This is the real secret of life
to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
And instead of calling it work, realize it is play
Alan Watts
photo vatobob
Tag: balance
Darkness and light
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious
Jung
Today is Lá Féile Bríde, St. Brigid’s Day, celebrated on the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc, a word meaning perhaps “in the womb”, and linked with the feminine, fertility and the birth of lambs. The Celts were much more in touch with the rhythms of nature and with symbols than we are, and so lit fires in the darkness to mark the fact that they had arrived at the midway point between the winter and the spring solstice. They celebrated the lengthening days and the early signs of Spring, in a declaration of trust that the darkness of winter was not going to last. It was the start of a period of planting and birth: a time for looking forward and beginning again. For us too, some form of death and rebirth is always happening in our inner selves, even if we are unaware of it. We are never really in just one place, but always somewhat in-between, re-working our own myths and adding depth and meaning to our journey.
For last year’s words
belong to last year’s language
and next year’s words
await another voice.
And to make an end
is to make a beginning
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
Life satisfaction
We have enormous expectations that our careers will provide satisfaction in our life, and however well or unwell our jobs work for us, in the second half of life we often find ourselves working for them, with decreasing satisfaction even as we accomplish our goals, collect our paychecks…If the soul could be bought so easily, then our culture would easily work. Only the unconscious think it does. Look around you. Look within you. Be honest. How well does material affluence work? And what is the price?
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.
photo of London underground train by Chris Downer
Choice
Find a place where you can feel completely at ease
and say to yourself,
Only I can destroy my peace,
and I choose not to do so
Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace
photo abrget47j
Trusting where we are
To be nobody-but-yourself
— in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else —
means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings, A Poet’s Advice
photo rennett stowe
Step by step
The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey
is the step that you are taking at this moment.
That’s all there ever is.
Eckhart Tolle
photo japanese gardens kildare, peter clarke
