What then is our path, and what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; Feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of a coach or a ship to carry you away;
All this order of things you must set aside and refuse to look at: Instead, you must close the eyes and call upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.
Plotinus, philosopher 204 – 270, The Enneads, 1.6.
photo bob embleton
We get to this point in our life [where] we see that stepping into a larger life is intimidating because it requires that we risk being who we really are, that is, what wants to come to the world through us – rather than serving our ego comforts or whatever instructions came our way. We cannot expect someone else to give us permission. The parent complexes, or the culture complexes, are embedded in our history and will never stop saying what they always said. So it is up to us at this later point, when we have served those voices so long, to realize that our own psyches have a unique point of view, that each one of us is different and that we are bound for different destinies. Stepping into largeness will require that we discern our personal authority – rather than the authority of others or the authority of our internalized admonitions – and live this inner authority with risk and boldness.
James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a more Considered Life.
photo wiros
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
photo mailander00
Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.
Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.
Mary Oliver, I Ask Percy How I should live my Life
photo of dog hurrying to the beach by andrew thomas
In novels – as in life – there is no perfection. We do the best we can with the tools we have at our disposal. Given that we are changing, the tools are changing, the thing itself is changing — there must be a moment when we stop. When we say, This is the best I can do for now… There is nobility in the effort, courage in the dailiness — the doggedness. It is a process of trying and failing. Of beginning again.
Dani Shapiro, Devotion
photo filiberto strazzari
Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.
Be. And know as well the need to not be:
let that ground of all that changes
bring you to completion now.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13
photo stephen sweeney
