Suffering and crisis transforms us, humbles us and brings out what matters most in life. Accidents sometimes open us to a world of meaning. How strange it is to have something so brutal bringing out so many changes in life.
'A broken heart is not the same as sadness. Sadness occurs when the heart is stone cold and lifeless. On the contrary, there is an unbelievable amount of vitality in a broken heart’
There are days when I have wanted to die because living has been way too painful. I appreciate my friends and people providing advice yet right now am kind of stuck and convicted that some advice is way too irrational and un-thought. Sometimes people are genuinely being helpful and yet do not take time to think through the advice that they may be giving and that puts someone listening and depending on this advice in a tricky position.
Oh stand at the window, as tears scald and start. You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart. – W.H. Andrew
A heart made crooked through loss and change is a heart that can love the world and it’s less than perfect people.
I think I have often seen men as a mysterious human species with whom I would like to make meaningful contact. when I got married “ I arrived carrying one big bag stuffed with longing. I brought with me nothing else – no experience, no training no wise advice, no honed instincts. I was a babe in the woods of intimacy.The rebirth of the soul is a much more arduous endeavor than merely getting a divorce, or changing jobs or having a crisis crash over the flimsy structure of a life ~ Elizabeth
What matters is that we take a deadness of the soul seriously, that we pay attention to the contents of the heart, that we ask the head questions and fearlessly face the hidden parts of self. What matters Jung says, is that we shine the light of consciousness in the dark, corners of our life – what is not brought to consciousness, he says comes to us in fate.
Before I could participate freely in the wonders of the world, I had to test the dark fruit and leave the garden of innocence. Man must first descend into humility before he can raise himself to God. – Mark Musa (Translator & Interpreter for Dante’s inferno) says, “The only way to escape from the dark wood is to descend into hell. The only way up the mountain lit by the ray of the sun is to go down. Man must first descend into humility before he can raise himself to God. Before man can hope to climb the mountain of salvation, he must first know what sin is. The purpose of the pilgrim’s journey through hell is precisely this: To learn all these is to know about sin, as a necessary preparation for the ascent of God.”
A frozen and frightened girl cannot be a good wife or a mature mother, that a person who has never been wounded cannot heal and that a leader is worth following only if she can follow her own heart.
Fujiwara no Teika
From the beginning
I knew meeting could only
End in parting, yet
I ignored the coming down
And I gave myself to you
I knew meeting could only
End in parting, yet
I ignored the coming down
And I gave myself to you
Jung wrote, “Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so…He belongs on one side to man’s primordial animal nature, which will endure as long as man has an animal body. On the other side he is related to the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when spirit and instinct are in right harmony.Spirit does not farewell when lies are told.
Marion Woodman Jungian Analyst.
“We come to the mythic crossroads during moments in our lives where the unconscious crosses consciousness where the external crosses the transitory; where a higher will demands the surrender of our eyes.”
One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence ~ Robertson Davies
"The road of truth is not an easy road to travel, but it leads onward into landscapes of freedom.And as long as you have not experienced this: To die and so to grow you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.” ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
It is better to be honest and free than it is to be right and trapped. There is a great joy in discovering our ignorance, and a great freedom in realizing how defended from the truth we have been- how often what we think is so, often not so at all.
Beauty and the Beast – A story of true love surviving false identities – beauty stays with the Beast because she sees who he really is, beneath his deceptive and fearsome veneer
Whether a marriage or a relationship survives the heat of the phoenix process is not really the issue here. Something much greater is at stake when we choose to learn and grow in the crucible of love. When trouble visits a relationship a dance with a charmane lover, a long period of deadness, a shift in role, a change in expectations – we are faced with weighty choices. Will we turn away and go back to sleep? Will we fall unconsciously into meaningless destruction, vengeance or acting out? Or will we use the dangerous force of the heart’s longing wisely and put it into service of our spiritual growth? Will the pain make us better, stronger, kinder, and bigger? Will we learn from a betrayed devotion or a broken family, so that our mistakes are not repeated over and over again?
