The Forgotten Art of Being

This morning I was looking at pictures of my grandkids’ first day of school. There is such a light in their eyes, such a joyful presence. We all had that once. As children, it is our natural state of being, fully present in each moment. But sooner or later the light fades as we come to accept and judge ourselves by the expectations of others; family, friends, society.

I feel such sorrow when I see young children suffering with anxiety or depression. They have already lost their presence, worrying about possible future mistakes or grieving past ones. If only they knew that the greatest mistake is the turning outward, the acceptance of the apparent, external world as reality. Each of us lives in a world of our own making. There is nothing in the material world that is real. There is only a cosmos of energy and vibration, detected by our senses, and given meaning by our minds.

In the great American novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe wrote, “…he looked on the faces of the lords of the earth – and he saw them wasted and devoured by the beautiful disease of thought and passion.” He saw the beauty in the tragedy of human life, but how much more beauty in the truth!
Turn inward. Be the observer of your life and reclaim mastery of your being. Hold your attention to the still silence within, and remember who you are, the you that you knew as a child.