Intelligently Savoring, Kindly Engaging Life

     "Well, I don’t know many people who still believe in art for art’s sake. You know, we have flowers for that. Most people that I know who are artists really are dedicated to trying to change people and to change minds and hearts. A lot of it has to do with just survival, that we, as a species, can survive and thrive. And so, people are putting their hearts into their work in a way that I think they haven’t done in a very long time."

     "It is the worst of times. It is the best of times. Try as I might I cannot find a more appropriate opening to this volume: it helps tremendously that these words have been spoken before and, thanks to Charles Dickens, written at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. Perhaps they have been spoken, written, thought, an endless number of times throughout human history. It is the worst of times because it feels as though the very earth is being stolen from us, by us; the land and air poisoned, the water polluted, the animals disappeared, humans degraded and misguided. War is everywhere. It is the best of times because we have entered a period, if we can bring ourselves to pay attention, of great clarity as to cause and effect. A blessing when we consider how much suffering human beings have endured, in previous millennia, without a clue to its cause. ... We have only to open our eyes, and awaken to our predicament. We see that we are, alas, a huge part of our problem. However: We live in a time of global enlightenment. This alone should make us shout for joy."           Alice Walker, from her book "We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For"
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/17/inner_light_in_a_time_of

A Full Life?

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass                                 Ezra Pound 


     Not busy, nor crazy, nor stressful enough, but "full". So what is a life that's "full enough"?

     See also: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2014/08/getting-somewhere.html

Portia and Hilde, August 17, 2014

 

Self-Knowledge, Depth, and Healing Abilities

     “Thomas Merton warns us that ‘he who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give to others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.’ And for Merton, the Cistercian monk, deepening one’s own self-understanding requires a disciplined practice of meditation or contemplative prayer, made possible only by regular doses of holy quiet.”

       Simmons P. "Learning to fall. The blessings of an imperfect life." Bantam Books, NY, 2000.

Shaman Traveler to Other Worlds for Blessings by Norval Morisseau