Meditation is not different from life

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

Meditation is not something different from daily life; do not go off into the corner of a room and meditate for ten minutes, then come out of it and be a butcher—both metaphorically and actually. Meditation is one of the most serious things. You can do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody, “I love you”, when you are considering your children. But then you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, to worship the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world.

Watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again—you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.

The Flight of the Eagle, p 46

Here is my reflection.

It is meditation, the continual observation of the self in action, in relationship, that makes for an integrted life. Nothing else will do as anything else shines the light of awareness and transformation elsewhere, and if it is elsewhere it is no transformation at all; just a manipulation through argument to make the world better for your kind of conditioning. If we are manipulative in this way, the we are, indeed, butchers literally and not just metaphorically.

Best wishes

Robert