Journey Within

"Living by principles is not living your own life.  It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.  If you are trying to live by ideals, you are constantly plagued by a sense of unreality. ... And when the crunch comes, you have to recognize the truth: you weren't there."
                                                                             --Marion Woodman
"We know that every good idea and all creative work are the offspring of the imagination, and have their source in what one is pleased to call infantile fantasy.  Without this play with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth.  The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.  It must not be forgotten that it is just in the imagination that a man's highest value may lie."
                                                                            --Carl Jung

Home
About us
Cultural Creatives
Being Peace
Journey Within
Nonviolence
Dialogue
Transforming World
Cost of War
Oil & War
Corporations & War
Withdrawing Consent
Kudos
Inspirations
Earth
Animals
Sacred Feminine
Equality for All
Stories
Expressions
Simple Living
Introversion
Album
Afghanistan
Palestine/Israel
Face of Iraq
Links
Contact us

** Search this site **

IAA Public Libraries

Norwac Audio Lectures

Shamanic Astrology

Marion Woodman /
Facebook

Carl Jung - YouTube

Matthew Stelzner
Supporting info /podcasts

Awakening the Bay

Tree of Life Celebration

Mindfulness Bell

Transit Watch

NOAA Current Solar
Activity

Full Moon Dates - SF

Moon Calendar

Moon Phases Calendar

NASA Eclipses

Astro Ephemeris

Astro Glossary

Melanie Reinhart

Juan Antonio Revilla

Jessica Murray

Astrology-Wave
Steven Forrest

Christine Page

Laurence Hillman

Mosaic Voices

Joseph Campbell
Foundation

Joseph Campbell
Power of Myth

Encyclopedia Mythica

Myth Index

Theoi Greek Mythology

Roman Myth Index

Thinking Allowed

Isis Institute tapes

Donna Cunningham

Learning Strategies

Sacred Mysteries

Barbara Hand Clow

New Millenium Being

Bob Marks, Astrologer

Steven Forrest

Sherene Scholstak

Sherene Schostak, Astrol
/ Jungian psychotherapist

Depth Astrology

Third Millenium
Library -
Ancient History

Astrolosophy

Solarlogos

Mountain Astrologer

Norwac Audio Lectures

Debra Clement podcasts

Anchored in Astrology

Bay Area Science

Saturn Return Stories

IAA Online Astrology Conference 2012: Breaking Down the Borders 2: November 30-December 2, 2012

Conscious TV
Future Primitive
Visionary Activist Show
Conscious Media Network
7th Wave Network Radio
Contact Talk Radio
Healing Sounds Show
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Solar System Scope

 

Videos, audios, seminars...

Tom Lescher - Astrology Forecast for February 8, 2012
The Dark Goddess Lilith
Lilith - the dark moon

Matthew Stelzner - The Joy of Astrology - 10-21-12

Terence McKenna's last video interview with John Buzard
October 1998

Kymatica

Shadow &Substance
Displaying popular astronomy visually & entertainingly

Caroline Casey and Daniel Giamario

Audio from KPFA The Visionary Activist 110311

Carl Jung - A World of Dreams 1 of 5

Carl Jung - Approaching the Unconscious 1 of 15

Cosmos and Psyche with Rick Tarnas 1 of 3

Dr Carl Calleman - Cosmic Convergence 9/23-26/11 interview
The Emergence Project

Debra Clement & Dena DeCastro - Saturn Cycles

Venus Transits 2004 & 2012
Transit of Venus 8.6.04.avi

Archetypal Astrology: Embodying the Planetary Gods - Sherene Schostak

Debra Clement & Lisa Finander -- Astrology & Tarot

741 Hz Frequency Awakening Intuition

Rick Levine - The 1960's, 2012 and the Turning of the Seasons 1-4

Lynne McTaggart - Living with Intention session one - 1 of 8

MUSICAL RAPTURE A Healing Gift for Humanity

Alchemy of Nine Dimensions: Barbara Hand Clow (1 of 12)

Creating Dispositor Trees ( 1 & 2)

Return of the Magi Astrology Trailer
Return of the Magi

Nassim Haramein - The Resonance Project

Audio from KKCR Kauai Radio -- The Resonance Project

Carl Calleman and Beth Green

Zane Stein on Chiron

Texas Milky Way Time Lapse (Nikon D90)

