People who come to Buddhist psychology hope that it will help them with the ordinary sufferings of their life, and often it will. But a deeper current flows through Buddhist practices and teachings, an opening to mystery. When I sit with a student, I do not just want to help them solve their problems. I want to find a moment with each person where their mind stops and their eyes open. I want to be together as if we were lying in a field on a clear summer night, held only by the magnet of gravity, looking down into a bottomless sea of stars. I want them to remember the beauty all around.

~Jack Kornfield

finding our imagination is one thing….but keeping it and tending it and nurturing it when all else seems so much more important is about remembering who we are……

inquiry for today~  how do you lean in? how do recall a moment to remember?

this leaning in

The spirit

likes to dress up like this:

ten fingers,

ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest

at night

in the black branches,

in the morning

in the blue branches

of the world.

It could float, of course,

but would rather

plumb rough matter.

Airy and shapeless thing,

it needs

the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,

the oceanic fluids;

it needs the body’s world,

instinct

and imagination

and the dark hug of time,

sweetness

and tangibility,

to be understood,

to be more than pure light

that burns

where no one is —

so it enters us —

in the morning

shines from brute comfort

like a stitch of lightning;

and at night

lights up the deep and wondrous

drownings of the body

like a star.

~Mary Oliver