THE ART OF AWARENESS

Thoreau wrote: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." The art of awareness is the art of learning how to wake up to the eternal miracle of life with its limitless possibilities.

It is rising to the challenge of the stirring old hymn: "Awake my soul, stretch every nerve."

It is developing the deep sensitivity through which you may suffer and know tragedy, and die a little, but through which you will also experience the grandeur of human life.

It is following the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer who teaches "reverence for life," from ants to men; it is developing a sense of oneness with all life.

It is identifying yourself with the hopes, dreams, fears and longings of others, that you may understand them and help them.

It is learning to interpret the thoughts, feelings and moods of others through their words, tones, inflections, facial expressions and movements.

It is keeping mentally alert to all that goes on around you; it is being curious, observant, imaginative that you may build an ever increasing fund of knowledge of the universe.

It is striving to stretch the range of eye and ear; it is taking time to look and listen and comprehend.

It is searching for beauty everywhere, in a flower, a mountain, a machine, a sonnet and a symphony. It is knowing wonder, awe and humility in the face of life's unexplained mysteries.

It is discovering the mystic power of the silence and coming to know the secret inner voice of intuition.

It is avoiding blind spots in considering problems and situations; it is striving "to see life steadily and see it whole."

It is enlarging the scope of your life through the expansion of your personality.

It is through a growing awareness that you stock and enrich your memory... and as a great philosopher has said: "A man thinks with his memory."