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I know this must be challenging for you
Grief weaves in and out until it wears itself out Be gentle with yourself and know that grief hardly ever takes a linear course It can surprise us sometimes with its intensity at sudden unexpected moments Be patient and stay the course by filling your attention with things you enjoy Someday, when you think of the loss, you will also experience acceptance, transcendence, and well being - Anonyme In my youth I was but the slave of the high tide and the ebb tide of the sea,
and the prisoner of half-moons and full moons Today I stand at this shore and I rise not nor do I go down - Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist The early stages of self-investigation require facing one’s suffering and embracing it, rather than turning away from it. Very often, we’re so busy escaping from our suffering, seeking solace in substances, activities, and relationships, that we don’t even feel it. In time, we recognize that our true nature is inherently peaceful, inherently fulfilled, before it is qualified or colored by experience. If one is in touch with one’s true nature, one feels its innate peace and joy, and this brings about a reduction in our suffering. We get in touch with that which lies behind identifying ourselves with the content of our experience. After a while, our essential being becomes our new identity. We remain in touch with its innate peace in the midst of experience. As a result, suffering arises less and less, and in time, simply ceases arising.
- Rupert Spira, Oxford, UK spiritual teacher, philosopher, and author In our ordinary life we are limited and bound in a thousand ways - the prey of illusions and phantasms, the slaves of unrecognized complexes, tossed hither and thither by external influences, blinded and hypnotized by deceiving experiences. No wonder then, in such a state, people are often discontented, insecure and changeable in moods, thoughts and actions...No wonder that, in a blind passionate search for liberty and satisfaction, people rebel violently at times, and at times try to still inner torment by diving headlong into a life of feverish activity, constant excitement, tempestuous emotion, and reckless adventure.
- Roberto Assagioli, Italian psychiatrist and pioneer in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. (Adapted) Potent: a conscious yet spontaneous response to what is happening in the here-and-now; no calculation or manipulation
Less Potent: trying to do what is right. This is calculated behavior based on a concept of right, and manipulative behavior based on an idea of what should happen Least Potent: imposed morality. Imposed morality rests entirely on should and shouldn't. It is both calculated and manipulative, and meets resistance with punishment. It sheds no light on what is actually happening. It often backfires Persons who lose touch with what is happening cannot act spontaneously, so they try to do what they think is right. If that fails, they often try coercion Wise persons who lose the sense of immediacy become quiet and let all effort go until a sense of clarity and consciousness return The unfolding of life does more than fray our bodies with entropy — it softens our spirit, blunting the edge of vanity and broadening the aperture of beauty, so that we become both more ourselves and more unselved, awake to the felicitous interdependence of the world. And yet the selves we have been — young and foolish, hungry for the wrong things, hopeful for the right but winged by hope into hubris — are elemental building blocks of who we become, unsheddable like the hydrogen and helium that made the universe.
- Maria Popova, a Bulgarian-born, American-based essayist, book author, poet,[1] and writer of literary and arts commentary and cultural criticism It takes a whole lot of human feeling
to be a human being - Carmen McRae, one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of lyrics |
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May 2023
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