In these days of political and economic turmoil, fuelled by fear and disrespect, we need to learn from those who have faced similar times and touch into a space within.
The sky within me
is as wide as the one stretching above my head
Etty Hillesum, 1914 – 1943, deported by the Nazi regime to Auschwitz and killed there
We cling to our history with tenacity precisely because to think of ourselves in other ways is either intimidating or unimaginable. But the human psyche imagines more
The problem with complexes is that they have no imagination. They can only say over and over the phenomenological message of their origins.
But the psyche has a much larger perspective on our lives. It imagines much more for us than the ordinary ego can comprehend. …Just as we periodically clean the house, go through old clothes and discard the no longer germane, so we have to go through our accumulated histories, our driving attitudes, reflexes and responses and discard what is no longer useful, productive, relevant or serving growth.
James Hollis, Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the second Half of the Journey
Almost every one of Odysseus’s encounters coming home from Troy are losses of some type – his men, his control, his power, his time, his memory, his fame, the boat itself. Falling, losing, failing, transgression and sin are the pattern, I am sorry to report.
Yet they all lead towards home.
In the end, we do not so much reclaim what is lost as discover a significantly new self in and through the process. Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan, and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
The sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is the root of all suffering.
When you contemplate, ‘This is not me, this is not mine, this is not my self,’ you’re no longer identifying with experience.
You see the body, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions as they are – impermanent, conditioned phenomena – and you stop taking them personally. That’s how you drop self-view.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Four Noble Truths
Life was unfolding in spite of me, not because of me. The more I leaned back and trusted, the more life took care of itself.
The key is to stop fighting. Lean back , let go and let life flow through you.
When you do, you will see that life knows what it’s doing
Michael Singer, The Surrender Experiment
Stepping into a new month
The idea that we should or even can know ourselves is a tyranny.
It assumes that clarity is always preferable to mystery, that explanation is always better than wonder.
But what if not knowing is the most honest relationship we can have with ourselves?
Adam Phillips, British psychoanalytic psychotherapist and essayist, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
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