Trust a natural rhythm

We already know how to let go – we do it every night when we go to sleep, and that letting go, like a good night’s sleep, is delicious. Opening in this way, we can live in the reality of our wholeness. A little letting go brings us a little peace, a greater letting go brings us a greater peace. Entering the gateless gate, we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself.

Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

Sunday Quote: Lifted

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no,

Then a stretcher will come from grace

to gather us up.

Rumi

The river will flow

When we fall utterly, something gathers us up. But our falling must be without reservation, without expectation, without hope, though not hopeless. You can’t plan that kind of falling. When you abandon yourself utterly to life, the river will flow, and the log jam will free. Impossible is another word for grace. Who would’ve thought it, life takes another turn, and you are gathered up into a whole different way of seeing and being.

Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Change Your Life

Releasing that thought

We have to let go of that black hole of ‘not enough.’ This is because although it feels like a hole, a lack, it’s actually a block….

What is needed then isn’t filling it, but releasing it….

What feels wrong at this time? What shouldn’t be here right now? Whatever it is, accept it. The more you don’t want it, the bigger it gets. How do you want things to be right now? Relinquish it. The more you want it, the farther you push it away. Daily life practice is to keep working against that [voice] which keeps saying, ‘I’m fed up with this. I’ve had enough of this. I don’t want to be in this situation. I can’t stand this another minute’.

Ajahn Sucitto

Fresh eyes

The freshness of simple being, before all the “shoulds” and “oughts” take over

There is a small opening into the new day,

that closes the moment you begin your plans

David Whyte

Perfect your love

Imperfections are part of the display of life. Joy and sorrow, birth and death are the dance of existence throughout which our awakened consciousness can shine. Yet we long for perfection. The perfect partner, house, job, boss, and spiritual teacher.….

Novelist Florida Scott Maxwell writes, “No matter how old a mother is, she looks at her middle-age children for signs of improvement. ” You are told that if you do enough therapy, work out at the gym, eat an especially healthy diet, watch documentaries on TV, manage your cholesterol, and meditate enough, you will become more perfect. Forget the tyranny of perfection. The point is not to perfect yourself. It is to perfect your love. Let your imperfections be an invitation to care.

Jack Kornfield, The Tyranny of Perfection