Our self talk matters. “I can’t” frequently means “I have never learned another way.”
Through the first years of life, we organize our entire system in a direction which will forever after guide us in that direction. We end up being restricted, we don’t do music, we don’t do other things.
What is most important, we find ourselves capable of doing only those things that we already know.
Moshe Feldenkrais
It is not in calm weather
that one sees the skill of the pilot,
but in a storm.
Epictetus, Discourses 1.24.6
There are two rules on the spiritual path:
Begin.
Continue
Sufi Saying
Bread for myself is a material question;
bread for my neighbour is a spiritual question
N.A. Berdyaev, 1874–1948, Russian Christian writer on human dignity and the dangers of oppressive systems, The Fate of Man in the Modern World
There is no less holiness at this time – as you are reading this – than there was the day the Red Sea parted or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the River Chabar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God.
There is not less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bo tree…
“Each and every day the Divine voice issues from Sinai” says the Talmud. Of eternal fulfillment Tillich said, “If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all”
Annie Dilliard, For the Time Being
To refuse the dark side of one’s nature is to store up or accumulate the darkness; this is later expressed as a black mood, psychosomatic illness, or unconsciously inspired accidents.
We are presently dealing with the accumulation of a whole society that has worshiped its light side and refused the dark,
and this residue appears as war, economic chaos, strikes, racial intolerance.
The front page of any newspaper hurls the collective shadow at us.
We must be whole whether we like it or not; the only choice is whether we will incorporate the shadow consciously and with some dignity or do it through some neurotic behaviour.
Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow
Mindfulbalance 