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Today's
quotation:
The past
is gone, and I don't know what's coming in
the future.
It's obvious that if I want my life to be
whole, to
resonate with feeling and integrity and value
and health,
there's only one way I can influence the
future: by
owning the present. If I can relate to
this
moment with integrity, and then this moment with
integrity, and then this moment
with integrity, wakefully,
then the sum of that is going to be very different over
time, over mind moments that stretch out into what we
call a life, than a life
that is lived mostly on
automatic
pilot, where we are reacting and being
mechanical
and are therefore somewhat numb.
Jon
Kabat-Zinn
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Today's
Meditation:
I
greatly fear a "mechanical" life in which
everything I do, I do on automatic pilot. Automatic
pilot is good for airplanes, but not for me. When
you set automatic pilot, you're telling the airplane or
ship exactly where to go, based on longitude and latitude,
and there's no room for variation at all.
Airplanes,
though, always have specific destinations. The
pilots know exactly where they're supposed to go and what
time they're supposed to get there. They know the
route they're supposed to be on because they've probably
done that particular route before. Automatic pilot
for an airplane is fine, because the trip is purely
functional and there's no need to do anything except get
to the destination.
For
us, though, automatic pilot would mean that we've already
determined our end goal. We've already decided what
we want to do and be, and there would be no room for
learning or changing our minds or ideas in the present
moment, for that would drastically change our
destination. We wouldn't be allowed to deviate our
journey based on new knowledge or new ideas that we learn
along the way. Our decisions of this moment would be
determined by the desire to reach a pre-set destination or
objective.
If
we can look at this moment for what it is, though, and
figure out what's best for this moment, we can build a
solid base upon which our future will rest quite
comfortably. Perhaps this moment is one for rest, or
a moment for getting some work done or a letter
written. We'll know what's right for us in any given
moment if we just live them all with integrity, as Jon
says, and if we're honest about what each moment needs
from us.
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