When I was young, I admired clever people.
Now that I am old, I admire kind people
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Tag: Life
No perfect way
Two quotes for today from the great Suzuki Roshi.
Life – or work – can contains elements of mess or chaos and we often approach them with a belief that a resolution can be, or should be arrived at. However, in reality, most of the time, it is rather a question of holding the irresolution or the problem in a new awareness.
Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.
There is no way set up for us. Moment after moment we have to find our own way.
Some idea of perfection, or some perfect way which is set up by someone else, is not the true way for us. Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.
Shunryū Suzuki Roshi, 1904 – 1971
Do not resist
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.
Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like
attributed to Lao Tzu
Sunday Quote: A choice
We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves strong.
The amount of work is the same.
Carlos Castenada, Journey to Ixtlan
The light is everything
The weekend, which allows the possibility to get out in nature, is a good time to share some of Mary Oliver’s poetry. This one is about flowers and how some are less “perfect” than others. But it is also about relationships and what hopes we have for our heart, about a greater beauty that embraces the clearly imperfect and allows us cast away the hassles of the everyday which are not us. We are nourished.
Shared moments, flowers, meanings and the stories that feed us.
What in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided–
and that one wears an orange blight–
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away–
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
Mary Oliver, The Ponds
Do not doubt your goodness
Often individuals who have experienced insecure attachments in childhood have high shame and self-criticism as companions in adulthood. The dominant role of their overdeveloped threat and protection system means that they have an underdeveloped capacity to use the soothing and safety system, whose function is to allow them feel safe and cared for.
In order to communicate very openly with the world, you need to develop fundamental trust. This kind of trust is not trusting “in” something, but simply trusting. It is very much like your breath. You do not consciously hold on to your breath, or trust in your breath, yet breathing is your very nature. In the same way, to be trusting is your very nature. To be trusting means you are fundamentally free from doubt about your goodness and about the goodness of others.
Dr. Jeremy Hayward, First Thought
