Tag: impermanence

A new month, a new frontier

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Human beings are a frontier between what is known and what is not known. The act of turning any part of the unknown into the known is simply an invitation for an equal measure of the unknown to flow in and re-establish that frontier: to reassert both the exterior and interior horizon of an individual life; to make us what we are – that is – a moving edge between what we know about ourselves and what we are about to become. What we are actually about to become or are afraid of becoming always trumps and rules over what we think we are already.

David Whyte, “Self-knowledge” in Consolations

We dont know

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Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that.

We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good.

But really we just don’t know.

Pema Chodron

Sunday Quote: Inner resources

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No matter how dark

The hand always knows the way to the mouth

Nigerian Proverb

Up hills and down valleys

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Jung [said]..: “A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not yet discovered its meaning.” Notice that he does not rule out suffering, for suffering, the medieval adage had it, “is the fastest horse to completion.”

The clear implication of Jung’s position is that working through one’s way to meaning – that is, to an enlarged view of ones dilemma and perhaps to an enlarged view of one’s own summons – can lead one through the valley of the shadow.

James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom For the Second Half of the Journey.

(The interesting medieval idea he refers to is from Meister Eckhart: The quickest horse that carries you to perfection is suffering)

The faces of others

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You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.

One thing is given to man which makes him into a god, which reminds him that he is a god: to know destiny.

When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god…

Hermann Hesse, If the War Goes on: Reflections on War and Politics

Take the leap

Karl Duffy1 Comment

There are second thoughts happening each time you act.

There is hesitation, and from that hesitation or gap, you can go backward or forward. Changing the flow of karma happens in that gap. So the gap is very useful.

It is in the gap that you give birth to a new life.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Truth of Suffering and the Path of Liberation