Meditation for Thursday 21 May 2026
In addition to our daily periods of practice, it’s good for us to cultivate awareness during the greater part of the day when we are not formally meditating, that is, in the course of our everyday lives.
The renowned spiritual guide Richard Rohr, a man now in his mid-eighties says these days he has developed the practice of gazing. He sits in his rocking chair and looks out at a dumpster or skip as we call them here in Australia and gazes. Somebody had graffitied on the dumpster, ‘God is Love’ so he reckons that there’s enough in that to keep him occupied for the rest of his life. But he doesn’t intellectualise the graffiti but rather just gazes at it without engaging in analysis. Meditation?
Usually most of us give only half our attention to the things we do. We often think we are doing things wholeheartedly when in fact we are probably thinking about a hundred different things at the same time. We are not usually conscious of this. We’re a bit like a person who thinks they are walking the dog but end up following the dog wherever the dog leads them.
One of the easiest ways to train ourselves in awareness practice is to take some simple, everyday actions and bring our attention fully to what we are doing.
We’ll be distracted by a commentary in our head that might run something like, “oh goodness, this is crazy. What am I doing cleaning my teeth and concentrating so intently on what I’m doing?
When we rush in with this mental chatter, we are no longer mindful.
Every action performed with awareness is a profound activity. But even the most seemingly exalted activity is meaningless if we do it mindlessly.
Meditation
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