Tag: Present moment

Predicament

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Two quotes from Leonard Cohen on the anniversary of his death

One idea on my new record is that the human predicament has no solution. We were tossed out of the garden; this isn’t paradise. And to look for perfect solutions is a very difficult burden to bear. That’s my theme: It’s a mess — thank God

[“The Traitor”]  was about the feeling that we have of betraying some mission that we were mandated to fulfill, and being unable to fulfill it. And then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it, and that the deeper courage was to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself.

 

Always being born, always dying

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To regress in a certain way is to return to origins, to step back from the battle line of existence, to remember the gods and spirits and elements of nature, including your own pristine nature, the person you were at the beginning. You return to the womb of imagination so that your pregnancy can recycle. You are always being born, always dying to the day to find the restorative waters of night. Darkness is natural, one of the life processes. There may be some promise, the mere suggestion that life is going forward, even though you have no sense of where you are headed. It’s a time of waiting and trusting. My attitude as a therapist in these situations is not to be anxious for a conclusion or even understanding.

You have to sit with these things and in due time let them be revealed for what they are.

Thomas Moore, The Dark Night of the Soul

Sunday Quote: Every Instant

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All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Just start

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I don’t think that you have to get all your inner stuff together and totally integrated before you can actually be what you’ve realized. You’re going to wait forever if you wait for that.

Just start being what you know now.

Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing.

Settle

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Just listen to whatever surrounds you. Sound is a good object of meditation because we generally do not try to control it as much as we do other things. People often have a more difficult time settling into their bodies than they do paying attention to the sounds that appear naturally. Just listen and try to let whatever sounds are around you pass through you.

The fundamental purpose of meditation is not to create a comfortable hiding place for oneself; it is to acquaint the mind, one a moment-to-moment basis, with impermanence….When the mind is settled, the underlying ephemeral nature of things can be more clearly perceived. Resistance diminishes, the flight to past and future recedes, and the sense that it might be possible to respond consciously rather than react blindly to events begins to emerge.

Mark Epstein,  Advice not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself

Thoughts about

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Finally calm again after some days of wind and rain..

Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

Mark Twain, Autobiography