Tag: flow

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi would say…go with the Flow.

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black-white-breeze-wind-flow

“We say to the confused,

Know thyself,

as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations,

we say to the apathetic,

Where there’s a will, there’s a way,

as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head,

we say to the indecisive,

Begin at the beginning,

as if beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life.”

― José Saramago, The Cave

Notes:

Monday Mantra(s): Flow & Focus

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Source: Huffington Post (Baby owl was 1 week old when he was admitted to the New Zealand Bird Rescue Hospital.)

Bang our very bones to roust our own souls

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Unless we learn to let experience play upon our inner lives as on a finely tuned instrument, we will try to manufacture inner intensity from the outside, we will bang our very bones to roust our own souls. We crave radical ruptures when we have allowed the nerves of our inner lives to go numb. But after those ruptures— the excitement or the tragedy, the pleasure or the pain— the mind returns to what it was, the soul quicksilvers off from the pierce of experience, and the kingdom of boredom…begins the clock-tick toward its next collapse.

~ Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

Photograph: Beza17

Morning Meditation

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In a life properly lived, you’re a river. You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it…

~ Jim Harrison

 

Source: Thank you THISISEVERYTHING

When you are required to exhibit strength, it comes

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joseph-campbell

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”

“Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer.  His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: “Follow your bliss.”  He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum’s collection of totem poles. Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell’s theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.”  (Sources: Wiki & Amazon)

Source: Journal of A Nobody.  Joseph Campbell portrait: TheStrengthsFoundation.org