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Today's
Meditation:
Many
people argue that we have to have high expectations of
life, that we ought to expect the best and only the best
for ourselves, and then the best will manifest itself in
our lives and we'll be happy and fulfilled. To a
certain extent, I believe they're right, for the energy
that we put out tends to come back to us, and if we put
out positive, expectant energy, then good things are bound
to come our way.
The
Zen masters or the Buddhist monks would tell us that we
should expect nothing but what life wants to give us, and
that life always will give us what we need. When we
expect life to give us something particular--a new
relationship, a new job, a return on an investment--we're
setting ourselves up for disappointment when it turns out
that life sees that there's something that would be better
for us. Perhaps we'll lose all our money in a
certain investment, but the lessons we learn will help us
greatly two years from now when we really need it much
more.
Everything's
on loan, for one day we shall die, and we will take
nothing with us but the lessons that we've learned while
we've been here. Hopefully those lessons won't be
about how to attain financial or material wealth, but
about how to love and give and live life fully.
Hopefully we won't have learned to hoard money, but to
share it. Hopefully we won't have learned to expect
people to do or say what we want them to, but to expect
them to be themselves and express themselves as they will,
no matter what we expect from them.
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