I admit it. I've got a thing for old things. Old is certainly not always better, but I've not found much wisdom yet in the new. So, when I'm looking for wisdom to help me in the spiritual life I mostly look to the past. The past holds wisdom that's been tested by time. Here's a little tidbit that helps me awaken to real life from the dream of the illusions that want all my attention:

"Human life is a mostly a dream. In our dreams we look without seeing, we listen without hearing, we taste and touch without tasting or touching, we speak without saying anything, we walk without moving. The mind invents realities that are entirely imaginary." Philo of Alexandria (50 BCE-20 CE)

It's awfully easy to look without seeing the person right in front of me. To listen to the sound of traffic or the song of the bird in the tree outside my widow, but not really hear. To taste and touch . . . and miss it all. And of course, to utter something that has no life behind the words because I'm not really in my words.

I might as well be dreaming, because I'm not really living.

Changing that's not hard; but it means no longer allowing my thoughts to render the rest of me unconscious.