Astrologers Lyn Goldberg & Linea Van Horn on The Galactic Embrace

Precessional Cycle of the Holy Cross - 300 pixel MP4 Movie

Daniel Giamario & John Major Jenkins - The Galactic Alignment,
the Precessional Cycle and the Turning of the Ages
- Interview 020207

INELIA BENZ : the full interview with Bill Ryan from Project Avalon

Conscious Partnering Conference - audios

Christine Page - Intuitive Wisdom

Audio from Inspiring Women Summit

Steven Forrest -- The Future of Astrology

Enneagram - Conscious TV interviews with Types

Jean Shinoda Bolen

Carolyn Myss on Chakras

The Energetics of Healing - Vol.1 - Part 1 of 10

David Spangler - Lorian Association

Audio from Sacred Awakenings

Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter ...

Jeddah Mali 'Recognizing Truth' - interview by Renate McNay
Jeddah Mali

Bruce Lipton on health, physics, the Field & more

Audio from The Tapping Solution

Yogi Cameron on Dr. Oz

Shamanic Astrology - Caroline Casey 4 parts

Michael Meade -- Spell of Life

Audio from New Dimensions Radio

C.G. Jung -- Wisdom of the Dream

Joseph Campbell - Power of Myth

Michael Meade -- Mythic Storytelling and the Ends of Time

Audio from New Dimensions Radio

David Whyte - Preservation of the Soul

Thinking Allowed on YouTube

J. Nigro Sansonese: The Body of Myth

 

 

 

Dane Rudhyar Audio
Archives

Rudhyar Archival Project

"Astrology is a
language.  If you
understand that
language, the sky
speaks to you."

     --Dane Rudhyar

International Academy
of Astrology

Kepler College

FAA Past Exams

Breaking Down Borders
November 2010

Astrology on the Web

Astro Logos

Solar & Lunar Eclipses
1940 - 2011

Moon Phases 2011

Midpoint Calculator

Arabic Parts Calculator

Astro Swiss Ephemeris

Index of /swisseph

Ephemeris of Eris

Ephemeris of the
Galactic Center

Ephemeris of Pholus

Degrees, Minutes,
Seconds

Astro Glossary

Find Latitude/Longitude

Atlas/ Coordinates

Astro Dienst
- Forum

Noel Tyl Forum

Signs of Intelligence
Forum

Skyscript Forum

Node-o-Rama Forum

Astrologers' Community
Forum

.
Journey into the uncharted voids of the Milky Way
Maritha Pottenger - Understanding the First Saturn Return
John Major Jenkins -What is the Galactic Alignment?
The Solar System
Aspect Pattern Configurations
Those Wild Out-of-Bounds Planets
Heinous Hybrids -Why the Quincunx is No Minor Aspect -Donna Cunningham
10 Questions that Have No Right to Go Away - David Whyte
Our Life's Foundation -- The Personal Soul Cluster - Hank Wesselman
All 12 Signs Rising  --  Personality and Physical Traits by Ascendant
Intercepted Signs
Does Uranus Rule Astrology? - Dane Rudhyar
Constellation, Sidereal Zodiac, and Tropical Zodiac Dial
Which Sign does Venus Really Rule?
Planets in Exaltation, Detriment and Fall
Table of Dignities and Debilities
How to read Ptolemy's table of Essential Dignities
Final Dispositors and Chart Rulers  --  Dispositors in Astrology
How to Build a Dispositor Tree
Sun Aspects
What is a Solar Arc?
Eclipses’ Doors of Perception
The Moon's Nodes
Nodes of the Moon - Spiritual
Understanding the Moon Phases
Lunar Phases in Natal Chart --
Interpreting Lunar Nodes
Venus - Queen of Heaven & Earth
Venus - Planetary Phenomena from 1899 through 2000
Venus - Planetary Phenomena from 2000 through 2100
Venus Retrograde for 2012
Transits of Venus - Six Millennium Catalog: 2000 BCE to 4000 CE
The Venus Transits - The Pentagonal Cycle of Venus
Venus Retrogrades 1801 - 2100
Venus 1940s
Venus and Mars Position Tables 1950 - 1995
Venus ingress dates 1900 to 2012 GMT
The Evening and Morning Star
The Planet Venus in Ancient Myth and Religion
Venus Morningstar: Harbinger of Illness?
Mayan-Aztec Calendar: The Century Cycle & Earth-Venus Conjunctions
Hemispheres of the Houses  --  Hemisphere Emphasis
Synodic Cycles and Planetary Retrogrades
New Millennium Being #179 - REALITY SHIFT 2011
Sabian Symbols
Intercepted Signs
Pluto Re-classified - Reflections on the re-definition of our solar system
Chiron - A Myth for Our Times
Chiron 2001
Astrological Assn of Great Britain - MP3 Recordings
The Zodiac: Sidereal Vs. Tropical
This is Your Brain on Metaphors
Open Season - Robert M. Sapolsky
For a New Beginning
Wild Geese
Descent into the Underworld
Interpretation of Inanna’s Descent Myth
Quest for Compassion: The Wounded Self and the Grail - Percival
Astrology Symbols and Glyphs  --  Planetary Symbols -- Astro Symbols
Pluto sextile Neptune + Keywords for Values of Aspect Orbs
A Reading List in Western Astrology
Using a 45 degree graphic ephemeris
The Archetypes by C. G. Jung

