Sunday, February 27, 2011

Paying Attention

No time today for the Heart Sutra, but this passage comes from a good book on yoga. It's available online for free at Erich's web site if you go there.

"The spiritual teachings you'll receive from within your silent mind will be the source of new meaning in your life, revealing to you lift's inherent meaning. Spiritual teachings are communications of truth about the way things are. They will answer your conscious and unconscious questions concerning the nature of who you are and how the world works. Inspiring and guiding you in your thought, speech, and behavior, they will come in the form of clarifying insights and sudden inspirations, creative ideas, intuitive knowings, life circumstances, people and situations, hunches, premonitions, desires, attractions, and spontaneous impulses. Spiritual principles will then no longer seem foreign or irrelevant, divorced from daily life, and they will no longer be gleaned from books and teachers only. The teachings, taught from within, will he pertinent to you and your life. They will make sense to you, meaningful sense.

"As this happens, life takes on a growing significance. You begin to understand and appreciate in a totally new way the fact that your life is indeed absolutely worthy of your fullest attention. And as you give it the undivided attention it deserves, moment by moment by moment, your life will become increasingly interesting. Remember, it's difficult to be interested in something if you are not paying attention to that thing. You may be listening to the most beautiful sonata in the world, but you won't know until you give it your attention and listen, if you join with it, do yoga with it, become one with it. As you do this with your life you will feel young again, renewed, refreshed, regenerated, optimistic, confident, secure, at peace ... and you will experience authentic happiness. That is, happiness without guilt.

"Experience yourself in silence, then - sit motionless, quiet your mind, immerse yourself in the feeling-tone of your own unique being, and then simply be aware of what you are experiencing of the world around you and within. This profound practice will clarify who you are and what your life purpose is and also make available the means to fulfill that purpose intelligently."

Moving Into Stillness
Erich Schiffmann



Two months sixty days
Pilgrims on the Henro Trail
All dreams within dreams

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