One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not good enough. We think back to the past a lot, which maybe was better than now, or perhaps worse. We also think ahead quite a bit to the future- which we may fear- always holding out hope that it might be a little bit better than now. Even if now is going really well- we have good health and we’ve met the person of our dreams, or we just had a child or got the job we wanted- nevertheless there’s a deep tendency always to think about how it’s going to be later. We don’t quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present. It’s that same feeling of wanting to jump over yourself and find something that’s more awake than the present situation, more alert than the present situation. If you’re going to be fully mature, you will no longer be imprisoned in the childhood feeling that you always need to protect yourself or shield yourself because things are too harsh. If you’re going to be a grown up- which I would define as being completely at home in your world no matter how difficult the situation- it’s because you will allow something that’s already in you to be nurtured. You allow it to grow, you allow it to come out, instead of all the time shielding it and protecting it and keeping it buried. ~Pema Chodron
we just need to be fully in our space….devoted and attuned…..engaged and emerged…..where did we walk today?
We can grow by simply listening,
the way the tree on that ridge listens
its branches to the sky, the way blood
listens its flow to the site of a wound,
the way you listen like a basin
when my head is so full of grief
can’t look you in the eye.
We can listen our way out
of howling, the way the heart
can soften the wolf we keep inside.
We can last by listening deeply,
the way roots listen for
the next inch of earth, the way
the old turtle listens all he hears
into the pattern of his shell.
~Mark Nepo
The world being illusive,
one must be deluded in some way
if one is to triumph in it.
~W.B. Yeats
Make Believe Boutique 