In the Storms of Spring

“Think… of the world you carry within you.”

“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”

“I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of… What’s the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I’m changing, I am no longer who I was…”

“Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life”

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation…Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

All quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Space Where We Meet

“Friendship has four forms: it can be heroic, intimate, spiritual or playful. A genuine friendship unites all four in one, and therefore it’s possible to see them as four dimensions of friendship. Heroic means that I sacrifice my life for him; spiritual means that it is the world of the spirit where we’re together; playful means that I am playing with him as cheerfully as a child; and intimate means that I open my heart to him.”

“It is not that friendship springs from sincerity, but sincerity springs from friendship.”

“Friendship is a classical way of solving life. That is why they appreciated it in the antique times and is not understood today. Classical means that the basis of existence is revealed in a crystal-clear light. The creator and protector of the classical way of life is Philia.”

“Love’s secret is that out of two will be one; friendship’s secret is that out of one will be two.”

“It is said that love makes you become poetic – often. Friendship makes life itself poetic; life becomes poetry. […] This poetic relationship is friendship itself. We don’t write poetry, but we live it.”

“Friendship begins by both stepping into the idyllic. And there’s no need for desire, wishing, power or struggle; the idyll lacks nothing and satisfies all passions. Therefore friendship is deeper than affection and deeper than love.”

“There is an incomprehensible relationship between friendship and stars. Why is my friend a star? And why is a star like a friend? Because he’s so far and yet living inside me? Because he’s mine and yet out of my reach? Because the space where we meet is not human but cosmic? Because he doesn’t want anything from me and I don’t want anything from him either? Only to be and to be the way he is and the way I am and that’s completely enough for both? There’s no answer. There’s no need for an answer. I will always think of my friend as a star, the universe shining down on me, incomprehensibly.”

All quotes by Béla Hamvas

One of the Most Penetrating Minds in England

I begin to write in a tired (too tired to think) and blissful (too happy not to connect with you!) state. So, I will be very brief, and just share this…

I wanted to create a post about Gerald Heard today. The British-born American historian, science writer, broadcaster, and philosopher. But due to a very long (lots going on!) week, that’s not going to happen. I’m behind schedule on my things, including my reading and usual pace of study.

How about if we do it together?

Here is what I wanted to read and write about:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:44445caf-be0a-49e2-bd51-ebed4d33225c/files/mee76663e2a7f81031795e7c6ff223871

That is a link to the Oxford University Research Archive, and an abstract on Gerald Heard.

I’m going to take a nap now, and read that later this evening.

If you decide to do it with me, I hope you enjoy your nap! And please let me know what you think about the research paper.

Happy Sunday.

The Amazing Voyage of Henry Miller

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”

Quote by Henry Miller

The Henry Miller Odyssey, 1969, Directed by Robert Snyder

The film is great. It shows Henry Miller revising his old haunts in Brooklyn and Paris. He talks openly about his struggles, making art, writing, all kinds of stuff. And there is a scene with him hanging out with Anaïs Nin. I couldn’t get enough! I loved it.

Aptitude of the Spirit

“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.”

“The sea has neither meaning nor pity.”

“If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.”

“All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.”

“Man is what he believes.”

“The more refined one is, the more unhappy.”

“Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.”

“There is nothing new in art except talent.”

“We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.”

“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

“No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.”

“Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.”

“The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.”

“Only entropy comes easy.”

“How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.”

“You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.”

All quotes by Anton Chekhov, and photo of him with Leo Tolstoy

The Art of Repair, and Shapeshifting, and Being Wow-ed

If you know me well, you know that I’m prone to have “Aimee-like” questions that I ask friends and family randomly.

It comes and goes in waves. I only ask when the questions arise. When they pop into my mind, I start dishing them out! I love the variety of answers that I get. That’s the most exciting part.

Just the other day, I asked a dear friend a question and received an unexpected answer.

When I said to him, “When was the last time you were wow-ed?” I was thinking I would hear a vivid description of a fleeting moment. Instead, he simply gave me a name. Nothing more. Just the name.

A name I had never heard before.

After I left, I googled the name, Bayo Akomolafe.

This is what I found:

And this as well:

I was wow-ed.

And very grateful.

Thank you, dear friend.

Photo of Bayo Akomolafe and his wife EJ

The Inner Voice

“So much of what gets in the way of things is thinking that we know. And the more that we can remove any baggage we’re carrying with us, and just be in the moment, and pay attention to what’s happening, and just listen to the inner voice that directs us, the better.”

Quote by Rick Rubin

The Truth of Being

Quick note:

If you missed last week’s blog post – Don’t! Go read it. I haven’t written like that in a long time. It might be another decade before I feel emotionally triggered enough to do it again! You can find it HERE and what I’m talking about in that post HERE. Please read both. I’m not twisting anyone’s arm. I’m just saying that it was a rare moment. Who knows?! I might end up writing a bunch more this year – or I might not. That’s why I’m saying catch it while you can, before it gets buried in the weekly posts to come.

Blog post:

While I was digging into old posts to write what I did last weekend, I found a quote I had completely forgotten about. I want to share it with you all today. I don’t know who the author is (if you do, please tell me). All I know is that I love it and I’m glad it resurfaced. It’s a great reminder.

“Our consequential activity — our resulting doings — no matter how pure of heart or well-meaning — then automatically manufacture circumstances around us serving only to maintain the causal discomforts driving all our doings.

It is through this bias toward doing that all our religions, spiritual groups, and peace organizations arise.

And, because all organizational structures foster activity that is repetitive – activity that fast becomes familiar and routine to us — and because familiarity is the sleeping pill that sows unconsciousness and the resonance of habitual egoic behavior — all our resultant doings intended to accomplish “stillness,” to enter “the now,” to “achieve happiness,” and to “attain peace” lead nowhere.

The unfolding of time reveals they all lead directly into circumstances that foster fear, anger, and grief — the causal resonance out of which they arise.

This ongoing loop continues because our doings have not arisen from the intent to know the truth of being. They have arisen as an attempt to quell the inner discomfort of our unintegrated emotional imprints [emotional scars].“