I pray that the new relationships you build with your old partner or with a new one, is a marriage between two whole people- two people who have married the shadow and the light within themselves, and who love the truth as much as they love each other.
Today, like every other day we woke up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground ~ RUMI
Let the young rain of tears come, let the calm hands of grief come. It’s not all as evil as you think~ Rolf Jacobsen
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~ Mary Oliver (The Summer day)
We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
~ Michel De Montaigne
The French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne advised people to practice death. “To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death…we do not know where death awaits us. So let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom.
We can practice death by becoming conscious of the ways in which we resist life; we can practice death by approaching endings and partings and changes with more ease and faith. Practicing dying is indeed the practice of freedom.
Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come. (Inscription on Rumi’s Tombstone Konya, Turkey)
When we practice dying, we are learning to identify less with ego and more with soul.
~ Ram Dass
Life is always changing, we live in a river of change and a river of change lives within us. Every day we are given choice, we can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it.
“All that is us are much more like a river than anything frozen in time and space,"
~ Deepak Chopra
“I’ve known rivers ancient as the work and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” ~ Langston Hughes
The secret in life is enjoying the passage of time. ~ Richie Havens
“In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Whatever difficulties come my way is fuel for my growing consciousness ~ ‘Poignant absurdity’
When grapes turn to wine they long for our ability to change. When Stars wheel around the North Pole, they are longing for our growing consciousness. Wine got drunk with us and not the other way ~ Rumi
In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark wood where the straightway was lost. ~ Dante
In letting God, “ we step aside and give way to something wiser than us, to the mystery that knows the truth about the past, the freedom of the present, the route of the future – dropping the burden of our fearful will- trusting in changes , trusting in God’s will.
Broken open by loss and love and life. Out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing, a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.
Intelligence is not knowing and being aware of all that goes around in the world. That is being knowledgeable, intelligence is about being able to understand life, analyze situations that provide for a better and much more productive life.
Life is uncertain that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next- God’s word for me is a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.
Regard everyday events as messages about reality. Trust in those messages, don’t fight reality. Don’t defend against it. Read it like you would a newspaper. Read everything that happens to you and to others as pertinent news about the reality of being human, of being you. For every action we take, reality leaves little messages about its wisdom or folly.
Hafiz:
Not the God of Names
Nor the God of don’ts,
Nor the God who ever does anything weird,
But the God who only knows
Four words and keeps repeating them
Saying: “come dance with me.”
The dancing God is always with us, but often it takes a calamity to make room for him at the table :)
It is not ideas that change the world, but simple gestures of love given to the people around you and often to those you feel most at odds with. He said that in order to save the world you must serve the people in your life. You struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything ~ Thomas Merton
A cure cannot always be found but it is possible...
Fame and fortune: I know that fame and fortune cannot alter the inner landscape of a human heart.
Unnecessary change turns through the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all its many forms. A seeker is one who renounces home and family to wander about, living on what he begs. Avoiding pleasure he subdues the passion; mediating he controls the mind. And so he strives for freedom from this world of tears and the endless round of rebirths.
Whatever is happening, whatever is changing, whatever is going or not going according to my plans I release my hold on all of it. I leave behind who I think I am, who I want to be, what I want the world to be. I come home to the great peace of the present moment, to the wide – open wonder of myGod like nature
Therapy aims to do: To return our souls to our bodies, to return ourselves to ourselves and this to overcome the human state of self-alienation. A life lived in order to please others ends up pleasing no one at all.
In order to change habits and attitudes garnered over a lifetime, we must want something more than the eggs. We must long for the truth, we must pay attention to the voice that calls us out of the safety zone, we must be willing to lose what stands in the way of the true self – we must give up the eggs (inspired by Woody Allen)
Man: Doc, my brother’s crazy, He thinks he’s a chicken
Psychiatrist: well, why don’t you turn him in?
