on selfhood and being

A dragonfly molting a final time as it breaches the pondwater portal between nymph and adult so that its iridescent wings can at last unfurl. A hatchling pipping inside an egg, using its beak to fracture the only world it has ever known. A snake growing a new skin under the translucent specter of the old, scraping against stone to create a tear so... See more

For the awakened individual, however, life begins now , at any and every moment; it begins at the moment when he realizes that he is part of a great whole, and in the realization becomes himself whole. In the knowledge of limits and relationships he discovers the eternal self, thenceforth to move with obedience and discipline in full freedom.

Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance,... See more

The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis . One can dance to sorrow or... See more

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”

the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this — that the universe didn’t owe us mountains and music, that we didn’t have to be born, and yet here we are with our physics and our poems and our ever-breaking, ever-broadening hearts.

Macmurray writes:

We ourselves are events in history. Things do not merely happen to us, they happen through us.

Observing that what we most long for is our “living unison,” he writes:

The vast marvel is to be alive... The supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and

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It is not easy living with those constant visitations from conflicting gods, each with a different dictate, impelling you toward a different path. What makes it all bearable is seeing this constellation of parts as a part of something greater still — a vast and coherent universe governed by immutable laws and immense forces that vanquish the... See more