Living with meaning

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Yesterday was a long rainy day here in Ireland and a sense of autumn approaching has settled into the days. So I will post for the next few days some reflections on maturing and deepening, and the meaning of fruitfulness in life, as opposed to just indicators of “success”.

The central paradox of our current feel-good culture is that we grow progressively more and more uncertain and less and less persuaded that our lives really mean something. Feeling good is a poor measure of a life, but living meaningfully is a good one, for then we are living a developmental rather than regressive agenda. We never get it all worked out anyway. Life is ragged, and truth is still more raggedy. The ego will do whatever it can to make itself more comfortable; but the soul is about wholeness, and this fact makes the ego even more uncomfortable. Wholeness is not about comfort, or goodness, or consensus — it means drinking this brief, unique, deeply rooted vintage to its dregs.

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of LIfe

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The one question

Path 2

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was Young. And my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: “Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

         Carlos Casteneda.

Be Happy

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One of my meditation teachers used to end each of our interviews … and say to me, “Remember, Sylvia, be happy.”  I actually for a long time thought it was a salutation, like “have a good day” or something that you say just in a routine kind of a way, and it took me a long time to realize that it was an instruction, “Be happy.” Not only that it was an instruction but that it was a wisdom transmission –  that happiness was a possibility. I understand that happiness to mean,  the happiness of a mind that’s alert, that’s awake to the amazing potential of being a person in a life, with a mind that’s opened, that sees everything that’s going on, and realizes what an amazing possibility this is, and with a heart that’s open, the heart that responds naturally as hearts do, in compassion, in connection with friendliness, with love, with consolation when it needs to:  That that’s the happiness of life –  a mind that’s awake, a heart that’s engaged.

Sylvia Boorstein, Stanford Keynote Speech, 2005

photo joe sarembe

How we grow

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How did the rose

ever open his heart

and give to this world all its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

against its being,

otherwise, we will remain too frightened

Hafiz

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Just dance

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Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right.

Just dance

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life

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The Big Question

earlz morning menton

That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning: 

‘Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’

Mary Oliver, Foreword,  Long Life: Essays and other Writing