The past is only accessible through the imagination.
The future is only accessible through the imagination.
Only The Now is accessible by anything other than the imagination - through the actual senses.
This moment, and only this moment, can we truly experience.
Although most of the time we miss it because we are too busy using our imagination.
Stop reading this and feel the air as it passes in, then out, of your body.
7 comments:
hey Kim.....evenin' over there.....
...have you ever read the book, "Love, Medicine, and Miracles" by Dr. Bernie Seigel? ...Wonder if you'd dig it....
sweet Sunday m'dear,
me~*
Hi Liz - I haven't read it, but I am getting increasingly interested in Buddhist texts :)
huh, my comment earlier was eerily apropos then ('when the student is ready the teacher appears')....that's a favorite Buddhist proverb of mine....growing up, my parents would take me to this ashram in the Catskills (New York)...interesting experiences....and gleaned some good things...
The gentleman I mentioned in tandem with that quote (Viktor Frankl) was a Viennese psychiatrist who survived four concentration camps over five years during WWII....his book, the one I mentioned, is his takeaway from that experience...so, it's a hard read, to say the least, but the most substantial work I've read in a very long time. no fluff. I'd be interested to see what you think. He is the psychiatrist who developed the school of thought/philosophy of Logotherapy (considered the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy" after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's individual psychology)...anyway, you would, with your background, have the frame of reference to appreciate his work. It'd be cool to get your take on it....we could have our own little overseas bookclub ; p ha.....
...any luck with the band name?
~*
Liz - I did read Viktor Frankl's book when I was at Uni and did a Psychology module, although I have to confess a couple of decades later I can't remember much about it.
Unfortunately, reading is now extremely limited for me. Although I am greatly improved on the ME/CFS I suffered from for several years, a lingering symptom that has never disappeared is I cannot read more than about 2 or 3 pages of a book without my mind fogging over.
These days it takes me about 6 to 8 months to read a book so I'm afraid a book club scenario would be impossible.
As for band names, we've not discussed anything further yet :)
good lord, Kim, how insensitive of me, you've shared that before and it just slipped my mind...
...your post here sorta resonates with a lot of what Jon Kabat-Zinn writes about in his book that I'm reading right now, "Wherever you go, there you are"....title sounds cliché, but the book is excellent...Staying in "the now" is such a challenge for me for a variety of reasons too many to expound upon in a comment forum...this quote particularly grabbed my attention tonight...
"So I discover that I am frequently pulled by my need to be somewhere else, or by the next thing I think needs to happen, or the next place I think I'm supposed to be."
ugh...always looking for what's around the corner....
I've begun an interesting meditation practice lately promoted by Julia Cameron in her book "The Artist's Way" (which you might like, as the exercises are just a few pages long)...she calls this practice, "The Morning Pages" - you just take time in the morning and write, long hand, three pages, stream of conscious, a sort of wringing out the mental washcloth, but it unclogs some enlightening stuff that was a little buried under the surface....she talks about how we spend a lot of energy sometimes on "not knowing what we know" and this can take a heavy physical toll on some...
...anyway, it's been helpful for me.....just doing some digging lately.....maybe a mid-life thing, who knows...just want to live intentionally, and be able to look back on some good choices in my wake, ya know?
ah well, so, on we go, huh, Kim? what a ride....
Liz - I found Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindful
way through Depression a very useful book - similar ideas.
My wife has The Artist's Way. I have tried the stream of writing thing, but couldn't get it flowing. I work best in blog sized posts of about 100 to 400 words. Writing 3 pages was way too much. However, I have a friend who swears by it :)
yeah, good point, I guess the blog thing is sort of a meditation too.....I do find that I'll start off on what I think is one path and by the time I've finished writing, my pen has taken a different path altogether....I often have to go back and change the title of my post because it went somewhere completely different from where I intended to end up......
hmmm....good food for thought, Kim...
sweet night over there for you...
(still mulling over your latest post here, "demon on her shoulder".....something in that for me...... : ( ... pooh.
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