If I am not careful – if I rise frantic from my bed, full of small concerns – the mystical flow of imagination at rest will be broken, the past and the future will rush in to claim my mind and I will be swept up into life’s petty details and myriad obligations…Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day.
Kent Nerburn, Small Graces, The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life
We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows
Jack Gilbert, American Poet, 1925 – 2012
Sometimes it seems almost everything in our culture conspires to distance us from heart and soul. So many messages are ads, trying to sell us something of questionable usefulness while ruthlessly pandering to our vanity, insecurity, or unhappiness – new toys, fashion, entertainment, or insurance against the inevitabilities of life. Few people ask the bigger questions.
Constant superficial conversation keeps us from noticing what’s going on with us emotionally or spiritually or in our bodies. Small talk alienates us from ourselves- perhaps a purpose as well as a result. In order to approach the deeper truths of our soul, we must quiet the inner chatter.
Bill Plotkin, Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
You know that the seed is inside the chestnut tree and inside the seed there are blossoms of the tree and the chestnuts and the shade. So inside the human body there is the seed, and inside the seed there is the human body again
Thinkers, listen…. tell me what you know of that which is not inside the soul: Take a jug of water and set it down on the water – now it has water inside and water outside. We shouldn’t give it a name, in case silly people start talking again about the body and the soul.
If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth: Listen to the secret sound, the real sound which is inside you. The One nobody talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the One who has made it all.
Kabir
Fall floods have washed away the planks of the bridge;
shouldering our sandals, we wade the narrow stream.
I dabble in the flow, delighted by the shallowness of the stream,
admiring how firm the stones are.
The point in life is to know what’s enough –
why envy those otherworld immortals?
With the happiness held in one inch-square heart
you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.
Gensei, Japanese monk and poet,
1623―1668
Two quotes from Leonard Cohen on the anniversary of his death
One idea on my new record is that the human predicament has no solution. We were tossed out of the garden; this isn’t paradise. And to look for perfect solutions is a very difficult burden to bear. That’s my theme: It’s a mess — thank God
[“The Traitor”] was about the feeling that we have of betraying some mission that we were mandated to fulfill, and being unable to fulfill it. And then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it, and that the deeper courage was to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself.
Mindfulbalance 