We do not turn away from difficulties or or injustice, but neither do we surrender to despair. If we can have a heart wide enough to hold both, the ordinary becomes sacred.
Hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart
and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun.
Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
What we need to know is already known within.
Sometimes life circumstances require [that] a therapist…embodies the permission-granting authority figure, the simulacrum of an empowering parent, but even that does not always work.
Sooner or later, a person has to understand and revisit the basics: we are accountable for the life we have lived or not lived; we are summoned to choice, courage and perseverance in living this life. From that recognition, the necessity of permission becomes more than obvious; it becomes the vital oxygen we must breathe or we choke to death on the fumes of the unlived life
James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second half of the Journey
Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! ……
We must become that moment….…
forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
Paul Cézanne
Much of our dissatisfaction comes from mentally living in the future or the past rather than inhabiting the present. Here, two Jungian therapists suggest that contentment comes from bringing one’s full presence to the task or the experience immediately before one.
St. Benedict, an Italian monk of the early sixth century and founder of the Benedictine order, had a powerful approach to staying in the present.
The word novice comes from medieval Latin, and it means to be a beginner, a person who is new to an activity.
St. Benedict instructed novices to take a special vow – a vow of fidelity to the moment.
Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, Contentment: A Way to True Happiness.
Nothing has ever been said about God
that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
Thomas Merton
Mystery is the place where meaning hasn’t settled yet.
And that’s not a bad place to be
Pádraig O’Tuama, Poetry Unhindered newsletter
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