At the end of this Mid-Summer week with the “longest” day
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness,
then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present
Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.431
Your identity is not equivalent to your biography.
There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.
And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.
John O’Donohue, The Inner Landscape of Beauty
The Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. The swallows in full flight across the fields having made their long journey to nest here.
When you set off on a path, the first thing you do is surrender yourself to a greater power, for you will encounter things you will not understand. You will understand things only with your heart, and that can be a little frightening. For a long time, the journey will seem like a Dark Night, but then any search is an act of faith. But God, who is far harder to understand than a Dark Night, appreciates our act of faith and takes our hand and guides us through the Mystery.
Paolo Coelho, Brida
You never really know what the next moment is going to bring,
so living fully in this moment is the only constantly reappearing option for happiness.
Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an inside job
Personal growth isn’t only about personal becoming. It is also a process of personal unbecoming. A process of letting aspects of our personality die away, acting as the fertile soil for the new and more mature version of us to emerge.
Connor Beaton, Men’s Work
Pay attention to those times when you feel like you are rushing. Rushing does not have to do with speed. You can rush moving slowly, and you can rush moving quickly. We are rushing when we feel we are toppling forward. Our minds run ahead of ourselves; they are out there where we want to get to, instead of being settled back in our bodies. The feeling of rushing is good feedback. Whenever we are not present, right then, in that situation, we should stop and take a few breaths. Settle into the body again. Feel yourself sitting. Feel the step of a walk. Be in your body.
The Buddha made a very powerful statement about this: “Mindfulness of the body leads to nirvana.” Such awareness is not a superficial practice. Mindfulness of the body keeps us present.
Joseph Goldstein, Transforming the mind, Healing the World
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