How do you feel directing your own & your loved ones' lives, in what many perceive to be a challenging, at times hostile, and seemingly deteriorating world? Many today feel anxious, nervous, afraid, worried for themselves, their children & grandchildren.
What ifHOW we usually perceive & think is ALMOST ENTIRELY focused on DARKNESS: trying to grab, accumulate & survive at any cost AS IFwe were alone, struggling in a hostile, meaningless, mechanical universe? WELL, THIS IS our culture's, and thus our own personal defaultway of understanding, thinking & behaving, called "left-hemisphere dominant" by noted scholar / researcher / author / psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist MD (http://www.johnlovas.com/2025/10/hope-courage-patience-perseverance.html). This mindset is certain that we are alone in a meaningless, mechanical universe, struggling against all odds to survive. Being trapped in this narrow, robotic mindsetIS the nightmare! Sadly, those of us who have experienced major trauma, especially in early childhood, have tremendous difficulty trusting anyone, anything, including life itself. As a result, trauma survivors tend to rely exclusively on their intellect ie left hemisphere! This leaves their hearts armored, somewhat protected against re-injury, buteffectively blocked from feeling, receiving & giving love.
Balanced, well-adjusted, thriving societies & individuals are "right-hemisphere dominant" by default. This right-hemisphere perspective is RADICALLY DIFFERENT because it ISaware of & ISin harmony with ALL of life's INFINITELY WIDER contexts, like Beauty, Love, Meaning, Values, Relationships, the Arts, Spirituality, etc.
Mysticspast and present, are exemplars of right-hemisphere dominance,experiencing life radically differently than left-hemisphere dominant people.Mysticsfeel peacefully held in love; "at one" - Unitive Mystical Experience - with everyone, everything & the Divine;no separation from others & life;feelnohostility; no desperation to control anyone or anything; no fear of anyone, any "vengeful God" nor death; noneurotic compulsion to do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. They feel liberated, free to be appropriate toward everyone & everything in the present moment ie to embody Divine nurturing unconditional love. ALL of us can gradually open our minds & hearts to our own Divine nature. Watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLmOpCCJkuY
Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like:
and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by.
It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves inwisdom - OR - darkness (https://www.jonathanashford.com/post/the-darkness). Are we "too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; Is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, are we "just too busy" to get into it and learn? We can procrastinate and aim at bestfor feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life isreallyabout.
I resonate with the nondual teachings of people like Lisa Cairns, Helen Hamilton, Gangaji, Angelo DiLullo, Henry Shukman, Louise Kay, Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, Richard Rohr, James Finley, Rami Shapiro, David Steindl-Rast,Norman Fischer, Rumi, Rainer Maria Rilke, etc.
"I believe that, whatever we’re going to call it – God, Kali or whatever – is a nondualReality. I don’t believe that there’s a God separate from Nature, who created the world, who judges us, and all that. I’m not a dualist. I’m a nondualist. And so I’m interested in the nondual aspects of Hinduism and Vedanta, in Taoism and Zen, Christianity, Islam, wherever – they all have this nondual perspective among their mystics. I’m interested in that. I will play in all those arenas, because I think they’re all leading us to the sameineffable experience. When you’re talking about that nondual reality, the labels are irrelevant. And I mean, every religious tradition has this mystic element. And because the mystics understand that - God or whatever they’re going to call it - can be experienced directly, in, with, & asyou. And I’m interested in that experience. But that’s not what the conventional religious teachers tell you." Rami Shapiro "CHALLENGING BELIEFS: Are You a VICTIM of Spiritual Misguidance?"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rZLlvXFQ7k
"The final stage of love is nonduallove, or love beforedivision, or love beforeseparation. Love where there is no person or thing to love. There is just love recognizing itself. So, when love looks at something, that loveseesitselfin a different disguise. It doesn’t see a person or a thing, only recognizes itself." Helen Hamilton – “The Pathway of Love” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWkkmLx1G6Y
“Vigilance is awareness of what does not disappear even when objects appear. Whether those objects are exquisite or horrible or mundane, always there is awareness aware ofitself. Whether those objects are emotional or mental or physical, always there is awareness aware ofitself. Pure vigilance must be an ease of recognition; otherwise, there is doing vigilance, and this is already not vigilant. When you hear this thought, Now I am going to do vigilance, ask yourself, ‘Who’ is doing vigilance? This is direct self-inquiry. You will see that it is quite natural to be aware of passing objects as well as aware of what is aware of both passing objects and itself. It is a mistaken understanding that implies vigilance to be a burden. The real burden is the denial of your beingness as awareness itself. The idea that vigilance is a burden comes from the concept of spiritual practice. You are admonished to practice. ‘You have to keep your practice.’ I don’t know what the word practice is translated from, but it is a bad translation, because in English practice means some kind of preparation for a real event. You practice for the football game. You practice for your recital. So I don’t use the word practice in terms of vigilance. I am talking about being vigilance. Be that right now. You are that already. Recognize yourself as that, and be vigilant to yourtrue nature. Then see. Without looking for anything, see. In Western culture, particularly in America, we are trained to know what is going to be ahead and to attempt to make it be what we want it to be. This is why there is so much suffering here, trying to force life to be something based on a particular concept. Then we search for agreement with that concept and fight any disagreement of that concept. Even if we are victorious in our fight, we are left unsatisfied, unfulfilled. Wait and see doesn’t necessarily mean you sit on your couch and never move. It also doesn’t necessarily mean that you get off your couch and move. It is much deeper than that. An active life can be lived as vigilance, and an inactive life can be lived as vigilance. There will be many insights. There will be many revelations and deepening experiences. In the midst of it all, be vigilant to what has not moved, what has always been whole, what has always been radiant & unpolluted. There will be even deeper insights. Enjoy them as they come, wave them good-bye as they pass, and be vigilant towhat has not moved, what has not been lostby the experience of loss, and what has not been augmentedby the experience of gain. Be vigilance. The deepest joy of the human experience is to be vigilant. It is not a task. It is blissitself. A bliss that is awake & vigilant to what never moves, to what is always present. Bethat. Then you will see that this entity called your lifetime unfolds exquisitely, as a flower unfolds. As it begins to die, itwilldie exquisitely, as a flower dies. You don’t need to dip it in wax so that it will stay forever at a certain stage. Death is not the enemy. Fear of death is the enemy. Fear of death is the result of the misidentification of yourself as some particular entity. Your true identification is the sky of being.” Gangaji. “Freedom and Resolve. Finding Your True Home in the Universe.” Hampton Roads, 2014.VALUABLE little book!
May this guided nondual (30 minute) meditation help you feel into, remember & re-experiencedeep calm, homecoming & peace - that you (& everyone & everything) already are, have always been, & will always be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkhrKy4FStE
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ... live in the question.” Rainer Maria Rilke
I'm sure I'm not alone wanting a wise, big-picture overview of life, so I canlive my best life. Mystics of all wisdom traditions, passed & living, are connected to & sharethis wisdom.
One of the wisest quotes I've come across: "The most important question to ask ourselves, according to Einstein: 'Is the universea friendly placeor not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993.
Even intelligent, educated people seem overwhelmed bymysticism for many reasons. First and foremost, our culture is by and large ignorant about mystics&mysticism. Our "consumer society" trains us to buy as much as possible as fast as possible, "greed is good," even after 9/11 George W. told Americans to show the world what they're made of, "Go shopping!" We're starving on a restricted diet of junk food (shallow materialistic concerns), and don't even know the vocabulary of nutrition (metaphysics, spirituality). We fear what we don't know, and procrastinate & otherwise avoid learning about it.
"Nothing in life is to be feared,
it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that
we may fearless." Marie Curie, Nobel Prizes in Physics, & Chemistry
"... relax, allow life to be as it is, &open yourheart to yourself. It’s
easier than you might think, and it could change your life.” KristinNeff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011.
"I was born when all I once feared I could love.”Rabia Basri
"Once we are willing
to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of
the simplest of life experiences."Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara
During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda
"To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things."Zen Master Dogen
SO, what CAN we do?Not should, not must - although our time as individual mortal beings, as well as a species is running out - but absolutely CAN do, because wisdom that is IN ALL of US, the wisdom that is in fact who/what we actually are, is amazingly what we mostly, and in some almost entirely, have forgotten. Here's some of what I've understood from the many imho wise elders I've been reading about, listening to on the web, occasionally meeting, and more recently, blogging about:
Don't Judge. Every day we see outrageous, disgusting behavior on the news. It's disorienting to see how almost half of the US population fervently supports behavior, that in a few years (as Germans did after WWII) they will categorically deny having even known anything about it. So it's hard not tojudge terrible behavior. Butfrom a much higher, non-dual perspective,what if we're each born to play a certain role, with a certain set of talents, a certain set of limitations & no matter how wonderful or horrible it appeared, we all did our best. And what if most of our ridiculous behavior was because most (but mercifully not all) of us completely forgot that we took on our role freely, including the fact that we are actually producers & executive directors of the entire play - almost identical to the Jesus being fully human andfully Divine story, except the he had almost complete recall of who he actually was, where he came from, and where he would return to. Bewildered? This blog & its video might help: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html
Be Discerning. Many of us spend a great deal of time watching / listening to the news & comments about the news. While it's important to perhaps watch / listen to the CBC or BBC news for 30 minutes a day, much more than that is probably masochistic or even an addiction. Doing more & more of what makes you feel sick is not a recipe for optimal healthy. Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like:
and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by.
