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

Not who we are

The transformation of fear does not mean that we no longer have fearful responses. It means that we no longer believe that those responses are who we are. This is what practice is about: learning to stop believing that our deep-seated reactivity is who we are. Who we really are is much bigger than any of our fear-based conditioned responses. When we can really experience fear, we can see through this false identification, perhaps even glimpsing a vaster sense of Being.

Ezra Bayda, Being Zen