How Will You Carry Yourself Today?

My elffriend visited his family in Los Angeles for a couple of weeks and came back home last night. He brought with him some books. I woke up early this morning and started reading The Book of Awakening. It's written by Mark Nepo who is also a poet and a cancer survivor. It has 365 little chapters, each about one page long, dedicated for each day of the year. Already what I read in January 1st touched me a lot :)


"There is a Buddhist precept that asks us to be mindful of how rare it is to find ourselves in human form on Earth. It is really a beautiful view of life that offers us the chance to feel enormous appreciation for the fact that we are here as individual spirits filled with consciousness, drinking water and chopping wood.

...It asks us to understand that no other life form has the consciousness of being that we are privilege to. It asks us to recognize that of all the endless species of plants and animals and minerals that make up the Earth, a very small portion of life has the wakefulness of spirit that we call "being human".

That I rise from some depth of awareness to express this to you and that you can receive me in this instant is part of our precious human birth. ...

So what will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? What will you ask and of whom?

Tomorrow you could die and become an ant, and someone will be setting traps for you. But today you are precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now."

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