On this ever-revolving wheel of being
The individual self goes round and round
Through life after life, believing itself
To be a separate creature – until
It sees its identity with the Lord of Love
And attains immortality in the indivisible Whole.
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad , ancient Sanskrit text, c 5th Century BCE
Just for a little while, stop thinking about all the problems, crises, tasks. everything that’s pulling and pushing on us.
Be in that quiet space.
After all these years, some of us still need permission to let go.
Melody Beatty
Today is the Autumn Equinox, which is celebrated as a public holiday in Japan.
Imitate the trees.
Learn to lose in order to recover,
and remember that nothing stays the same for long,
not even pain.
May Sarton, 1912 – 1995, Belgian-American poet and novelist.
When life does not in any way add up, we must turn to the part of us that has never wanted a life of simple calculation. To be consoled is to be invited into the terrible ground of beauty upon which our inevitable disappearance stands, to a voice that does not soothe falsely, but touches the epicenter of our pain or articulates the essence of our loss, and then emancipates us into the privilege of both life and death as equal birthrights.
Solace is a direct seeing and participation; a celebration of the beautiful coming and going, appearance and disappearance of which we have always been a part. Solace is not meant to be an answer, but an invitation, through the door of pain and difficulty, to the depth of suffering and simultaneous beauty in the world that the strategic mind by itself cannot grasp nor make sense of.
David Whyte
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,
not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
All has been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,
the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of love.
Strange a priest would rob us of this
knowledge
and then empower himself
with the ability
to make holy what
already was.
St Catherine of Siena (1347–1380),
in Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God:Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
Mindfulbalance 