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Today's
Meditation:
Self-knowledge can be frightening. Which means that
for many people, healing is frightening. When we
look around ourselves and see just how dominant
entertainment has become in our society, we must keep in
mind the basic reason for which we love entertainment--
because it allows us to pass time without reflecting on
who we are, what we are, what we want, what we
believe. When we keep ourselves entertained by
outside sources--movies and music and sports and video
games--we don't have to reflect, and we don't have to look
into our hearts. And so many people wonder why
healing is so difficult sometimes.
If my heart has been broken, the only way that I can heal
is to get in touch with how I really feel inside, and
why. It's very similar to having to heal a broken
bone--we need to know where the pain is located, what
caused the break, and what shape the bone is in right
now. If I've done something that's hurt me deeply,
like causing another person pain or doing something that
violates my moral principles, then I need to look inside
and find the source of my discomfort and then deal with it
on its terms, not necessarily the terms that are the
easiest for me to handle.
"Expanding our awareness of who we are."
Frightening words, aren't they? One of the reasons
for which people find these words so frightening is that
they're afraid that as they learn more about themselves,
they'll lose much of what they find comfortable now.
As I've grown in my life, I've given up things like
television, and I know plenty of people who are completely
unwilling to do something like that. To me, though,
it's not a loss--it's a gain of plenty of free time to do
things that are much more important to me.
We're all hurting. But healing doesn't necessarily
come from a prescription or a trip to the doctor's
office. Much healing comes from looking inside and
recognizing the stress, the negative feelings and
attitudes, the sorrow, the pain, the hopelessness that we
keep locked up inside ourselves and that continues to gnaw
away at us from the inside, causing much of our physical
pain and discomfort. We need to heal the spirit by
knowing the spirit, and then our bodies will follow
suit.
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Questions to
consider:
If entertainment keeps us from knowing ourselves by
keeping us distracted, then how is it helping us?
What kinds of pain and sorrow are still inside of you,
things with which you haven't yet dealt clearly?
From where have we gotten the idea that healing has to
come from outside, from a doctor or nurse or spiritual
leader, instead of from ourselves?
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