Soulmate

A soulmate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communicating and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace.
~Thomas Moore

Irony

"The worst offenders of the virtue of irony, this talent for multiple emotional and intellectual points of view are moralists.  They think they know what is right and wrong, tell others how to live, and see themselves as models of virtuous living.  Next in line are literalists, who anxiously take their every thought or belief as pure fact.   They are incapable of appreciating the paradoxes in belief and need to feel that they possess truth.. "  Thomas Moore

Dark Night of the Soul

"The most precious gift of your dark night might be the sheer edge and heft of your soul, your presence as a person of real substance."  Thomas Moore

Dark Night of the Soul

"There is a smith in our soul who works the failures and successes of everyday life int eternal shapes that make us who we are.  It is not extraordinary, this dark place of heat and hammering, but rather an unspectacular scene of hard work.   You might think of your dark night as such a place and realize the importance of keeping it stoked and fired and dim.  Your job is to provide the setting and let the divine smith do his work."    Thomas Moore

Dark Night of the Soul

"You sense in your body and in the fullness of your own emotion a great rupture in the world you have known, an irrevocable emptiness that is not just to be felt but completely absorbed if you are to go on.   A genuine dark night of the soul takes you to this crossroad place, this bardo place, where you have the opportunity, extremely hard won, to live in a different world."  Thomas Moore

Change

"Profound shifts in the condition of your soul don't happen easily.   They are always mysterious and happen in spite of your efforts."

Dark Night of the Soul

"Things are not better, but you are in a different state.  Perhaps you are now where the Dark Night has been trying to take you for so long.   Now you are almost ready for a new life, and that is the purpose of bardo.  Slowly, a different kind of light begins to glow from inside you."  Thomas Moore

New Beginnings

"It can be helpful to distinguish between depression and the sense of existential emptying.  You are beyond emotion.  You are sensing your reality and your personhood.   The emptiness you sense may not be yours, not even personal.  It may the the vacuum of life.  You may be standing at the edge of your atmosphere, looking out on the empty space of your unknown world, as though you were in a space station looking out into the universe."  Thomas Moore

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

Life Questions

"Note that the question is not, what do you want, but rather what is wanted at a level beyond and beneath your consciousness."   Thomas Moore

Honor Yourself

"Go with developments, rather than against them.   If you feel lost, be lost in ways that suit you and make you feel like a participant in your life.   If you feel empty, empty out your life where it needs it.   If you feel sad, let sadness be your dominant feeling.   Being in tune with your deep mood is a way of clarifying yourself.  Speak for it.  Honor it."  Thomas Moore

Dark Night of the Soul

"The dark night may be a kind of dying.  It washes out a cluttered life.   Think of your dark night as a pruning of your tree of life."  Thomas Moore

Being Deworlded

"Richard Kearney sums up catharsis as a matter of 'acknowledging painful truths'.   He says it 'stops us in our tracks, throws us off kilter, deworlds us'.  To a person intent on getting somewhere, these are not appealing developments, but to the human soul it is important to get out of the busy life, to be dissuaded from familiar activities, and to step outside the paradigm that has become habitual and taken for granted.   To be 'deworlded' mean you have a rare opportunity to consider a different way of life.   You can't renew life without stepping out of the pattern that is in place."   Thomas Moore

Dark Night of the Soul

"The traditional  rite of passage approach is to see life as a series of transformations in which you become a person with new capacities and talents.   Each of these steps might have it's own dark night.   To be a person means that you are always becoming, and a dark night is one sign that you are alive."  Thomas Moore

Dark Night of the Soul

"The dark night itself is a kind of vessel that allows our putrefaction, the breaking apart of a life that once made sense but needed reviving."  Thomas Moore

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

Change

"To keep the unfolding self alive, you have to open yourself to change every step of the way."  Thomas Moore

Born in Soul

"To be born in soul again and again is a positive experience, but it also involves pain.   It means entering a new kind of life just when the old one might have grown comfortable.   Familiarity can bring tranquility, but you also need the sting and chaos of the new.   To be alive entails both of these qualities, the yin and yang of peace and pain."  Thomas Moore

Depression vs. Dark Night

"Depression is a strong emotion, but a dark night is a slow transformation fueled by deep issues at work defining the very meaning of your life."   Thomas Moore