Lewis Hyde on the nature of the gift: "The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him." (1/2)

Reading Charles Eisenstein's Scared Economics and came across this: "The extinction of any species diminishes our own wholeness, our own health, our own selves; something of our very being is lost."

"Pass us by and forgive us our happiness!" the prince said in a low voice. | The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is..."

Jung on neurosis: "There are in a neurosis two tendencies standing in strict opposition to one another, one of which is unconscious. The neurotic is only a special instance of the disunited man who ought to harmonize nature and culture within himself."

"It's just that a mother rejoices...when she notices her baby's first smile, the same as God rejoices each time he looks down from heaven and sees a sinner standing before him and praying with all his heart." | The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Majestic beauty.

‘Omar answers’ The wisdom of the wisest of the wise Is but the pinch of powder in the eyes Thrown by the fingers of the fiend, that we True things from false may fail to recognise. Hafiz in London, Hafiz (Translation: J.H. McCarthy)

"Defenses are forms of narratives, created in imagination and fantasy to support a positive sense of identity and personal worth when these are threatened by cruelty, hostility or indifference from those on whom we are most dependent." | Archetype, Attachment, Analysis; Jean Knox

"Wishes! Desires! What does life know about them? Life urges and pushes forward and it has its mighty nature into which we stare with our waiting eyes." | The Poet's Guide to Life, Rainer Maria Rilke

The self – wounded, incomplete, empty, is felt to have a fundamental flaw, a congenital deficiency. Such logic presupposes a severe super-ego and a complex dialectic of idealization and devalorization, both of self and other."

Mankind owns four things That are no good at sea — Rudder, anchor, oars, And the fear of going down. Antonio Machado

Waking to sound of thunder Coffee.

Hollis on anger: “The child who suffers the insufficiency of its environment tends to develop a diminished sense of self-worth and addictively pursue affirmation and reassurance from others. In both cases (overwhelm and abandonment), the child unwittingly colludes in self-estrangement."

"What cannot be borne consciously will be projected onto a person, a substance, a behavior, and the wheel turns anew." | Swamplands of the Soul, James Hollis

“Falling in love happens through projective identification. What feels so good about the ‘in love’ state is that the other is, for the moment, able to reflect our missing piece(s) back to us. The sense of euphoria arises from the momentary intimation of our own wholeness."

“The consequence most terrible to us all from the primal wounding is not the wound itself, but the distortion it causes in one’s sense of self, and the unconscious compulsions to replay analogs of that relationship over and over later in our lives.” | Swamplands of the Soul, James Hollis

A perspective on anxiety as a portal to individuation: "Risking doubt means risking greater anxiety. But to risk greater anxiety is to open to the enlargement of personality against which our rigid standpoint is a defense.” | Swamplands of the Soul, James Hollis

James Hollis on the importance of loneliness and its role in individuation: "The more we are enmeshed with others, the less differentiated, the less individuated we are; the less individuated, the less we serve the greater purposes of the cosmos for which we were so mysteriously generated."

"The two greatest fantasies we are obliged to relinquish in the second half of life are that we are immortal exceptions to the human condition, and that out there somewhere is some "magical Other" who will rescue us from existential isolation." | Swamplands of the Soul, James Hollis

"The experience of betrayal, translated into psychological terms, provides the opportunity to experience one of the fundamental processes of psychic life, the integration of ambivalence, including the love-hate feelings that exist in every relationship."

Thomas Moore writes about genuine #power: "A tolerance of weakness, you might say, is a prerequisite for the discovery of power, for any exercise of strength motivated by an avoidance of weakness is not genuine power...In general, we keep our power when we protect the power of others."

@msmariestillfree.bsky.social, how are you doing now? Hope you're feeling better 🌱

This is the paradox of socialisation. It is supposed to orient and instruct us to become members of a society, but it also teaches us ideas against community, solidarity, and finding and offering support. One must remember: "Support doesn’t make us weaker – it makes things more possible."

We grieve the loss of friendship in strange ways. There is inconsolable crying or a certain hard-heartedness that prevents us from feeling fully the many pains, without realising soon that a loss of friendship mirrors the losses one accrues from a difficult childhood and brings into adulthood.

And here he is writing about the power of the #soul. Look at this unforgettable imagery: "The power of the soul, in contrast, is more like a great reservoir or, in traditional imagery, like the force of water in a fast-rushing river. It is natural, not manipulated, and stems from an unknown source."

Thomas Moore on jealousy and envy: "It is the gods who become jealous and envious, and only by touching that deep place of divine activity can the individual make a response that is transforming, that takes him to an unfamiliar place where the mythical impulse stirs." (Book: Care of the Soul)

Witness our elder.

"Bringing grief and death out of the shadow is our spiritual responsibility, our sacred duty. By so doing, we may be able to feel our desire for life once again and remember who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred." | The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller

Here is Francis Weller: "Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close. Alone and together, death and loss affect us all."

When it was over, when they declared a ceasefire, I breathed freely along with everyone else. And now, the work. The task of re-membering the grief, containing it, keeping it warm. And, slowly, bringing down the fort, removing one stone at a time.

I saw my fears rising up like a fort, surrounding, protecting everything I loved and cared for. Everything important was right here before me. Every birdsong, every leaf fall, every laugh, every quirk, every voice, every look. I was already grieving for all this, and the future that may not be.

Perhaps because of the conflict we just witnessed, I am drawn toward grief, loss, and poetry. In that one week, we held so much fear and terror. Each day was a palimpsest, new fears written over the fears from the previous day, and our dreams reflecting the reality we were witnessing.

"Sorrow is part of the earth’s great cycles, flowing into the night like cool air sinking down a river course. To feel sorrow is to float on the pulse of the earth, the surge from living to dying, from coming into being to ceasing to exist."

She is here.

A space for holding grief — personal and collective.

For these difficult times, "May the Fourth be with you."

Trees, our elders.

But Father Reason says, No need to announce the future! This now is it. This. Your deepest need and desire is satisfied by the moment's energy here in your hand. Rumi Coleman Barks translation

Here's a poem to honour and re-memeber "...the step you don't want to take," that first step that makes entire worlds available to you, that makes you stand before the fears you would rather keep locked, that breaks you open.

"But love itself is eternally young and always manifests some of the folly of youth. So, maybe it is better not to become too jaded by love's suffering and dead ends, but rather to appreciate that emptiness is part of love's heritage and therefore its very nature."

Pale sunlight, pale the wall. Love moves away. The light changes. I need more grace than I thought. (Rumi, Coleman Barks translation)

The cracks and the scars are where light enters.

"Never ignore those intuitions. When you feel some slight repugnance about doing something, listen to it. These premonitions come from God." Rumi (Coleman Barks translation)

Happy Earth Day 🌍

"Is there someplace wet in me, not the place of dry intellectualism but rather of moist feeling and green, fertile, shady imagination, far from human influence?" | Care of the Soul in Everyday Life, Thomas Moore

I've waited for this bougainville to bloom for years. This year, she is in bloom. It's her way of saying, it takes time — to emerge, to show your beauty, and for you to become who you are. She finds her way into my conversations easily, as if she is a friend, and I love that this is my life.

Join us in wishing Nikai a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The charismatic and playful wolf is celebrating his 11th birthday + we couldn't be more excited! Nikai has embraced many roles throughout his life + we're so grateful that we're along for the journey. We love you, Nikai!

"It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth." | Care of the Soul in Everyday Life, Thomas Moore

"The philosopher Martin Buber describes the conflicting ways human beings view themselves and others in his book I and Thou. He describes two attitudes, that of I–It and that of I–Thou."