It'sOUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves inwisdom - OR - indarkness. "Too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, "just too busy" to get into it and learn? You can procrastinate and aim at bestfor feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life isreallyabout.
Learn & Do Spiritual Practices. Theory is important BUT not enough. We need to intentionally PRACTICE shiftingfrom beingfearful consumer robotstobecoming wise elder human beings. Our culture is not big on "practices." Some of us might admire the dedication it takes to become world class athletes, dancers, surgeons etc, but most of us just don't have the dedication to put in the time & effort. The ONE area where ALL of us would massively benefit is putting in dedicated time & effort into spiritual practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=spiritual+practice
Be a Nurturing Presence. Only by waking up to who/what we truly are, can we help instead of hinder others to wake up and help others. “… we have to allow our higher nature to show before we can do anything real, before we can be truly responsible people.” Jiyu-Kennett. “The Wild, White Goose. The Diary of a Female Zen Priest.” ed 2. Shasta Abbey Press. 2002.
Be Humble. The ego is a tricky, sticky, persistent trickster. We must regularly check our own BS-meter. A common problem is assuming a massive group ego - thinking one can do even horrible things because "I'm doing God's work." But such "crazy wisdom" is just crazy. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does." Humility, gentleness, empathy, wisdom & kindness are rarely promoted or even recognized in our consumer culture & partisan religions.
Learn Self-compassion. The tough, aggressively self-reliant, workaholic individual is venerated these days, while a decent, nurturing, humble person would be branded "a loser" by today's dictators & billionaire CEOs. So decent human beings need to intentionally practice self-compassion, in order to survive & be effective in today's crass, superficial, heartless environment.
Practice Self-awareness. With self-awareness practice, your talk & your walk are kept aligned. Again, humility is crucial. "Self-inquiry" is a specialized, key, self-awareness practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Self-inquiry
Become More Discerning, More Self-compassionate. The more neuroses & "story of me" burdens we shed, the more clearly we see ourselves & what's going on around us. The more clearly we see, the more magnified our remaining (though diminishing) neuroses & other burdens appear to us, so it can seem like we're regressing instead of "getting ahead." So we need more self-compassion & patience with ourself. “Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgmentsslip away in the tracks of tears. And when we cry, we are revealing our truest, most loving self.” Richard Rohr. “The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage” Convergent Books, 2025.
Live in Joy. Gradually, you will be progressively more peaceful & joyful, regardless of the many challenges & sorrows in your own & loved ones' life, as well as that of the human race. The major, even crippling burdenthat you will shed is your identification with & constant rehashing of your own 'story of me' AS WELL AS its twin, the constant anxiety of 'what will happen to me?' and of course, vividly imagining the worst possibilities. As this HEAVY PSYCHOLOGIC BURDENstarts to lift, you start to experience 'the peace that surpasses all understanding' ie it must be experienced to be understood. Even this has, if you will, a 'dark side': while you'll see as your own past, no matter how miserable, as just a story, your empathy towards others (even actors playing a sad role in a movie) becomes progressively more powerful. Your job now is embodyingpeace & joymodelingequanimityeven in the midst of chaos, when it's the most essential.
"This is actually instruction from the Buddha, where he says, ‘Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health,even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Look within. Be still, freefrom fears and attachments. Know the sweet joy of living in the way things are in the Way, the Dharma.' And so this is also a challenge. He doesn’t say, let’s get rid of disease and all these problems, butto find a joyfulway to be aliveamidst it all.” Jack Kornfield - Finding Your Self on the Spiritual Path - Point of Relation with Thomas Hüblhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjz7WaTyX4WONDERFUL MATURE WISDOM - Jack Kornfield at his best
And some 500 years later, in another incarnation of the Divine, Jesus said, "the poor will always be with us." Fixating on quickly eliminating age-old problems is in itselfproblematic, akin to "seeing a splinter in another's eye," again from Jesus, advising that we should first address our own significant flaws (‘the beam’ in our own eye) before attempting tocorrect / "save"others.
