Tag: balance

Relax the fist

Karl Duffy1 Comment

I hope you can live your life with slightly less firmly clenched fists and slightly more open hands. Slightly less control. Slightly more trust. Slightly less I need to know everything beforehand. Slightly more take life as it comes. It does all of us a world of good. Life doesn’t have to be lived with constant anxiety about things not turning out the way we want. We don’t have to make ourselves smaller than we are. We have a choice. Do we want to grab life by he throat or do we want to embrace it?

Relax that fist as often as you can.

Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be Wrong, and other wisdoms from life as a Forest Monk.

You know you have to follow

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There is a road always beckoning.

When you see the two sides of it

closing together at that far horizon

and deep in the foundations of your own heart

at exactly the same time,

that’s how you know it’s the road

you have to follow.

that’s how you know

it’s where you have to go.

That’s how you know.

It’s just beyond yourself,

it’s where you need to be.

David Whyte, Just Beyond Yourself

Being the moon

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Everyone wants to be the sun

to brighten someone’s life,

but why not the moon,

to shine on someone’s darkest hour?

Don Jose Ruiz

Be still

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Why scurry about looking for the truth?
It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose.
Can you be still and see it in the mountain? the pine tree? yourself?
Don’t imagine that you’ll discover it by accumulating more knowledge.
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge.

The wise person dines on something more subtle:
He finds this subtle truth inside his own self,
and becomes completely content.
So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?
The foolish are always making impulsive moves,
but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something more subtle.
They see that something perfect exists before any move is made.

Remain quiet. Discover the harmony in your own being.
Embrace it.
If you can do this, you will gain everything,
and the world will become healthy again.
If you can’t, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

The Huahujing, traditionally attributed to Lao Tzu, translation Brian Walker 

Sunday Quote: Not demanding more

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Nor with impatience from the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are.

Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book 5

It starts with you

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Only one of our relationships is truly lifelong, from our first breath to our last. The one we have with ourselves. Imagine if it was characterised by compassion and warmth. By an ability to forgive, to forget our little missteps. Imagine if we could look at ourselves with gentle, kind eyes and view our faults with a sense of humour. Imagine if we could give ourselves the same loving care we give our children or other people we love without reservation. It would do us a world of good. And the divine emotions in us would thrive.

from this nice, heartfelt book which I am just finishing – Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May be Wrong, and other wisdoms from life as a Forest Monk.