“We are so close to the Earth that we often forget—it is alive. And the language of its aliveness is what we call nature. When we listen to nature, we are listening to the Earth. Of course, such a conversation takes time, because we are too small to readily grasp what the Earth has to say. The vast Earth has carried us our whole lives. Can we thank it? It has held up and endured everything for thousands of years. Can we ask it how? It speaks with a thousand tongues, none of which uses words. Yet, to build a relationship with that which holds us up seems essential.

But what can we hear? As the smog we’ve created prevents us from seeing the sky, the noise of machinery we’ve created prevents us from hearing the wind and birds and quiet teachers that have always been there. When I leave the mechanical hive, even briefly, I can tell that the horse runs to know its father, the wind. Just the other day, I took a walk where there is no pavement. I lost my way and followed two geese until I reached the end of my small logic.”

~ Mark Nepo, ' Conversation With the Elements: Wisdom and practical guidance on opening to the world'

  

'Frontera Entre El Abrazo de Amor de el Universo'

(Love Embrace of the Universe)

by Frida Kahlo

RITUAL

Because plunging into another element, the cold water, or greeting the sun from a height, are impressive moments, and we must do ·something to celebrate them. In bathing you have exposed yourself in a somewhat risqué costume and you want an outlet for your feelings. We always put everything on to our parents or forefathers. We make them responsible for everything and we think we have explained something by this, but as a matter of fact we have not. When we hide Easter eggs, it means that we are expressing an unconscious thought, that thought is - "Now it is the time for the beginning of new lives,” Everywhere there are young things " and we are moved by this thought as the primitives are by the rising sun.”

 

[Carl Jung on Affects and Customs]

Lecture VI 2nd June, 1934

Pages 110-113.

“To practice any art,

no matter how well or badly,

is a way to make your soul grow.

So do it.”

 

~ Kurt Vonnegut, 'A Man Without a Country'

"For a craftsman, it is important to gather and use the materials lovingly, and this attitude allows the materials and the technique to teach one their ways. Along with the inner attitudes, the art of waiting needs to be cultivated. Silence is a tool of the intuitive realm, the vehicle of inspiration, just as readiness is the vehicle of physical techniques. Standing in readiness for any possibility allows recognition of outer conditions that might serve one’s deeper intent. Recognition is the ambassador of seeing.

Nothing is truly dead, even within the various levels of earth substance; stones simply breathe too quietly and slowly for their breath to be perceptible. In a craft, it is often the attitude of the individual working with the material–not the materials themselves–that is really dead or comatose. Can fires be kindled under these cold attitudes to enliven the working process, and to impart depth and warmth to it?

Through receptivity and communion, one can open to a higher consciousness, remembering that this quiet inner attention is a most precious energy which can be used throughout the total process. Recording the light of the outer subject can be linked with gaining access to one’s inner light."

~ Paul Caponigro, “Writing with Light,” the photographer as silversmith, an excerpt featured in PARABOLA, Volume XVI, No. 3 “Craft,” 1991.

"When a little toddler comes fumbling and tumbling along, it's the disproportion of the whole thing that's utterly lovable. As I was coming here I saw two kittens, absolutely black, one sitting on top of a little post and the other at the bottom of it. It was a ridiculous scene. But it was perfectly lovable, these two funny little faces there. There's an absurd dog sits outside of this place with the strangest ears. It looks like something that came out of The Spook Sonata. And it's a lovable beast. And so we come to this curious ironic point: that fault in the person is what must be loved. And furthermore, you know Paul's word, 'Love beareth all things.' And the majesty and dimension of your love is the measure of how many faults you can detect with love in the world, in your neighbor, and so on."

~ Joseph Campbell

from The Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell, Lecture II. 1. 7- "Thomas Mann and James Joyce"

#shadow #compassion #love #psychotherapy

"Hard to believe, but the hypochondrias are taking care of us, the depressions are slowing us down, obsessions are ways of polishing the image, paranoid suspicions are ways of trying to see through--all these moves of the pathological are ways we are being loved in the peculiar way the psyche works."

~ James Hillman

 

#teleology #heliotropism #psyche

 

Questions for Reflection:

1. Where do my dependencies show up in my intimate relationship?
 

2. What am I asking my partner to do for me that I, as a mature adult, need to be doing for myself?
 

3. Am I taking too much responsibility for the emotional well-being of the Other? Am I taking on his/her journey at the expense of my own, and if so, why?
 

4. In what ways do I seek to avoid suffering?
 

5. What fears, lack of permission or old behaviors block me from living my life?

21 Ways to Consider What Matters Most by James Hollis

1. THE CHOICE IS YOURS:
Realize that your life is something you choose every day, whether you are paying attention or not. And that it is now time to pay attention.