 

 

 

 

Clairvision Astrology

S.F. Astrological Society

NCGR Bay Area

Find Astrologer

Astrrology Events

Assoc. for Psychological
Astrology

Beyond Sun Signs

Soul Healing
- Tutorial, West Astrol
- Reading List

Astrology in Depth

Cafe Astrology

Astrology on the Net

GaiaMind

Alignment 2012 -
John Major Jenkins

 

"If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be?  What would I do?"
                                                                            --Buckminster Fuller

"Remember that you are at an exceptional hour in a unique epoch, that you have this great happiness, this invaluable privilege, of being present at the birth of a new world."
                                                                            --Sri Aurobindo

"I believe that the astonishingly consistent and nuanced reality of the planetary correlations with the archetypal dynamics of human life is one of the most compelling intimations we have that we live in a meaning-laden and purposeful universe.."
                                                                             --Richard Tarnas

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
                           --Anais Nin

"We can become authentically public only by first going to the depths of the private. At the heart of the uniqueness of the individual lies
the universal. Every person's deepest ecstasies and fears are old as mankind and common as dirt. Thus, the greatest freedom for the individual comes  from the love of many stories. The strongest state is the one that keeps the fewest citizens in jails, insane asylums, and ghettos. ... [O]pen the doors behind which you imprison the citizens of your private commonwealth. ... [F]orm a community of teller and listener. It is a call to revolution; seize the authority to create your own story."

                           --Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox, Your Mythic Journey

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating."

                                                                             --Pearl S. Buck

"How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.."
                                                                             --Alan Watts

 

 

 

 

 

Shamanic Astrology
- Astrology Timings

Shared Wisdom

Spencer John

Caroline Casey

Astrology Zone

Daykeeper Journal

Astrology Weekly

Wisdom Quotes

Jo Garceau

Reclaiming / Rituals

The Sky Tonight

Nightfall Project

Solar Eclipses

Table of Dignities

Rick Levine

On Yods
- Melanie Reinhart mp3
- Donna Cunningham
- The Yod Book

On other Aspects
- Biquintiles

Astro-Databank

Bill Ryan / Inelia Benz


10 Questions That Have No Right to Go Away

The thought-provoking poet David Whyte considers what we should be asking ourselves—especially when we least want to confront our own answers.

By David Whyte
June 15, 2011


The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering. Nine years ago, I wrote a poem called "Sometimes" in which I talked about the "questions that can make or unmake a life ... questions that have no right to go away."

I still work with this idea. Questions that have no right to go away are those that have to do with the person we are about to become; they are conversations that will happen with or without our conscious participation. They almost always have something to do with how we might be more generous, more courageous, more present, more dedicated, and they also have something to do with timing: when we might step through the doorway into something bigger, better—both beyond ourselves and yet more of ourselves at the same time.

If we are sincere in asking, the eventual answer will give us both a sense of coming home to something we already know as well a sense of surprise—not unlike returning from a long journey to find an old friend sitting unexpectedly on the front step, as if she'd known, without ever being told, not only the exact time and date of your arrival but also your need to be welcomed back.

Here are my 10 Questions That Have No Right to Go Away.

1) Do I know how to have real conversation?

