Now every mortal has pain
and sweat is constant.
But if there is anything dearer than being alive,
it’s dark to me.
Euripides, Hippolytus, 428 BC
Tag: Mindfulness
Comparing
As long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find where the weakness is. So where there is comparison, there is no love. When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child. But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love. You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else. As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh.
And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love.
J. Krishnamurti
New month
Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new.
Thus life is always new.
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Micro Moments
Find a micro-moment of happiness.
Enjoy spring flowers or favorite songs. Have chocolate or tea.
What matters is your intention to be happy
Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down
Sunday Quote: Not anxious
The unwanting soul sees what’s hidden,
but the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 1
The bigger context
The work of sacred rituals like initiation was to situate life in a bigger frame, so nature, beauty, suffering, work, sexuality, and ordinary moments were seen to have transcendent significance. They gave life meaning — the one thing the soul cannot live without…Initiation was always, in some form, an experience of the tension and harmony of opposites: of loss and renewal, darkness and light, the cycle of seasons, death and resurrection, yin and yang, the paschal mystery.
In my cross-cultural research on male initiation rites, I perceived five consistent lessons or truths communicated to the initiate, meant to separate initiates from their attachment to who they think they are and reattach them to who they really are. In this time of global disruption, these lessons can help us align to reality..[and] …our own belonging in it.
These five essential messages of initiation are:
Life is hard.
You are not important.
Your life is not about you.
You are not in control.
You are going to die.
You may be shocked by the seemingly negative character of these five truths. We typically want to flee from our current anxiety, grief and pain, but I encourage you to stay with these messages. They are truths for your soul that can help you find meaning and a sense of God’s compassionate presence inside of the chaos.
Richard Rohr, The Patterns That Are Always True
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