There is often little time for reflection though the hours never cease to pile up. Much is thought of, many things are remembered, but little is reflected upon. There is a difference between thinking and reflecting; one of them presents a plan or an image, which is transformed according to feeling, or exterior phenomena that seeks an end, or a means to an end; the other is the transformation of thought without end, it simply looks, it watches the worry come and go, plans arise and finish. When you step back from a wall, you can see how high it is, but when you are very close, you must grasp onto something because there is no way to see where you are. So reflecting is a way to stand back and see how far the thought goes, while thinking holds to the thought as long as it wants. Reflection shows that thoughts do not control you, while thinking always seeks a thought to control. Douglas Thornton
January 24th, 2014 Arranging our lives into a schedule and setting goals for them is a pleasing venture in itself; our efforts are never so precise and our discipline never so honourable as when we have something to point to, turning our every day activities into an improvement of the self. Ben Franklin set aside one day a week for study and personal improvement, and advised others to do the same; Coleridge offered three hours a day as fitting to the battle against time; but when we burn up the hours and carve into our days these affairs, the magic disappears; the struggle we once thought honourable now seems vain and doubt leaks into the mind. Should we make a new schedule and set a new goal it would be just as pleasing, but there is always the lone question that asks us if we are cut out for that sort of life. Apart from turning us on to patterns and appearances, the mind is far from logical in its understanding, so why then do we try to frame it? There was a profound sage