The first one is the Glimpse of the Day. This is a good reminder for me -- I tend to use busyness, even if it is just manufactured busyness, to avoid spending the needed time to look within. Someone I care about also does this -- but she really feels the terror element of looking within.
We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely. We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find. We may even think that if we do, we will be in danger of madness. This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us from discovering our real nature.
So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the slightest risk of looking into ourselves. Even the idea of meditation can scare people. When they hear the words egoless or emptiness, they think that experiencing those states will be like being thrown out the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void. Nothing could be further from the truth. But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyness. Looking into the nature of our mind is the last thing we would dare to do.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
The second one is the Daily Dharma from Tricycle. It suggests that if we can look within, and not get distracted by the "monkey mind" of random thoughts and fears, we will discover that peace is our true nature.
Looking At Our Hands
Peace is a natural mind-state in every one of us. Peace has been there since the day we were born and it is going to be there until the day we die. It is our greatest gift; so why do we think we have no peace of mind?
Experiencing peace is like looking at our hands. Usually, we see only the fingers--not the spaces in between. In a similar manner, when we look at the mind, we are aware of the active states, such as our running thoughts and the one-thousand-and-one feelings that are associated with them, but we tend to overlook the intervals of peace between them. if one were to be unhappy or sad every minute of the twenty-four hour day, what would happen to us? I guess we would all be in the mad house!
~ Thynn Thynn, Living Meditation, Living Insight
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