The concept of beginning and ending is time, produced by thought. Can we see, right now, that beginning and end, getting somewhere, being somebody, wanting to get the something I lack, are all products of the imagination. As long as this isn’t clear, this bodymind remains tied up in knots. Can we see that a thought is always away from this present moment, where time does not exist?
Toni Parker, The Wonder of Presence.
photo adam jwc
Some of the sentiments expressed around New Year – or the current fad of people posting pictures online – can lead us to think that looking to the future, or looking for happiness somewhere other than where we are, is good for our mental health. These beautiful few lines from Rumi – an extract from a longer inspiring poem – reminds us that it is in this moment, in what is right here, and not in our concepts, is where we need to keep our awareness.
Forget the future.
I’d worship someone who could do that.
On the way you may want to look back, or not.
But if you can say, There’s nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.
Rumi,
from Coleman Barks, Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
photo kevin law
Life offers its wisdom generously.
Everything teaches
Not everyone learns
Rachel Naomi Remen
photo Woodstown beach Co.Waterford by tony quilty
Our life in the world comes to us in the shape of time.
Consequently, our expectation is both a creative and constructive force.
If you expect to find nothing within yourself but the repressed, abandoned, and shameful elements of your past or a haunted hunger, all you will find is emptiness and desperation.
The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.
In a vital sense, perception is reality.
John O’Donohue, AnamChara
photo of girl standing on the Calanque of Sormiou, near Marseille by benh lieu song
“I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship
and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces,
then I will swim.”
Homer, The Odyssey
On my printer I have this quote from Odysseus, as every morning we awake and we face the same perils as that ancient mariner. Every day we are cast upon the high seas of the soul. Whether we wish to be or not, we are already there, and have orders to show up. We begin showing up when we ask ourselves where are we blocked by fear, by lack of permission to live our own life, by self-doubt? What do we gain from staying stuck? Where is life served by our staying stuck? Who, or what are we waiting for before beginning our real life? How does staying stuck help anyone around us? Every day we are summoned anew to high adventure on the tenebrous seas of the soul. Living our lives, and not someone else’s, calls us to voyage, and if our familiar structures falter, then we swim.
James Hollis, Embracing the New: Avoiding a Routinized Life
photo Bernd Reuschenberg
One way to express the crisis of our time is to say
that most of us have an address
but cannot be found there.
Henri Nouwen
