Love and wholeness

In our yearning to be perfect, we have mistaken perfection for wholeness. We think we cannot love ourselves until we and others meet some external standard. Depression, anxiety – in fact, most neuroses and compulsions – are ultimately a defense against loving ourselves without condition.

We are afraid to look at the damp, dark, ugly yet exquisite roots of being that stretch deep into our survival chakra. We are fearful of finding that the spirit is not there, that our Home is empty, even as our outer home is empty. Yet it is in that place of survival, where the dark mother has been abandoned, that spirit longs to be embodied so that the whole body may become light.

Ego wants to be the god of our own idealized projection; spirit wants to be incarnated in our humanity where it can grow in wisdom through experience.

Marion Woodman, Jungian author and poet, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness

Where wisdom arises

When a person remains focused on the inconstancy of everything that comes together,

ignorance is abandoned,

and clear knowing [wisdom] arises.

The Buddha, Itivuttaka: The Group of Threes, Iti 3.36; 

Abundance

In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition.

Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.

Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Manipulating the world

Your mind has very little control over this world. It is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. It cannot control the weather and other natural forces. Nor can it control all people, places, and things around you. You have given your mind an impossible task by asking it to manipulate the world in order to fix your personal inner problems.

If you want to achieve a healthy state of being, stop asking your mind to do this. Just relieve your mind of the job of making sure that everyone and everything will be the way you need them to be so that you can feel better inside. 

Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul

Sunday Quote: the holy tree

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there

W.B. Yeats, Irish Poet, The Two Trees

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

The present moment

If you view everything as practice,

your suffering will disappear.

Shido Bunan, 1603-1676, Zen Master