Sage Said So

The best thing for being sad

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing  that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then: to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

-- Spoken by Merlyn the Magician in T. H. White's, *The Once and Future King* 

Up the Ante with Your Muse

An excerpt from Rob Brezsny

Everyone deserves a place to live, good food and water, comfortable clothes, fulfilling work, decent health care, and an intimate relationship with a provocative muse. The muse need not be an actual person, but might be an animal ally, a familiar spirit, a guardian angel, or an  autonomous part of one's own brain.

Do you have one? If not, use all your ingenuity to get one. If you're already blessed with a muse, upgrade your relationship. Demand more high-quality prods and inspiration, and in return offer more daring acts of love and generosity. If your muse is unwilling to undertake a deeper
collaboration with you, hand him or her a pink slip and enlist a more enthusiastic candidate.

For every inch of paradise

For every inch of paradise, there are miles and miles of bones. -- Sadie Kohler

Faith doesn't dig ditches

Waiting for my acupuncture appointment today, I stumbled upon this quote from novelist Alice Sebold in the May issue of O Magazine:

A difficult lesson, which I fought at every turn, is that what often must substitute for faith is discipline. Faith has a lovely ease about it, an ethereal ring. Discipline is the rod, the staff, your insecurities internalized and sprouting rules and limits on your life. Why can't I just have faith that books will be completed? Why isn't faith alone enough? I hear my Southern roots respond. Faith doesn't dig ditches, they say; faith doesn't scrape the burn from the bottom of the pot. Ultimately, faith gives freedom, and discipline, its sister, makes sure the job gets done.

What timing! As I read this, I realized that I've lately been burdening faith with my sluggish discipline, and wondering why I feel rudderless. With Sebold's clear delineation of the interdependence and authority of each, I took a deep breath and squared my pot-scrubbing shoulders. Tonight, I commit to invigorating my tepid discipline in service to that little pilot light of faith. Into the ditches we go.

Between the two

Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
And between the two my life flows.

-- Nisargadatta

The Wisdom of Insecurity

Let yourself breathe and trust.
It is only by a courageous letting go
that the heart becomes free.
This is called the wisdom of insecurity.

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do children as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run
than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure
or nothing.

-- Helen Keller

The Abyss

The mind creates the abyss,
and the heart crosses it.

-- Sri Nisargadatta