The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking,
it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little.
If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
photo of Tibetan prayer wheel, Etnografiska museum, Stockholm
The first week back to work over. Nature has a gentler pace than the one imposed by our minds and seems to have different phases – growth, slowing down, covering over and rest. Thus, despite all the clamour to change we hear in these first weeks, we can choose to have some natural rest and a time of quiet, not always striving – allowing the different parts of our lives to just be .
You begin to see that there are seasons in your life, in the same way as there as seasons in nature. There are times to cultivate, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally there are those times that are cold and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.
Chogram Trungpa Rinpoche, How to Rule
A friend reminded me yesterday that it is all about starting each day anew, with fresh eyes – like lighting a candle in the darkness and seeing things in the glow of a kind light:
I’m heading into 2017 aspiring to look at life through the eyes of a child. Buddhists call it “beginner’s mind” — a corrective to the cynicism that comes when we let hard realities darken our vision and diminish our imagination. It’s a way of looking at the world that doesn’t deny the darkness, but makes fresh starts possible in everything – from our personal to our political lives.
What’s “the growing edge” in your life?
Whatever it is, may 2017 be a year in which our adult powers dance with our child-like imaginations to help make all things new.
Parker Palmer
With thanks to makebelieveboutique.com
We can spend our whole lives waiting to start living, instead of loving fully, even though we are flawed. As Emerson reminds us: “Give all for love. Obey thy heart…when half-gods go, the gods appear”
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, Touch in,
Let go.
John Welwood
photo rosino
What counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity. When am I truer than when I am the world? My cup brims over before I have time to desire. Eternity is there and I was hoping for it. What I wish for now is no longer happiness but simply awareness.
Albert Camus, Essays
One of the themes around this time of year is that of the triumph of light over darkness, the transformation of whatever feels dead in our lives by the way we bring light to it. And at times of struggle it can comfort us to know of this complete victory, as this icon of Saint Jurgis (George) reminds us. However, for most of our lives, the path to happiness is ongoing and lies in taking time to create and celebrate special moments – even if our overall situation is not as we would like it – and in integrating all aspects of our experience, both the good and the difficult, the dragons and the tigers, in our lives :
There is an old Sufi story about a man [who] senses a wild tiger chasing him. Frantically, he runs and runs, and comes upon a well. As the tiger approaches, he has no choice but to jump into the dark well. As he falls, he can see the tiger growling above him. As he falls, he can suddenly see that a dragon is hissing and waiting for him at the bottom of the well. Just then, he sees a branch growing out of a stone in the well. He grabs it. As he strains to hold on, with the tiger above and the dragon below, a single ray of light falls on the one leaf on the one branch that holds his life. And on that leaf, in the light, is a single drop of honey. With the hissing of the dragon and the growling of the tiger in his ears, the man summons all his strength to lick the single drop of lighted honey.
The story ends there, with the man savoring the single drop of honey while the tiger and the dragon await. The power of this ancient story is that it affirms that spirit and crisis work each other in the world, and that the Divine Source is at the heart of every moment, even in the midst of danger. Mysteriously the way that pressure makes the diamond in a piece of coal visible, the press of the tiger and the dragon makes the essence in the moment visible. Again and again, we are shown that life is a jewel waiting in each moment broken open. Whatever the tiger, whatever the dragon, the drop of lighted honey, once seen and tasted, can bless us. And licking that drop of lighted honey is what life is all about. It may not save us from suffering or even death, but it will let the spirit become the jewel that it is. It will let us experience radiance.
Mark Nepo, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion.
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