No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land.
Annie Dillard
photo peter dowley
Tag: growth
Endings are also beginnings
Become totally empty. Let your heart be at peace.
Amidst the rush of things coming and going,
observe how endings become beginnings.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
To see beginnings and endings is a great support in difficult times. Early on, as I began to trust in the fiber of my being that nothing lasts, I became less afraid of pain. The fact that everything has an end comforted me. “One way or another,” I would say to myself, “this too will pass.” I was glad I saw that…the end of the day is the beginning of the night, and that a dead rose becomes compost for new growth….When I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.
Sylvia Boorstein
photo dominicus johannes bergsma
Saturday Rest
Here close to earth be cherished, mortal heart,
Hold your way deep as roots push rocks apart
To bring the spurt of green up from the dark.
Where music thundered let the mind be still,
Where the will triumphed let there be no will,
What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.
Here close to earth the deeper pulse is stirred,
Here where no wings rush and no sudden bird,
But only heart-beat upon beat is heard.
Here let the fiery burden be all spilled,
The passionate voice at last be calmed and stilled
And the long yearning of the blood fulfilled.
Now voyager, come home, come home to rest,
Here on the long-lost country of earth’s breast
Lay down the fiery vision, and be blest, be blest.
extract May Sarton, Now Voyager
photo Yu-hong Wen
Autumn: Not getting discouraged
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time:
not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
from Marge Percy, The Seven of Pentacles
Fall and get up
The reality is that, despite our best efforts, life can be challenging sometimes, and we can fall short and not fully measure up. Thus, some way of starting over is an essential practice. The mind likes to have ideas about things and people, and they are often ideas of perfection, which is probably not possible in this world. This can makes it harder to be at ease with vulnerability or have patience with a world that has ups and downs
We’d so much rather be kind, generous, loving and wise all the time – not to mention calm and peaceful – [but…] our major task as persons of the Way is to accept our human-ness...which includes greed, anger, ignorance and all the other emotions, thoughts and behaviors that we’d rather not feel, think or do.
How to cope with this paradox? It’s very simple, really, although not easy…we rely on the practice of vow and repentance. We vow to do our best, and then, when we make our inevitable mistakes, we repent. We recognize that we have done harm, and then we vow again to have as big a view as possible under the circumstances, so that maybe the next time….and on and on, endlessly, forever. This practice is not something we can learn and complete…it’s a lifetime’s worth of, as we sometimes say, 9 times fall down, 10 times get up. Or, an infinite number of times fall down, and an infinite number of times, plus one, get up.
Melissa Myozen Blacker, on her Blog Firefly Hall
photo brian snelson
Not listening to our fears
The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike, where it hurts. It knows the vulnerable spot, and life does not, our friends and lovers do not, because seldom do they have the imagination equal to the task.
Anais Nin
Mindfulbalance 