Meditation for Thursday 27th February 2025
When we meditate we are gifting ourselves to each other and to others. Giving, Eric Fromm wrote in his classic book “The Art of Loving’ is the highest expression of potency.
I think Fromm might agree that when we give we bring joy both to our self and to others.
It’s natural for us to seek joy in our lives; not happiness but rather joy, which unlike happiness can ideally be sometimes sustained even in the midst of suffering. As we become battle-scarred day after day by a barrage of bad news the search for joy becomes more intense. The absence of joy is sorrow. And the so-called ‘sads’ can easily overwhelm our best intentions to remain joyful.
“Wars start in the minds of men,” says the UNESCO Charter, but “peace starts in our minds and hearts.” Peace brings joy. Vijaya Pandit the first female President of the UN General Assembly put it this way, “there is superficial order, but there is no inner tranquility and understanding. True foundation for peaceful coexistence is the right state of mind.”
Trappist monk, Thomas Merton wrote, “where there is a deep, simple, all-embracing love of man, of the created world of living and inanimate things, then there will be a respect for life, for freedom, for truth, for justice.
Vijaya Pandit, Thomas Merton, Eric Fromm and people of goodwill everywhere know that joy is an expression of who we are ‘within’. Our outer life is an expression of who we are within.
Meditation assists us to shape our inner life and in doing so rendering us the gift of joy, that invaluable endowment that transforms.
Meditation
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