No one chooses what to like or dislike. All that arises preconceptually, and then we call the conscious coming to awareness of those preconceptual brain states ‘me’.
— Robert Saltzman
If you’re moved by something, it doesn’t need explaining.
If you’re not, no explanation will move you.
— Federico Fellini
I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
— Jonathan Safran Foer
Finding and accepting your own mind makes clear the recognition that, not only does all seeking end, but you are home having never left.
I have no interest in theory or academia…
That’s all very well in practice but will it work in theory?
— Garret FitzGerald
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any of that guidance, how pertinent any of that wisdom, in the end you discover that you make the path of life only by walking it with your own two feet under the overstory of your own consciousness — that singular miracle never repeated in all the history and future of the universe, never fully articulable to another.
What started off as dank and foggy has blossomed into a crisp and bright day with more than a hint of warmth to it.
There is no perfection, only completeness, which is exactly what we always are.
Home.
Is this what you think it means to be human? How little adept we are at living! We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life. And how much childish, shortsighted egotism lies in an intention! We believe that we can illuminate the darkness with an intention, and in that way aim past the light. How can we presume to want to know in advance from where the light will come to us?
— Carl Jung, The Black Books
When you feel you are everything there is no need to believe in anything.
Debris from the recent floodwaters caught in the branches of trees over ten feet above the river’s usual level.
The sea used to be my contemplative companion on the morning walk to work but now it’s rivers and mountains – the same ebb and flow of nature, just differing rhythms and vibrations of the whole happening.
The sun exquisitely striking the hills through the clouds this morning on my way into town.
Both the poetic and the mythic image at once reveal and conceal.
The meaning is divined rather than defined, implicit rather than explicit, suggested rather than stated.
– Alan Watts, The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity via Tony Cartledge
It is inarguably true that I exist. That I am. The mind’s response to this fundamental fact is to miniaturize it, to make it absurd, to say ‘I am a body.’ The belief that I am a body is the First Mistake. From the chalice of this mistake are poured a thousand others. That life begins and ends, for example, just as the time-bound body begins and ends. Obviously, life is timeless. It has no beginning and no end, and despite what Oprah says, no one lives a life. We are life.
The Trojan Horse of mistakes
Growth and insight often arise in unplanned moments, outside the pressures of deadlines. By moving beyond the idea of time as a resource to be spent, we open ourselves to a fuller experience of life, where value comes not from efficiency but from the depth of our connections and the richness of our experiences.
There is no inter-personal justice, no weighing of scales between two souls – only forgiveness.
A wet but fresh and alive autumnal morning. The brook running fast and clear. Everything glistening, even the rich red leaves underfoot.
You can only find your own mind.