There is not a fragment in all nature,
for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself
John Muir
Sunday Quote: Complete
Tag: impermanence
Courage
There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us:
we suffer more often in imagination than in reality
Seneca the Younger, Letters from a Stoic
A time for integration
As we leave the expansiveness of summer and settle into autumn’s rhythms and routines, we may discover a desire or longing to integrate our fresh insights. … All the spiritual traditions of the world acknowledge that wisdom comes from the accrued learnings of our experiences, and this includes those learnings we reap by following someone else’s inspired path for a time. What is at the center of your life at this time? What is your central motivation now? Whenever we have the experience of being ourselves, or of loving what we are doing, we arrive at the center of what is important for us.
Angeles Arrien
Sunday quote: No preference
Awareness is the silent and choiceless observation of what is.
Jiddu Krisnamurti
Open the mind and heart
We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.
So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the storyline. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.
Pema Chödrön
Let go
Try to go a whole seven days without having to control everything, without stressing when things don’t work out as you thought they would or should. As you do this, any time you feel the need to take charge, try to relax out of it, just to see what happens. Look for the good that happened precisely because things didn’t work out the way you thought they would or should.
And take your time. There really is no desperate hurry. When we constantly pursue perfection, our life speeds up. We make hasty decisions and snap judgments…. You’ll likely feel relived, and make better choices.
Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect life
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