Have we lost the power and agency of trusting our own instincts in the face of: the crowd, the ‘norm’, what other people think, peer/ social pressure, what we are told to think and believe etc. on and on..?
Is imposter syndrome so prevalent because so many of us try to be what we are not and instinctively, unconsciously know we will never be?
I used to have imposter syndrome when I was doing something that wasn’t truly me. When I stopped doing that and began to do what I truly am, it disappeared and never came back, despite it being harder and more challenging than what I was doing before.
The radical honesty of understanding who we are and who we’re not as well as what we are and what we are not capable of is essential. The contemporary fetish of believing that we are all capable of being anybody we choose to be and can achieve anything we want is simply delusional and harmful to our mental health.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
Mary Oliver
My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.
Hermann Hesse
That anything is happening at all trumps all specific things that happen.
There may be relativistic problems of the world to solve but you are not one of them.
Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it.
Alan Watts
Identification with concepts, imagination and with images of selfhood are all part of the same energy and process of human aliveness. There is no separation. The ‘human condition’ as such, is living this, is being this, is expressing this very paradox without splitting apart, yet remaining whole and indivisible. Aperspectival — The ever-present origin.
There is a beautiful irony and paradox in that seeking, meditating and in some way taking action to see what is already present, is also the same energy, movement and process of aliveness that also takes no action.
Don’t believe the hype…
Public Enemy
…the mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n…
John Milton
Simply being is all the meaning we need, yet evidently not all the meaning we want.
I’m not interested in remedial projects of improvement but just curious about the nature of what is.
It seems we have made pain some kind of mistake, like having it is somehow wrong.
Don't let them fool you—pain is a part of things.
But remember, dear Ellie, the compost down in the field: if the rank and dank and dark
are handled well, not merely discarded, but turned and known and honored, they one day come to beds of rich earth home even to the most delicate rose.
Teddy Macker from Poem for my Daughter
People meditating on the fundamental carry out their ordinary tasks and activities in the midst of meditation and carry out meditation in the midst of ordinary tasks and activities. There is no disparity between meditation and activity.
Muso Soseki
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as l am, then I can change.
Carl Rogers
And yet change cannot be brought about or contrived. Change is what results when everything is left alone and you do what you are moved to do, not what you think you should or ought to do.
Then there is no going back. You are not who you were but something else which simply is.
Distracted? From what?
We are constant flux. No ground, no resting place. Nowhere to land. Perpetual process. Cessation of one thing reveals the movement of another. Whatever is here is included. Everything that occurs is allowed and a natural , indivisible part of the flowing whole.