As one matures, a greater tolerance of ambiguity is essential both for growth
and as a measure of respect for the autonomy of the mystery.
James Hollis, Tracking the Gods
Tolerating ambiguity
Tag: growth
Persistent practice
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs – all this resinous, unretractable earth.
Jane Hirshfield, Optimism
What limits us
Letting go of fixation is effectively a process of learning to be free, because every time we let go of something, we become free of it. Whatever we fixate upon limits us because fixation makes us dependent upon something other than ourselves. Each time we let go of something, we experience another level of freedom.
Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, Letting go of Spiritual Experience
Uncertain and not knowing
The core of all navigation is probably uncertainty: tolerating not knowing makes it possible to find your way. Not knowing means embracing what is not known rather than fighting with yourself over it. Since the mind always strives to know, not knowing is disorienting in a useful way. Uncertainty and not knowing teach you not to believe the stories your mind feeds you day in and day out. If you allow your own course to be mysterious, then even the hard things can become easy. This is the beginning of awakening.
John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way
Times when we learn most
There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives.
Pema Chodron
The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego
Jung
A bell tower
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
photo Glendalough, County Wicklow ,Ireland by cqui
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