What is about to follow is a guided process conducted by Anthony DiMello.
Please do not listen to this while operating a motor vehicle or any kind of equipment.
From time to time you will hear a gong.
The purpose of that gong is to invite you to put the recording on pause while you complete part of an exercise.
Imagine that you retire to a lonely place in order to give yourself a priceless gift.
The gift of solitude.
For solitude is a time when we see things as they truly are in their reality and not as we imagine them to be in the distortion of our minds.
What kind of a place have you chosen to be in?
A mountaintop?
The bank of a river maybe?
Or a lake?
Or a seashore?
Where you are all alone with sand and sky and sea.
Give yourself a minute or two to imagine the place as vividly as possible.
Now confront yourself with the following.
There are many little things in your life that have grown far too big simply because you haven't had the time and the solitude to stare them in the face and cut them down to size.
Search for these phony big things now and see how large a slice of your life they are devouring and see how small they are in reality.
There are also some mighty big things in your life that you are probably neglecting because you are too rushed and busy.
Now that you have a little quiet and peace search for them and let them stand out in your vision.
Let solitude give them the place and the dimension that they deserve.
Solitude is a time for making decisions.
Are there any decisions that you are running away from?
Are you escaping into work and social life to avoid them?
Face them now.
But first get in touch with your surroundings.
With the vastness of the sky or the rootedness of the trees or the immensity of the ocean or the stillness of the lake or the soothing flow of the river or the eternity of the stars.
First get in touch with some of these and then against this background look at those decisions that need to be made or to be reconsidered.
You couldn't do better of course than get in touch with the solitude of death.
A hundred years hence you will be in your grave.
Put yourself there in fantasy if you dare to and look at those decisions from that time and place.
The time has now come for you to make a decision about the kind of day that today will be.
Will it be a day of doing?
List the things that you really want to do today.
Will it be a day of being?
A day in which you will make no effort to achieve or to get things done or to gather and possess but just to be.
Your life will not be fruitful unless you learn the art of lying fallow.
The art of wasting time creatively.
Stop to think what that means.
So make a decision now on how much time you want to give to play to purposeless and unproductive interests to silence intimacy rest and ask yourself what you are going to taste today and to touch and to smell and to listen to and to see.
For it is thus that one brings depth and substance and creativity and energy to one's life.
