In these days of political and economic turmoil, fuelled by fear and disrespect, we need to learn from those who have faced similar times and touch into a space within.
The sky within me
is as wide as the one stretching above my head
Etty Hillesum, 1914 – 1943, deported by the Nazi regime to Auschwitz and killed there
We cling to our history with tenacity precisely because to think of ourselves in other ways is either intimidating or unimaginable. But the human psyche imagines more
The problem with complexes is that they have no imagination. They can only say over and over the phenomenological message of their origins.
But the psyche has a much larger perspective on our lives. It imagines much more for us than the ordinary ego can comprehend. …Just as we periodically clean the house, go through old clothes and discard the no longer germane, so we have to go through our accumulated histories, our driving attitudes, reflexes and responses and discard what is no longer useful, productive, relevant or serving growth.
James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the second Half of the Journey
The sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is the root of all suffering.
When you contemplate, ‘This is not me, this is not mine, this is not my self,’ you’re no longer identifying with experience.
You see the body, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions as they are – impermanent, conditioned phenomena – and you stop taking them personally. That’s how you drop self-view.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Four Noble Truths
Stepping into a new month
The idea that we should or even can know ourselves is a tyranny.
It assumes that clarity is always preferable to mystery, that explanation is always better than wonder.
But what if not knowing is the most honest relationship we can have with ourselves?
Adam Phillips, British psychoanalytic psychotherapist and essayist, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
Way back in the ’80s, my guru asked me, “What is stress?” He had never heard of stress because he came from the Himalayas. I told him stress is the perception of threat: physical, emotional and psychological. After a while, he said, “You mean resistance to existence.” And he said, “If you don’t resist existence, you will have flow.” That’s the best advice.
Deepak Chopra in Wall Street Journal, November 2024, Deepak Chopra Doesn’t Believe You’re Too Busy to Meditate
The goal, if we can speak of a goal on the spiritual path, is not to be attained in the future.
It is the place we start from. It is within us. It is us, our essential self.
We cannot go towards it; we relax back into it
We are revealed as that
Rupert Spira
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