If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.
Month: July 2020
Sunday Quote: What myth
Thoreau, Campbell, and Euripides ask the same question for the same reason:
What myth is playing out now in your life?
What sacred, spiritual drama is in play in what appears to be secular life?
Thomas Moore
How we learn
I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.
Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom.
Toni Morrison
Through difficulties..
I know from my personal experience that out of pathos (great suffering) we come to know pothos (our sense of emerging self).
Through the portal of the intolerable, we deepen into soul.
Stephen Aizenstat, Dream Tending: Awakening to the Healing Power of Dreams
The first step
Without meditation, where do we even begin to find a place to stand and speak the whole truth? The four noble truths teach that there is suffering, that it’s caused by human ignorance and selfishness, that it stops when these attitudes stop, and that we have to live in accordance with that. Maybe the truths of suffering and its origin don’t lead to the ceasing of suffering on the sociocultural level right now. But through meditation, through directly accessing the heart, one can at least see and speak the truth of how suffering feels in this moment, where you experience it in your heart and body. A way of action can evolve from that, but the first step is to speak truth, feel truth, live truth.
Ajahn Sucitto, Heart light in Dark Times
Moment by moment
You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets.
You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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