theme of life as a journey, of wisdom gained as we go along, of being blown off course and reaching a destination through paths not expected. It is the same for us: every day of our lives, winds blow and shift our direction. Some take us along with joy. Others throw us off-balance for a while, and there are winds that can blow hard and long, forcing us to keep our heads low under the gale. We all prefer to travel in sunny weather. However, what these ancient (and modern) stories tell us is that wisdom is an unexpected gift, and it frequently comes when we leave behind what we think we know or when we go through what seems like detours or thorough getting lost. The realities of life challenge us with much that is not on our simplistic maps, and we have to let go and sometimes wander in the dark, trusting that the outcome will be revealed in time.
Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the authority, and take the journey of self-discovery. Love, and don’t be caught in opinions and ideas about what love is or should be. When you love, everything will come right. Love has its own action. Love, and you will know the blessings of it. Keep away from the authority who tells you what love is and what it is not. No authority knows and he who knows cannot tell. Love, and there is understanding.
Krisnamurti
One thing that we notice very quickly when we practice meditation is that our experience is always changing. Thus practice helps us develop a mental flexibility by keeping us in the present moment, accepting what is present in the body and in our lives. We work with life as it is, without always being able to see the overall picture. Sometimes things become clear only long after the event. We come to see that there is a larger context in which our life is unfolding and accept change as being one of the great realities of life. When we understand the impermanence of things, as the old saying tells us, we cease to struggle.
Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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