I just started reading a book I got as a gift from my mom, Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. I'm literally just a few pages in, but I wanted to post this quote.
I love finding these little treasures in things—thoughts so tightly strung together you can touch them. Well, they touch you.
The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.
A number of years ago, I had one of the most profound experiences driving down the interstate. It was well into the fall in upstate New York, the leaves ablaze with crimsons and oranges against a pale, grey sky. Through the clouds off in the distance broke the most beautiful sunset I’d ever beheld—it completely robbed me of breath. Every part of me was consumed by this delicate explosion of color—I couldn’t understand, I couldn’t even imagine how something so exquisite could ever exist.
But it did, and I was there bearing witness to it. Then, in the quiet, intruded the subtlest recognition: It wasn’t the “sunset” I was seeing.
Faster than awareness itself, I shut down: batten down the hatches! It pained me, terrified me to acknowledge the source of this indescribable experience.
I’ve spoken about this time and time again, as if attempting to keep the experience alive but always at a safe distance. Today, that safety was broken.
I was out for a walk in the early evening, and found myself staring off into another sunset. It was, again, beautiful. Moments before losing myself in the experience, the same memory rushed in. A tender vulnerability marked a palpable threshold I realized I could choose to cross.
I can’t recall the exact decisions I made, but I finally surrendered: There, the sunset serving as a backdrop, a gracious mirror against which I could briefly glimpse the vastness of the universe within. There, with the gift of the physical world and this physical existence, I found my place in earnest gratitude. There, magnificent.
Photo by Steven Feldman on Unsplash
Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash
Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions, and the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none—coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
– commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln,
Shearson Lehman or anon
When one paints, one loves in a different way.
– Séraphine,
from the 2008 film
by the same name
Photo by Julian Hanslmaier on Unsplash
Food is the food of the body; love is the food of the soul.
– Vasant Lad
For as long as I remember, I've been afraid to love—to love in the purest sense.
There are these lines from Lord Tennyson's poem, In Memoriam A.H.H.:
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
I’ve been an ardent advocate of the opposition, especially as I’ve grown older. Yet throughout my life, through the good choices and the terrible ones, this is true: it is the very thing I’m drawn to—a moth circling an ever-burning flame.
We cannot know love without loss. The profound pain of loss and the nature of love itself—immense, vast beyond comprehension, infinite—is deceptively terrifying. I say “deceptively” because I’ve glimpsed it and survived.
This video, When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, was deeply moving to me. If you’re also on a quest to overcome the fear to love, I hope this inspires you too.
Photo by Liam Macleod on Unsplash
I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
– Red (narrating), The Shawshank Redemption
When you look at a beautiful picture, where do you feel pleasure, in the picture or in yourself? When you eat a delicious meal, do you experience satisfaction in the food or in yourself? When you meet a friend and feel joy, is that joy in your friend or in yourself?
– Swami Muktananda
Photo by Chris Ensey on Unsplash
Speaking of setting the heart aflame, I've been away: I was preparing for a performance that took place this weekend—it went beautifully. I enjoyed myself tremendously and so did my students. I met a lot of great people, and received the highest compliment on my choreography from one of the professional dancers I most admire.
Something very deep within me ignited again. It's the kind of thing that keeps you up at night, and in those short instances where you do fall asleep, it seeps into your dreams. There's no remedy but to succumb to the music playing quietly inside, like a soft, unrelenting echo, and, in the middle of the night, externalize its voice with a song that fits just right, then move to it until it the body can do no more.
This video is lovely—movement at 1,000 frames per second. I thought I'd share it here while I finish the piece I've been working on.
Freedom of speech is currently on my radar. I'm writing a little something on it, but in the meantime I thought I'd share a quote—a teaser, if you will—from Soren Kierkegaard.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use.
Photo by Paul Varnum on Unsplash
Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving,
It doesn't matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Even if you have broken your vows
A thousand times it doesn’t matter
Come, yet again, come
– Rumi
I saw this on a bumpersticker a couple of days ago, except it had the line "You do the math" right underneath it. It's such a simple statement, yet so easy to forget. I liked this artist's rendition of it, JustGage.
Although, if I had my way with it, I'd change it to this: Love > Fear
I’ve been thinking a lot about tools. Every once in a while, I look back and notice how much my relationship to them has changed.
As a child, the only family outings I remember dreading were visits to the hardware store. To a seven- or eight-year-old girl, a warehouse full of tools didn’t just pale in comparison to the toy store or the candy store; for some odd reason, I found them painfully boring. (Never mind that practically everything around me—including toy and candy stores—existed in part because of tools!) The closest I ever came to enjoying these visits was the day I discovered an isle packed with rolls of pink fiberglass insulation. Maybe it was the Pink Panther on the label, or layer upon layer of fluffy goodness inviting me to dive right in; whatever it was, my delight was but momentary: I learned the hard, itchy way that fiberglass insulation is not cotton candy.
Read MoreOh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
– Dinah Craik
Photo by oldskool photography on Unsplash
We may never really know how this started, but it's caught on. It came to me via a dear friend with a most peculiar sense of humor. I bet you'll be hearing about him again, so I might as well introduce you: Sean, say "Hello Everybody!"
There’s a story I read several years ago; it comes and goes like a familiar ghost, but lately it’s more and more present. To me, it’s one of the simplest, most poignant allegories on the human condition—as long as you’re willing to look beyond theological constructs. Sometimes, when I bump up against labels and the like, I find approaching any information as one would a fable or a childhood story yields a refreshing flexibility of mind.
This excerpt is from How To Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali. If you’re unfamiliar with Eastern Philosophy, as I am, the only term that’s helpful to know beforehand, ahem, is “Atman.” Simply put: it means the real Self.
Read MoreTwo years ago a friend of mine gave me her copy of Irina Tweedie’s The Chasm of Fire: A Woman's Experience with the Teachings of a Sufi Master. The title is self-explanatory, and it’s a great read—it’s actually a portion of her larger work, Daughter of Fire, which I haven’t read. There are a couple lines in the first chapter that moved me; they were the first of many.
It is the task of the Teacher to set the heart aflame with an unquenchable fire of longing; it is his duty to keep it burning until it is reduced to ashes. For only a heart which has burned itself empty is capable of love.
Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
– Abraham Lincoln
