“Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”
—-Josh Billings
suffering
Morning Trip (364)
“Self-judgement is the root of our suffering. When we self-judge, we aren’t able to see and enjoy who we really are at this very moment, because we are constantly evaluating ourselves by an illusory standard set by our own agreements. We have been conditioned to believe that our self-acceptance relies on our accomplishments.”
—-Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., Living a Life of Awareness
Morning Trip (306)
“On with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there’s any dance to dance, or any joy to unconfine.”
–Mark Twain
Morning Trip (264)
“Resentment and anger are emotions that cause your suffering, keeping them alive inside you, draining you of your life force and inner light. Nothing good comes from anger, hate, or resentment. Peace can only come through forgiveness, when you release all that binds you to negativity. Perhaps you need to forgive yourself for placing unrealistic expectations on your situation resulting in a self-sabotaging perception tainted by perfectionism.”
(Look within) “…and see how the lack of forgiveness feeds the” (perception of) “turmoil and suffering around you. Forgiveness is the key to freedom and peace…and it starts with you.”
–Colette Baron-Reid
Morning Trip (199)
“Emotional pain makes me the opposite of a deep person; it renders my life narrow and thin and isolated. My suffering takes this whole thrilling, and gigantic universe and shrinks it down to the size of my own unhappy head.”
–Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
Trapped or Protected
enclosed in your fist
i was safe
what if
i feel abused
and then you sigh
and you carefully open a space between two fingers
and i peer out
and i see
that I am being
held
up
close
in the light
of the sun
there is no ground beneath me
there is no where to run
there is not yet
any safe space
to be put down
–elisabeth connelley
I forgot somehow to run and to play around and around, up and then down laughing at you watching me as the flame rises and I float off in union. Maybe I can remember how. Please forgive me. I cannot forgive myself. At least…not yet.
Joy(which can also be called solace), is it a way of being? Or simply a break from eternal suffering?
Shinto
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.
Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us –
touch us and move on.
– Jorge Luis Borges
Who Gets to Create?
Who created the idea of suffering? Who made it up? Only when we accept this idea can any lying schmuck convince us that we are needing to be saved, needing to be different than we are. This created thing causes us to be ungrounded and to want. Want an idea that cannot be had because suffering was created and made up–it has no opposite, so many many search to find it to create it and to fill it in, attempting to escape ‘suffering’. I think I cannot understand why no one else notices this. Maybe they do and the voices are too strong so they stay silent.
Elisa's Spot 