A path

 

Heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.

Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is a deeper introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something or someone who has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the last letting go.

David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

The tone and quality of your life

When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination, you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life. It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment, unease, self-criticism and bleakness. All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone and quality of your life. Your life is no longer consumed by hunger for the next event, experience or achievement. You learn to come down from the treadmill and walk on the earth.  You no longer squander yourself on things and situations that deplete your essence. You know now that your true source is not outside you. Your soul is your true source and a new energy and passion awakens in you.

John O’Donoghue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

New life

Letting go of all the theories from the past frees us to go with how it is actually unfolding

Throw away the light, the definitions,

and say of what you see in the dark

Wallace Stevens

Change and constancy

Your job may change, your relationships may change, your body may change, your beliefs may change, your desires may change, your ideas about your role in the world may change, but the essence of who you are is the continuity of awareness that has no beginning or end. Your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, goals, and experiences may come and go, but the one who having the experiences – the experiencer – remains.

Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga

Our view for the day

Meditation is the natural process of becoming familiar with an object by repeatedly placing our minds upon it. Whatever we’re doing, we always have a view; we’re always placing our mind on one object or another. For example, when we get up in the morning and we’re anxious about something, anxiety becomes our view for the day: “What about me? When will I get what I want?” The object of our meditation is “me.”
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Fresh

Today is the Spring Equinox – from the Latin “equal night”, when there is equal light and dark in our day –   marking the beginning of Spring for countries in the Northern Hemisphere.

We, the older ones,
Call it Spring,
And we have been through it
Many times.

But there is still nothing
Like the children bringing home
Such happiness
In their small hands.

Mary Oliver, Children, It’s Spring