If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Paolo Neruda, Keeping Quiet
I love this time of year when the poppies grow alongside and inside the fields of wheat. With the wind of today and yesterday they sway, attracting our attention as we walk along the lanes. They are a splash of colour on a grey day. However they do more. They are, as Mary Oliver says, an invitation to happiness. And then it dawns on me that innumerable things each day are the same. Sure. like every one of us, I am tempted, from time to time, to “drown” in moments of darkness, but so many things – like these flowers – remind me that I am given opportunities each day to collect moments of colour, little miracles of light , that give me courage to go on and renew my joy. They invite me to not just live life, but to celebrate it.
The poppies send up their orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while, the roughage
shines like a miracle as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold, black, curved blade from hooking forward—
of course loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light is an invitation
to happiness, and that happiness,
when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do about it—
deep, blue night?
Mary Oliver, Poppies
Image by John Ecker | Pantheon Photography.
We have a tendency sometimes to put our lives on hold or believe that conditions will somehow be different in the future and then we will start to put our plans into action. Or maybe we find ourselves looking for something to come from outside or waiting on someone else’s plans. In this way, we risk missing out on opportunities which already present themselves or on what was right in front of our noses all the time, and which we do not take for fear of making a mistake or because we are waiting for some “perfect” moment.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.
Thoreau
People [have always] faced the same kinds of issues we face now, but with different window dressing. In the time of the Buddha men and women were arguing, gossiping, judging others, losing their perspective, overreacting, sexualizing their experiences, chasing after greener pastures, obsessing about nonessentials, feeling lonely and creating too many pipe dreams. Nothing has fundamentally altered.
How many of us, for example, are still convinced, mature as we may be, that if our partner would only change, or if we could meet the perfect person, everything would be fine? These are the dysfunctional myths and illusions that drive our lives in very dissatisfying directions. How many people remember the song from the musical Fiddler on the Roof – “If I were a Rich Man…” What is your “big if”? The big “if” that leads you away from wisdom and reality?
Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha within
When we have achieved the stature of solitude, namely achieving a conscious relationship with ourselves, then we are freer to share with others, freer to receive their gifts in return and not be infantalized by the mutual archaic agenda of childhood, the agenda that covertly uses the other to provide for us….Intimate relationship, when it is in service of the summons of the soul, is only one of the many engagements we have with the mystery. Relying on it to replace the many other realms we, as spiritual beings, are meant to travel will not only burden the other with our unlived life, but will keep us from the appointment which the soul consistently solicits for us.
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Try not to become a person of success.
Rather become a person of value.
Einstein
Mindfulbalance 