A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want. To do this requires vulnerability. Now we tend to think that vulnerability is associated with weakness, but there's a kind of robust vulnerability that can create a certain form of strength and presence too.

There are many tough conversations, but one of the most difficult is between a parent and an adolescent daughter, partly because as a parent we are almost always attempting to relate to someone who is no longer there. The parent therefore usually tries to start the conversation by offering a perspective that the daughter finds not only out of date but also unhelpful; the daughter then replies by way of defense with something just a shade more unhelpful, and so the process continues. A year or so ago, I found myself in exactly this dynamic, my daughter's bedroom door slamming shut just as I was just about to say that last, deeply satisfying unhelpful thing.

But I caught myself and said, "David, this isn't a real conversation. How do you make this a real conversation?" I gave it the old 10-minute cooldown time, walked into the kitchen, made tea and put out a tray, and on the tray: a plate of cookies, a milk pitcher, a cup and a saucer. Then I knocked on her door and said in a very different, more invitational voice, "Come on, Charlotte, I've made tea. Let's go and have a talk."

As soon as I put the tray down and we had sat next to each other, almost by accident I happened to say exactly the right thing—I said, "Charlotte, tell me one thing you'd like me to stop doing as a father. And tell me one thing you'd like me to do more of." She suddenly gazed up at me with a lovely look in her eyes, one I knew from her very early infancy. She was engaged again because at last I was really inviting her to tell me who she had become—not who she had been or who I wanted her to be—but who she was now.

2) What can I be wholehearted about?

So many of us aren't sure what we're meant to do. We wonder if we're simply doing what others are doing because we feel we don't have enough ideas or even enough strength of our own.

There was a time, many years ago, working at a nonprofit organization, trying to fix the world and finding the world didn't want to be fixed as quickly as I'd like, that I found myself exhausted, stressed and finally, after one particularly hard day, at the end of my tether, I went home and saw a bottle of fine red wine I had left out on the table that morning before I left. No, I did not drink it immediately, though I was tempted, but it reminded me that I was to have a very special guest that evening.

That guest was an Austrian friend, a Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, the nearest thing I had to a really wise person in my life at that time or at any time since. We would read German poetry together—he would translate the original text, I read the translations, all the while drinking the red wine. But I had my day on my mind, and the mind-numbing tiredness I was experiencing at work. I said suddenly, out of nowhere, almost beseechingly, "Brother David, speak to me of exhaustion. Tell me about exhaustion."

And then he said a life-changing thing. "You know," he said, "the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest."

"What is it then?"

"The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. You're so exhausted because you can't be wholehearted at what you're doing...because your real conversation with life is through poetry."

It was just the beginning of a long road that was to take my real work out into the world, but it was a beginning.

What do I care most about—in my vocation, in my family life, in my heart and mind? This is a conversation that we all must have with ourselves at every stage of our lives, a conversation that we so often don't want to have. We will get to it, we say, when the kids are grown, when there is enough money in the bank, when we are retired, perhaps when we are dead; it will be easier then. But we need to ask it now: What can I be wholehearted about now?

3) Am I harvesting from this year's season of life?

"Youth is wasted on the young" is the old saying. But it might also be said that midlife is wasted on those in their 50s and eldership is very often wasted on the old.

Most people, I believe, are living four or five years behind the curve of their own transformation. I see it all the time, in my own life and others. The temptation is to stay in a place where we were previously comfortable, making it difficult to move to the frontier that we're actually on now.

People usually only come to this frontier when they have had a terrible loss in their life or they've been fired or some other trauma breaks open their story. Then they can't tell that story any more. But having spent so much time away from what is real, they hit present reality with such impact that they break apart on contact with the true circumstance. So the trick is to catch up with the conversation and stay with it —where am I now?—and not let ourselves become abstracted from what is actually occurring around us.

If you were a farmer, and you tried to harvest what belonged to the previous season, you'd exhaust yourself trying to bring it in when it's no longer there. Or attempting to gather fruit too early, too hard or too late and too ripe. A person must understand the conversation happening around them as early in the process as possible and then stay with it until it bears fruit.

4) Where is the temple of my adult aloneness?

