It could happen that one evening, when you are busy with many things, netted into your routine role of your daily mind the phone rings. Someone you love is suddenly in the grip of an illness that could end their life within hours. It only takes a few seconds to receive that news. Yet, when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. All you know has just been rendered unsure and dangerous. You realise that the ground has turned into quicksand. Now it seems to you that even mountains are suspended on strings.
If you could imagine the most incredible story ever, it would be less incredible than the story of being here. And the ironic thing is that story is not a story, it is true. When your soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become. The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control.
Once you start to awaken, you see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity. You are no longer caught in the false game of judgement, comparison and assumption. More naked now than ever, you begin to feel truly alive. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; you have inherited treasure that no one will ever be able to take from you. Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue who addressed the challenges of living in a shallow, narcissistic world - what he called the "religion of rush."
I think there's a huge crisis of belonging in postmodern culture. Most institutions have really diminished and fallen into the hands of frightened functionaries who are great custodians of the gateways but don't really know what the landscapes are like further in towards the heart of the mystery. Politics has become synonymous with economics and the crudest form of pragmatism. Then there's the whole homogenization of culture and consciousness in mass technology and media - although there's a lot more interaction than there once was between people, but it's all simulated, you know, and lacks the vitality and vigor and danger of a direct encounter with otherness. So these are some of the contexts which are creating a massive spiritual hunger.
The hunger to belong is at the heart of human nature. For when we find the place where we are truly supposed to be, we find ourselves in balance, and free to experience the divinity of our world and each other. The eternal values of human life -truth, unity, justice, beauty, and love - grow only when we find sanctuary in family, community, and divine relationship. Eternal Echoes by John O'Donohue
Jane Birkin - "arabesque" album - Elisa (Serge Gainsbourg Classic song) Sylvie Paquette
Rumi's Masnavi tale of a transformation by the power of Love reveal the limitless domain of possibilities for change. It is the voice of hope echoing like a divine doctor of souls promising the joy of recovery and healing to those who have lost the vision and the connection to their heart. The change for a complete annihilation-rebirth process, dying to the old self and rebirth to anew selfless being. The seeker should exert oneself to the utmost to become worthy of Love, and hope one day may be hunted down by the beloved, "If they that are thirsty seek water from the world, water too seeks them that are thirsty". Yearning, is the prerequisite to enter the path and is assumed that seekers already feel the need and have the thirst for the quest.
"Beauty will save the world." This maxim of Dostoevsky's The Idiot, is widely misunderstood and misused in our times. As the author demonstrates beauty alone cannot save the world. However, one of his primary insights is that beauty and suffering can seize the human heart of the observer for reasons other than carnality or even romanticized idealized attraction, though these may be present at early stages of a relationship. As the lover grows in love of the beloved, he must continuously seek the ultimate good of the beloved. If his love is to avoid degenerating into selfishness, it must steadily become more and more God-like. A great physical beauty can be a visible metaphor of the eternal beauty of the human soul. When such a person suffers in a devastating manner, the suffering itself is a metaphor of the degradation of the image and likeness of God in man through sin. Dostoevsky shows that those who recognize the genuine beauty of the human soul (each and every human soul, even the most fallen), can by a divine indwelling love resist the alternative temptations of adulation and contempt. The saving force of love is continuous mercy. Mercy, and mercy alone, penetrates the lies, for mercy is a quality of true love that flows from a sense of compassion, a sense of unity with the sufferer. In a profound sense, the suffering person is my self, my father, mother, brother, sister, friend in need of help. Pity is not enough. Practical and theoretical solutions are not enough. Love alone can restore the damaged image and likeness to the original unity. Genuine love is the antithesis of anything which feeds the ravenous false self.
Believe in God with childlike faith; for simplicity with intelligence is the sign of the Holy Ones.
