' busy with this and that '...

How many of us find ourselves worn out by the physical anxieties, the frequent nerve-tensions, and the jittery tumultuousness of our period!

We tend to get entrapped in our own activities, to multiply them by the dozen, to be everlastingly busy with this and that.

We are, in a sense, the unwitting victims of our surface-life, the unconscious slaves of its activities and desires, the dancing marionettes of its interests and possessions.

There is no real free movement of our wills, only an apparent one.

We have only to look at the faces of the men and women in our big cities to realize how desolate of spiritual repose most of them are.

We have become so extroverted that it has become unnatural to turn the mind upon itself, artificial to direct the attention inwards for a while.

All this causes us to miss the most important values, keeps us on the plane of being merely higher thinking and mating animals and little more.



-- Perspectives > Chapter 3:
Relax and Retreat > # 15
Paul Brunton