Start over

The first days of a new Spring

There is no expected pace for inner learning. 

What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson. 

We fall down as many times as we need to , to learn how to fall and get up. We fall in love as many times as we need to , to learn how to hold and be held. We suffer pain as often as is necessary for us to learn how to break and how to heal. No one really likes this of course, but we deal with our dislike in the same way, again and again, until we learn what we need to know about the humility of acceptance.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Signs of Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; 

And give us not to think so far away 

as the uncertain harvest; keep us here 

all simply in the springing of the year.

Robert Frost

The natural order

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

Estragon: He could dance first and think afterwards….
Vladimir: Would that be possible?
Pozzo: By all means…. It’s the natural order
.

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Stay open and quiet

Don’t call it a way; it is more a kind of skill.

It is not even that.

Stay open and quiet, that is all.

What you seek is so near you that there is no place for a way.

Sri Nisargadatta, 1897 – 1981 Indian non-dualist teacher

Slow down

The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.

Travel too fast,

and you miss all you are travelling for

Louis L’Amour, Western author

Keep the mind high

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty.

No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self, which is poetry.

Matsuo Bashō, 1644 – 1694