Month: July 2021

July 11, 2021July 11, 2021 ddangler

The Facts of Life

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That you were born
and you will die.

That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.

That you will lie
if only to yourself.

That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.

That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.

That you will live
that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constraining.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.

BY PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA

July 10, 2021 ddangler

Honor your dark night

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The dark times leave their mark and make you a person of insight and compassion. Oscar Wilde, an Victorian writer jailed for his homosexuality, went through a dark night of the soul and wrote from this place, ‘My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken. That is why God sends sorrow to the world. To me, suffering seems now a sacramental thing, that makes those whom it touches holy.’

Give yourself what you need at the deepest level. Care for your soul rather than cure it. Arrange your life such that you can be tender and kind to yourself. Talk with those you love about subtleties of your struggle and don’t allow any of us to give you an easy answer. Loss, even death, is a mystery that if you can honor your own experience, may give you a glimpse of the divine.

July 10, 2021 ddangler

You Don’t Need to be Normal

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“The need to be normal is the predominant anxiety disorder in modern life.”
― Thomas Moore, Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

July 10, 2021 ddangler

Living with Paradox

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“The soul has its own sets of rules which are not the same as those of life. Unlike the steady forward movement of progress, reaching goals, achieving dreams, the events of the soul have little concern for outcomes, even achievement.

The soul events are cyclic & repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The living and the dead have equal roles. Emotions and the sense of meaning are paramount. Pleasures are deep and pain can reach the very foundation of our existence.

The soul is more concerned with the dynamics of the heart and imagination. Moods, attitudes, influences, aspirations, and fears also ask for a degree of sophistication in our response.

The soul doesn’t evolve or grow. It cycles and twist, repeats and reprises, echoing ancient themes common to all human beings. The soul cares little for outward success, but rather looks at places deep within, both at the individual level and the archetypal world.

The soul is always circling home and calls us to a foreign and strange world. The soul is constantly homesick and yearns for its own milieu. The odyssey of the soul is not a straight line of progress. Rather it is a drifting at sea, a floating towards home, not an evolution towards perfection.

Live as though nothing exists except momentarily in its present form. We should remain attached to nothing, not even to our philosophy of life or our spiritual pat. Better to be present to what is happening than to be lost in our ideas and beliefs.

If we were to embrace the past without excessive judgment and calmly step, not leap, into the future, we might feel the vitality of the all-embracing soul.

The secret of a soul-based life is to allow someone or something other than the usual self to be in charge.”

– Thomas Moore, Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality