What are You Living for?

Subtle Changes

I am meditating on my life by reviewing it. Perhaps you could call it reflecting. Or you could call it recalling. Or perhaps you might call it recapitulating. Whatever you choose, I am reviewing large sections of my life and re-experiencing the feelings of those times. As I do a slow sweeping breath, I feel I releasing the energy from those feelings and experiences. This is what I call letting go, or maybe you could call it releasing emotional baggage.

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I am getting better at it. You might expect that as practice makes perfect for anything. So I can feel those feelings deeper now than just a casual remembering. I am recapturing the mood of those times. This is one of those subtle changes. It is putting me more and more in touch with my own life. It feels like my life is getting more integrated and at the same time a little lighter.

When I revisit old moods and feelings like this I often find there is a wash over effect where I feel depressed after the meditation. one of the subtle changes is the length of time that I feel like this after a meditation. it is getting less and less. Also the intensity is becoming less intense too. I find myself feeling despair at lunchtime, yet oddly not worried about it and then six hours later the feeling has vanished like a cloud.

What is Important

One thing that is changing in me is the relative importance of different things. The scale of importance seems to be changing. It could be like the things are moving on the scale of importance. Mostly I find things gradually becoming less important.

This means that I worry less about things. This is usually quite handy, as it means I don't get entangled in other people's affairs or emotions as much as I used to.

The Rat Race

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It seems to me that this is what the fabled 'rat race' is all about: our attaching importance to things. When things are less important you are not so much in the 'rat race' anymore. It is not like you are trying to avoid the rat race; the very motivation for taking part in the race is still there. It is more like the rat race values are simply not important anymore. They are like phantoms.

Inner Quiet

One bonus of the changing importance of things is the quiet it affords. When things are not so important anymore, you don't think about them so much. If not many things are important, then you simply don't have much that concerns you and that you feel compelled to think about. This affords you many more quiet moments.

What I Find More and More

I find more and more that what I am living for is not a relevant question. I am living. That is enough. It is kind of like an axiom. There is no need for a reason beyond living itself. I don't feel like this all the time, but these kinds of feelings are becoming more common in my daily life.