I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately; to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau
Mindfulness, living deliberately, waking up, paying attention. Is such a practice not the key to life, the universe and everything? Is our central task what Dolly Parton advises when she says “Find out who you really are, then go do it on purpose?”
Mindfulness is living in the moment, this moment. Some say that by doing so we are practicing zazen or meditation even though we may be washing clothes or shopping. Enlightenment is learning the truth and accepting it. The truth about our world and about ourselves. Mindfulness keeps us in the moment better to learn that truth.
The older I get, the more I realize that NOW is the only important time. I have wasted a lot of my life worrying about things that might not even happen, and not understanding that this very moment is the only moment that really even exists.
My sister gave me a bookmark with this quote: “Wheresoever you go, go there with all your heart.”
I believe that is key to living the Way.
Yes, speculating about the future is such a waste of time and energy–but seductive! Rollo May said, “One can’t do much about the past and very little about the distant future–how pleasant, then to dream about them! How free from bother, how relieved from troublesome thoughts about what one has to do with one’s life!”
[...] started this blog on August 12, 2007, by speculating that mindfulness was the key to “God, the universe and everything.” Now [...]
[...] of course because it validates what I have come to discover over the years and wrote about in my very first post to this blog (that mindfulness is key to God, the universe and everything). I read the research [...]
I like the new blog title. Very descriptive and more representative of the blog in its entirety. I’m too lazy to blog my own blog, but I do enjoy your new postings. t