Don’t Take Anything Personally.
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.
When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements. Second Agreement
A nice poem for the weather we are having these days on this island on the edge of Europe. Insight deepens when we resist the urge to prematurely close meaning, allowing complexity to speak in its own time.
How would it be to allow for knowing
and not knowing: allowing room
for the mystery of creating
to be able to wonder softly
without needing to understand everything
to trust in the process, to trust in love
to trust in the mystery and wonder
of the universe
that beats softly wildly
true, all round about us,
that is hidden in the mists in the clouds and the rain
in the wind blowing and the rain lashing down on your window,
reminding you poetically, prosaically
that this is where you are,
on the island, at the edge,
in a place of finding and refinding,
and remembering to remember
the feel of the mist, wind and rain.
John O’ Donohue
The Universe conceals its workings, and the underlying meaning of things is not immediately evident;
Nature loves to hide
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
Heraclitus, fragment B123
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple, the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness, with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested —
this sorrow, that great love —
it too will leave on that clean knife
Jane Hirshfield,
Calming and stilling are the willingness to commit to just being wholeheartedly present in one moment at a time,
to commit to one breath,
to commit to the sense of our feet touching the ground.
To know this, we begin to train the mind.
Christina Feldman, Blindfolding Mara
Ancient knowledge from the Celtic calendar which saw tonight as the threshold between the light and dark times of the year, when the earth turns inward. Sometimes wisdom doesn’t have to be learned so much as reawakened. We scroll endlessly, but rarely return to stillness to rediscover the thresholds where mystery begins.
Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are depths that keep watch. These are depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle.
Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms of interiority in favor of the ghost realms of cyberspace. We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and colour of images.
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Mindfulbalance 