Be patient

Sometimes things work out when you do not force them, but rather let your inner wisdom make itself clear through a period of quiet or rest.

If any one cannot grasp this matter,

let them be idle

and the matter will grasp them.

Henry Suso, German Dominican friar, 1295- 1366, The Exemplar

Tensions are part of life

We could say that New Age people in general are addicted to harmony.

The alchemical woodcut says that a child will not become an adult until it breaks the addiction to harmony, chooses the one precious thing, and enters into a joyful participation in the tensions of the world.

Robert Bly, Iron John

Let go

The sun will set without your assistance

Talmud quote found in H. Polano The Talmud: Selections

Caught in the middle

“No-thought” does not mean cutting off thinking – it means there is no fixation with regard to the free flow of our thinking. We don’t need to reify or solidify what we experience into my thoughts, my feelings. If self-grasping is present, then thoughts don’t flow. When we suffer, we are caught in the middle of the stories that we’re fabricating, and, in this way, we prolong our suffering.

Guo Gu, Silent Illumination

Not the story of my life

Therefore, whatever feeling, past, future or present, internal or external, ….. must be regarded with proper wisdom, in this way:

‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’

The Buddha, Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic

Look out, and breathe

We are encouraged to drop the storyline and simply pause, look out, and breathe. Simply be present for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a whole lifetime, with our own shifting energies and with the unpredictability of life as it unfolds, wholly partaking in all experiences just exactly as they are. What I’m advocating is that in that precious moment we start to make choices that lead to happiness and freedom rather than choices that lead to unnecessary suffering and the obscuration of our intelligence, our warmth, our capacity to remain open and present with the natural movement of life. 

Pema Chodron