Reflect means grasping the totality of a situation, especially our own role in producing it

 

 

What makes you happy?
Select from the following

Are you arrogant, greedy, selfish?
What are you most upset about?
What is the role of religion in your life?
What do you find funny?
What do you do to help others?
What do you do for creativity?
When did you humiliate someone?
In what ways are you truly unique? In what ways are you the same as others

Are you bored? Or are you full of vitality?
“There are several probable reasons that chronic, compensated boredom is generally not considered pathological. Perhaps the main reason is that in contemporary industrial society most people are bored, and a shared pathology…is not experienced as pathology. Furthermore, ‘normal’ boredom is usually not conscious.” Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, 273
Are you callous? Are you vulgar? Are you capable of bestial acts? Is your heart hard?
“In true inbred vulgarity, there is a dreadful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar.” The Genius of John Ruskin, 304
How do you respond in times of trouble?
“We can never tell how patient or humble a person is when everything is going well with him. But when those who should cooperate with him do the exact opposite, then we can tell. A man has as much patience and humility as he has then, and no more.”
St. Francis, The Admonitions, XII
In what ways are you wounded? Have you suffered a great loss?
“Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt.”
― Rachel Naomi Remen

What holds you back? What is your potential?
In what ways are you limited? What thwarts you from being, achieving, or doing what is closest to your heart? Work backward from there to find your core truth.
Are you reaching, achieving, and acting upon my potential?
How are you failing to act on my potential? What could you be doing that you are not?

Which of your hopes do you secretly know will never come true?
“Which of your hopes do you secretly know will never come true? Go ahead, think this over honestly. Without hopes and dreams, we cannot live. But once we know that certain hopes are false, we can’t hold on to them forever, because sooner or later they’ll end in crisis and failure. If you can search deep within yourself and find the hopes you realize will never come true, and if you make the effort to abandon these hopes here forever, you will gain a greater sense of reality.
Silo, Guided Experiences, ‘False hopes’
Do you engage in self-justification?
'Lightly swayed on the easy springs of the carriage and no longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew calmer physically and, as always happens, simultaneously with physical relief his reason suggested arguments to salve his conscience. The thought which reassured Rostopchin was not a new one. Ever since the world was created and men began killing one another no man has ever committed a crime of this character against his fellow without comforting himself with this same idea – le bien public, the hypothetical welfare of other people.'
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, page 1057
Do you use intellect for personal gain?
You know, there is the intellect, and there is pure feeling—the pure feeling of loving something, of having great, generous emotions. The intellect reasons, calculates, weighs, balances. It asks, “Is it worthwhile? Will it give me benefit?” On the other hand, there is pure feeling—the extraordinary feeling for the sky, for your neighbor, for your wife or husband, for your child, for the world, for the beauty of a tree, and so on. When these two come together, there is death. Do you understand? When pure feeling is corrupted by the intellect, there is mediocrity. That is what most of us are doing. Our lives are mediocre because we are always calculating, asking ourselves whether it is worthwhile, what profit we will get, not only in the world of money, but also in the so-called spiritual world—“If I do this, will I get that?”
J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

In what ways do you escape? How are you controlled?
Take account of all the ways you escape. Entertainment, food and drink, exercise, etc. Of course this is an ongoing, lifelong process.
Give an example of how you are controlled by ‘public consciousness’.
What groups do you identity with? Can you free yourself from any kind of identification with any group?

What are you unaware or incapable of?
Great music, art?
Entering the heart of another?
What do you yearn for?
“A person what he aspires for. In order to know myself, I ask: What are the ends I am striving to attain? What are the values I care for most? What are the great yearnings I should like to be moved by?” Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 259
What is false and real in your life?
What do you do in your life that is utterly meaningless? Give an example from your own life.
What have you seen or met that was utterly real to you? Give an example from your own life.
Let us tear away the veils that shackle our consciousness. Begin by seeing through what is illusory or meaningless.
 Write it on the last page of this booklet, tear it off and place it in the box.

What do you have in common with?
What do you have in common with all human beings?
What do you have in common with plants and animals that we do not have in common with rocks?
What do you have in common with all things?

What are the names of your great-grandparents?
That’s how quickly you’ll be forgotten. Within one hundred years nobody here will be remembered by anyone. And nothing we do will solve the world’s problems.

What is the truth of your most closely held beliefs and attitudes?
“Humbling oneself, expressing gratitude, and admiring another are worldly pleasures.” Rumi, Signs of the Unseen, chap. 26, page 114. “So long as any of those original joys remain in your stomach you will not be given anything to eat.” Signs of the Unseen, chap. 26, page 120. (See additional quote by Krishnamurti at Insights)
"Best of all exercises for the finding of truth is the confrontation of statements that seem absolutely to contradict each other. 'Method of investigation—' Simone Weil once jotted down in a note to herself, 'as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true.'....Her deliberate strategic emphases, her desire to 'throw the counterweight' on the side of a proposition against which popular judgment is almost solidly arrayed; as she does most spectacularly by insisting, in the teeth of our worship of happiness and success, that 'unhappiness' is the essential road to God, and the supreme evidence of God's love." Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 31-32


Share memories
Share a memory of what is dearest to you
When did you face a crisis?
“For more than twenty years I have offered a very simply yet powerful ritual to people before their radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery. I suggest they meet together with some of their closest friends and family the day before their procedure. It does not matter how large or small the group is, but it is important that it be made up of those who are connected to them through a bond of the heart….The ritual begins by having everyone sit in a circle. In any order they wish to speak, each person tells the story of a time when they too faced a crisis. People may talk about the death of important persons, the loss of jobs or of relationships, or even about their own illnesses….When they finish telling their story of survival, they take a moment to reflect on the personal quality that they feel helped them come through that difficult time.” Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, 153

What was a formative experience of your life?
What made you and makes you the distinctive person who you are?

Wonderful people you have known