Freud thought that each person possessed a fixed stock of affection. So if you love someone else you love yourself less. Freud’s wrong. Love doesn’t run out. It’s the miracle of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. The more we love another person, the more we love ourselves, and everything else, and the world.
Anna Kamienska, A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook
A reflective life means hitting the pause button from time to time. Today marks the start of Holy Week in the Western tradition, the most important week in terms of giving meaning to life.
Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius, born 551 B.C.
One should say before sleeping,
“I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved had sat upon my knees and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved.
Everything that has been shall be again.”
W.B. Yeats
Meditation is the natural process of becoming familiar with an object by repeatedly placing our minds upon it. Whatever we’re doing, we always have a view; we’re always placing our mind on one object or another. For example, when we get up in the morning and we’re anxious about something, anxiety becomes our view for the day: “What about me? When will I get what I want?” The object of our meditation is “me.”
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
This old Celtic prayer from Scotland is appropriate for two reasons today – the feast of Saint Patrick, the patron of Ireland and because of the weather we have had this week:
May the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly;up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.
Amen.
The journey is into the wildness of your greater life. The wilderness is your soul. To merge with your destiny, you must locate, liberate and live what is truly wild. The soul is here to live its joy. The unitiated ego is here to keep things familiar, safe and predictable. Which path will you choose?.
Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
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