Incubation periods

Our psyches, like nature, need periods of rest and regeneration. Some overly positive psychological models have no place for the dips in mood or energy that are a normal part of life and which can be seen in the cycles of nature. We have to learn to not fear those moments when we do not feel completely in control, or when lose our sense of direction for a while.

There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. New interests and tendencies appear which have hitherto received no attention, or there is a sudden change of personality. During the incubation period of such a change we can often observe a loss of conscious energy: the new development has drawn off the energy it needs from consciousness. This lowering of energy can be seen most clearly …in the empty stillness which precedes creative work.

Jung, The Psychology of the Transference, CW 16.

Sunday Quote: Love and Suffering

Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering.

Oh praise the soul’s migration.

I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you.

I am again in love with the world.

Mark Nepo, In love with the World

Underneath all

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed – that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.

But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Seungsahn Haengwon, 1927 – 2004, Korean Zen Master

Remember

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

David Levithan, 1972 – American author and editor.

Mindfulness of the body

The key lesson every meditator should take away … is that when the mind is calm, use that calm to investigate the body as impermanent, suffering, and not-self. This is because the roots of all difficulties are attached to this body.

Ajahn Sona

Sunday Quote: At peace

Watch the workings of all of creation [“the ten thousand things”},
but contemplate their return to the source.

All creatures in the universe
return to the point where they began.

Returning to the source is tranquility
because we submit to heavens mandate

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 16