Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet
Tag: Present moment
A seed
Almost all cultures have the notion that there is a judgment when we die. Some kind of accounting has to be made of one’s life. I believe God — and to me “God” is just shorthand for the ineffable divine presence — has only one question for us at the end: “Did you become yourself?” We have a seeded self that begins to germinate at birth. Our true goal in life is to become that self.
There’s an African proverb: “When death finds you, may it find you alive.” Alive means living your own damn life, not the life that your parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live. That’s the way to evaluate whether you are an authentic person or not.
Michael Meade, Your Own Damn Life
Preoccupied with expectation
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is.
Alan Watts
Life is better when we flow
Most of us are persistent. We have persistently tried to change what we cannot, usually a circumstance or someone else’s behavior. Take that energy, that persistence, that determination, that almost obsessive resolve, and persevere with the things you can do. Don’t push. Let go of concern about the seemingly impossible tasks in your life. Softly, steadily, like the rain, let your kind spirit naturally remove the obstacles in your path. Life is better when we flow. But sometimes it takes a persistent flow to change the things we can. Enough water, persistently applied, can be more powerful than rock.
Melodie Beatty, More Language of Letting Go: 366 New Daily Meditations
As we think, we become
Watch the thought and its ways with care
And let it spring out of love
Born out of concern for all beings.
As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.
The Dhammapada
Sunday Quote: Not a dress rehearsal
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
William Stafford, You Reading This, Be Ready
for E and B, wandering through Italy at this moment
Mindfulbalance 