Meditation for Thursday 24th November 2022
Every now and then I get the urge to reduce complexity by making my day to day life simpler. Sometimes I succeed other times I fail. Certainly if I meditate and practice mindfulness it guides me towards adopting simplicity in every aspect of my life.
When I look at our society it seems that simplicity is counter-cultural even scorned by some who see uncompromising, competitive productivity as virtuous.
Meditation, living in the present moment, opens the heart to getting rid of what is unnecessary and superfluous so that we can enter into an interior simplicity. It is a way of gaging some peaceful control in a world dominated by ‘achievement’, acquisition and status.
Living in the moment provides balance and control, an interior simplicity that has concern for doing the ordinary things quietly and as best as we can.
Dutch spiritual author, Henri Nouwen wrote about simplicity…
“Reflecting on my past three years of work I realize more and more that it lacked unity. The many things I did during those years seemed disjointed, not really related to each other…My fears and my resulting fatigue over these years might well be diagnosed as lack of single-mindedness, as a lack of one-eyedness, as a lack of simplicity.” Genesee Diary, 1981.
It seems to me that Nouwen recognised that in order to gain simplicity it required of him a certain self-discipline in an effort towards living in the present moment. He was looking for a centre from which everything else would flow. That centre is found in the now, in the present
As we practice tonight we bring ourselves to the centre, a place that gives us the joy and peace that flows from simplicity.
Now let us meditate with the intention of harvesting the fruit of simplicity for ourselves and for the world.
MEDITATION
________________________________________
Check out the offerings at the Carmelite Centre by going to www.thecarmelitecentremelbourne.org