The Flashlight of Awareness
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Claude Monet, “An Orchard in Spring”, 1886. Source: WikiArt
Wellbeing

The Flashlight of Awareness

Ram Dass
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Is it possible to achieve inner harmony? How can we stop our thoughts for longer than a moment? Ram Dass looks for answers to the questions we ask ourselves every day – or maybe even more often.

Awareness is like a flashlight and it flashes on things. So your knee itches, it flashes. You think about the death in Bosnia, it flashes. You’re

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Communing with the Moment
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Photo by Marek Piwnicki/Unsplash
Breathe In

Communing with the Moment

How to Avoid Circular Thinking
Marcin Polak

Beautiful moments are seen not in hurrying, but in slowing down, in wandering. Circular thinking happens all too easily, while the fragments of thought that are open to the immeasurable form incredible patterns.

Generalizing, making circular thoughts out of thought fragments, is a normal, popular and boring process. At the same time, in life, only moments are beautiful: scraps of time and thought. I used to think about this line sung by Ryszard Riedel [of popular Polish blues rock band Dżem – trans. note] by way of circular thoughts – thinking that only some moments in life are beautiful. I thought there were more ugly or neutral moments in life than beautiful ones – as if, in the ocean of moments, only now and then would you come across nuggets of amber or other precious stones. I thought there were only a few such moments to be found in life. For a long time, this was how I interpreted the line about beautiful moments, while to me, the words “that’s why it’s worth living sometimes” meant that it’s only worth living for those times when a beautiful moment comes along. It’s a quarter of a century since I first heard Dżem’s song. In the meantime, I disregarded its message as a rock ‘n’ roll cliché and locked it away in the deepest corner of my memory, from where it recently emerged with renewed strength. Yesterday, out of the blue, I told a moment that in life, only moments are beautiful.

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