Hi Everyone,
I read somewhere: “A flower does not think of competing against the flower next to it. It just blooms.” Am I blooming? Are you blooming?
In one of my classes, we focused on learning about imagination last week. I tied this in with what we are learning about how visualizations impact our brains just as if we had done the activity itself instead of imagining it.
When we learn about the importance of visualizing, it becomes essential to use living an examined life to not just learn from the past, but to also visualize the future I would like to create.
You can take time to imagine the kind of career you would like. For example, in my life, I wanted to have the time to continue to be a reader and not too busy or tired at night to continue to be a lifelong learner. For me, that led to basically remaining in college for the rest of my life!
But it is also important to imagine the kind of relationships you want, the kind of marriages you want, the kinds of jobs that will not only allow you to provide for yourselves, but also to contribute in some way to making the world a better place.
Many of the great sages and mystics have told us that love is the true source of our being. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I want it to be. I want to believe it…but I also see my own flaws and I see the world around me. But what would my life and the world look like if I imagined a life based on love rather than on fear, on forgiveness rather than bitterness, wisdom rather than group think?
Even if it was not ultimately true, would not living in such a way help me at least personally to bloom? And what if it were true? Then basing my life on love would also mean that I was aligning myself with the universe, with ultimate reality. A life aligned with love, at the service of love and blooming with love. What would that look like? What would it feel like?
So what do I do know? That imagining such a reality helps me to activate it in my own life and how I experience the world and my relationships. I don’t want to live filled with fear. I want to live as if love is the source of my being.
To Blooming!
Apophat