Sometimes it takes a great sky
to find that
small, bright and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
David Whyte, The Journey
Category: Make the most of life
Keeping in touch with an underlying truth
Unless that underground level of the self is preserved as a verified and verifying element in your make-up, you are going to be in danger of settling into whatever profile the world prepares for you and accepting whatever profile the world provides for you. You’ll be in danger of molding yourselves in accordance with laws of growth other than those of your own intuitive being.
Seamus Heaney
An autumn poem
The last few days have turned much cooler in Ireland, and this year’s late arrival of autumn progresses with a little more intensity, with leaves turning colour and beginning to fall. This year the natural world is slow to move towards its conclusion, preferring to hold on to the period of growth and warmth. And yet a different type of growth awaits, with new lessons to be learned.
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the last fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell
Uncertain and not knowing
The core of all navigation is probably uncertainty: tolerating not knowing makes it possible to find your way. Not knowing means embracing what is not known rather than fighting with yourself over it. Since the mind always strives to know, not knowing is disorienting in a useful way. Uncertainty and not knowing teach you not to believe the stories your mind feeds you day in and day out. If you allow your own course to be mysterious, then even the hard things can become easy. This is the beginning of awakening.
John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way
Sunday Quote: Meeting our limits
The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.
Flannery O’Connor
Times when we learn most
There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives.
Pema Chodron
The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego
Jung
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