Power

"Originally the word power meant to be able to be.  In time, it was contracted to mean to be able.  We suffer the difference."  Mark Nepo

Holy Fallout

We are often in battle.
So often defending every side of the fort,
It may seem, all alone.

Sit down, my dear,
Take a few deep breaths,
Think about a loyal friend.
Where is your music,
Your pet,
a brush?

Surely one who has lasted as long as you
Knows some avenue or place inside
That can give a sweet respite.

If you cannot slay your panic,
Them say within
As convincingly as you can,
"It is all God's will!"

Now pick up your life again.
Let whatever is out there
Come charging in,
Laugh and spit into the air,
There could be a holy fallout.

Throw those ladders like tiny match sticks
With "just" phantoms upon them
Who might be trying to scale your heart.

Your love has an eloquent tone.
The sky and I want to hear it!
If you still feel helpless
Give our battle cry again

Hafiz
Has shouted it a myriad times,

"It is all, It is all the Beloved's will!"

What is that luminous rain I see
All around you in the future
Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, O it looks like
Holy Fallout
Filling your mouth and plams
With Joy!

Hafiz.

Spiritual Warrior

"When the spiritual warrior progresses on the path he paradoxically finds himself more alone.  He is like an island sitting alone in the middle of the lake...Although the warrior's life is dedicated to helping others, he realizes that he will never be able to completely share his experience with others.  The fullness of his experience is his own, and he must live with his own truth.  Yet he is more and more in love with the world.  That combination of love affair and loneliness is what enables the warrior to constantly reach out to help others.   By renouncing his private world the warrior discovers a greater universe and a fuller and fuller broken heart.   This is not something to feel bad about; it a cause for rejoicing."   Chogyam Trungpa

Identity

"It is important not to take care of or be taken care of all of the time.   They [mothers/women] are always caring, always wanting care.   They are stuck, fixated on the nurturing mother-child archetype.  But you don't always need to be cared for.  You don't have to justify your existence by caring for others.   Instead of making mutual care an absolute principle, you could understand that need, absence and ignorance allow wonder and new life.  You need to feel your own essence - who you are when you are not acknowledged and supported by someone else.   This empty underworld of your identity is an important ingredient in your reality, and when you are learning this lesson you may think you are in a dark night."  Thomas Moore

Aloneness

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with. ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

Dark Night of the Soul

"Your dark night is liminal, an in-between place, and that explains in part why it is so uncomfortable.   It is neither here nor there.   It seems to take you out of life rather than further into it.   It becomes difficult to find words to describe your experience, and you may hesitate to describe it to friends because people usually want good news.   They don't know what's going on.   Nobody around knows what is happening to you.   But something is taking place, some deep process dissolving you and remaking you into something new."   Thomas Moore

Transition

"People in transition often disregard their appearance.  You may have to allow this kind of transition in others.   When you're going through a significant change of life, your good habits may fall apart.  You may do things that distance you from your family and community.   The insanity of a dark night makes some people less civil and controlled, and yet, at the same time, they may be more present."  Thomas Moore

"If you see yourself
as no one worth looking at;
if you believe you are
not worth listening to,
if they told you,
"That's not what you saw,
not what you heard,
not what you think
you cannot trust yourself"
You are lost.

Don't look to others to find you,
to love and take care of you now.
You'll suck them dry.

No one out there
is responsible.
Go back and find
your soul.
Be mother and father
to yourself,
Until the divine parents
arrive.

Christina Baldwin

Life as Story

"As creatures of story, we long for story; not just wordiness but the quality of interaction story engages in us.  Ironically so many of us experience great loneliness as we jostle around each other on crowded streets, overhear each other on cell phone, or cruise the internet late at night.   As we practice the art of storycatching, we can look for opportunities to insert story space into our daily life when we pay attention, and when we are paid attention to, we learn to take our place in the story going on around us."  Christina Baldwin

Oneness

"Those who control the ear of the heart understand that if people truly discover each other, we will have a million circles and sit down and laugh and cry at our commonalities.   And then we will not be so easily led to fight wars.   We will not so unconsciously exploit each others lives in order to make our own more comfortable.   We will not be confused by the manipulation of half-truths and lies."  Christina Baldwin

Receiving

"I have come to accept that no matter how much I am able to be with myself, no matter how much I like my own company, I still long to sit close to and at times merge with another in deep intimacy.   The completeness of self is found when we can be alone and when we can bring all of who we are to another, receiving and being received fully."  Oriah

Life's Adventure

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.   The labyrinth is thoroughly known.   We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay one another, we shall slay ourselves.   Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.   And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world."   Joseph Campbell

Aloneness

"There is a lantern in the soul, which makes your solitude luminous.   Solitude need not be lonely."   John O' Donahue

Aloneness

"Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false longing, with which you will become empty and weary.    When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen.  Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging.   This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality...this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life.    As soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outward to the world.   No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative.   You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself."    John O' Donahue