Summer can be a period when we feel a bit lighter as the days get warmer and the weather allows us have some down time or we take some holidays or maybe go on retreat. So to reflect this, the blog will have a lighter feel for the next few weeks, as there will be only one posting per day. This will give those who follow the blog a bit of a break in their in-boxes (!) as well as some space from the continual stimulation which is a feature of todays life, even regarding our inner life. It also coincides with some travel I am doing for lecturing and I am taking some time for refreshing the spirit and going on holidays.
Speaking of retreats, for those of you in Europe who are would like to deepen your practice , I would really recommend the Awakening Joy Workshop, being run by James Baraz in Austria, on the weekend of July 4-6. James is one of the kindest teachers I know and has been teaching meditation since 1978. This workshop is based on his Awakening Joy Book and Course. It would be an excellent way to nourish the sources of joy which can be found in the present moment and move away from our persistent living in the future.
Further details can be found by clicking on this link : http://www.arbor-seminare.de/awakening-joy
We have negative mental habits that come up over and over again. One of the most significant negative habits we should be aware of is that of constantly allowing our mind to run off into the future. Perhaps we got this from our parents. Carried away by our worries, we’re unable to live fully and happily in the present. Deep down, we believe we can’t really be happy just yet — that we still have a few more boxes to be checked off before we can really enjoy life. We speculate, dream, strategize, and plan for these “conditions of happiness” we want to have in the future.
Your meditation practice here is to bring your mind back to the present and just recognize the habit every time it pulls you away. You only need to breathe mindfully and smile to your habit energy: “Oh, I got pulled away by that again.” When you can recognize habit energies this way, they lose their hold on you, and you’re free once again to live peacefully and happily in the present.
Thich Nhat Hahn, Peace is Every Step
You must descend from
your head into your heart.
At present your thoughts of God
are in your head. And God Himself is,
as it were, outside you, and
so your prayer and other spiritual
exercises remain exterior.
Whilst you are still
in your head, thoughts will not easily be subdued but
will always be whirling about, like snow
in winter or clouds of mosquitoes in summer.
Saint Theophan the Recluse, (1815–1894) monk of the Russian Orthodox Church
photo alan Murray-Rust
On the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere….
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness
then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present
Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.431
The finality of death is meant to challenge us to decision, the decision to be fully present here now, and so begin eternal life. For eternity rightly understood is not the perpetuation of time, on and on, but rather the overcoming of time by the now that does not pass away. But we are always looking for opportunities to postpone the decision. So if you say: “Oh, after this I will have another life and another life,” you might never live, but keep dragging along half dead because you never face death.
Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda, “That is why you are so moody and not fully alive, because you forget you are to die; you live as if you were going to live forever.” What remembrance of death is meant to do, as I understand it, is to help us make that decision.
David Steindl-Rast, Learning to Die
My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.
When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,
when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,
He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.
“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—
otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.“
Naomi Shihab Nye, The Words Under the Words
