There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity
Jung.
In contrast to our frenetic, saturated lives, the earth offers a calming stillness. Movement and growth in nature takes its time. The patience of nature enjoys the ease of trust and hope. There is something in our clay nature that needs to continually experience this ancient, outer ease of the world. It helps us remember who we are and why we are here.
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Don’t prolong the past,
don’t invite the future,
don’t be deceived by appearances,
just dwell in present awareness.
Patrul Rinpoche
I often think that if the rest of creation could actually speak,
it would be looking at us wondering why we quibble about the details of living out our lives
when everything around us and everything inside us is so utterly and totally unique.
David Whyte, What to Remember when Waking
Gentle, slow, walking – best done in nature – sends a signal to the brain and by slowing down the body we slow down the rushing mind. It can put things in perspective and prevent us from living all the time in our heads:
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
hills and a cloud.
Wallace Stevens, Of the Surface of Things
Slowing how we think and feel and take in the world is directly related to being centered. The wisdom traditions all have some form of meditation and prayer that is aimed at slowing us into this center, where the very pace of creation breathes…..At the pace of creation, all things breathe the same way….So, when we slow and open and center ourselves, we breathe in unison with all of life, and breathing this way we draw strength from all of life. At the pace of creation, the beginning enters us and we are new.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
photo josh hallett
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