Making space to see

An American poet, for the day that is in it…

I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.

Mary Oliver

Let go

When we let go of the continual construction of a self or even the need to be a “somebody,” then we are free to be who we are. When we are completely ourselves, we forget about needing to be the center of our perceptual world and thus we can take in others and our environment with greater sensitivity, compassion, and openness

Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga

Fully here and yet not

No one needs to tell us

we are already on our onward way,

no one has to remind us

of our everyday and intimate

embrace with disappearance.

We were born saying goodbye

to what we love,

we were born

in a beautiful reluctance,

not quite ready

to breathe in this new world,

we are here and we are not,

we are present while still not

wanting to admit we have arrived.

David Whyte, Cleave

Living peacefully

I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.

Of course, at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.

Are you following me?

Mary Oliver, I Have Decided

No identification

When there is full awakened awareness, there is no identification with the body or with conditioned factors of mind…. the body and mind are not-self, so the heart remains serene through all life’s ups and downs, its many psychological births and deaths, triumphs and failures, as well as the ‘big death’ of the body’s ending. As St Teresa of Avila put it when expounding on this same theme: ‘We die before we die so that when we die, we won’t die.’

Ajahn Amaro, What does ‘I am the Way’ mean

More than food

The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment.

It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought.  

Thomas Moore