Each individual's self cohesion, self esteem and vitality derive from and are maintained by the empathic responsiveness of others to his or her needs. A cohesive self is vigorous, responsive, flexible and energetic, optimistic and available to experience pleasure, regardless of whether it is attuned to the outer or the inner world. It implies a capacity for self- soothing and self-regulation in the face of unsettling experience. A fragmented self will have compromised vitality, exploratory energy and flexibility. Heinz Kohut
Abyaneh is one of the oldest villages in Iran. Visiting Abyaneh is like traveling through a time tunnel.
Anam Cara is a Gaelic word meaning soul friend. It symbolises a spiritual friendship that is not affected by time, distance, or separation.
Is the time for art practice found on an airplane, in a hotel room, in bed? Is
it housed in a laptop or a car? Is it found in solitude or anonymity?
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream, I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been; To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen; They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed. Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
Travel with time is the concept of moving between some different moments in time in a manner comparable to moving between different points in space.
There are two ways of prolonging life. The first consists in putting the maximum distance between the points of birth and death, and thereby extending the journey...The other way consists in walking more slowly, leaving the points where God desires them to be; this is the way of the philosophers, who have discovered that the best thing is to walk in a zigzag, botanizing and trying to jump a ditch here, and further on, where the ground is bare and nobody sees them, performing a somersault. Lichtenberg
The capacity of the infantile mind to perceive, remember, and control movements-functions that conceived to be primary (inborn) and autonomous (developing as a separate organization in response to stimuli, rather than developing as a result of conflict). Functions that exist prior to a conflict must be present to give psychological registry and meaning to the impulses that give rise to the conflict. As Freud had stated, conflict is created when a desire to re-experience satisfaction must be subjected to delay. Self Psychology By Joseph D. Lichtenberg
We are all birds. We descend to this dust to fill our stomachs. Then we fly to the heaven of desire so high that our shadows eclipse the Moon and Jupiter. Alas, some of us lose our wings. We stay too long on the ground, digging for gold and diving for pearls, till we forget the art of flying.
The Prophet said, "Paradise is not far away. It is just a journey from night to day."
Prepare for an austere journey, In our progress, we shall overcome arduous valleys where we lose our feathers of pride and break our beaks of greed. Yet our souls will be polished. The crude will be cast out.
Hooray, O nightingale! Come and sing for us the music of migration, the song of longing on the note of belonging. O finch, little bird with big dreams! Don't look at your small body. You measure up to your desires.
O eagle, leave this pride and vanity. In our quest, we fly with wings of humility. O bird of ambition, your food is not a dead mouse. Come along. Let's start the chase for dignity.
We are all one when we have a quest. Quest is the light, darkness is the rest. The city of passion is our next stop. Then follows the city of knowledge and insight.The lantern of wisdom is light upon light. The forth is the freedom from pettiness, wealth in modesty, grace in a simple dress.
Ego is a heavy stone on a phony crown. From the heights of happiness, it brings you down. A lifetime of pain shall pass but a moment with the beloved will remain forever.
French novelist/theorist Maurice Blanchot interrogates the liminal spaces that fall out between binary oppsitions such as being/non-being human/animal, creation/destruction, light/dark, and life/death. The limits revealed in Blanchot's writing challenge each of these borders, but the border most challenged is that between writer and reader, and between writing and reading. Blanchot writes in such a way that as the reader reads, the readers feels her/his self to be read.
