There is no reality except the one contained within us.
That is why so many people live such an unreal life.
They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself
Hermann Hesse Steppenwolf
Tag: Be fully present
Life bears fruit
Sometimes, things planted many years only make sense and bear fruit much later. Autumn teaches the virtue of waiting:
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested –
this sorrow, that great love –
it too will leave on that clean knife.
Jane Hirshfield, Ripeness
Time to take your turn
Giving up some conditioned behaviour patterns is also good:
You didn’t come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren’t born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose — paid but good. It is now your turn to reap.
I never used to take my turn. I always gave my turn away. I helped others have a great turn. I must have had a clipboard by the time I was six, because by then I had a whole caseload of people to keep track of. After they had all gotten a turn, then maybe I could go, if there was time and it didn’t bother anyone.
Now I take my turn, as a radical act.
Anne Lamott, Stitches
Don’t pay attention
Autumn means letting go. A good place to start is with self-critical thoughts:
Stop.
Be silent.
When thought has no customers, thought vanishes.
Nisargadatta Maharaj 1897 – 1981
Balance
It is not always easy to maintain a tranquil and balanced mind when work pressures mount, or we have a lot of evaluation reports to complete. Resting in awareness by stepping out of the story line is a good thing to do, even for a few moments every hour.
Anyone can restore some degree of balance
between thinking and awareness
right in this present moment,
which is the only moment that any of us ever has anyway.
Jon Kabat Zinn
A good attitude for the week
If you don’t like something, change it.
If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
Don’t complain.
Maya Angelou
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