Waking Up

Taking up a formal meditation practice by making some time for it each day doesn't mean that you won't be able to think any more, or that you can't run around or get things done. It means that you are more likely to know what you are doing because you have stopped for a while and watched, listened, understood.
Thoreau saw this ever so clearly at Walden Pond. His closing message: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." If we are to grasp the reality of our life while we have it, we will need to wake up to our moments. Otherwise, whole days, even a whole life, could slip past unnoticed. One practical way to do this is to look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them. Sometimes our thoughts act like dream glasses. When we have them on, we see dream children, dream husband, dream wife, dream job, dream colleagues, dream partners, dream friends. We can live in a dream present for a dream future. Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all. While things in the dream may change and give the illusion of being vivid and real, it is still a dream we are caught in. But if we take off the glasses, maybe, just maybe, we might see a little more accurately what is actually here. Thoreau felt the need to go off on a solitary retreat for an extended period of time (he stayed two years and two months at Walden Pond) to do this. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front 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." His deepest conviction: "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. ... I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" TRY: Asking yourself from time to time, "Am I awake now?" My inside, listen to me, the greatest spirit, the Teacher, is near, wake up, wake up! Run to his feet - he is standing close to your head right now. You have slept for millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning? (Kabir)