Today’s Quotation:
We must work on our souls, enlarging and expanding them.
We do so by experiencing all of life–
the beauty and the joy as well as the grief and pain.
Soul work requires paying attention to life,
to the laughter and the sorrow,
the enlightening and the frightening,
the inspiring and the silly.-Matthew Fox
Today’s Meditation:
Some of the most important things in my life almost went right by me because I’ve limited my own experiences of life. I’ve thought that certain people weren’t destined to be my friends, only to have them become great friends. I’ve avoided taking a different route home because it might be a bit longer, only to find that it wasn’t as long as I thought, and it was quite a beautiful drive. Life comes at us and keeps coming at us, and it seems that if we pay attention to everything, we’ll become completely overwhelmed. And that’s possibly true–we do need to decide what we’ll pay attention to and what we won’t.
But if we are to expand our souls, we need to pay attention to the life all around us–the people and things and light and dark and wind and sun. If you believe that you have a soul, it’s probably more important for us to focus on developing our souls–which are immortal–than it is for us to gather more information and develop our brains. A balance would be nice, but most of us don’t work at all on our souls, except for an occasional prayer or book on a religious topic.
Much of our work on our souls can be accomplished by working on our abilities to listen–not just hear, to see and understand–not just see, to feel in our depths–not just feel.
Life is here, and life is now. Look around yourself–you are alive, and you are surrounded by wonders. Take advantage of them all and make them an important part of who you are. Your soul would appreciate the attention.
Questions to ponder:
1. When was the last time you consciously tried
to help your own soul to grow?
2. Which is easier to do–learn about information,
or learn about our spirits?
In which area are there concrete answers, and in which are there none?
3. How can paying attention to all that’s
around you help your soul to grow?
For further thought:
My whole attitude to life is spiritual–a feeling of
identification with all nature, all mankind, all life,
the whole of the past, the whole of the future.-Fenner Brockway
Credit: Living Life Fully
