There is one habit that is worth acquiring: awareness. What distinguishes this “habit” from all the others is that it cannot be automatic. Awareness can arise spontaneously, but it requires a discipline to be sustained.
For example, when I went for a walk in the woods recently, I focused my mind on the quality of my walking, breathing, and a mantra (“spoken” internally). One might think that this would limit my awareness of my immediate surroundings, but it was quite the contrary. My senses delighted in acute perceptions of all the manifestations of life that I encountered in my path. I reflected on how much more ALIVE I feel when my mind is freed from its dreamlike reflections of the past and projections into the future and wakes up to the clarity of Presence. Ironically, when my mind is harnessed into a discipline, its energy is channeled into the potential of presence instead of being dispersed by its monkey-like meanderings.
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