Whatever form of meditation you practice, it is in essence simply a method for detaching yourself from thinking (which tends to reinforce the egoic process) long enough for you to begin to trust this other, deeper intelligence moving inside you. It provides you with another way to think: from “beyond the mind” — which, incidentally, is what the word metanoia, usually translated as “repentance,” actually means.
Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope
It is not easy to be fully in the moment, every moment. What we notice is that we have a host of thoughts, ideas, expectations, preconceptions, hopes and fears working as a filter between us and the moment – or the person – that stands before us. The ability to be right-here-now is what we practice each day; the capacity to choose between the world in our heads or the real world before us. It is true that we rarely see the world, or another person, as they actually are, but we see them as we are in that moment. So in order to be right here with whatever is going on we need, in one sense, to empty ourselves, to create space. The best way to do that is to pause and focus your attention before beginning something, such as a new task, or a meeting, or indeed, a conversation. Take a few conscious breaths today before you begin something, to allow a gap to open and the mind to relax enough in order to have the space to welcome.
If my eye is to receive an image, it must be free from all other images; for if it already has so much as one, it cannot see another, nor can the ear hear a sound if it be occupied with one already. Any power of receiving must first be empty before it can receive anything.
John Tauler, 14th Century German mystic and preacher.
I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don’t think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life
The quality of our experience,
Moment by moment,
Will determine the quality of our lives
Matthieu Ricard
Often we do not know what is really going on. Our perspective can barely accommodate another person’s point of view, no less the forward march of evolution or the eternal mind of God.
Better to admit not knowing and to relax in the mystery of life than to try to force our minds where they can’t go.
Elizabeth Lesser
Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.
When the mind has settled, we are
established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.
Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
