Is Free-Thinking an Oxymoron?
Pause to Ponder
For July and August, instead of writing full-length blogs, I’ll be sharing short “Pause to Ponder” posts—offering you something I’ve found lovely, intriguing or inspiring to touch your heart or get you thinking. Happy summering!
“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society…Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body. Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules.”
—Alan Watts, from The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Freedom
by Mendek Rubin
My ideas and values have a life of their own.
Their existence has their roots in my conditioning and culture.
I cannot claim that they originated within me.
Yet I think I am free.
My emotions have a life of their own.
They swell up and recede, like tides of the sea,
with a rhythm not of my own making.
Yet I think I am free.
My actions and reactions have a life of their own.
I’m often unaware of the “whys” of my own behavior,
doing things unlike “me.”
Yet I call myself free.
My thoughts have a life of their own.
They follow each other, like night follows day,
without acknowledging my authority.
Yet I call myself free.
Take a Moment Micro-Meditation
Tiny pauses to be right here, right now can have big results. Our Take a Moment series of micro-meditations—all under two minutes long—make taking mindful pauses as easy as possible. We invite you to "Take a Moment" to find the calm that is always within you.
