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

New Beginnings

"With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Who can tell what miracles
Love has in store for us
If only we have the courage to become one with it?
Everything we think we know now
Is only the beginning
Of another knowing that itself has no end.
And everything we now can accomplish.

Will seem so derisory to us
When the powers of our divine nature
Flower in glory and act through us."

Iqbal (Sufi Mystic)

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

Bardo

Bardo = a liminal period between the old life and rebirth

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

Reality

"Anything that is real has no beginning and no end."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Beginnings

"Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown...this is not the case.   Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced...We are never alone in our beginnings...A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward gifts and growth that are stored up for us.   To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect."   John O'Donahue