Dear friends,
Having listened to this meditation,
It's my hope that you will be greeted by amazement when tomorrow you wake up to welcome yet another new day.
Notice the simple delight,
The bright-eyed happiness for existence that we can see all the time in the faces of young children.
This elemental delight is a gift that we tend to lose as we grow older.
Yes,
We grow older and hopefully wiser,
But in one respect at least we don't grow in realization as we should.
We can become too familiar with all that faithfully surrounds us to the point where life can lose its magic,
Its fascination.
This meditation is designed to restore some of that magic by reminding us to follow the example of the great Mary Oliver.
Remember what Mary told us about looking back on this gift of existence.
She said,
When it's over I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.
And we can all work to reach a stage of awareness where we can say with Mary Oliver that we are married to amazement.
Let's begin our reflection by bringing ourselves gratefully into this present moment.
We'll do this in two parts.
We'll begin with a simple breathing exercise.
You're probably familiar with the formula.
As we breathe in we think of words such as breathing in I bring my attention to the fact that I am breathing in.
And we follow the same pattern as we breathe out.
Breathing out I bring my attention to the fact that I am breathing out.
So for the next minute,
Just 60 seconds,
Let's mindfully concentrate on the breath.
Our simple breathing in and our breathing out.
Welcome back.
Next I'd like if we would extend this simple breath awareness into a breathing exercise linked to gratitude.
We will breathe mindfully as before but this time as we breathe out we will give thanks for some benefit.
Some benefit that we are experiencing today,
Right now,
Or some benefit that we have experienced in the past.
For example,
We might be grateful for the love of a partner,
The life of a relative or a friend,
The fact that we have somewhere to live,
Food to eat,
Such everyday gifts as the air we breathe.
The potential list is endless.
There's no need to think of a different reason for gratitude on each breath.
It might be more useful to concentrate on one particular benefit for the length of say three breaths and then we can move on to another reason for thankfulness for the next three breaths and so on.
So that we won't feel rushed we will allow ourselves two minutes for this exercise.
Again simply breathing but this time with a sense of gratitude.
Welcome back again.
I hope you found that last gratitude exercise a useful introduction to this idea of amazement.
When we pause,
When we take time to reflect on the world about us,
We must be filled with a sense of awe and wonder.
This sense of grateful amazement that we are working on today.
Just consider for a moment the fact that you and I are here.
That somehow or another this universe has given rise to you and to me.
How can that be so?
Isn't that an extraordinary thing?
Something we could reflect on for a long time.
Not to mention the fact that the universe itself exists.
How come that and that you and I are made of the very stuff of stars?
Everything is.
Our existence is an endless source of amazement and it should give rise to unending feelings of gratitude.
Yet in the busyness of our daily lives we can fail to notice these things.
We can flip from one activity to another,
Aided by a selection of space age gadgets.
Any one of which would have been considered the stuff of science fiction only a few short years ago.
Even though we inhabit a field of wonder,
We can fail to feel this sense of amazement.
Why?
Because the magic has become familiar.
We can find ourselves plodding along,
Drifting into living a boring unreflective life.
By failing to contemplate on the wonder of this existence,
We can miss out on all the joy,
The beauty that even the simplest life experience has to offer us.
The wonders are all around us.
Every day we are surrounded by phenomena that are just too easily taken for granted.
The changing light of day,
The harmonies we hear in music,
The sounds of the world around us,
The hubbub of conversation,
The noise of daily life.
Think of the variety we see in nature,
The intricacy of a spider's web or a bird's nest.
And how does a one-year-old bird have the instinct that allows it to make a nest for the very first time?
Then of course there's the migration of birds over huge distances.
The list goes on and on.
The magnificence of the night sky,
The complexity of the human brain,
Our ability to invent.
For example,
Just think of the development of planes.
Planes that have allowed us to easily travel across the earth and rockets that have allowed us to explore the solar system.
Today we can track not only the movement of planets and stars,
But smaller and hard to trace objects such as asteroids and comets.
At the microscopic level,
We have been able to uncover the secrets of DNA,
The genetic information inside the body's cells that helps to make us who we are.
Developments in medicine allow us to treat illnesses that would have meant certain death in the not too distant past.
These are just a handful of examples,
Just some of the wonders that surround us every day.
Yet all too often we take them for granted.
We fail to even notice them,
Never mind feel a sense of astonishment.
Let's have a pause now,
Just one minute,
60 seconds,
To allow us to reflect on how lucky we really are.
Welcome back.
When we fail to reflect on the wonder of this existence,
We risk falling blindly into a state of apathy and indifference.
Indifference to the beauty and the complexity of this world in which we live.
Our narrow vision leaves us focused simply on the daily grind.
We can come to take not only the things but even the people in our lives for granted.
This failure to reflect can lead us to feelings of separation,
Even disillusionment.
We might begin to lack empathy and lose compassion for our fellow travellers,
Leaving each person to fend for his or her own self.
Our blindness to wonder leaves us alone,
Closed off and indifferent not only to the world around us but even to the struggles of other people.
We may fail to recognise the inherent worth and dignity of every human being and instead we begin to judge people based on superficial qualities that suit our own narrow self-interest.
What is in this for me?
By failing to reflect on all the causes for amazement,
We can lose sight of the happiness that can be found even in,
And especially in,
The simplest of things.
We can become blind to the magic that surrounds us everywhere.
What a loss.
Thankfully there is a different way of looking at things.
When we pause and take time to reflect on the wonder of this existence,
We see things in an entirely different light.
We become open to a world of possibility and potential.
Once again we begin to see the world and the people in it with fresh eyes,
As if through the eyes of a child,
Expecting the best,
Recognising beauty and enjoying even the most common everyday experiences.
We feel a greater sense of belonging and connectedness that inspires us to work to leave this world in even a slightly better state than the one in which we found it.
Let's have another one-minute pause.
This time maybe what we might call a pause for resolution.
What can we do to rekindle the sense of amazement that will make a difference to our lives?
Welcome back again.
Before we end this reflection,
Here are three quotes on the subject of amazement.
Each day,
Each moment is a step into the unknown.
How can we feel anything but amazement?
Ivan M.
Granger.
Standing face to face with the world,
We often sense a spirit which surpasses our ability to comprehend.
The world is too much for us.
It is crammed with marvel.
The glory is not an exception,
But an aura that lies about all being.
A spiritual setting of reality.
Abraham Joshua Herschel.
And finally from Jacob Nordby.
Hello,
Life says.
Remember me?
We started out together here,
When you were just a bundle of innocent amazement.
Remember how you saw the world with nothing but wonder?
We were such rowdy playmates then.
We painted on the sky with clouds and made magic out of clothespins and peanut butter.
Remember,
Can you,
How I became stained and heavy with trouble?
Not safe now?
Lots of no.
They dressed me in painful clothes and made you wear them too.
You don't recognise me,
Do you?
But I've never abandoned you or lost my wild,
Happy desire to show you,
Play with you,
Kiss you,
Hide and seek down twisty paths and always discover more.
Want to run away with me again?
Shall we elope without ever leaving?
Because that's possible,
You know.
I've never been anywhere but here,
Waiting for you to remember.
Words from Jacob Nordby.
And there you have it.
Your invitation to allow amazement in at the door of each new day.
The background music will continue for some minutes now,
So that if you have time,
You might like to continue to reflect on how we might find ourselves,
Like Mary Oliver,
Married to amazement.
What a happy union that will be.
Namaste.
