for a new beginning

 

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 gray 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.

~ John O'Donohue

where new beginning might be ripening

 

Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved 

when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. 

Risk might be our greatest ally. 

To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look

 at where we presently are, attempting always to discern 

where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening.

 There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable 

to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth

 that was not rewarded a thousand times over.

There are days when Conamara is wreathed in blue Tuscan light. 

The mountains seem to waver as though they were huge dark ships 

on a distant voyage. I love to climb up into the silence

of these vast autonomous structures. What seems like a pinnacled summit

 from beneath becomes a level plateau when you arrive there.

 Born in a red explosion of ascending fire, the granite lies cold, 

barely marked by the millions of years of rain and wind. 

On this primeval ground I feel I have entered into a pristine permanence,

 a continuity here that knew the wind hundreds of millions of years

 before a human face ever felt it.

When we arrive into the world, we enter this ancient sequence. 

All our beginnings happen within this continuity. 

Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages

 into the unknown. Yet, in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated. 

We seem to think that beginning is setting out from a lonely point

 along some line of direction into the unknown. This is not the case. 

Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced… 

We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time.

 A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth 

that are stored up for us. 

To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.

Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning.

~ John O'Donohue

the true love

 

There is a faith in loving fiercely

the one who is rightfully yours,

especially if you have

waited years and especially

if part of you never believed

you could deserve this

loved and beckoning hand

held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now

and the testaments of loneliness

and what we feel we are

worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,

I remember an old man

who walked every morning

on the grey stones

to the shore of baying seals,

who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering

salt wind and say his prayer

to the turbulent Jesus

hidden in the water,

and I think of the story

of the storm and everyone

waking and seeing

the distant

yet familiar figure

far across the water

calling to them

and how we are all

preparing for that

abrupt waking,

and that calling,

and that moment

we have to say yes,

except it will

not come so grandly

so Biblically

but more subtly

and intimately in the face

of the one you know

you have to love

so that when

we finally step out of the boat

toward them, we find

everything holds

us, and everything confirms

our courage, and if you wanted

to drown you could,

but you don’t

because finally

after all this struggle

and all these years

you simply don’t want to

any more

you’ve simply had enough

of drowning

and you want to live and you

want to love and you will

walk across any territory

and any darkness

however fluid and however

dangerous to take the

one hand you know

belongs in yours.

~ David Whyte

from The House of Belonging

To learn from animal being

 

Nearer to the earth's heart, 

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens;

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking our from

The here and now.

May we learn to return 

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

May we enter 

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence 

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind

And the light and the rain.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

at ease

 

The more that we’re at ease, the more we’re willing to open up a bit.

 When our attitude is not oriented exclusively around ‘me’ 

we experience a greater readiness to share. 

There is a sense of wanting all our friends to be at ease 

that gradually expands to encompass the whole population around us, 

the whole region. 

This being at ease with ourselves, accepting, 

or having a certain affection for our own state of being, 

can be steadily expanded to include others. 

This is the true beginning of meditation practice. 

~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche

from Fearless Simplicity: 

The Dzogchen Way of Living Freely in a Complex World

benefits for others

 

The only source of every kind of benefit for others

 is awareness of our own condition.  

When we know how to help ourselves,

 and how to work with our own situation…

our feelings of compassion arise spontaneously, 

without the need to hold ourselves to the rules of behavior

 of any religious doctrine.    

~ Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche 

Caring for Each Other and Our World - Jack Kornfield's Dec 2023 Community Talk

 

~ Jack Kornfield