There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night.
John O’Donohue
The task is to shift the identity more toward the movable conversation that stands behind us, a deep undercurrent we can tap into that carries on unconcerned with the surface tribulations. In this depth we try to create a real silence in which to keep our long-standing, well-established, self-protective stories away, to let ourselves alone so we can experience the physical vulnerability of the question and be transformed by it. We give these smaller protective stories away so that we can see how they come back to us once we have established a larger way of being in the world.
David Whyte, The Three Marriages
A lovely misty morning here in Kildare, and the leaves are clearly starting to fall. Autumn is the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Keats said in his beautiful description. The seeds fall underground and move into a period of silent growth. We can learn from them how to trust and wait, in times which are dark or when nothing seems to be happening.
I gratefully acknowledge how darkness has become less of an enemy for me and more of a place of silent nurturance, where the slow, steady gestation needed for my soul’s growth can occur. Not only is light a welcomed part of my life, but I am also developing a greater understanding of how much I need to befriend my inner darkness.
Joyce Rupp, Little Pieces of Light
photo phil champion
When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds
Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart
These are the first days of autumn, my favourite season. This has been a good Summer in Ireland, and the leaves are very slow to reflect a change of atmosphere. However, inevitably, the seasons evolve and have their own rhythm, with periods of growth and periods of rest. As John O Donohue’s quote yesterday suggests, there is something in our being that is linked to the changes in nature. We can instinctively feel that all things change. That gives birth to the understanding that there is only suffering to be had when we try to hold onto things, like the long days of summer, or elements of life that have passed. However, I realize how much I like permanence and continualy rehearse a story of a solid, single identity. So I will try and walk in nature and learn that, like the seasons, I too change, things come and go in my life. Nature lets go and moves on. So should we. We all have need for different tempos in our lives.
Most of our suffering comes from habitual thinking. If we try to stop it out of aversion to thinking, we can’t; we just go on and on and on. So the important thing is not to get rid of thought, but to understand it. And we do this by concentrating on the space in the mind, rather than on the thought.
Ajahn Sumedho, Noticing Space