In 1996, I wrote a poem called "The House of Belonging." In it, I spoke about the small, beautifully old house I came to live in after the end of my first marriage. In the poem, I wrote:

This is the temple of my adult aloneness
and I belong to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

That temple was the house I moved into after the end of a chapter in my life. There I would live alone, but also with my son a good deal of the time. It was a new start. There was a great deal of grief in letting go of the old, but I was so very excited about my new home. I felt that even though it was such a small house and an old house, it had endless new horizons for me, as if the rest of my life was just beginning from that place. It is important to have the equivalent of this house at every crucial stage in our lives. Where do you have that feeling of home? Do you have it in your apartment? Do you have it when you walk along the lakeshore or the seashore? Where do you have that sense of spaciousness with the horizon and with your future?

Gaston Bachelard, a French philosopher, said that one of the beautiful things about a home is that it is a place where you can dream about your future, and that a good home protects your dreams; it is a place where you feel sheltered enough to risk yourself in the world.

5) Can I be quiet—even inside?

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone—and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

Being quiet in the midst of a frenetic life is like picking up a new instrument. If you've never played the violin and you try to play it for the first time, every muscle in your body hurts. Your neck hurts, you don't know how to hold that awkward wavy thing called a bow, you can't get your knuckles round to touch the strings, you can't even find where the notes are, you are just trying to get your stance right. Then you come back to it again, and again, and suddenly you can make a single buzzy note. The time after that, you can make a clearer note. No one, not even you, wants to listen to you at first. But one day, there is a beautiful succession of notes and, yes, you have played a brief, gifted, much appreciated passage of music.

This is also true for the silence inside you; you may not want to confront it at first. But a long way down the road, when you inhabit a space fully, you no longer feel awkward and lonely. Silence turns, in effect, into its opposite, so it becomes not only a place to be alone but also a place that's an invitation to others to join you, to want to know who's there, in the quiet.

6) Am I too inflexible in my relationship to time?

In Ireland, where I spend a great deal of time, they say, "The thing about the past is that it isn't the past." Sometimes we forget that we don't have to choose between the past or the present or the future. We can live all of these levels at once. (In fact, we don't have a choice about the matter.)

If you've got a wonderful memory of your childhood, it should live within you. If you've got a challenging relationship with a parent, that should be there as part of your identity now, both in your strengths and weaknesses. The way we anticipate the future forms our identity now. Time taken too literally can be a tyranny. We are never one thing; we are a conversation—everything we have been, everything we are now and every possibility we could be in the future.

7) How can I know what I am actually saying?

Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future. We need that same skill as an art of survival. We need to overhear the tiny but very consequential things we say that reveal ourselves to ourselves.

I have one friend who, when she is in a quandary, goes out for a drive in her car and sings. Whatever she's grappling with, she sings about it—to the windscreen, to the road, to the oncoming traffic. Then she overhears herself singing how she actually feels about something and what she should do about it.

Sometimes she pulls up to a stoplight, other people look over and she's singing, slightly crazed, into the windscreen, but that's her way of finding out.

8) How can I drink from the deep well of things as they are?

In the West of Ireland, there are very old, very sacred wells everywhere. The locals call them "blessed wells" or "holy wells." At them, you find notes to the dead, bits of ribbon, keepsakes that people have left when they've said a prayer for a child or someone who's sick. Often a local church will have a Mass out there once a year. These holy wells are everywhere, and they're part of the local imagination and have been for thousands of years.

So to me, a well, a place where the water springs eternal all year round, is a very real, blessed place to stop and think. Almost always, when I'm struggling over a particular situation, I realize that I am only looking at the surface of the problem and refusing to go for the deeper dynamic that caused all the tension in  the first place.

All intimate relationships—close friendships and good marriages—are based on continued and mutual forgiveness. You will always trespass upon your friend's sensibilities at one time or another, or your spouse's. The only question is, Will you forgive the other person? And more importantly, Will you forgive yourself? We have to deepen our understanding, make ourselves more equal to circumstances, more easy with what we have been given or not given. We must drink from the deep well of things as they are.

9) Can I live a courageous life?

If you look at the root of the word "courage," it doesn't mean running under the machine-gun bullets of the enemy, wearing a Sylvester Stallone headband, with glistening biceps and bandoliers of ammunition around one's neck. The word "courage" comes from the old French word coeur meaning "heart." So "courage" is the measure of your heartfelt participation in the world.

Human beings are constantly trying to take courageous paths in their lives: in their marriages, in their relationships, in their work and with themselves. But the human way is to hope that there's a way to take that courageous step—without having one's heart broken. And it's my contention that there is no sincere path a human being can take without breaking his or her heart.

