Herman Hesse

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me. We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself. Each man has only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself. His task is to discover his own destiny — not an arbitrary one — and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself.

To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.

I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I’ve got. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art.

That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony. 

source 

The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus may have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in it. Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid. Sometimes it was rock hard- ice. Sometimes it was soft- snow. Sometimes it was visible but weightless- clouds. And sometimes it was completely invisible- vapor- floating up into the the sky like the souls of dead people. There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said. It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottomland into swamp. Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it. Never take water for granted, Jim said. Always cherish it. Always beware of it.
― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

New Twist on Carrot Salad

Shredded carrots preferably Dorot carrots, dried cranberries,  chopped scallions, olive oil and cider vinegar, and Adobo. Delicious combined with cooked Royal brand brown Basmati rice.

A Blessing for One Who Is Exhausted: John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

John O'Donohue, from "Blessings"

 

Neighbor

by John Donohue

There in her backyard in the rain and crazier by the week, my neighbor Joan is laying out the many big blue pieces of her downstairs carpet on the grass, “To clean them,” she calls holding up her Tide and a long-handled brush, “just like the Persians in the villages!”   “They use Tide?” I ask, shocked stupid, this never-dry-out, 5,000 pound, smell-bad disaster pushed aside by an image of the orange box set amid the rocks beside a stream in hills near Hamadan.   And where the hell’d she find the strength of will and just plain strength to rip it up and drag it out? And yes, there’s something I could say to her, something I could do that might help turn her from her hell-bent march to full-blown madness—   but I won’t, I’ll never be her friend: smart, short-fused, aggressive, you give an inch she’s calling, leaving food, barging in and personal; slow it down she’s slamming doors, accusing, writing incoherent letters. And I do not love her—except in theory.   So. I watch her sprinkle Tide, her white, loose underarm shaking with the box. I watch her spread it with the brush. In the lightly falling rain I watch her turning on the hose.

__________

From A Small Asymmetry, Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2005, by JOHN DONOGHUE.

When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. John O'Donohue

When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.

 John O'Donohue  Anam Cara, p. 17

It’s not that I decide what to write and carry it out. It’s more that I grope my way towards something—not even knowing what it is until I’ve arrived.

 Kathryn Harrison

If I were to die in a fall from the breakwater, the last thing I’d smell would be the seaweed rotting on the beach. The last thing I’d see would be my mother’s face, like that of a clock: still, flat, and white [...]

Kathryn Harrison 

She will accept, acknowledge, see me only in as much as I will make myself the child who pleases her.

― Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss: A Memoir

I have to write. It’s not an option. When I write, I am literally building myself a place in which to live. Kathryn Harrison

When I’m writing the way I want, the way I love, which is without thinking about what I’m writing, a strange thing happens: I feel simultaneously the most myself I could possibly be, and at the same time totally relieved of self. I become, I guess, a version of myself that isn’t filtered through the detritus and clutter of experience. We can’t control so much of what happen to us in life. Even our own actions unfold in time in ways we can’t possibly imagine. But there is someone inside who remains untouched by all of that. That person may not really exist in the light, but she is there, waiting, in the dark.

― Kathryn Harrison

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Carl Gustav Jung

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. Thich Nhat Hanh

When the resistance is gone, so are the demons. Pema Chödrön

To resist change, to try to cling to life, is like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself. Alan Watts

Let your body relax and your heart soften.

To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own. Jack Kornfield

 Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting. Jack Kornfield

The way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is a total acceptance and no desire to change anything. Osho

Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. G.K. Chesterton

Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go. Hermann Hesse

 “Conversation between a princess and an outlaw:
"If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?"
"Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night."
"Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype."
"You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve."
"Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it."
"And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me."
"I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker