Into the unknown

A new month begins….

We are daily forced to choose between depression and anxiety. Depression results from the wounding of the individuation imperative; anxiety results from moving forward into the unknown.

That path of anxiety is necessary because therein lies the hope of the person to more nearly become an individual. My analyst once said to me, “You must make your fears your agenda.” When we do take on that agenda, for all the anxiety engendered, we feel better because we know we are living in ‘bonne foi’ [good faith] with ourselves.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the perception that some things are more important to us than what we fear.

James Hollis, Jungian Analyst, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places

Believe

Every man has his own courage,

and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Continue writing

Embrace uncertainty.

Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later

Bob Goff, 1959 – ,  lawyer and author

Staying with the unknown

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don’t – and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Begin

To know what you’re going to draw,

you have to begin drawing.

Picasso

Wings will be given

You are uneasy riding the body?

Dismount. Travel lighter. Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror, reflecting nothing.
Be clean of pictures and the worry that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own without any judgment of them.
Be pure emptiness.

What is inside that? you ask. Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets That they keep.

Rumi