Wouldn't the apacayptic be a trascendental condition of all discourse, of all experience even, of every mark or every trace? Jacques Derrida
As soon as we no longer know very well who speaks or who writes, the text becomes apocalyptic. When the sender, message, and addressee each exist as unknowns, the revelation of the apocalypse becomes the always already; the structure of every scene of writing ...of all experience itself ... it is first the revelation of the apocalypse ... of the divisible dispatch for which there is no...assured destination. And there is no certainty that man is the exchange of these telephone lines or the terminal of this endless computer. No longer is one very sure who loans his voice and his tone to the other in the Apocalypse; no longer is one very sure who addresses what to whom. Deconstruction and philosophy: the texts of Jacques Derrida By John Sallis
Resonating with complex interplay to a degree that simulates a clash of stubborn wills, Sovereignties in Question:The Poetics Of Paul Celan covers such subtle issues as the significance of speech acts such as testimony, promising, lying, and perjury, and much more. These are the themes central to all of Derrida's writings that thread the intense confrontation that include the date or signature and its singularity; the notion of the trace; temporal structures of futurity and the "to come"; the multiplicity of language and questions of translation; such speech acts as testimony and promising, but also lying and perjury; the possibility of the impossible; and, above all, the question of the poem as addressed and destined beyond knowledge, seeking to speak to and for the irreducibly other. The memory of encounters with thinkers who have also engaged Celan's work animates these writings, which include a brilliant dialogue between two interpretative modes--hermeneutics and deconstruction. Derrida's approach to a poem is a revelation on many levels, from the most concrete ways of reading-for example, his analysis of a sequence of personal pronouns-to the most sweeping imperatives of human existence (and Derrida's writings are alwaysa study in the imbrication of such levels). Above all, he voices the call to responsibility in the ultimate line of Celan's poem: "The world is gone,I must carry you," which sounds throughout the book's final essay like a refrain.
Jack Zipes argues that the fairy-tale notion of happiness must be turned on its head if we are to glimpse the myths of happiness perpetuated by the canonical fairy tales and culture industry and if we are to grasp what happiness might mean.
Yeah you cooked his dinners, you raised his children and still, he's not satisfied. He says I rather switch with you. You don't now hard it is to work from 9-5. But he speaks with his eyes closed, and eventhough you're not all alone he's never there to be with you. And you remember when you were young when life was new and it was fun. Now every corner's filled with dust. But you're not coming home tonight
You just took the train, and you left without a wave; Figured he'd never let you leave anyway; And now you're sitting in that train seeing life in a new way. And every forest sings a song. One for the heartbroken lovers and one for the dreamers. And then there's one just for you. The wind's been humming on it all day and the soil lies awake waiting for it's drumsolo. Cause you're not coming home tonight. The ship is sailing; I'll meet you on the other side; The future's unclear but hopefully it will be fine. You're not coming home tonight. First Aid Kit
Each pebble in this world keeps its own counsel. Certain words may be keeping a pronoun hidden. Even a desk will gather its clutch of secret, half-crumpled papers, eased slowly, over years, behind the backs of drawers. Yet even with so much withheld, so much unspoken, potatoes are cooked with butter and parsley, and buttons affixed to their sweater. Invited guests arrive, then dutifully leave. And this poem, afterward, washes its breasts with soap and trembling hands, disguising nothing. Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist, By Jane Hirshfield
The real meaning of crucifixion is to crucify the false self, that the true self may rise. As long as the false self is not crucified, the true self is not realized. Sufi Inayat Khan
Love manifests towards those whom we like as love; towards all those whom we do not like as forgiveness.
Give me absolute control, over every living soul and lie beside me, baby,that's an order! Take the only tree that's left, and stuff it up the hole in your culture. The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul. I've seen the nations rise and fall, I've heard their stories, heard them all but love's the only engine of survival. THE FUTURE. Leonard Cohen
The sheer depth, complexity, beauty and extraordinary wealth of knowledge that is the Indian classical dance style of Bharatanatyam, makes it a fascinating and humbling art form with limitless potential for growth and self-development. Ishwarya
It is more important to find the truth about oneself than to find the truth about heaven or hell.
Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End of Love "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin. Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in. Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove. Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone. Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon. Show me slowly what I only know the limits of." Meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation.
Oh, life is bigger, it's bigger than you and you are not me. The lengths that I will go to, the distance in your eyes. Oh no, I've said too much, I set it up. That's me in the corner, that's me in the spot light, I'm Losing my religion. Trying to keep up with you and I don't know if I can do it. Oh no, I've said too much, I haven't said enough. I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing, I think I thought I saw you try. Every whisper, Of every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions. Trying to keep an eye on you like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool. Oh no, I've said too much, I set it up. Consider this, consider this: The hint of the century. Consider this: The slip that brought me to my knees failed. What if all these fantasies come flailing around. But that was just a dream, Try, cry, why try? That was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream, dream. R.E.M
