The Buddhist teachings are fabulous at simply working with what’s happening as your path of awakening, rather than treating your life experiences as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening.
Pema Chodron in conversation with Jack Kornfield, The wondrous Path of Difficulties
Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.
Joseph Campbell
Every morning the world is created…
If it is in your nature to be happy..
And if your spirit carries within it
the thorn that is heavier than lead….
there is still somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted –
each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, every morning,
whether or not you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not you have ever dared to pray.
Mary Oliver, Morning Poem
Unless we live all our lives in the torment of the contradictions, as C.G. Jung insists, then we’re not human. We can’t become whole. If you’re stuck, and you don’t know what to do, stuck between two opposites, and you allow them each to live within you, then a small transformation of the ego takes place. It becomes related to the Self instead of identifying with it.
Helen Luke, 1904 – 1995, Jungian Analyst and writer
Wisdom consists in doing the next thing that you have to do,
doing it with your whole heart,
and finding delight in doing it.
And the delight is the sense of the sacred.
Helen Luke, 1904 – 1995, Jungian Analyst and writer
Starting here, what do you want to remember?…
Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
William Stafford, You Reading this, Be Ready (extract)
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