A Journey of Soul Discovery
Love has many shapes,
It may last forever, or just one summer,
You may love someone who is close to you every day,
Or someone who is thousands of miles away
It can start as a friendship, and before you know it, you can no longer live without that person.
Love can be many things.
Love is life,
Love is support,
Love is acceptance,
And love can be forgiveness.
– From The Girls from Ipanema
“Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learned the great lessons of those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you? or who treated you with contempt, or disputed the passage with you?”
– Whitman
“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.”
Brene Brown
“I come to understand that for most of my life, when I was looking for love, I was looking to be loved. In this, I am a prism of my world. I am a novice at love in all its fullness, a beginner.”
― Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
“I like messy people, people who don’t fit in a box or stay between the lines, but whose integrity is greater than any rule book and whose loyalty is stronger than blood.”
This is precisely what I asked for, and I fucking know it.
The only thing I yearn for, more than to have my heart broken open, is to have my heart met. And for a few weeks, I felt seen and held in a way I have not in years. It reminded me that I want love.
So much of the cat and mouse—come here and go away—games that we see in dating are, in my opinion, attempts to navigate our need for reassurance, validation, comfort, and intimacy.
We are told that we should not put these needs on the opposite sex, that it makes us come off as needy and undesirable, when the truth is we all have these needs. To ignore them and suppress them makes us feel less human, and that makes us behave neurotically.
We belong to each other, but there is no belonging without safety. To feel safe, we must feel cared for, protected, and cherished. These are not feelings that can be chased. They can only be shared and claimed.
By Justice Bartlett
“In our daily lives we experience enormous amounts of disorder and confusion.
And what poetry says to us is, ‘turn your confusion, turn your world into words. Take it outside yourself, into language.'”
Gregory Orr
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes
Because those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation
– Rumi
All through your life, the most precious experiences seem to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense.
Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost.
This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience.