Good morning, Digital Neighbors! Happy Sabbath and Saturday to all you fine souls milling about on Locals and Substack. A morning meditation from Anthony de Mello. Not all of his writings are my cup of tea, but Wellsprings is a book I have returned to often for reflection and meditation. I take all these morning musings as something like a 12-Step program session: take what you like and leave the rest. Some have put me on block or mute at various sites, which I am thankful for as a modern feature. They can enjoy the community without my content interfering or distracting. I have done the same to a few myself. It is one of the best features of more recent social media. I wish they would have had that back in the days of AOL chat rooms. The first rule of the internet: jerks are emboldened by a screen between them and reactive reality. Anywho, off to the morning reflection. It is a tad longer than most morning posts. Have a great Saturday, Digital Neighbors!

THE EXPOSURE

I think of the times I come alive
and the times when I am dead.

I ponder on the features I assume
in moments of aliveness and
in times when I am dead.

Life abhors security:
for life means taking risks,
exposing self to danger,
even death.

Jesus says that those who wish to be safe will lose their lives;
those who are prepared to lose their lives will keep them.

I think of the times
when I drew back from taking risks,
when I was comfortable and safe:
those were times when I stagnated.

I think of other times when I dared to take a chance,
to make mistakes,
to be a failure and a fool,
to be criticized by others,
when I dared to risk being hurt
and to cause pain to others.
I was alive!

Life is for the gambler.
The coward dies.

Life is at variance with my perception
of what is good and bad:
these things are good and to be sought;
these others bad and to be shunned.

To eat of the Tree of Knowing Good and Bad
is to fall from paradise.
I must learn to accept whatever life may bring,
pleasure and pain, sorrow and joy.
For if I close myself to pain
my capacity for pleasure dies
—I harden myself and repress
what I regard as unpleasant and undesirable,
and in that hardness,
that repression, is rigidity and death.

So I decide to taste in all its fullness
the experience of the present moment,
calling no experience good or bad.

Those experiences that I dread—I think of them,
and, inasmuch as I am able, I let them come and stop resisting them.
Life goes hand in hand with change.
What does not change is dead.

I think of people who are fossils.
I think of times when I was fossilized:
no change, no newness, the same old worn-out concepts
and patterns of behavior, the same mentality,
neuroses, habits, prejudices.
Dead people have a built-in fear of change.

What changes have there been in me
over the past six months?
What changes will there be today?
I end this exercise by watching nature
all around me:
so flexible,
so flowing,
so fragile,
insecure,
exposed to death
—and so alive!

I watch for many minutes.

Meditation - Gantas Vaiciulenas - Unsplash