Enlightenment

"Enlightenment is intimacy with all things." Jack Kornfield

Relationship

"I don't need you for my wholeness.  I want you for my joy."  Unknown

Uniqueness

"We can be unique without being better than anyone else, without being special."  Unknown

Sex

"Sex, like money or meditation, is best used to realize and express your natural openness, rather than to build a false home of childish security."  David Deida

Growth

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present.” ~ Anais Nin

Courage

"Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made."  David Whyte

Trust and Keep Going

Lick the Fire
You don’t have to trust the process.
You just have to keep moving forward
through the fear.
If we had certainty,
if we could control the outcome
the risk wouldn’t be there
and without the risk
the growth does not run deep.
And believe me, it would
not be nearly as fun, or
transformative.
I try not to promise trust, or safety.
Art is not safe at all.
That is what you can trust,
it will take you into
dangerous territory, but,
you won’t be harmed.
Honor your instincts
instead of your controlling nature.
Stop trying to understand,
to grasp, to know, to get the
hang of it. Really, stop it.
The true work will often
feel like you are about
to start flying, lifting off.
Feels like bliss and
throwing up all at once,
enjoy the uncertainty of the ride.
Stop trying to predict or
create the outcome.
Stop convincing yourself
you have to trust and be fearless.
You don’t.
There is a new story,
the only storyline is this one:
KEEP DOING IT.
That’s it. That is how you
will get where you need to go.
Stop requiring so much
security during your process.
Let the freefall be your lover.
The feeling of no bottom be
welcome. Welcome the thought:
you might not get this one right.
Welcome the Uh-Oh! at the
beginning of almost
every stroke. Release the
need to dominate. Submit.
Let the process completely make
you come undone so
you drop your ribbons
to the floor and laugh
and cry and lay your
head upon your creation.
Keep the dialogue happening,
talk out loud if you need to.
Talk to the muse as if
she could really hear you. She can.
By allowing the fear to
be there without stopping
your work, the chatter
will not cease, but it will
change. You are the over-comer now.
You are an unstoppable creative.
You don’t have to trust the process.
Just don’t put your brush down.
Don’t put it down. Listen.
Allow yourself to get scared to life
instead of scared to death.
Don’t step back from the flame.
Lick the fire. Be burned if you have to.
And put the ashes into the creation.
All of it, every fear and wound,
becomes useful here.
Desire trumps the need to trust.
If you are not shaking in your boots
you haven’t yet, even arrived.