“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious.
If you have a deep scar, that is a door.
If you have an old, old story, that is a door.
If you love the sky and the water so much
you almost cannot bear it,
that is a door.
If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Tag Archives: quotes
This Is What You Shall Do
Oh Walt Whitman!!
Timeless words that inspire me daily….
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
-Walt Whitman
Kindness is Like Snow
“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
—John Muir.
“Kindness is like snow –
It beautifies everything it covers.”
-Kahlil Gibran
Sweet Solstice
Ahhh… Winter.
Now the sweet season of introspection, quiet, peaceful snowscapes, good books, long nights, welcoming fires, warm hearths, cozy afternoons, wanderings, deepening, dreaming, awakening…
We celebrate this longest night with a glad heart, knowing that with each subsequent day, the sun will grace us with ever more moments of light. Each day more light.
May our lives, our very souls know this too; each day more light!
O Winter ruler of the inverted year… I crown thee king of intimate delights, fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, and all the comforts that the lowly roof of undisturbed retirement, and the hours of long uninterrupted evening, know.”
-William Cowper
“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”
– Pietro Aretino
“Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.”
– Anamika Mishra
Wild Nature
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody.”
-John Muir
Becoming Rich
“I make myself rich by making my wants few.”
-Henry David Thoreau
New Eyes
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
~ Marcel Proust
Silence
“Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.”
-Paul Goodman
So many silences, a profound collection. To these eloquent words of Goodman’s I would add, the silence of being one with nature, and in awe of the beauty and connections …
Viewing the World
“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
-Muhammad Ali
This Moment is the Perfect Place to Begin
Matt Licata’s words resonated with me today…
“Turn into the ocean of your unlived life, and bring the warmth of awareness into the hidden places inside you. Behold the forms of love as they reconfigure, and open to the unmet feelings, the disowned longings, and the split-off pieces you have lost contact with. Dare to see that they do not mean you harm, but have come longing for integration. There are jewels concealed in the forgotten pathways, awaiting discovery, filled with energy and information for the journey ahead.
But the substance which shapes these pathways is of the unknown, and is unbearably creative. It was never going to turn out the way you thought. Rather than seeing this as a mistake or cosmic error, you can find rest here. It is not the rest of the mind where everything is resolved, but the rest of the heart where everything is held and metabolized in wholeness. Love will never be pinned down or worked out. It is just too wild for all that.
If we do not meet, hold, and integrate the heartbreak, the fear, the rage, and the entirety of our essence vulnerability – if we do not provide sanctuary for the aliveness of the somatic world – we will inevitably place this burden on the others in our lives, to care for it on our behalf. While others can help us along the way, they cannot take care of this sacred material for us. For this is their gift to us.
It is an act of love to remove this burden from our lovers, our friends, and our families. And to take experiential, full-spectrum responsibility for its holding and its care. As we integrate the arising narrative, emotions, feelings, and sensations within the spaciousness of awareness, we become open, warm, transparent vessels for love to come alive here, and to seed this world with its qualities.
You need not postpone being fully here for another moment. This moment is the perfect place to begin.”
