#703 Behaving At Home

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#530 At Home or Traveling - How Do You Feel?

     We travel - looking for what?
     What does being at home feel like?
     Is home really just a place?
     Isn't home a state of being?

     When we have strong preferences - one way or another - we're far from home. Even when we're physically in our own house, unless we're at peace - with ourselves & our environment - we're not really at home.

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, May 4, 2014

#495 Is the Devil in the Details?

     A few years ago, during a break in a continuing medical education course, I overheard a group of young female physicians chatting about their children. One comment stuck: "I just hope they don't grow up to be assholes!"
     Isn't that our hope for ourselves as well? And yet, much of our lives are spent reacting to minor details - "sweating the small stuff", making a big deal out of them, then recuperating by zoning out with mindless distractions, booze, sleep etc. Our life too easily gets pilfered away, lost in details.
     Of course there's nothing wrong with the details themselves, the waste is in the sour attitude of "putting out fires": http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2014/02/493-how-we-fail-to-prioritize.html Such an attitude assumes that we're constantly battling annoyences. NO - we're actually LIVING, & CHOOSING the QUALITY of our LIFE. Our problem is settling for the wrong attitude. A wise person once said: "Every day is a good day." Statements like this really irritate some people - where's the locus of control? See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2014/02/494-we-know-were-heading-wrong-way-when.html and: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=attitude

William McIntosh   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtsacprof/

#446 Gratitude, Service & Responsibility

     The great philosopher Huston Smith summarized a profound approach to life:

"Infinite gratitude towards all things past;
infinite service to all things present; 
infinite responsibility to all things future."

http://billmoyers.com/content/a-personal-philosophy-the-wisdom-of-faith-with-huston-smith/

     Can we acknowledge how this, and only this, total timeless engagement with life is right, natural, our only home?
     Can we recognize that anything less than such an openhearted mindful embrace of the whole is partial, incomplete, inadequate, and therefore - painfully unsatisfying?
     Can we then reduce suffering by settling for nothing less?
     Can we recognize how this is as plainly reasonable & practical as pulling a splinter out of our thumb?

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/11/personal-deepening-universal-meaning.html

Kristiina Lehtonen - "A Message to Eternity"   http://www.kristiinalehtonen.fi