Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

worth seeking the altar where our own fragmented
and isolated being-strands can find each other and
marry, bringing new levels of harmony and
understanding to our lives, to the point where we
might actually live happily ever after, which really
means in the timeless here and now. These stories
are wise, ancient, surprisingly sophisticated
blueprints for our full development as human beings.
One recurrent theme in the fairy stories is that of a
young child, usually a prince or a princess, who loses
his or her golden ball. Whether we ourselves are
male or female, old or young, we each contain both
prince and princess (among countless other figures),
and there was a time we each radiated with the
golden innocence and infinite promise carried by
youth. And we still carry that golden radiance, or can
recover it, if we take care not to let our development
arrest.
Bly points out that between losing the golden ball,
which seems to happen first around age eight, and
taking any steps to recover it or even to recognize
that it has gotten away from us, might take thirty or
forty years, whereas in fairy tales, which take place
"once upon a time," and therefore outside of ordinary
time, usually it only takes a day or two. But in both
instances a bargain needs to be made first, a bargain