Tag: growth

An experience of emptiness

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Each chapter of the Bhagavad Gita concerns a particular yoga. This first chapter is called “the yoga of Arjuna’s despair” and it is significant that the experience of despair is a yoga; despair is often the first step on the path of spiritual life. It is very important to go through the experience of emptiness, of disillusion and despair. Many people do not awaken to the reality of God, and to the experience of transformation in their lives, until they reach the point of despair.

Bede Griffith, River of Compassion

A choice these days

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We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us
so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid,
or we can let them soften us, and make us kinder.


We always have the choice.

The Dalai Lama

Sunday Quote: Oil and vinegar

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Wrong solitude vinegars the soul

right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Jane Hirshfield, Vinegar and Oil

Not being afraid

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As Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche summarizes: “Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.” Believing the seemingly non-stop, discursive commentary that courses through our heads simply interferes with letting ourselves be the brave beings we actually are. Such hyper-vigilance stems from fear, of course: “If I don’t check myself constantly, won’t I make a mistake?”

Letting go of incessantly measuring and comparing ourselves to others leads to spontaneous acts of courage and compassion. It’s like learning a dance step well enough that we no longer need to keep looking down at our feet.

Gaylon Ferguson, Natural Bravery

Finding your own way

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We tend to focus on, and speak about the soul life of an individual in terms of spiritual comfort and deep nourishment…. but the equally unsettling and disturbing quality about this strange, often wild and courageous faculty of belonging inside us we have come to name ‘the soul’, is its ruthless, and almost tidal wish to find its own way to a full union with the world.

The soul is a planner’s nightmare, the biographer’s conundrum, an internal abiding spring that is both a source and a continual unstoppable flow, an internal stranger at the door of our outer life about to break everything apart and leave; a pilgrim suddenly more in love with the horizon than its home; and most disturbingly, someone who is willing to fail, often spectacularly, at their own life rather than succeed drably at someone else’s.

David Whyte

Reset your compass

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When you’re overwhelmed by illness or loss, by the conflicts around you, when you feel you are lost in the darkness, sometimes all you can do is to breathe consciously and gently with your pain and anguish and know that with this simple gesture you are resetting the compass of your heart, no matter your circumstances.

By taking that one simple, mindful breath, you will return again to compassion and realize that you are more than your fears and confusions.

Jack Kornfield