Greetings Readers,
Welcome to Part IV of our course, Wisdom is the Way: The Timeless Art of Leading a Life. In today’s meditation, I’m sharing the first exercise — The Art of Noticing. It focuses on how we notice our three timeless perspectives (or eternal truths) in daily life. The purpose of the exercises (a new edition to the course) is to help us to think about putting these ideas into practice.
***As a reminder, for those who are available, our first virtual meetup will be on Wednesday (24 January) at noon EST (Register here).
The Art of Noticing
As we’ve discussed thus far, we do not always notice eternal truths in daily life. Even though we believe impermanence and interconnectedness are true, we usually need to be reminded.
Several passages in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations consist of reminders of these types of eternal truths. Here are two examples:
(1) Remind yourself at frequent intervals how quickly things and events are carried past and swept away. Reality is like an endlessly flowing river, its activities constantly changing, its causes variable beyond counting. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that nothing is stable, even what is close to us in time. (5.23)
(2) Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one. (6.38)
***Listen to this audio meditation to hear more ideas on the art of noticing. […]
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