Tag: Mindfulness

Looking forward

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One’s life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage

Anaïs Nin

The search

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There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home.

Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

Josephine Hart, Damage

Restlessness

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I have been reflecting these days on how our sense of self is related to finding a space where we can feel safe, which we can be “at home”. It may be a place, but it is more likely found in the acceptance and love of others. We search for this all our lives. Without it we are restless, even lost.

 

One way to express the crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.

Henri Nouwen

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

Maya Angelou

Within the heart

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There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

Hafiz

Sunday Quote: Looking inward

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When we are no longer able to change a situation,

we are challenged to change ourselves.

Victor Frankl

Stillness and safety

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An old soothing lullaby, in Irish,  to calm the baby before sleep, sung here by Altan. The deepest rest comes when we know we are safe and we can let go. The progressive internalization of this safety from consistent parenting in our childhood is crucial for our capacity as adults to be alone.

Dún do shúil, a rún mo chroí
A chuid den tsaol, ‘s a ghrá liom
Dún do shúil, a rún mo chroí
Agus gheobhair feirín amárach

Close your eyes, love of my heart
My worldly joy, my treasure
Close your eyes, o love of my heart
And you will get a present tomorrow