Self-love involves a yes to myself in whatever I am going through, instead of holding on to some concept of what or how I should be. Any idea I have about who I am or who I should be is never accurate, for it always falls short of the living presence that I am, as this unfolds freshly in each new moment. Who I am is not a fixed entity but a dynamic stream of experiencing that is alive in every moment – when I let myself happen.
John Welwood
If your relationship to the present moment is not right,
nothing can ever be right in the future –
because when the future comes,
it’s the present moment.
Eckhart Tolle
We live our lives,
for ever taking leave
Rilke, Duino Elegies
Stars and blossoming fruit trees:
Utter permanence and extreme fragility
give an equal sense of eternity.
Simone Weil
photo il conte di luna
What I’ve noticed is that there are two main ways that fear of uncertainty affects us, at least initially. One is that we speed up and the other is that we get very lazy. As I’ve talked with people many of them share their experiences of how a basic level of nervousness causes them to speed about even in their own homes, bouncing from room to room and task to task and never quite finishing anything. People talk about going back and forth between one thing and another, emailing and calling people on the phone. …Lazy is the other way to go. It is the opposite of speed, and yet these two seeming opposites are both about the same thing: avoiding being present with our fear of uncertainty. You procrastinate. You feel unworthy. Laziness has a frozen quality. You spend hour after hour on the computer, not as a form of speediness, but just distracting yourself, trying not to feel what’s underneath what you’re feeling, trying to avoid touching the uncertainty and uneasiness.
Pema Chodron
photo trishna datta
