Tag: growth

Growing resilience

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Each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant.
The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops.
       Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure.
Paulo Coelho, Brida

Sunday Quote: What myth

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Thoreau, Campbell, and Euripides ask the same question for the same reason:

What myth is playing out now in your life?

What sacred, spiritual drama is in play in what appears to be secular life?

Thomas Moore

How we learn

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I know the world is bruised and bleeding and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.

Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom.

Toni Morrison

Through difficulties..

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I know from my personal experience that out of pathos (great suffering) we come to know pothos (our sense of emerging self).

Through the portal of the intolerable, we deepen into soul.

Stephen Aizenstat, Dream Tending: Awakening to the Healing Power of Dreams

You are all possibilities

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Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, stand a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path to the north,
the way you came, as if seeing
your entire past and then south
over the hazy blue coast as if present
to a broad future.

Recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not.

David Whyte, Mameen (extract)

More than your sorrow

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…

How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow?

It is natural – you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.

Thich Nhat Hahn