The stories that keep us back

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One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true – it actually never was true. Not now not ever. There is another form of obsolescence that can fray at the cocoon we have spun about ourselves, that is, the story was true at one time, and for an extended period; the story was even true and good to us, but now it is no longer true and no longer of any benefit, in fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us.

David Whyte

photo Uwe H. Friese

 

Meaning for the New Year

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Life has no meaning.

Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life.

It is a waste to be asking the question

when you are the answer.

Joseph Campbell

Each moment

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Most of us wonder from time to time how to give meaning to some days:

A Lord asked Takuan how he might pass the time, as his days were long in the office,

sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others.

Takuan wrote these 8 Chinese characters and gave them to him:

“Not twice this day

Inch time foot gem

This day will not come again

Each minute is worth a priceless gem”

Takuan Sōhō 1573 –  1645, Japanese Zen Buddhist Master

photo Lorenz Kerscher

Not seen but real

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There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

Hafiz

Right now

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We can spend our whole lives waiting to start living, instead of loving fully, even though we are flawed.  As Emerson reminds us: “Give all for love. Obey thy heart…when half-gods go, the gods appear”

Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, Touch in,
Let go.

John Welwood

photo rosino

Saddened

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The Christian calendar is quite wise in placing the feast-day of the Slaughter of the Innocents today,  just immediately after the Christmas celebrations. It faces into the reality of this world, with the sad turns which we cannot understand, and the fact that we can lose that which is most important to us, due to factors which are unexpected or outside of our control.  It is the opposite to the distracting tactics which we see scattered all through the modern understanding of this holiday.

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world

without being saddened very often.

Erich Fromm

photo Mstyslav Chernov