“Most of us have grasshopper minds,” Easwaran writes in this week’s reading, “dispersing our attention, energy, and desires in all sorts of directions and depriving us of the power to draw upon our deeper, richer resources for creative living.”
Meditation is the solution to this dispersion: “Meditation is integration.” This integration is the key to using all our intelligence and creative faculties, the key to peace and happiness.
In this week’s essay, “The Path of Meditation,” Easwaran presents his eight-point program for realizing our potential. Let’s start by reading the first half, pages 127–131 in Climbing the Blue Mountain,* in which he covers the first point, Meditation on a Passage.
Is there some tip from Easwaran in this reading that you tend to skim over because you have already heard it many times before? Try focusing on it this week.
We have experimented with many different putting others first exercises over the recent months. Let’s repeat those exercises and see if we can each find a way to deepen them, for example by practicing more consistently or via a bit of extra effort or preparation. Here’s our Putting Others First challenge this week:
Try focusing this week on treating others – and speaking about them – with respect. Do this for those you love, those you dislike, and those you tend to ignore. What do you learn by trying this?
* For those using electronic versions of Climbing the Blue Mountain with different page numbering: this week’s reading is the start of the chapter “The Path of Meditation,” ending with “…what you think.”