Control

Image taken from rawforbeauty.com

Our original Unity

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We are already one.

But we imagine that we are not.

And what we have to recover is our original unity.

What we have to be is what we are.

Thomas Merton

The way of not pushing

SweepingMonk

Most people want to have pure clarity,

but sweep as you will,

you cannot empty the mind.

Keizan Jokin, Zen master, 1268–1325

Getting real

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It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work

and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

Wendell Berry

photo steve f

A part of life

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Movement and change are interesting aspects of life to work with. On one level change is obvious – such as the rain last night in Ireland after a few days of lovely sun – and we frequently resist this, acting as if we expect things to always remain the same. On another level, we have an inner restlessness which is constantly moving us to want change, that things be different, “better”, a constant inner “becoming” that does not make contentment in the present moment easy. This quote deals with impermanence, but both aspects – impermanence and becoming – have to be worked with, if we are to become fully human.

Change of one sort or another is the essence of life, so there will always be the loneliness and insecurity that come with change. When we refuse to accept that loneliness and insecurity are part of life, when we refuse to accept that they are the price of change, we close the door on many possibilities for ourselves; our lives become lessened, we are less than fully human.

If we try to prevent, or ignore, the movement of life, we run the risk of falling into the inevitable depression that must accompany an impossible goal. Life evolves; change is constant. When we try to prevent the forward movement of life, we may succeed for a while but, inevitably there is an explosion; the groundswell of life’s constant movement, constant change, is too great to resist.

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human

photo xlibber

Security from letting go of it

Falling

The bad news is: you are falling through the air,

nothing to hang on to, no parachute.

The good news is: there’s no ground

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.

Rumi