Seeing Your Life As It Truly Is
“Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God’s goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?”
–Albert Schweitzer (Alsatian-born Theologian, Philosopher, Mission Doctor and, in 1952, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1875-1965)
Rules for Being Human
This has been around for a little while, but it well worth passing on. I have heard several different claims to the original authorship, but I think that this is the correct one. If not, please let me know!
RULES FOR BEING HUMAN
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works”.
4. A lesson is repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive there are lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better than “here”. When your “there” has become a “here” you will simply obtain another “there” that will, again, look better than “here”.
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, trust.
10. You will forget all this.
–Cherie Carter-Scott (American Author and Life Coach, 1949-)
Penetrating Through Illusion
There is an extraordinary treasure trove to be found in the Philokalia.
Here is just one that is worth meditating upon:
“If the intellect has not risen above the contemplation of the created world, it has not yet beheld the realm of God perfectly. For it may be occupied with the knowledge of intelligible things and so involved in their mulitplicity.”
–Evagrios the Solitary (a.k.a. Evagrius Ponticus, Pontus-born Christian Mystic, Writer and “Desert Father,” c.346-399) {From: On Prayer: “Philokalia Vol. 1”, p. 62, text 58}
Your Life Is More Than A Piece of Existence
“Inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, this life of yours is not merely a piece of the entire existence but is, in a certain sense, the whole.”
–Erwin Schrödinger Austrian Physicist and, in 1933, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, 1887-1961
