Tian Dayton

Seeing the universe as alive in the present moment alters my sense of
life. What goes around comes around. What gets missed in one day will
re-present itself in another form. The frantic rush to accumulate
experience in order to fill me leaves me feeling emptier than before. If
the experiencer is not engaged on equal terms with the experience, then
energy does not get exchanged and I do not fill up. The soul experience
allows me to trust life because trust is an implicit part of this
exchange of energy. Part of trust is the feeling of being held, of not
being dropped. The soul experience allows me to be held by life.
Eventually I come to the understanding that if I drop, I will only drop
into more of life or more of the soul experience of living.

There is only life.

Can anxious thought add one day to our lives? Consider the lilies of the
field, they do not sow, nor do they reap, but I say unto you that even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.
Matthew 6:28-29

Today I see that my life is full of choices. I also see that it is not
so much what I do with my life that adds up inside of me but how I do
it. My life is in my hands to live as I choose to live it. I seek a
balance between self-determined action and respect for God’s timetable.
I understand that forcing something is out of tune with the natural flow
of life but that does not mean I should not make choices and take
actions. To allow for life and the universe to work, I will take an
action, let go of the results and trust that if my desire is right for
me it will manifest. Just as a tree does not seek to pick its own
fruits, I can turn over my results and release my preoccupied hold on
them. I can make friends with life on its own terms and live by its
natural laws.

I choose to live with my eyes open.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
Virginia Woolf

If I hurt, today I can own it and if I am afraid, I can admit rather
than hide it. Experiencing my own fear can make me so anxious that I try
to pretend it isn’t there. This is when I look for crutches to hold me
up. Owning my own fear actually gives me strength. It allows me not to
be caught off guard or get overly triggered by whatever frightens me.
When I know I am afraid, I have a stronger psychological position than
when I deny that part of myself.

It’s okay for me to be afraid.

[We] frame the situation in such a way that we can once again open
ourselves to new possibilities of response to suffering. They can turn
our attention to an examination of the reactions that suffering triggers
off in us. Up to now these reactions have been rooted not only in fear
but in the denial of fear. Merely to be mindful of this pattern is to be
one step closer to our own truth and, in turn, to the truth of someone
else’s suffering. Truth is where we will meet. Simply acknowledging our
reactiveness to pain, therefore, is itself an initial act of service.
Ram Dass and Paul Gorman from “How Can I Help?”

Today I will do what is in front of me. Rather than make my plan for the
day on a formless future, I will do that task which is nearest to my
hand. I cannot live in days that have not happened yet. Hard as I try, I
cannot put my boots on and take a walk through the future. Life unfolds
as it is meant to, and the life that I lead is subject to the laws of
time. Time is actually a wonderful caring principle that gives me my
life in manageable doses. To understand and experience the depth of the
moment - to taste the sweet that is in my hand - that is living. The
rest will be provided for.

I perform the task in front of me.

Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, Which thou knowest to be a Duty!
Thy Second Duty will already have become clearer…
Thomas Carlyle

In my quiet moments I allow myself to fully entertain my own thoughts. I
learn and grow in layers. When I have come finally to decode what feels
like garbled data and to understand more clearly what I am seeing,
feeling and hearing, then I am ready to move through another layer. Some
days, learning how to live feels like too hard a struggle, but then I
consider the alternatives - living a hollow and meaningless life,
wasting or even resenting life, living stupidly and blundering
mindlessly along, living only on the surface, never letting anything or
anyone really touch or move me is certainly no easier. When I consider
the alternatives, it puts the struggle in perspective; I understand why
I carry on.

The struggle is worthwhile.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a
journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which
no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we
come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust