No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
Alan Watts, This is it
We’re always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can’t help feeling that that’s what it is.
Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov
C’est la Nuit qu’il est beau de croire à la lumière
It is at night that it is beautiful to believe in the light
Edmond Rostand, 1868 – 1918, French poet and dramatist
You cannot do yoga.
Yoga is your natural state.
What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.
Sharon Gannon, 1951 – , yoga teacher, animal rights advocate, musician and author
We should not give up on our dreams or any deep sense that persists over time, or let it be blocked by our fears.
Since the powers of nature in this dreamer, in that dreamer, and in the macrocosm of nature itself, are the same, only differently inflected,
the powers personified in a dream are those that move the world.
All the gods are within you,
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God
Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but ‘steal’ some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world.
But you need to breathe.
And you need to be.
Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
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