Tian Dayton

Today I realize that truth and beauty are at one with a Higher Power. There is so much more beauty in this world than I am able to take in. There are skies and meadows, oceans and rugged hills, animals, birds and people. Truth is everywhere in the symmetry of nature, in the perfection of a sunset. Truth waits for me in the depths of my unconscious to be discovered. It is there beneath the chatter and distractions of any given moment when I can sit and be with it.

I am a part of eternal truth and beauty.

When old age shall this generation waste. They shalt remain in midst of other Woe than ours a friend to man To whom thou sayest Beauty is truth, truth beauty That’s all ye know on earth And all ye need to know.
John Keats

One of the surest paths toward feelings of inadequacy and an inability to move forward in life is to set unrealistic goals for myself. That is, to have standards that represent “getting there” that are so high that I always fall short. More likely, the effect of these overly high standards will be to keep me from ever beginning because the point of arrival looks too far away, and I cannot imagine how to find and take all of the intermediate steps. Today I will be realistic. I know that
there is no such thing as perfect, so why should I worry about getting there? There is the here and now, and when I get there, it will be that day’s here and now. I recognize that perfection is only an illusion, and I will learn to take daily pleasure and fulfillment from the process.

I live in today.

We have trained them (men) to think of the Future as a promised land which favored heroes attain – not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
C. S. Lewis

Today I accept my true place in the nature of things. I am neither nothing nor am I everything. I am a connecting link between the earth and the heavens. I have the natures of both a beast and a saint. I am capable of greatness or meanness. I am all of this, wide and deep. There is nowhere for me to journey but to push against the limits of my own
knowing, my own soul. No tomorrow promises greater gains than yesterday – it all connects through me, in the here and now, the only real point of power, the intersection from which I can move wherever I choose to move.

I am a part of earth and heaven.

For in fact what is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the Infinite and All in comparison with Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.
Blaise Pascal

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