“We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.”

~ Alan Watts

From the Archives
New Thought Redux

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1914)
The Art of Being Alive

IN every thousand people who are living on this earth, not more than one is alive.

To be really alive means more than to be a moving, breathing, eating, drinking, and talking human creature. He who is actually alive finds the days too short for all the wonderful explorations which life offers in three realms to the reverent and aspiring adventurer.

He finds life itself a continual adventure, an unfolding panorama, with opportunities for pleasure and achievement at every turn. He finds himself an object of interesting study, however dissatisfied he may be with the present results of that study, for he perceives that he is a crude chunk of Eternity, and that in himself lie all the powers and possibilities latent in the Universe. And that in himself lies the will to work out these possibilities.

He who is fully alive enjoys the earth and all its pleasures. He loves the slap of the wind upon his cheek, the dash of the waves up on his breast, the motion of his limbs in the swift walk; the thrill of the good steed's body under his own; the ecstasy of rhythm in the dance; the vibrant swing of the oar. He loves labor, and the fatigue which follows; and in his harmoniously developed frame there is not one lazy or unused muscle.

Are you alive?