“The teachings on Buddha Nature do not mean that there is some nucleus of Buddhhood enclosed in sentient beings behind the temporary obscuring stains. Rather, our whole existence as sentient beings is in itself the sum of temporary stains that float like cloudsin the infinite, bright sky of Buddha Nature, the luminous, open expanse of our mind that has no limits or boundaries. Once theseclouds dissolve from the warm rays of the sun of wisdom shining in this space, nothing within sentient beings has been freed or developed, but there is just thisradiant expanse without any reference points of cloud-like sentient beings or cloud-free Buddhas." Sthiramati, 6th century Indian Buddhist scholar-monk
Watching David Ditchfield's 40-minute BBC interview about his Near-Death Experience (NDE) is imho wise use of your precious time: https://www.shineonthestory.com/
"There is something in all of us
that seeks thespiritual…
The spiritual is inclusive. It is the
deepest sense of belonging & participation. We all participate in the
spiritual at all times, whether we know it or not. There’s no place to go to be
separated from the spiritual, so perhaps one might say that the spiritual is
that realm of human experience which religion attempts to connect us to through
dogma & practice.
Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it fails. Religion is a
bridge to the spiritual — but the spiritual lies beyond religion.
Unfortunately, in seeking the spiritual we may become attached to the bridgerather than crossing over it."Rachel
Naomi Ramen MD
More and morebrave, intelligent adults are freeing themself from religious & secular orthodoxies, evolving & awakening into their authentic, mature, spiritually-independentSelf.
“We write here in conversation with Rilke and each other, opening to a ‘wiser way’ than is more generally offered in our hectic, demanding societies, where individuality is so highly praised and our inevitable interconnectedness is so poorly understood. It might well enable you to ground your life in what the ancients knew as the ‘transcendentals’: ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful.’ Those are the collective attributes we find singly and learn to live socially. Rilke suggests in one of his early poems that ‘you are the future.’ You! Is it the ‘you’ of the divine one Rilke often addressed simply as ‘Lord’ but equally call ‘neighbor’ or ‘friend’? Is it the ‘you’ of the poet himself? Or the ‘you’ of the reader? Rilke refused, characteristically, to define whom he is addressing.For in the deepest things in life, the truest things of the heart, the most enduring things of the soul, these three are not different. Not distinct. Not separable. You are the future.” Mark S. Burrows, Stephanie Dowrick. “You are the Future. Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke.” Monkfish, 2024.
It's fascinating to frequently hear a wide variety of spiritual experiences in which the experiencers are completely surprised by their experience, that it was nothing at all what they expected. Indeed one may be at a complete loss to identify the source of a powerful, authoritative voice, that neither quite sounded as if it were God, nor themself. And many decades later, the awe remains ... and probably there is no difference, no distinction, no separation between Self and God.
We CANpull up our big adult spiritual pantsand stopexternalizing the Divine!
"Every Day, Think As You Wake Up, Today I Am Fortunate To Have Woken Up, I Am Alive, I Have A Precious Human Life, I Am Not Going To Waste It I Am Going To Use All My Energies To Develop Myself, To Expand My Heart Out To Others, To Achieve Enlightenment For The Benefit Of All Beings, I Am Going To Have Kind Thoughts Toward Others... I Am Going To Benefit Others As Much As I Can."
I once knew a man who dearly loved his wife & sons, and loved to take them skiing, hiking, canoeing, fishing, camping. My family and I gladly did all of these with them. He was a very honest, hard-working, sincere, 'straight-as-an-arrow,' 'by-the-book' fellow. He'd happily chat except about anything to do with religion or spirituality. These were strictly off limits, and we never learned why. All his hard work seemed to pay off when he landed a strikingly lucrative job as one of six in-house lawyers for a multinational lumber company. But within a month or so, his boss asked him to sign off on a document that our friend knew was shady, so he refused to sign. This immediately got him fired. His whole world collapsed. He abandoned his family, changed his name, joined a religious cult, and moved to Europe. When his existing worldview crumbled, he 'flipped'to its opposite.
David Whyte’s poem “Anger”: "ANGER is the deepest form of care, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger points toward the purest form of compassion, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacityto sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingnessto be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being. What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find noproper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingnessto live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live. Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability; anger too often finds its voice strangely, through our incoherence and through our inability to speak, but anger in its pure state is the measure of the way we are implicated in the world and made vulnerable through love in all its specifics: a daughter, a house, a family, an enterprise, a land or a colleague. Anger turns to violence and violent speechwhen the mind refuses to countenance the vulnerability of the body in its love for all these outer things - we are often abused or have been abused by those who love us but have no vehicle to carry its understanding, who have no outer emblems of their inner care or even their own wanting to be wanted. Lacking any outer vehicle for the expression of this inner rawness they are simply overwhelmed by the elemental nature of love’s vulnerability. In their helplessness they turn their violence on the very people who are the outer representation of this inner lack of control. But anger truly felt at its centeristhe essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here, it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be understood fully at the very spring of its birth: it is an invitation to find a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heartmore compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete and absolute mirror-oppositeof itstrue internal essence."
