Dear friends,
Welcome to this morning meditation,
Which I hope will act as a reminder to us all to appreciate the wonderful fact of our existence.
Let's begin by taking a few moments to come into the present moment.
If you find it comfortable,
You might like to close your eyes.
Now take a deep breath in and as you release the breath,
Encourage your body to relax.
Breathing in,
I know that I am breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know that I am breathing out.
With each breath,
Allow yourself to relax more and more as we take a one minute pause.
Welcome back and welcome to this wonderful world.
Sometimes when we hear the word wonderful,
We think of exotic places,
The Grand Canyon,
Mount Everest,
And man-made wonders such as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
It's estimated weight,
6 million tonnes.
And then we have modern wonders,
Such as the International Space Station,
Where a series of international astronauts have been living 400 miles above us for almost a quarter of a century now.
But we don't have to climb Mount Everest or hitch a ride up to the ISS in order to realise how wonderful it is to be here.
The wonderful is all around us.
We just have to stop and pay attention.
A simple example.
You are at a concert and someone begins to play the piano.
That action sets up vibrations that travel invisibly through the air.
These vibrations are picked up by our eardrums and this results in signals being sent to our brains.
In each of our brains,
The signals are processed and in some amazing way,
They are understood and recognised as what we call music.
Yes,
We listen and we enjoy the concert.
But do we realise the wonder of what we are seeing and hearing?
And the reading of music brings us to consider how our eyes can interpret letters and characters and symbols and make sense of them.
Not only for each of us individually,
But in a way that is understood by all of us collectively.
How amazing is that?
From an instrument in the concert hall to one we see above us all the time,
The common aeroplane.
The first powered,
Controlled flight occurred on the 17th of December,
1903.
The Wright brothers successfully flew their aircraft for just 12 seconds for a distance of 120 feet,
36.
5 metres.
And yet,
Only 66 years later,
In 1969,
Men were walking on the moon.
I feel sorry for people who fly so often that they cannot see flight as an everyday source of wonder and awe.
You make your way into what is essentially a metal box.
The flying machine takes off with you and hundreds of other people in it as well.
Someone comes around with food and drink as easily as if you're sitting on a seat in a cafe.
You look down over the clouds and you've entertainment to pass the time.
And some time later,
You land in a different country or on a different continent.
And far from looking upon this as the mind-boggling thing that it is,
We complain about the flight being delayed.
The food is not up to scratch.
And even more astonishingly,
We protest that the Wi-Fi signal isn't great.
Let's pause for one minute to give thanks.
Welcome back again.
The pity of it is that yesterday's miracle becomes today's everyday experience and we can easily shrug our shoulders and say,
So what?
Back on the ground,
Nature is producing its own miracles at every single turn.
The miracle of conception and the birth of a baby.
How a child gains intelligence and language skills.
The mystery of existence and the question of what it means to live,
To be born and to die.
And consider the evolution of species.
The fact that somehow animate life emerged from inanimate beginnings.
And what about the inner nature of matter itself?
How,
When we break down matter into its smallest parts,
We find that what appears solid,
Including ourselves,
Are mostly open space.
I'm told that an atom is about 99.
999% and more empty space.
The only reason we don't experience this emptiness is because the electromagnetic forces between atoms gives the illusion of solidity.
But matter,
Including bodies like ourselves,
Is very far from solid.
You and I are wonderfully here.
The reasons giving rise to feelings of awe and wonder go on and on.
All that is needed on our part is that we stop,
Look around us and listen.
Albert Einstein once said,
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead.
His eyes are closed.
We need to practice real presence,
In other words mindfulness,
In order to be fully here,
In the moment,
Without distraction or judgement.
Stopping to notice will allow us to break the habit of taking things for granted.
It will help us overcome our tendency to write off the extraordinary as just ordinary.
The fact is,
We are surrounded by mysteries that are way beyond our understanding.
We think of the vastness of the universe,
The intricacy of a single cell,
The complexity of our own consciousness.
It brings to mind the words of the poet William Blake,
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
And for all this magic,
We need to have a proportionate sense of gratitude.
Just imagine this,
If you or I woke up today with only the things for which we gave thanks yesterday,
Where would we be?
I'm not asking you this question,
I'm asking myself as well,
Because we can all take these everyday miracles for granted.
So tomorrow,
When we each wake up,
To experience the fact that we are wonderfully here,
Let us all give thanks for the gift of another new day in this wonderful world.
Namaste.
