Tag: joy

Lightly Child, Lightly

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That was his most perfect idea of heaven’s happiness —
mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing
and bright, white clouds flitting rapidly above;
and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds,
and linnets and cuckoos pouring out music on every side…
close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze;
and woods and sounding water,
and the whole world awake and wild with joy…”

~ Emily Brontë, from “Wuthering Heights”

Notes:

  • Photo: Favim.com
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here 
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

the beginning, the middle, and the end

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They sleep early and rise in the dark. It is winter now. The nights are long but outside, where the leaves have fallen from the branches, the snowed-in light comes through. There is a cat who finds the puddles of sunshine. She was small when the boy was small, but then she grew up and left him behind. Still, at night, she hunkers down on Kiri’s bed, proprietorial. They were born just a few weeks apart, but now he is seven and she is forty-four. My son is the beginning, the middle, and the end. When he was a baby, I used to follow him on my hands and knees, the two of us crawling over the wood floors, the cat threading between our legs. Hello, hello, my son would say. Hello, my good friend. How are you? He trundled along, an elephant, a chariot, a glorious madman.

 

T.G.I.F.

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Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out

there’s something in us that calls to us, that pulls us out the door

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Here is entry number 208: ‘I was out walking one night in busy streets of Glasgow when, with slow majesty, at a corner where the pedestrians were hurrying by and the city traffic was hurtling on its way, the air was filled with heavenly music, and an all-encompassing light, that moved in waves of luminous colour, outshone the brightness of the lighted streets. I stood still, filled with a strange peace and joy … until I found myself in the everyday world again with a strange access of gladness and of love…’

Psychologists and psychiatrists are moving from their traditional hostility to ecstasy to an understanding that it’s often good for us. Much of our personality is made up of attitudes that are usually subconscious. We drag around buried trauma, guilt, feelings of low self-worth. In moments of ecstasy, the threshold of consciousness is lowered, people encounter these subconscious attitudes, and are able to step outside of them. They can feel a deep sense of love for themselves and others, which can heal them at a deep level. Maybe this is just an opening to the subconscious, maybe it’s a connection to a higher dimension of spirit – we don’t know…Ultimately, there’s something in us that calls to us, that pulls us out the door. Let’s find out where it leads.

~ Jules Evans, excerpts from Dissolving the Ego. You don’t need drugs or a church for an ecstatic experience that helps transcend the self and connect to something bigger (Aeon Essays, June 26, 2017). Adapted from his new book: “The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher’s Search for Ecstatic Experience” (April 25, 2017)

Photo: Brian Travelling. Photo of South Frederick Street in Glasgow

A Glorious Sunday Afternoon

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Dogs are our link to paradise.

They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent.

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring –

it was peace.

~ Milan Kundera

Photo: Amaya Eguizábal with Sitting with the Dog.  Quote: From in The Canine Hiker’s Bible by Doug Gelbert (via macrolit)