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It’s been a long day

November 29, 2017 by 15 Comments

The Chinese poet Po Chü-I (772-846) recounts in a poem how he’d traveled so long on horseback that he’d fallen asleep in the saddle. For a moment, his reins had slackened. It seemed like an instant but he’d gone a hundred lengths while asleep. He’d exhausted himself all day; prodding the horse to push on; to go here, then there. But in his sleep, he loosened his grip, gave up control, and the horse, which seemed to wait for this chance, carried him easily. This is the tension between will and surrender. We push and push; insistent on keeping pace with the urgency of our dream. All for the moment that we exhaust ourselves. And letting go the reins, the horse of spirit quickens its pace and carries us on.

~ Mark Nepo, Will and Surrender (Huffpost, Nov 6, 2017)

Notes:

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Nature, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

In the skein of life

June 25, 2013 by 15 Comments

skein,string,yarn

“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.”

Skein
/skān/

Noun
  1. A length of thread or yarn, loosely coiled and knotted.
  2. A tangled or complicated arrangement, state, or situation

Source: Thank you Whiskey River.  Image: yeraydorta

Filed Under: Books, Grow, Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

There are moments when you…

May 8, 2013 by 19 Comments

“…There are moments on the brink, when you can give yourself to a lover, or not; give in to self-doubt, uncertainty, and admonishment, or not; dive into a different culture, or not; set sail for the unknown, or not; walk out onto a stage, or not. A moment only a few seconds long, when your future hangs in the balance, poised above a chasm. It is a crossroads. Resist then, and there is no returning to the known world. If you turn back, there is only what might have been. Above that invisible crossroads are inscribed the words: Give up your will, all who travel here…”

~ Diane Ackerman

Passage Excerpt from nytimes.com.

Eddie Catlin – Actor. Peter Batchelor – Narrator / Voice.  Music Credits: “Preparing” by In The Nusery. “Hope Renewed – Instrumental” by Martin Sebastian Holm.

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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