Do your circumstances dictate your mood and emotions? Or do you choose your mood and emotions, and the situation is simply something you respond to?*
James Clear
What is in you
is ultimately stronger than
what is in the world–
It is as Viktor Frankl says,
No one can take from you
the freedom to choose your response
to what is happening around or
to you.
*James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On thinking long-term, how to attract like-minded people, and one sign of mental toughness.
In a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry – to allow things to take the time they take – is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all your fulfilment to the future.*
Oliver Burkeman
Resistance is a small, playful collaboration with my friend
Rebecca who showed me her screenprinting project
exploring four forms of resistance–**
I loved it, and wanted to get doodling,
And slow down.
*Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks;
**Rebecca is working on more.
A mystic.
Of course I am.
Aren’t we all?*
Rob Bell
You are a mystery–
This cannot be bought–
Only dive in–
*Rob Bell’s Everything Is Spiritual.
All things cry for forgiveness in their imperfection, their incompleteness, their woundedness, their constant movement towards death. Mere rage or resentment will not change any of these realities.*
Richard Rohr
If your output isn’t where you want it to be, try working on your input.**
Austin Kleon
Forgiveness knows me
and knows my need,
Feeding my heart and mind
and even my body,
It remains and always will be
my good beginning and necessary end–
*Richard Rohr’s The Tears Of Things;
**Austin Kleon’s Don’t Call It Art.
Love is a combination of attention, appreciation, and empathy.*
Derek Sivers
One way to understand the numinous right hemisphere is that it manages life’s complexity. Complex challenges in life are easy to understand but impossible to solve, so they can only be lived and understood.**
Arthur Brooks
More than a puzzle
to solve, or ignore,
You are a complexity,
And this whole thing
works better
when we meet
and listen
and share
and explore–
Over a drink
or taking a walk
or working on some project–
A real heart-to-heart,
As they say.
Love, I would say, is that capacity which allows him to grasp the other human being in his very uniqueness.^
*Derek Sivers’ How To Live;
**Arthur Brooks’ The Meaning Of Your Life;
^Viktor Frankl’s The Will To Meaning.
Ego breaks open – then you see what you really are.*
Ram Dass
The ego is initially born into us as potential, and is shaped, developed and filled up with ideas, values, and duties by the world around us, our parents, our teachers, our culture. And this is how it should be, for it becomes our escort, our armour, our scout in the outer world. However, if the wildest nature is not allowed to emanate upward through the ego, giving it colour, juice, and instinctive responsiveness…the soul does not, cannot, will not approve such incompleteness of its work.**
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
In my beginning I am Echo,
In my growing I am Ego,
In my becoming I am Self:
Dependent, independent,
Interdependent.
I am no clean progression–
I hope to be Self
but sometimes
I am Ego,
And I may even be Echo.
Yet there remains in me and all
a wild nature or soul–
Some say this is god’s image,
Others say it is nature’s image, urging
Me and you and us towards all we can be.
*Quoted in Victor Strecher’s Life On Purpose;
**Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With The Wolves.
I’m not an exceptional person, but I am a grower. I do have the ability to look at my shortcomings, then try to prod myself into becoming more fully developed human being. I’ve made progress over these years.*
David Brooks
It takes an initial tender vulnerability (“wounding”) to defeat our ego and to open us to full consciousness – which must include the scary unconscious.**
Richard Rohr
I am returning to a place
I once lived and worked twenty five years ago–
Being pushed out was painful,
Though I am now glad for the wounding–
Learning from mistakes
and forgiving,
I have grown – no,
I have become a grower–
I have such a long way to go–
*David Brooks’ How To Know A Person;
**Richard Rohr’s The Tears Of Things.
Make visible what without you may never have been seen.*
Robert Bresson
Tomorrow keeps arriving. Perhaps we can use a strategy to make it better.**
Seth Godin
Each a unique perspective-
Making something visible to others–
Picture or music,
Environment or person,
Delivery or scientific …
First, the future feeds today in imagination–
Then, today feeds the future in activeness–
The future is strong in you–
*Quoted in Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method;
**Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy.
When you withhold your compassion from yourself, you withhold your gifts and unique presence from others…You can’t be as patient, creative, strong, loving, or reliable when you’re punishing yourself – you can’t be you.*
Katherine Morgan Schafler
It is through imagination, Blake promises us, that we will be redeemed.**
John Higgs
You’ve already been freed,
Now it’s time to free yourself,
Not to ignore whatever
it is that causes you to be
hard on yourself, but to face this
with a liberated imagination
to be fully with us here
giving–
*Katherine Morgan Schafler’s The Perfectionist’s Guide To Losing Control;
**John Higgs’ William Blake Vs The World.
It remains the dream of every life to realise itself, to reach out and lift oneself to greater heights. A life that continues to remain on the safe side of its own habits and repetition never engages with the risk of its own possibility, remains an unlived life.*
John O’Donohue
We learned lots of very valuable skills, but we weren’t taught how to be here, how to be fully present in this moment, how to not be distracted or stressed or worried or anxious, but just be here, and nowhere else – wide awake to the infinite depth and dimension of this exact moment.**
Rob Bell
You won’t find them on the school curriculum
or the training courses for your work,
But your kind of magic and mystery
are only a moment away–
*John O’Donohue’s To Bless The Space Between Us;
**Rob Bell’s How To Be Here.
THIN|SILENCE 
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