You know you’ve gained weight when the belt is temporarily unnecessary.
Quote for Today ~ 16 January, 2009 January 16, 2009
One of the least discussed issues of individuation is that as one shines light into the dark of the psyche as strongly as one can, the shadows, where the light is not, grow even darker. So when we illuminate some part of the psyche, there is a resultant deeper dark to contend with. This dark cannot be let alone.
Women Who Run With The Wolves ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Quote for Today ~ 15 January 2009 January 15, 2009
Freedom isn’t the choice the world encourages.
You have to wear a suit of armor to defend it.
Brian Morton ~ Starting out in the Evening
Résister October 22, 2008
J’aime bien ce verbe résister.
Résister, à ce qui nous emprisonne, aux préjugés, aux jugements hatifs …résister à tout ce qui est mauvais en nous et ne demande qu’à s’exprimer … résister à l’envie d’abandonner, au besoin de se faire plaindre, au besoin de parler de soi au détriment de l’autre … résister aux modes, aux ambitions malsaines, au désarroi ambiant.
Résister, et … sourire.
Emma Dancourt … Préface du livre de Marc Levy “Les enfants de la liberté”
(merci Gerald)
Pinocchio ~ Effort and Grace April 30, 2008
As I am reading David Richo’s book “The Power of Coincidence”, I find this powerful paragraph that I want to share with others…
Every one of us is like Pinocchio in the Disney cartoon. We were not born real; it is something we have to achieve by effort and receive by grace. At first we think becoming real / healthy / whole means being dutiful: “Go to school and follow your conscience” — things we can control. Soon we find it takes more than that. We have to confront our dark side. We have to notice how we lie, how we look for a quick fix, how we still believe our addictions can content us in ice-cream land. Then we find out that we have to go into the belly of the whale, the depths of the unconscious, and be inventive enough to light a fire to help others live. Only then are we reborn from the dark, that is, spit out of the whale’s mouth.
Then and only then are we ready to become real, but we are still not real yet. We cannot achieve the final part of the transformation on our own. The Blue Fairy has to lean lovingly over the body of a broken boy, a disassembled, dissolved ego ready for rebirth. The Blue Fairy (feminine intervention) represents the grace that makes us whole. Effort (masculine power) was not enough, not even heroic effort. It takes the wand of grace to tap us in its own time for the process to be complete. The reality of liberation is achieved AND received.
We saw all this in the childhood cartoon. Now, in this paragraph. we see INTO it in a new way.
This too is synchronicity.
Synchronicity April 21, 2008
I just started reading this book that I “happened to” find at the library yesterday. It is called “The Power of Coincidence” by David Richo.
This paragraph in the introduction already made me want to share here:
Most of us are quite aware of our limited powers and not so aware of our boundless potential. This potential is our true Self, an energy that is unconditionally and universally loving, discerning with the wisdom of the ages, and abundantly rich with healing power. When these sleeping powers are activated, we are acting in accord with the best in us. Our spiritual powers may, however, remain sleeping giants in our psyche and never display themselves in our actions. Then our destiny remains unfulfilled and a sense of something missing may pervade our life. Synchronicity comes along to wake us and fulfill us.
Synchronicity shows us that the world orchestrates some of our life events so they can harmonize with the requirements of our inner journey. This is reflected in the opening quotation by Shakespeare: “Such harmony is in immortal souls.” Synchronicities are unusual, unexpected, not constructed or controlled by the human ego. In this sense they are miracles of conjunction between ourselves and the events of the world. We cannot cause these kinds of miracles to occur, but we can greet them and grant them hospitality in the yet unopened rooms of our souls. Then the power of coincidence is respected and it opens us to many marvels.
I have though a lot about coincidences (or synchronicity) throughout my life. Whenever that word comes up I always say “there are no coincidences”. Many people say that. I truly believe it. I have a file on my computer called “synchronicity” where I write down such moments. Sometimes I try to figure out why something happened or happens. Why you meet certain people. Why certain people say certain things to you at a specific moment of your life. Sometimes it takes me years to figure it out. Sometimes I don’t ask myself that question. Perhaps because it is too painful to look at. Perhaps because it is just a good story that I like to remember. No lesson. Just a good moment.
I will keep reading this book. The subtitle is “How life shows us what we need to know”. Yeah. Many of us need this. I need this.
But I know myself. Supposed coincidences to me are like dreams. Just another tool of communication with your deepest self. The messages are there. The happenings occur. There are so many tools out there.
But do we listen to them? Do I hear them? Yes! Do I listen to them? Yes and no. Not enough. Especially right now in my life. It is there…on a silver platter.
greet them and grant them hospitality in the yet unopened rooms of our souls…
That, my friends…is the challenge. You can greet them. You can grant them hospitality…but take the next step and act upon them…THAT is the challenge.
Quote of the Day…10/04/07 October 4, 2007
“The day came when the risk to remain a closed bud became more painful than the risk to bloom.”
Anais Nin
Are we really too late? September 3, 2007
********************************************
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“There is such a thing as being too late. … Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity. … Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”
**********************************
Raymond McGovern born 1939, is a retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents over 27 years and presented the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many years:
Ignore. That’s what the vast majority of Germans did in the 1930s as Hitler curtailed civil liberties and launched aggressive wars. I was born in August 1939, a week before Hitler sent German tanks into Poland to start World War II. I have studied that crucial time in some detail. And during the five years I served in Germany I had occasion to ask all manner of people how it could possibly be that, highly educated and cultured as they were, the Germans for the most part could simply ignore. Why was it that the institutional churches, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran, could not find their voice? Why was it that so few spoke out?
A few did…and they provide good example for us today. Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out, plotted against Hitler, and was executed. Also executed was a more obscure but equally courageous professor from the University of Berlin, Albrecht Haushofer.
Like Bonhoeffer, Haushofer was arrested for speaking out. The SS prison guards were required to extract a confession from prisoners before they were hanged or shot, but Haushofer refused. When they removed his body, though, a paper fell out of his pocket. It was his admission of guilt written in the form of a sonnet:
Schuld
…schuldig bin ich Anders als Ihr denkt.
Ich musste früher meine Pflicht erkennen;
Ich musste schärfer Unheil Unheil nennen;
Mein Urteil habe ich zu lang gelenkt…
Ich habe gewarnt,
Aber nicht genug, und klar;
Und heute weiß ich, was ich schuldig war.
Guilt
I am guilty,
But not in the way you think.
I should have earlier recognized my duty;
I should have more sharply called evil evil;
I reined in my judgment too long.
I did warn,
But not enough, and clear;
And today I know what I was guilty of.
At Riverside Church 22 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began by quoting a statement by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Dr. King added, “That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”
And that time has come for us in relation to Iraq. But where are the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Iraq? Where are the successors to Dr. King, to Bonhoeffer, to Professor Haushofer? “There is only us,” says Annie Dillard, and she is right of course. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Dr. King was typically direct: “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak….there is such a thing as being too late….Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity….Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.”
(to read more from this speech, go to Commondreams.org)
**********************
I watched Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector on BookTV yesterday, promoting his latest book called “Waging Peace”. At the end of his Q&A he said the following. I found it to be a very strong and powerful statement that I recorded it (sorry for the bad quality):