2. TIME TO GROW UP:
Grow Up. Growing up means that we truly take responsibility for our lives, for how they are turning out, and stop expecting others to make those decisions for us.

3. LET GO OF THE OLD:
Pay attention to how much of your daily behavior is in service to old
anxiety management systems that, once necessary, now bind
you to a disempowering past.

4. RECOVER PERSONAL AUTHORITY:
Recover personal authority: what is true for you, really, and now find the
courage to live that truth.

5. SEEK TO MAKE AMENDS:
Ask others where you have injured them, where they see you limiting yourself, and vow to change those behaviors.

6. STEP OUT FROM UNDER THE PARENTAL SHADE:
Consider where you are still carrying, or compensating for, the unlived life of your Mother, the unlived life of your Father.

7. VOW TO GET UNSTUCK:
Reflect on where you are stuck, and what old fear is keeping you stuck.

8. COME BACK TO YOUR TASK:
Identify what task you need to address, the flight from which will diminish your life.

9. CHOOSE THE PATH OF ENLARGEMENT:
Ask of any important life choice: does this path enlarge me or diminish me—and act on your conclusion.

10. WHAT GIFT HAVE YOU BEEN WITHHOLDING FROM THE WORLD:
What wishes to come into the world through you, and only your fears keep you from serving it?

11. SEE THE OLD SELF-DESTRUCTIVE PATTERNS:
Notice the patterns which keep showing up in your intimate relationships, and from whence do they arise in your history?

12. WHAT IS THE BIGGER PICTURE FOR YOU?
Where do you stand in relationship to what is larger than you, that which asks more of you?

13. CHOOSE MEANING OVER HAPPINESS:
A life of happiness is transient; the search for meaning is life-long.

14. HONOR, FINALLY, WHAT YOU LEFT BEHIND:
What parts of yourself did you leave behind, perhaps necessarily then, but which cry out for your recovery of them, for your honoring of them?

15. EXORCISE THE GHOSTS OF THE PAST WHICH BIND YOU:
What old guilts or shames inhibit you today, and how can you grow larger than their inhibiting powers?

16. FREE YOUR CHILDREN FROM YOU:
Free your children from your own unlived life, your expectations that they ratify your values, and release them as you wished released from the expectations of your parents.

17. BESTOW LOVE ON THE UNLOVEABLE PARTS OF YOU:
Accept that fact that we all are flawed, which does not mean that we are not worthy of love, of respect, and of the power to redo our lives.

18. HONOR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DUTY AND CALLING:
Know the difference between work and vocation, that one is a duty and one is a calling, and that in the end, a calling is more important than anything.

19. EXPLORE WHAT ONCE MOVED YOU MOST:
What fired your imagination in the past, aroused your curiosity and passion? Those energies are still there, waiting for release and affirmation.

20. SIEZE PERMISSION TO BE WHO YOU REALLY ARE:
Where are you still looking for permission to live your life, and who do you think will give it to you today?

21. LIVE THE EXAMINED LIFE:
Keep asking “what matters most,” lest you be living someone else’s life, or simply staying on automatic pilot.

Poem: The Healing Time

THE HEALING TIME

finally on my way to yes
i bump into
all the places
where i said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where i find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and i lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say    holy
holy

~ pesha joyce gertler

#poetry #beauty #healing #psychotherapy  

There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vadar in all of us. Thing is, this ain't no either or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience Face the darkness, stare it down. Own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig. Give that old dark night of the soul a hug Howl the eternal yes.

~ Stuart Stevens

Northern Exposure, 1991

#innerwork #shadow #jung

"Everything in existence is crying out for a particular quality of consciousness that only humans can give. This doesn’t mean we are superior to nature, only that there’s an incredible need for a certain cooperation. The famous mystic Rudolph Steiner has said that for the agricultural process to happen, for seeds and plants, and trees to grow, birdsong is absolutely essential. This is a beautiful truth that very few people know. But we also need to take what he said one stage further, because birds call and sing not only to quicken plants: they also call to awaken the human seed that we are. They are actually singing for our sake as well. 

If we can start to listen to them, really listen, they will draw us into this greater consciousness I have been talking about. They will be our teachers, because nature is able to point us to our inner nature. …We are called to be there. When we can listen to what the birds have to say, to what nature has to say, and when we perceive the beauty of nature, then we are completing the circle and returning this physical world to its source through our own consciousness."

~ Peter Kingsley

"And you may find that something else is quietly happening when we face obstacles. Under the mind that is freaking out or shutting down, we may find another mind, a vastly more quiet and responsive mind."

~ Tracy Cochran

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, 
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go, 
we have begun our real journey. 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”


~ Wendall Berry

Poem: The Guest House

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Jellaludin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks