Morning Trip (196)

“You’re searching, Joe, for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings – there are no such things. There are only middles.”
–Robert Frost

Morning Trip (195)

“Oh, for a tongue to express the Wonders which the Thought reveals!
Oh, for some Word to comprehend the boundless idea!
Would that some Voice were sweet enough to sound the harmony of Life.
But Within, in that vast realm of thought where the Soul meets God, the Spirit knows.
I will listen for that Voice and It will tell me of Life, of Love and Unity.
Speak to me, Spirit.”
–Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind

Morning Trip (194)

“Within each of our forms lies the existential mystery of being. Apart from one’s physical appearance, personality, gender, history, occupation, hopes and dreams, comings and goings, there lies an eerie silence, an abyss of stillness charged with an etheric presence. For all of our anxious business and obsession with triviality, we cannot completely deny this phantasmal essence at our core. And yet we do everything we can to avoid its stillness, its silence, its utter emptiness and radiant intimacy.

Being is that which disturbs our insistence on remaining in the life-numbing realm of our secret desperation. It is the itch that cannot be scratched, the whisper that will not be denied. To be, to truly be, is not a given.
–Adyashanti

Morning Trip (193)

“So when these states of mind arise – restlessness, desire, fear, wanting, worry, agitation, or judgment, if only it were somehow different than it is, “I don’t like this” – what to do with them? Sit in the very middle of them and study them. Note how they feel in the body. There’s desire. Desire runs much of our world. Pay attention to see what it’s like, how do you feel it in the body, what is it like in the mind. Give clear and careful mindful attention to it, without getting caught – not suppressing it, or trying to get it to go away, and not getting involved. Just noting, “desire, desire, wanting,” until you come to see its nature and you come to some balance where you’re not so caught up in it or afraid of it.

The same for anger. Most of us are either afraid of it and stuff it down or we act it out. See if when judgment or anger arises you can just sit and note, “angry, furious, judging,” whatever it is, and feel it. Heat, movement, energy in the body, certain contractions, different qualities of mind, see if it is possible to experience that energy and learn from it. See how it changes, what it does to you, what its flavor is, its effect on you, and then maybe you can learn not to be quite so caught in it. It doesn’t mean it won’t still come, heaven knows, but your relationship to it can be a wiser one. Do it again and again – with fear, with all the kinds of mental states that come up, especially the difficult ones – until you can sit and allow them to come and go like cows or sheep in the meadow.

What if they’re very strong, what if they’re too difficult, they’re really, really hard, what should you do? You’re so restless you just can’t stand it, what to do? Die! Be the first to ever die of restlessness. Just say, “Fine, take me.” Surrender to it and let it kill you. And what you discover if you do that is that in a way you die; what dies is your resistance to it, and that you just carry on. You discover this powerful capacity we have, if you work with it, to open to all of our experience and find some balance in it.”
– Jack Kornfield
Householder Series

Morning Trip (192)

“When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.”
–Mary Oliver

Morning Trip (191)

“Here, surrounded by the products of nature, often I sit for hours, while my senses feast upon the spectacle of nature. Here the majestic sun is not concealed by any dirty roof made by human hands, here the blue sky is my sublime roof.

When in the evening I contemplate the sky in wonder and the host of luminous bodies continually revolving within their orbits, suns or earths by name, then my spirit rises beyond these constellations so many millions of miles away to the primeval source from which all creation flows and from which new creations shall flow eternally.

When, now and again, I endeavor to formulate my seething emotions in music – oh, then I find that I am terribly deceived; I throw my scrawled paper upon the ground and feel firmly convinced that never shall anyone born on this earth be able to express in sounds, words, colors or stone those heavenly images that hover before his excited imagination in his happiest hours . . . yes, it must come from above, that which strikes the heart; otherwise it’s nothing but notes, body without spirit, isn’t that so?

What is body without spirit? Earth or muck, isn’t it? The spirit must rise from the earth, in which for a time the divine spark is confined, and much like the field to which the ploughman entrusts precious seed, it must flower and bear many fruits, and, thus multiplied, rise again towards the source from which it has flown. For only by persistent toil of the faculties granted to them do created things revere the creator of infinite nature.”

–Ludwig van Beethoven

Morning Trip (190)

“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything – other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion – that standing within this otherness – the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”
– Mary Oliver