| From The Artist's Way By Julia Cameron My grandmother was gone before I learned the lesson her letters were teaching: survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention. Yes, her letters said, Dad's cough is getting worse, we have lost the house, there is no money and no work, but the tiger lilies are blooming, the lizard has found the spot of sun, the roses are holding despite the heat. My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her; success or failure, the truth of life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always to the capacity for delight. the capapcity for delight is the gift of paying attention. The reward for attention is always healing, It may begin as the healing of a particular pain--the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: that pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it "unutterably alone." More than anything else, attention is the act of connection.... ...Writing about attention, I see that I have written a good deal about pain. this is no coincidence. It may be different for others, but pain is what it took to teach me to pay attention. In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are all, always, all right. Yesterday the marriage may have ended. Tomorrow the cat may die. The phone call from the lover, for all my waiting, may not ever come, but just at the moment, just now, that's all right. I am breathing in and out. Realizing this, I began to notice that each moment was not without its beauty. |