To follow up on yesterday’s post—how do we cultivate empathy, compassion and mindfulness in our lives? Cultivate a practice of stillness. Some may use meditation, some may use prayer. Either way, create quiet, still space in your daily life. Things are so hectic these days, with pressures and distractions constantly pulling at our hearts and minds. A daily practice of stillness will help you to slow down and stop reacting to everything. If you have something upset you, then you will be distracted when the next thing hits, making you react rather than respond thoughtfully and deliberately. Over the course of the day, these reactions followed by reactions make you feel increasingly crazy as you bounce around inside the pinball machine of your life. Through stillness, you interrupt this spiral of stress, so that you can begin to respond to your life more mindfully. Putting this in the context of how we, as individuals, influence the nature and direction of our nation, consider times in recent history when we as a people have made poor choices out of fear or anger, when considered, mindful choices would have made our country healthier and happier. If we as a nation of individuals were to create space for stillness, what feats of empathy and compassion would we embrace? What power for good in the world we would wield as a people if we weren’t bouncing between fear and anger. That is our potential as a nation, and embracing it by starting your own daily stillness practice this 4th of July Weekend would be a wonderful act of patriotism!
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 15:35:23 +0000
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