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Today's
Meditation:
Many
people argue that we have to have high expectations of
life, that we ought to expect the best and only the best
for ourselves, and then the best will manifest itself in
our lives and we'll be happy and fulfilled. To a
certain extent, I believe they're right, for the energy
that we put out tends to come back to us. If we put
out positive, expectant energy, then good things are bound
to come our way.
I really like the things I have--this computer, the bed I
sleep in, the clothes I wear, the books I read. But
I try to keep in mind always that these are just things
that I happen to possess right now, and if they're gone
tomorrow for some reason, I'll still be okay. How
many people have lost all their possessions in a fire or
storm, but still turned out okay? The things that we
possess can be very important to us, but we shouldn't
consider them to be too important. As Maude says in
the film Harold and Maude, her possessions are
"incidental, not integral."
When we become preoccupied with possessing things, we lose
a lot of our focus on developing our selves. We
don't think as much about what we need spiritually or
emotionally; instead, we focus on the next purchase, and
we often depend upon the things we own to provide us with
our sense of self-worth, and that's always a recipe for
disaster.
Everything's
on loan, for one day we shall die, and we will take
nothing with us but the lessons that we've learned while
we've been here. Hopefully those lessons won't be
about how to attain financial or material wealth, but
about how to love and give and live life fully.
Hopefully we won't have learned to hoard money, but to
share it. Hopefully we won't have learned to focus
on material possessions, but to focus on those things that
are not material at all, like love and compassion and
giving and hope.
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