We live in a complex world where many demands can be made on us through our work, family and relationships. We often live at a pace of life that is also very busy with not much space to pause and reflect. We may also find ourselves living a life we feel we some how stumbled into due to economic demands or voices from our surrounding culture or parents. A lot of our daily concerns can be worrying anxiously about the future or caught in the past, playing over in our head events that have long passed. I recently attended a meditation retreat, where for a week I had the space and time to relax into a more grounded open awareness. During the retreat I saw more clearly what was really important in my life, what held real meaning and value to me. We may not all have the opportunity to be able to go on a week’s retreat, but maybe we can find quiet pauses in our lives, on our yoga mat or in the rest of our day to stop and reflect on what really matters most?
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”