There is no marriage, no matter how happy, that won't at times find you wanting and break your heart. In raising a family, there is no way to be a good mother or father without a child breaking that parental heart. In a good job, a good vocation, if we are sincere about our contribution, our work will always find us wanting at times. In an individual life, if we are sincere about examining our own integrity, we should, if we are really serious, at times, be existentially disappointed with ourselves.

So it can be a lovely, merciful thing to think, "Actually, there is no path I can take without having my heart broken, so why not get on with it and stop wanting these extra-special circumstances which stop me from doing something courageous?"

10) Can I be the blessed saint that my future happiness will always remember?

Here's the explanation for what sounds like a strange question. I have a poem called "Coleman's Bed" about a place in the West of Ireland where the Irish saint Coleman lived. The last line of that poem calls on the reader to remember "the quiet, robust and blessed saint that your future happiness will always remember."

We go to places of pilgrimage where saints have lived, or even to Graceland, where Elvis lived, because these people gave something to the rest of us—music or good works— that has carried on down the years and that was a generous gift to the future.

But that blessed saint could also be yourself—the person who, in this moment, makes a decision that can make a bold path into the years to come and whom your future happiness will always remember. What could you do now for yourself or others that your future self would look back on and congratulate you for—something it could view with real thankfulness because the decision you made opened up the life for which it is now eternally grateful?


David Whyte is the author of The Three Marriages, Crossing the Unknown Sea, and poetry collections including River Flow and Everything is Waiting for You.

Oprah.com    

 

 

 

 

 

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a New Beginning

by John O’Donohue


In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety,
And the grey promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
                                                                 --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re living in a time where we each need a tremendous amount of courage — a fierce kind of attention and intentionality. The doorway is always through your vulnerability, the experience where you are open to the world whether you want to be or not.

“I’ve come to consider vulnerability as a form of imaginative intelligence, and the good news is that it can be cultivated. The real challenge is the pain that comes with vulnerable living. When pain arises, it is tempting to say to yourself: ‘If this is the way that God is playing, no thanks, I’ll back up.’ Self-compassion is needed to understand this.

During and after the season of pain, the question that comes up is: “Will I turn back to vulnerability, to living a wholehearted life?”

                                                                        ~ David Whyte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I sometimes feel like an alien creature
for which there is no earthly explanation.
Sure I have human form, walking erect
and opposing digits,
but my mind is upside down.
I feel like a run-on sentence
in a punctuation crazy world.
And I see the world around me
like a mad collective dream.


An endless stream of people
move like ants on the freeway.
Cell phones, PC's, and digital displays.
"In Money We Trust" we'll find happiness
is the prevailing attitude;
like a genetically modified irradiated Big Mac
is somehow symbolic of food.


Morality is legislated.
Prisons over-populated.
Religion is incorporated.
The profit-motive has permeated all activity.
We pay our government to let us park on the street,
and war is the biggest money-maker of all.
We all know missile envy only comes from being small.


Politicians and prostitutes
are comfortable together.
I wonder if they talk about
the strange change in the weather.
This government was founded by, of, and for the people.
But everybody feels it
like a giant open sore,
they don't represent us anymore.
And blaming the President for the country's woes
is like yelling at a puppet for the way it sings.
Who's the man behind the curtain pulling the strings?


A billion people sitting watching their TV
in the room that they call living.
But as for me,
I see living as loving.
And since there is no lovingroom,
I sit on the grass under a tree
dreaming of the way things used to be.
pre-Industrial Revolution,
which of course is before the rivers and oceans
and skies were polluted,
before Parkinson's and Mad Cows
and all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas
like skyscrapers and tree paper, and earth rapers
like Monsanto and Dupont had their way
as they continue to today.


This was pre-us
back when the buffalo roamed
and the Indian's home
was the forest, and God was nature
and heaven was here and now.
Can you imagine clean water, food, and air,
living in community with animals and people who care?


Do you dare to feel responsible
for every dollar you lay down?

Are you going to make the rich man richer?
Or are you going to stand your ground?
You say you want a revolution,
a communal evolution,
to be a part of the solution;
maybe I'll be seeing you around.


- Woody Harrelson

Thoughts from Within

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Lysistrata Project posts this material without profit for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.