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.

Love and Fear

"The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."

"Our eyes are not just viewers.  They're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time.  Fear is writing that script.  Fear is going to be a player in your life.  You get to decide how much.  So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.  What we really want seems impossibly  out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dare to ask the universe for it.  I'm saying that you can ask the universe for it.  Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.  As far as I can tell it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass.  Why not take a chance on faith.   Not religion but faith.  Not hope but faith.   I don't believe in hope.  Hope is a beggar.  Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.  You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world.  You'll only ever have two choices.  Love and fear.  Choose love and don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart."  Jim Carey 

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.”
― Mary Oliver

Facing Fear

I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. ~ Dune

Our Greatest Fear

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others".  Marianne Williamson

No more Swatting

"We all suffer the uncertainty of being hurt by the life that surrounds us, and we all have a changing ring of safety beyond which we are likely to hurt other living things in the guise of self-defense.  How often we imagine things are dangerous when they are only doing what comes naturally.  This is too much like the dance we do with strangers and loved ones alike.  How often we murder parts of ourselves by not letting things advance or come close.  How often we let fear and the swat rule our emotional lives.  How often we kill or chase away everything that moves.  I think of Francis of Assisi, who held so still the birds landed on his branchlike arms, and we wonder why we are so lonely when we won't let anything full of life come near.   If we could only see the bee, or the bird, or our enemy as a brief living center like ourselves, we could let them go on their way without pulling us into opposition."   Mark Nepo

Urgency

"The doorway to our next step of growth is always behind the urgency of now.  Now more than ever, when all feels urgent, you must cut the strings to all events.  Now more than ever, when the weights you carry at your wrists, you must not run or flail.  Now more than ever, when each decision feels like the end, you must believe that each question is a beginning.   Now more than ever, when you fear that being who you are is a knife to those you love, you must be strong inside where no one has seen you, for loving from there can only make those you love grow.  Now more than ever, when feeling that you are the source and recipient of all pain, you must bow your head till the ancient channel from the sky to the heart can reopen, til you remember that you are a blessed piece of spirit-dust in spirit-wind. 

In this way, pray to know your place in the human family like you've never known it.  In this way, pray to have your True Self inch through your turmoil.  In this way, love yourself the way you love your children or your dog or your dearest friend, without reservation.  In this way, today with all it's hardships will spill into tomorrow, and decisions will become clear as streams thawing."  Mark Nepo

Transformation

As a frightened man in a burning boat
has only one way to the rest of his life,
we must move with courage
through the wall of flame
into the greater sea. 

Mark Nepo

Born

"I was born when all I once
feared - I could
love."

Rabia

Your Heart

The heart is a thousand-stringed instrument.
Our sadness and fear come from being
Out of tune with love.

Hafiz

Peacemaking

“We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds--our own prejudices, fears and ignorance...To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women.” --Thich Nhat Hanh

Fear and Faith

"If you never ask any questions, you never learn anything.  If you never learn anything, you never grow.   If you never grow.  That is not faith; it's fear."  Sagan

Spirtual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.  Id didn't want to become anything more than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.  I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world -a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Thought

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
-Bertrand Russell

Rilke

Dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we've built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour

and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor—let their work
grip them another five hours, or seven,

before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're worthy of you and real.

Rilke 

Now Is The Time

Now is the time to know



That all that you do is sacred.



Now, why not consider



A lasting truce with yourself and God.



Now is the time to understand



That all your ideas of right and wrong



Were just a child’s training wheels



To be laid aside



When you can finally live



With veracity



And Love.



Hafiz is a divine envoy



Whom the Beloved



Has written a holy message upon.



My dear, please tell me,



Why do you still



Throw sticks at your heart



and Soul?



What is it in that sweet voice inside



That incites you to fear?



Now is the time for the world to know



That every thought and action is sacred.



This is the time



For you to deeply compute the impossibility



That there is anything but Grace.



Now is the season to know



That everything you do is sacred.

Fundementalism

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

Friedrich Nietzche

Fearlessness

"A fearless sort of living allows us to delight in the koan of human existence.   We stop fearing the opposite of happiness, or the opposite of success, or the opposite of love, because we no longer believe in opposites.  Unity within duality reduces the sense of drama and tragedy in daily life."  Elizabeth Lesser

Dogma

"A man or woman who clings to the words of others can become a slave to dogma.  Many religions spoon feed their flocks descriptions of the afterlife and strict instructions on how to get there.  They lead followers around the fear and darkness into the promised safety of the light.   This is a mistake.  People who blindly accept the teachings, who hold on the wings of someone else's angels, miss out on the peace gained from experience."  Montaigne

Change

"Things are always ending and arising and ending.  But we are strangely conditioned to want to experience just the birth part and not the death part...We have so much fear of not being in control, of not being able to hold to things.  Yet the true nature of life is that we're never in control; we can never hold onto anything.  That's how life is.  Although we can accept this intellectually, moment by moment it brings up a lot of panic and fear.  So my path has been learning to relax with this lack of control and the panic that accompanies it, learning to stay in the space of uncertainty, learning to die continually."   Pema Chodron