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

 

 

Remember glimpses of the eternal
What is your own religious sentiment?
Do you have a sense of universal spiritual truth???
Trust your strengths. What is the intense pain or passion that you feel in certain situations? What appears superficial, what appears authentic? This is the token that you are who you are.
Each of us has caught a glimpse of the eternal
"In every man’s life there are moments when there is a lifting of the veil at the horizon of the known, opening a sight of the eternal. Each of us has at least once in his life experienced the momentous reality of God. Each of us has once caught a glimpse of the beauty, peace and power that flow through the souls of those who are devoted to Him. To some people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered. In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith.” 165
Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone
The greatness of things on earth
“All facts are parables; their object is God. All things are tales the Teacher relates in order to render intelligible issues too difficult to comprehend literally, directly....What a shame it is that people do not comprehend the greatness of things on earth. They act as if life were trivial, not realizing that every trifle is filled with Divinity. No one makes a move that does not stir the highest Heaven.” Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, 19
This world is the reality of the spirit in a state of trance
“You grasp the essence of the here by conceiving the beyond – for this world is the reality of the spirit in a state of trance. The manifestation of the mystery is partly suspended, with ourselves living in lethargy. Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.” 71
Abraham Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s

What was the most sacred experience in your life?
“Was it a moment of love? A moment of beholding the awe of nature’s beauty or being moved by a stirring song, the birth of a child or being in the presence of a tzaddik?”

Look for the good
Stand up for the good in the bad
The single most important thing one can do is to stand up for the good in the bad. It is easy to see and condemn the false. Standing up for the little bit of good in flawed, mixed reality is the only thing that can make one happy.

Do not think or say bad about others
When I make a mistake I don’t tell others. So I will follow this and I will forgive others also.

Never humiliate another person.
Never treat others with contempt, even if we believe they deserve it.

In what ways are you devoted to a false god? Watch how an object can become holy.
“I do not know if you have experimented with yourself. Take a piece of stick, put it on the mantelpiece and every day put a flower in front of it - give it a flower - put in front of it a flower and repeat some words - ‘Coca-cola.’ ‘Amen,’ ‘Om,’ it doesn’t matter what wordany word you like - listen, don’t laugh it off - do it and you will find out. If you do it, after a month you will see how holy it has become. You have identified yourself with that stick, with that piece of stone or with that piece of idea and you have made it into something sacred, holy. But it is not. You have given it a sense of holiness out of your fear.” Krishnamurti, The Awakening of Intelligence, 214
What is sacred to you?
The sacred is reality, purpose, being. “For many of us, money was the most real thing in life, and therefore the most sacred thing. Since what is real is the same as what is sacred, in our guts – in our ‘unconscious’ – reality had the contours of the merely mental, that which we can control by calculation.” Jacob Needleman, The Meaning of Money, 267