Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows ‘what he wants,’ while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
It’s time to get serious about joy and fulfillment, work on our books, songs, dances, gardens. But perfectionism is always lurking nearby, like the demonic prowling lion in the Old Testament, waiting to pounce.
Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn’t go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart.
Don’t let this happen.
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, Instructions on Writing and lIfe
Piglet noticed that even
though he had a very small heart,
it could hold a rather
large amount of gratitude.
A.A. Milne
There is Thomas Merton’s famous prayer, the beginning of which reads, ‘My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.’ You can look up the rest.
There is a beautiful prayer a friend’s Jewish mother wrote and taught me, which I swear by: Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever. This is my prayer, O lord. Amen.
I wrote one that will do in a pinch:
Hi, God. I am just a mess.
It is all hopeless. What else is new?
I would be sick of me, if I were You,
but miraculously You are not.
I know I have no control over other people’s
lives, and I hate this. Yet I believe that if I
accept this and surrender, You will meet me
wherever I am. Wow. Can this be true? If so, how is this
afternoon – say, two-ish?
Thank You in advance for Your company and blessings.
You have never once let me down.
Amen.
Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
We understand that the nature of the mind is to wander. In this wandering everything that is encountered is a teaching., a pointing to a life that can be vividly lived. And every path that we wander leads to the same place “Here”.
The realization of the continual return to this moment, this time, this place is liberating. A sense of wonder arises, of not-knowing, and deeply trusting this feeling of simple presence.
Melissa Myozen Blacker in Living Mindfully: 52 weekly quotes and Mindfulness practices
As the Summer Solstice approaches….
Shamanic healing is not about fixing what has gone wrong.
It’s about growing a new body that heals, ages, and dies consciously.
Alberto Villoldo, 1949 -, Cuban psychologist and medical anthropologist, writer on the healing practices of the Amazon and the Andean shamans.
Mindfulbalance 