- Three things
differentiate living from the soul versus living from ego only: the
ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road,
and the patience to learn deep love over time.
It would be a mistake to think that it takes a muscle-bound hero to
accomplish this. It does not. It takes a heart that is willing to die
and be born and die and be born again and again.
- To be ourselves
causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others
want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.
- Regardless
of collective affiliations or influences, our challenge in behalf of
the wild soul and our creative spirit is to not merge with any
collective, but to distinguish ourselves from those who surround us,
building bridges back to them as we choose.
- We cannot control
who brings us into this world. We cannot influence the fluency with
which they raise us; we cannot force the culture to instantly become
hospitable. But the good news is that, even after injury, even in a
feral state, even, for that matter, in an as yet captured state, we
can have our lives back.
- If we stay
as survivors only without moving to thriving, we limit ourselves and
cut our energy to ourselves and our power in the world to less than
half. One can take so much pride in being a survivor that it becomes
a hazard to further creative development. Sometimes people are afraid
to continue beyond survivor status, for it is just that —a status, a
distinguishing mark, a "damn-straight, bet your buttons, better believe
it" accomplishment.
Once the threat is past, there is a potential trap in calling ourselves
by names taken on during the most terrible time of our lives. It creates
a mind-set that is potentially limiting.
- To be strong
does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one's own
numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in
one's own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what
we know. It means to stand and live.
- Those who are
not delighted by learning, those who cannot be enticed into new ideas
or experiences, cannot develop past the roadpost they rest at now. If
there is but one force which feeds the root of pain, it is the refusal
to learn beyond this moment.
- In our lives,
even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always
another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more
opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve
to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater
teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.
- At bottom is
the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting
bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground.
- We have been
taught that death is always followed by more death. It is simply not
so, death is always in the process of incubating new life, even when
one's existence has been cut down to the bones.
- For most women,
to let die is not against their natures, it is only against their training.
- As in sleep,
the Life/Death/Life nature in its most wildish form is as simple as
a graceful exhalation (ending) and inhalation (beginning). The only
trust required is to know that when there is one ending there will be
another beginning.
- If we live
as we breathe, take in and let go, we cannot go wrong.
- To be able
to see the right turns, we have to be able to see the wrong ones.
- Addiction is
anything that depletes life while making it "appear" better.
- Usually a single
fear has three parts; one part being a residue from the past (this often
being a source of shame), one part being a lack of certainty in the
present, and one part being a fear of poor outcome or negative consequences
in the future.
- There is very
little right/wrong or good/bad in this world. There is, however, useful
and not useful. There are also things that are sometimes destructive,
as well as things that are engendering.
- It is worse
to stay where one does not belong at all than to wonder about lost for
a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires.
It is never a mistake to search for what one requires. Never.
- When you are
connected to the instinctual self, you always have at least four choices...
the two opposites and then the middle ground, and "taken under further
contemplation".
- What does one
feed intuition so that it is consistently nourished and responsive to
our requests to scan the environs? One feeds it life —one feeds it life
by listening to it.
- Long ago the
word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all
one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially
or temporarily.
- While exile
is not a thing to desire for the fun of it, there is an unexpected gain
from it; the gifts of exile are many. It takes out weakness by the pounding.
It removes whininess, enables acute insight, heightens intuition, grants
the power of keen observation and perspective that the "insider" can
never achieve.
- The deep work
is a lot like sexual arousal. It begins from ground zero, accelerates
in plateaus, becomes sustained and intense. If the plateaus are interrupted
harshly, you must begin all over again.
- One of the
least discussed issues of individuation is that as you can shine the
light into the dark of your psyche as strongly as you 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. The key, the questions, cannot be hidden
or forgotten. They must be asked. They must be answered.
- Can a negative
aspect of psyche be reduced to cinder by being watched and watched?
Yes, indeed it can. Holding it in consistent consciousness can cause
the thing to dehydrate.
- ...taking a
little from here and putting it there. Transformation is no more complicated
than that.
- Being bound
to one's intuition promotes a confident reliance on it, no matter what.
It changes a woman's guiding attitude from "what will be, will be" to
"let me see all there is to see."
- The instinctual
nature has the miraculous ability to live through all positive boon,
all negative consequence, and still maintain relationship to self, to
another.
- To love pleasure
takes little. To love truly takes a hero who can manage his own fear.
- Afeared or
not, it is an act of deepest love to allow oneself to be stirred by
the wildish soul of another. In a world where humans are so afraid of
"losing", there are far too many protective walls against being dissolved
in the numinosity of another human soul.
- Many times
I have heard a man say he has a "good woman" who is enamored of him
and he of her, but he just can't "let go" enough to see what he really
feels about her. The turning point for such a person is when he allows
himself to love "even though"...even tough he has pangs, even though
he is nervous, even though he has been wounded previously, even though
he fears the unknown.
Sometimes there are no words to help one's courage. Sometimes you just
have to jump. There has to be at some point in a man's life a time when
he will trust where love takes him, where he fears more being trapped
in some dry cracked riverbed of a psyche than being out in lush but
uncharted territory. When a life is too controlled, there becomes less
and less life to control.
- If it is love
we are making, even though we are apprehensive or frightened, we are
willing to touch the not-beautiful [and also the not-yet beautiful]
in another, and in ourselves.
What is the not-beautiful? Our own secret hunger to be loved is the
not-beautiful. Our disuse and misuse of love is the not-beautiful. Our
dereliction in loyalty and devotion is unlovely, our sense of soul-separateness
is homely, our psychological warts, inadequacies, misunderstandings,
and infantile fantasies are the not-beautiful. Additionally, the Life/Death/Life
nature, which births, destroys, incubates and births again, is considered
by our cultures the not-beautiful.
- Somehow and
somewhere in the delicate layers of the being that is created when two
people love one another, there is both a heart and breath. While one
side of the heart empties, the other fills. When one breath runs out,
another begins.
- Love in its
fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase,
one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back.
Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace
and at the same time to withstand many many endings, and many many beginnings
—all in the same relationship.
- When a man
gives his whole heart, he becomes an amazing force —he becomes an inspiratrice,
a role that in the past was reserved for women only. When Skeleton Woman
(Life/Death/Life nature) sleeps with him, he becomes fertile, he is
invested with feminine powers in a masculine milieu. He carries the
seed of new life and of necessary deaths. He inspires new works within
himself, but also in those near him.
- If we could
realize that the work is to keep doing the work, we would be much more
fierce and much more peaceful.
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