Incubation periods

Our psyches, like nature, need periods of rest and regeneration. Some overly positive psychological models have no place for the dips in mood or energy that are a normal part of life and which can be seen in the cycles of nature. We have to learn to not fear those moments when we do not feel completely in control, or when lose our sense of direction for a while.

There are moments in human life when a new page is turned. New interests and tendencies appear which have hitherto received no attention, or there is a sudden change of personality. During the incubation period of such a change we can often observe a loss of conscious energy: the new development has drawn off the energy it needs from consciousness. This lowering of energy can be seen most clearly …in the empty stillness which precedes creative work.

Jung, The Psychology of the Transference, CW 16.

Vastness

I have a certain faith in our ability to find the wisdom we need to co-create necessary change, if we are willing to sit with what is hard and the vastness of what we do not know.

Sometimes the darkness is a place of rest. And sometimes it is a place where we gather wisdom and strength to deepen our participation in the world.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Early morning mindset

We examine each day before us with barely a glance

and say, no, this isn’t the one I’ve been looking for.

Tom Hennan, 1942 – American Poet

Sunday Quote: Love and Suffering

Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering.

Oh praise the soul’s migration.

I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you.

I am again in love with the world.

Mark Nepo, In love with the World

A moment

This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water

and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to

where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.

Mary Oliver, Poem of the One World

Underneath all

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed – that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.

But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Seungsahn Haengwon, 1927 – 2004, Korean Zen Master