I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
* It is solved as we walk along: Diogenes
Tag: Acceptance
Transforming, not running away
If this job is no good, change jobs, If this wife is no good, change wives. If this town is no good, change towns … The underlying thinking is that the reasons for these troubles is outside of you – in the location, in others, in circumstances …This way of thinking and seeing is an all-too-prevalent trap. There is no successful escaping from yourself in the long run, only transformation … There can be no resolution leading to growth until the present situation is faced completely and you have opened to it with mindfulness, allowing the roughness of the situation itself to sand down your own rough edges. In other words, you must be willing to let life itself become our teacher
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are
The desert of the heart
The summer was like a resort — you knew your way around. But then you needed to return to the desert of your heart. The lengthy solitude begins, the days turn dull again; the wind removes, like wilted leaves, the world you once could name. Through branches bare the sky looks down, the only sky you have; be ground now, evening song and land, with which this sky can blend. Be subject like a tool for use, mature and fit for much— so he, of whom we often heard, will know you at his touch.
Rilke, The Book of Hours
Learning from the season – let go
Now is the end of summer, harvest time. From that point of view, [Fall ] is a chance to harvest the results of whatever has happened in our lives this year…To be a student of meditation is to take to heart that short-term fixes are usually illusions. To make real change, we need an actual path. Any genuine path takes time. Most of the time, we simply want to practice more things than we can practice, take on more than we can take on, achieve more than is possible to achieve. This is especially true if you live in an exciting and overstimulating city. The wish to do more things than we can actually do comes from a positive place – it’s because we love life, recognize impermanence and want to experience as much as we possibly can before it all slips on by. That’s why we end up doing WAY too many things and driving ourselves nuts with busy-ness. Sadly, when we try to do everything, we find ourselves doing much less than if we just took on a few things.
Here’s the exercise in simplicity that I often introduce to students when I work with them closely. Let’s say that each day you can only do five things. Each of these five things must be done with the view of a practice, a process that we engage in to develop our heartminds and cultivate the qualities we want to embody in this precious and not-long-enough life of ours. You can only do five practices every day. Not six, not eight. Five.
Let’s assume for the purpose of this exercise that the basics – such as food, shelter, and medicine – are all taken care of each day. Let’s assume that after that, you can do five things, each of which is viewed as a practice, which means each is a process where daily engagement in the process is considered more important than outcome. If you only had five practices for the fall, what would they be?
Ethan Nichtern, “A Meditation for the Fall”, Huffington Post
Sunday Quote: Imitate the Trees
Imitate the trees.
Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain.
May Sarton
Autumn and maturity
It’s no coincidence that autumn and authenticity are linguistic cousins. Both share the Latin root aut-, meaning [to increase or grow.] Autumn brings the harvest bounty: the earth’s increase. Authenticity brings the reward of increased self-knowledge and awareness, of a life augmented (another word cousin!) through integrity. As autumn represents the ripening of the crops, so authenticity represents the coming into maturity of our characters. The link is gratitude, which allows us to ground ourselves in humility and recognize our authentic nature. When we live gratefully, we become more truly ourselves.
Alan Jones et al., Seasons of Grace: The Life-Giving Practice of Gratitude.
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