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Today's
quotation:
Enlightenment
does not consist of pretending to be where we are not;
enlightenment means being in touch with where we are and being
willing
to learn what God would have us learn from it. Sometimes the
purpose
of a day is to merely feel our sadness, knowing that as we do we
allow
whole layers of grief, like old skin cells, to drop off us.
Marianne
Williamson
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Today's
Meditation:
I want
to be enlightened, but I'm not so sure if I'll ever reach
the state. I have too many preconceived notions, and
I'm too prone to judgment and trusting my first
impressions. I'm trying, though, to let life be life
and to take it in rather than trying to control it; trying
to accept things rather than manipulate them; trying to
love rather than judge. It's not all that easy, but
it's also not all that difficult. I do try to be
sure that when something happens I do my best to learn
from it rather than trying to figure it out, because life
is life, and it will keep on being life no matter how I
respond to it.
Whatever
our current situations, we have the choice as to how to
respond to them. We can say they're not fair, that
we're being rewarded because we're "better" than
other people, that they're going to change soon, that
they're unbearable-- the list is very long. But if we
accept them for exactly what they are and appreciate them
for the lessons they're giving us, then I think that we're
working towards enlightenment.
We
can't change the way the world works. The sun will
rise tomorrow without my assistance, says the Talmud, and
just as I accept the sunrise each day, if I can accept the
changes in politics, in relationships, in job situations
just as I accept the sunrise, I'll be allowing myself to
feel a sense of peace and balance that I wouldn't feel
otherwise. Accepting a situation doesn't mean
suffering from it-- if I'm sitting in the shade and an hour
later the light has shifted and I'm in the hot sunlight, I
do have to accept the situation, but there's nothing
keeping me from moving back into the shade.
Is
there a journey towards enlightenment? I don't
believe so. To me, rather, enlightenment is a
letting go of our need to judge and to attempt to control
situations, a letting go of our need to have explanations
for everything. If we can let life be life and try
to be persons who flow with life and do our best to
contribute to it in positive ways, who knows? We may
find that enlightenment is closer than we think.
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For further
thought:
If we
pretend to be more enlightened than we really are, we will miss
an opportunity to heal ourselves. Admitting our limitations
can make us
feel vulnerable, yet it is very freeing. We just have to be
ourselves as
we are now, accepting the mixture of enlightened awareness and
human
limitation that is in each of us. Through this
self-acceptance,
we find a deep peace and self-love.
Shakti
Gawain
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