I emailed Whyte's poem above, as well as the link to his imho wonderful interview (bottom of this page) to a relativewho is on aspiritual path, as well as an old friend whose dogmatic belief is that we live in a cruel meaningless mechanical Cosmos, and who has, on a couple of previous occasions, become very angry when I suggested otherwise. I had (naively) hoped that Whyte's nuanced, compassionate understanding of angermight soften my friend's rigid armor.
My relative's response started like this: "I watched 5 minutes of Whyte and stopped. Not because it's useless but because it resonates so well and connects with so many thinking points that I had to put some down before resuming. ..."
My friend's response started like this: "I have read the "poem". This guy, Whyte, has trouble with language. For example, when is a poem, a poem? And when is anger, anger? He keeps ..." My friend made no mention of the interview - probably too angry to notice the link, or the mention of it in the subject heading of the email. Coincidentally, David Whyte is a well-known, highly-respected poet, with multiple published books, so the "trouble" may not be in Whyte's use of "language."
Whyte's interview skillfully addresses anger about aspects of life we cannot control, and much more: Interviewer: “… the intersection between powerlessness and anger. When we’re made to make contact with that sense of helplessness or powerlessness, our immediate response is rage, anger. Can you unpack that?”
David Whyte (DW): “Well you can immediately see its actual practical physical evolutionary necessity, in rage and physical defense in people you love. So the inability to actually be able to do something about something that doesn’tinvolve physical defense (invokes frustration & anger).What'sactually needed involves another kind of deeper cradling, or holding, which our physical bodies are unable to do. We have to be able to hold another person in our heart and our mind. And that heart energy is often what we feel lies below the horizon of our inner line of resistance. So opening the heart is always a very powerful path for a human being to take. Albert Camus, the great French writer & philosopher, had a beautiful invitation. It was just one simple line, ‘live to the point of tears.’ This is not an invitation to maudlin sentimentality. This is asking you to feel things, right to their Essence. If you just have an edge of dread about something, then feel that dread more, don’t resist it. Get to the center of it until it starts to change into something else. The Greeks had this beautiful word, which we don’t have in modern English, which is, ‘enantiodromia,’ and it means the ability of something, once it becomes its absolute essential self, to start changing into something completely different, and quite often its complete opposite. Which is why immovability always changes into incredible fluidity, once you’ve got through that. So to be able to feel things until they actually start to have a life of their own, and start to mature … This is a received understanding in psychology, that parts of us when they’re traumatized, stay stone-like inside you for good reason, and refuse to grow older, untilthat trauma has been resolved. The traumatized part doesn’t want to move on until it’s healed. And maybe it would be very destructive if it moved on prematurely. So finding the parts of you that are stuck – is a wonderful thing actually. It’s not a pejorative thing. And to feel the stuckness even more,toget right tothe heart of your stuckness, your inability to say it, and then you start saying it, it’s quite remarkable really.”
Interviewer: “It’s brutal though. I find that there’s something beautifulandbrutal about it.”
DW: “This is why in all real Warrior Traditions, there’s always been a parallel discipline of poetry. You look at Samurai, the Japanese tradition, Chinese tradition, Indian tradition, and in the West we have the first World War poets like Sassoon. Poetry is the way in for anyone at all, man or woman or anything in between. But for men, it’s a real doorway. We all instinctively understand what poetry represents. Even people who’ve hardly read a line of poetry in their life, will come away from a football game saying, ‘it was sheer poetry, that touchdown!’ We instinctively understand about the verve and vitality and mutability and movability and tidal forcesof the world, if you can capture these in speech (poetry). And if you can capture these in movement on a football field, why couldn’t you catch it in your own voice? So I would say, besides the practical activity of something that concerns all heterosexual young men, which is getting into real conversations with young women, I would recommend poetry rather than a Maserati.
It can be comforting
for a young man to know that under this inability to speak my emotions,
underneath this inability to feel what I feel, underneath this inability
to bring those two poles together, feelings, emotionsandarticulation,
there’s something reallyquite astonishingwaiting for me. The great
German speaking-poet Rilke said, ‘Stretch your well-disciplined strength
between two opposing poles, because inside human beings, is whereGod learns.’” David Whyte "Facing The Unknown And Finding Meaning"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or44UlIKQuESUPERB interviewimho - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
David Whyte - "Facing The Unknown And
Finding Meaning"
