trust

Letting go

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dandelionblow

Letting go, in order to let in
releasing, in order to receive
nature’s coded messages become clearer
the less we try to see.

Trying hard, trying harder and harder
trying so very hard
is not the way.

We need commitment, yes
and focus
and hope and faith and trust
but most of all we need ease
a discipline of ease
not trying too hard at all.

You see “trying hard” has a cell-mate
called “giving up”, admitting defeat
like black and white
like pushing and pulling
no peace there.

“Not yet”, you say
“I’m not ready yet
to take the step beyond.”
I know
I’ve stepped so slow myself,
still do
but love sweet sister,
like death
comes in a moment’s heartbeat
then goes.

There are no ways to hold
except by letting go, and
letting it be a part of you
and you of it.

Stewart Mercer

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Forget about enlightenment

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andy-goldsworthy-book-ephemeral-works02

Photo and artwork by Andy Goldsworthy

Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.

John Welwood

I go among trees

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tree

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

Wendell Berry

 

For freedom

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white_bird_soaring.jpg

Photo by zolthan5

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back among
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

John O’Donohue

Letters to a young poet

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dragoncover4

by Jackie Morris

We have no reason to harbour any mistrust against our world,
for it is not against us.
If it has terrors, they are our terrors.
If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us.
If there are dangers, we must try to love them,
and only if we could arrange our lives,
in accordance with the principle that tells us
that we must always trust in the difficult,
then what now appears to us to be alien
will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

How could we forget those ancient myths
that stand at the beginning of all races –
the myths of dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses?
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses
waiting for us to act, just once,
with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is,
in its deepest essence,
something helpless that wants our love.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you
larger than any you’ve ever seen,
if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows
moves over your hands and everything that you do.
Life has not forgotten you.
It holds you in its hands and will not yet you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life
any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions?
For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Reiner Maria Rilke