Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest sense, something helpless that needs our love.    ~Rilke

give in to the grace of your own dark night….

inquiry for today~   what is the difference between the Divine and the Gritty Mess today?

when we begin to give up

The path seems to be designed such that we cannot know in advance the trials that await us- it would frighten us away from what our innermost being most deeply desires. The Divine, or Truth, seduces us with its unparalleled beauty, so we may glimpse the true nature we have been estranged from by our karma and conditioning. Once we have sensed our deeper origins and have committed to the path, we begin a profound and enduring process in which everything that keeps us from perceiving and abiding in our deepest nature is brought to the light of conscious awareness, so it can be understood, addressed, and assimilated. When we have awakened the light within us, that very light becomes focused inward in order to illumine that which remains dark or unconscious. Each spiral of growth involves moving through and addressing another level of obscuration so that more of our inner light can be known. It seems that the deeper our exposure to the light, the more intensely we experience our estrangement from it.     ~Mariana Caplan