The Book of Awakening

This little book is one that I've been reading before bed and when I wake up, before getting out of bed, I think about the lesson and meditation and try to keep it in mind throughout my day.

The book is divided into 365 'chapters' for each day of the year. Every day, there's a new topic, followed by instructions on what to mediate on.

Here's an example and some excerpts from today's chapter:




October 26: The Effort to Listen.

• We all suffer sometimes from the effort to fix and hold rather than listen. 
• The first duty of love is to listen. 
• So often when we refuse to listen, we become obsessed with remaking the world in our own image. 
• To truly listen is to risk being changed forever. 

Meditation: During your day, take 5 minutes and stop making, stop doing, stop thinking, and just listen.

This was a really powerful one for me because I've always considered myself to be a decent listener. But when my friends or family talk to me about a challenge or a situation, I'm guessing 99.9% of the time, I try to give them an example from my own life. I relate their issue back to myself and tell them how I handled a similar problem and what I think they can/should learn from my own experiences. Me! Me! Me!

I think a lot of people do this. And maybe this isn't always a bad thing. But this was a helpful reminder that sometimes that's not what the situation requires. Sometimes people just want to talk, and whether their words are few or many- it can be very soothing to have someone else just...listen.

PS- loving my blog's new look. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Whitney!