Man: I would but I need the eggs
Life sends all sorts of foxes to raid the hen house and steal the eggs. Try to look at the problems that come your way as opportunities to give up illusions of myself and about life on the planet earth. (I don’t recommend courting drama and disaster so you can be open to the truth). Use anything- everything- as a wake-up call. You can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain. You will be given the key to a more truthful and therefore more joyful life.
When things fall apart
Adversity is natural party of being human. It is the height of arrogance to prescribe a moral code or health regime or spiritual practice as an amulet to keep things from falling part. Things do fall apart. It’s their nature to do so. When we try to protect ourselves from the inevitability of change, we are not listening to the soul. We are listening to our fear of life and death, our lack of faith, our smaller egos will to prevail. To listen to the soul is to stop fighting with life - to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we get betrayed or mistreated, or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slowdown, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait.
It is in times of brokenness that the soul sings it’s most wise and eternal song. Each person’s soul has its own cadence. You will recognize its music by the way you feel when you are listening; awake, calm, and suddenly relieved of the burden of control, you will take a big breath, and you’ll sigh and say to yourself, “its okay. Everything’s okay”
Sometimes in moments of surrender you will see how much you get from staying stuck in the way you see yourself and other people, how much you have invested in making someone else wrong so that you don’t have to accept your own culpability; how you idolize others so that you don’t have to claim your own power. Take a stand; be you’re most noble and radiant self.
You may know something true about yourself but protect the hen house nonetheless. It’s when you let the fox steal the eggs that you’re left with the truth of who you really are. And who you really are is worth so much more than those imaginary eggs.
Drum sounds rise on the air and with them, my heart. A voice inside the beat says I know you are tired, but come. This is the way. – Rumi
Over and over we are broken on the shore of life, Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open not, once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live. The promise of being broken and the possibility of being opened are written into the contract of human life. Certainly this tumultuous journey on the waves can be tiresome. When the sea is rough, we may want to give up hope and give into despair wary on (mine)
When you are...
May you listen to the voice within the beat even when you are tired,
When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead,
May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart,
expands your understanding and leads you to freedom.
If you are weary, may you be aroused by passion and purpose.
If you are blameful and bitter,
may you be sweetened by hope and humor,
If you are frightened,
may you be emboldened by a big consciousness far wiser than your fear.
If you are lonely, may you find love, may you find friendship,
If you are lost, may you understand that we are all lost,
and still we are guided – by strange Angels and sleeping giants,
by our better and kinder natures,
by the vibrant voice within the beat,
May you follow that voice for this is the way
The hero’s journey, the life worth living, the reason we are here.
~ Elizabeth
Everything can change in a moment; we have little control over the outer weather patterns as we make our way through the landscape of life. But we can become masters of the inner landscape. We can use what happens on the outside to change the way we function on the inside. (The reward is true self, the awakened consciousness)
John Campbell ~ what all myths have to deal with is transformation of consciousness. You have been thinking one way; you now have to think a different way. Consciousness is transformed wither by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it’s all abou.
When we have been through trials and discomfort (mine) and survived, better still, transformed its terrors into revelations – then we begin to approach other adversities with a different attitude. Change and loss may still break us off the horse, but soon we are back in the saddle, stronger and wiser than ever. As life progresses and we continue to transform and refine our consciousness, we have more insight and humility, greater strength of character and deeper faith in the meaninglessness of life.
Brokenness leads to openness, descent to rebirth, fire to phoenix- difficult journeys are best taken in a sturdy circle, or at least with trusty guide and a helpful toolbox.
At critical times in life, find things / practices to push you to take responsibility for your own happiness- stop waiting for the elusive someone or something to mind and define my life. Prayers give solace and strength. It is a reassuring companion on the road. Prayer, meditation, therapy can teach one to transmute pain into growth.
Patience
Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting....
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