Imagine how it might feel to suspend all your judging and instead to let each moment be just as it is, without attempting to evaluate it as “good” or “bad.” This would be a true stillness, a true liberation. This means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Modern society likes to portray everything as being within our grasp, so long as we apply ourselves with determination and ambition. Its unrelenting positive message and preference for distraction does not allow for any complexity or for anything which cannot be explained easily. Success in life comes from building up, getting more, going higher. Prompted by this model, we can sometimes believe that we are fully in charge of our lives, when in fact we have depths and motivations that we are often unaware of. A lot of what is important or which shapes and drives our life is hidden from us, deep in the unconscious. We have wounds that have not healed but still have an influence, fundamental assumptions and powerful unmet needs. Hidden also, is a natural understanding of the direction we should go, as well as potential riches which we are often too timid to take hold of. However, at crucial moments in our lives, growth involves us going down into the depths, paying attention to what has been neglected, hidden or buried. This can happen in the mid to late twenties when we are forced to finally leave the shadow of our parents or in the “mid-life” years when we awaken to these depths as their demands oblige us to redefine our understanding of who we truly are. At these times we are called to a more genuine relationship to our deepest selves and the journey we are on. This can be prompted by a loss or a period of deeper reflection, or by a restlessness or boredom which leads us to see that we are not fully content.
At moments like this we are led to consider the values which will lead us to living a richer, larger life. The way we have lived life’s challenges to date may no longer feel authentic to us. Although it may feel like a crisis or be deeply uncomfortable, we know we are being called to deepen the paradigm which we use to guide us through life. The question of our most real identity will not go away. The untended parts of our lives seek expression. Do we have the courage to go with this new prompting and be rewarded with a deeper, more fulfilling story?
One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self;
Of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Every morning I vow to be grateful for the precious gift of my human birth. It’s a big gift, and it includes a lot of stuff I never particularly wanted for my birthday. Some of the things in the package I wish I could exchange for a different size or color. But I want to find out what it means to be a human being — my curiosity remains intense even as I get older — so I say thanks for the whole thing. It’s all of a piece.
In thirteenth-century Japan, Zen Master Dogen wrote, ‘The Way is basically perfect and all-pervading.’ I’m already in it. We are all in it; we are made of it.
Susan Moon
Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
The Buddha
Only from the heart
Can you touch the sky
Rumi
Have you ever noticed that
when you get on the highway at rush hour
that it is everyone else who is the traffic,
never you?
Ajahn Armaro.
