We frequently identify quite closely with our moods…never the best idea on a Monday morning….
In a world where nothing is as fixed as it seems,
it comes as a great relief to discover that even the ego is impermanent
Mark Epstein, Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting over Yourself
The beauty of a mountain is that it is so much like a mountain, and of water that it is so much like water
Zen saying
To regress in a certain way is to return to origins, to step back from the battle line of existence, to remember the gods and spirits and elements of nature, including your own pristine nature, the person you were at the beginning. You return to the womb of imagination so that your pregnancy can recycle. You are always being born, always dying to the day to find the restorative waters of night. Darkness is natural, one of the life processes. There may be some promise, the mere suggestion that life is going forward, even though you have no sense of where you are headed. It’s a time of waiting and trusting. My attitude as a therapist in these situations is not to be anxious for a conclusion or even understanding.
You have to sit with these things and in due time let them be revealed for what they are.
Thomas Moore, The Dark Night of the Soul
The festival of Samhain, which is behind modern-day Halloween, marked the end of the Celtic year and of agricultural work. People followed the rhythm of nature and wound down their activity. This festival began that period of resting, and was an occasion for meeting up, for building bonfires, celebrating the harvest and for storytelling. It was felt that the gap between the material and spiritual worlds was very thin at this time. The bonfire tradition still persists in Ireland and England to this day. The Western Churches took over the importance of this date – with its themes of endings and beginnings – and added to them remembrance for those who have gone before us. So…reminders of change but also of celebration, of fully living each moment that is given to us.
We must make good use of this life for the time we have left. This brief flash of light, like the sun appearing through the clouds.
Kalu Rinpoche
I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.
Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.
There, I said to myself,
that’s done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.
Jane Hirshfield, Changing Everything
We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul. We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery. The false burdens fall away. We come into rhythm with ourselves. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life.
John O’Donoghue
Mindfulbalance 