Love and Need

Our philosophy of life is not something we create all by ourselves out of nothing. Our ways of thinking, even our attitudes toward ourselves, are more and more determined from the outside. Even our love tends to fit ready-made forms. We consciously or unconsciously tailor our notions of love according to patterns we are exposed to day after day....
Love [Merton begins to examine one of these patterns] is regarded as a deal. The deal presupposes that we all have needs which have to be fulfilled by means of exchange. In order to make a deal you have to appear in the market with a worthwhile product, or if the product is worthless, you can get by if you dress it up in a good-looking package. We unconsciously think of ourselves as objects for sale on the market. We want to be wanted. We want to attract customers. We want to look like the kind of product that makes money. ...In doing this we come to consider ourselves and others not as persons but as products, as "goods," or in other words, as packages. We appraise one another commercially. We size each other up and make deals with a view to our own profit. We do not give ourselves in love, we make a deal that will enhance our own product, and therefore no deal is final. Our eye is already on the next deal, and this next deal need not necessarily be with the same customer. Life is more interesting when you make a lot of deals with a lot of new customers. -- Thomas Merton, "Love and Need: Is Love a Package or a Message?"

The trouble with this commercialized idea of love is that it diverts your attention more and more from the essentials to the accessories of love. You are no longer able to really love the other person, for you become obsessed with the effectiveness of your own package, your own product, your own market value. -- Thomas Merton, "Love and Need: Is Love a Package or a Message?"

Happy Without

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life,

loved to go to the market.

When his students asked about this, he replied,

"I love to go and see all the things I am happy without."

Jack Kornfield

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

To Be Alive Is To Be Hungry

Our appetite for life is good.
It keeps us reaching, growing, enjoying, and yearning to fulfill our potential.
When our basic needs are satisfied, our hunger propels us to search for more elaborate gratification.

Here is where we often run into trouble.
Instead of progressing through the hierarchy of needs to the spiritual level, we get stuck in an attempt to make quantity - more things, more people, and more activity - substitute for quality.
And quantity alone is never enough.

It's good that we're hungry.
Our appetite motivates us to feed our body in a healthy way and also to feed our mind, heart, and spirit.
Our needs pyramid, and our hunger leads us beyond quantity to the quality experiences that fill our emptiness.
We read, we share, we love, we pray, we listen, we accomplish, we dance, and we feast on the fullness of life.

Today, I will direct my appetite to quality experiences.

Inner Harvest by Elisabeth L.

Without

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, "I love to go and see all the things I am happy without."

Jack Kornfield

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Always Working

Your life is always working,
whether you know it or not.

Sometimes it works to bring you what you want,
and sometimes it works to keep you
from what you think you want.

Neale Donald Walsch

Tomorrow's God

Knowing Is The Key

Getting What You Want

The first step to getting what you want in life is knowing what you want.
This may sound obvious, but a surprising number of us are going through life without really coming to terms with the truth of what we want.
There are many reasons for this, and they range from parental influences that curb our imaginations to external factors that curb our ability to take action.
We may feel that getting too caught up in exploring our deepest desires is wasted energy when it seems we want things beyond our grasp.
This is a very practical attitude and has its benefits, but it can be safely balanced with a more imaginative and unlimited approach to the question of what we want.

Perhaps you are 40 years old and find within yourself a desire to be a ballet dancer.
You see the impracticality and seeming impossibility of this idea, so you reject it without exploring it.
But perhaps you should allow yourself to feel this desire and perhaps even take a dance class.
Allowing yourself to participate in ballet in small ways may provide inspiration that leads you in a new direction in life.
And time spent doing what you want to do is never wasted because it generates energy that can fuel the rest of your life.

You can begin to uncover and discover what you want by doing a simple, timed writing exercise. Set your timer for 15 minutes and write without stopping, starting every sentence with the words "I want."
Writing without stopping for a set period of time enables your inner voice to override your inner censor and helps to unearth buried dreams.
It also creates a feeling of relief in the mind, heart, and body.
This exercise can also be practiced orally, alone or in the company of a friend.
You might try doing this exercise every morning for a week, looking back at the end of the week to see what has come up.
Sometimes the simple act of expressing a want actually releases it, while other yearnings retain their energy, asking us to pay attention.
When we pay attention to what we want, we are that much closer to getting it.

DailyOM