Two writers, from different traditions, speaking of our most important journey – coming to terms with the basic restlessness and unease at the core of our being – and being able to rest there.
To live an inner life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to fearless play.
Henri Nouwen, Reaching out
As I look out of my eyes at the world, I see that a lot of us are just running around in circles pretending that there’s ground where there actually isn’t any ground. And that somehow, if we could learn to not be afraid of groundlessness, not be afraid of insecurity and uncertainty, it would be calling on an inner strength that would allow us to be open and free and loving and compassionate in any situation. But as long as we keep trying to scramble to get ground under our feet and avoid this uneasy feeling of groundlessness and insecurity and uncertainty and ambiguity and paradox, any of that, then the wars will continue. It’s like the matrix of creative potential. The matrix of the spiritual life. It’s like if we could rest there, which I suppose would be the description of enlightenment or the mystic, you know. Rest in that place, and is completely happy. That’s why, you know, they always say, with someone who’s very, very awake… the walls could start crumbling in and they wouldn’t like freak out or something. Because they’re kind of ready for anything to happen.
Pema Chodron, Interview with Bill Moyers, Faith and Reason, 2006.
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