“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.”
— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Tonight is Severance night. Loved Season 1 and I’m carrying on watching it but I’m beginning to kind of sort of not care.
Brilliant premise, no doubt, but I find myself getting bored in these characters’ company.
To bastardise/ rewrite Alan Watts:
“Poetry is perhaps our greatest folly. The art of saying what cannot be said.”
Maturity, at any age, is nothing more than realising that both you and life are not what you thought they were and then accepting them exactly as they are.
“If one is looking for final answers and somehow, unfortunately, finds them, that is religion, not wisdom, and blessed indeed is s(he) who knows the difference.”
— Robert Saltzman
Feel I have to give another shout out to The Kissing of Kissing: Poems (Multiverse) by Hannah Emerson.
Picked it up this morning and was, yet again, blown away…
“When we live our life as a whole, there is no longer an aspect that gets singled out as ‘suffering’.
— Barry Magid, Ordinary Mind Zendo
“How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other.”
— Carl Jung
Nothing in particular to do today. Got a run of long shifts coming up so taking the opportunity to not do much of anything. Cold but bright out so maybe a walk. And coffee of course.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung
“Thus to enter a realm of immediate experience is most stimulating for those who have done their utmost in the personal and rational spheres of life and yet have found no meaning and no satisfaction there. In this way, too, the matter-of-fact and the commonplace come to wear an altered countenance, and can even acquire a new glamour. For it all how depends how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”
— Carl Jung
“This may be no more than his household, his own tortured psyche, or the lives that he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world—no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world’s messenger of disaster, even though, in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions.”
— Joseph Campbell
“One lives as one can…”
Today: cleaning out fires, chopping logs, laundry, signing off on our roof work and then maybe a 5k run later. It’s cold but the sun is shining and I’m grateful to be able to just do what needs to be done.