on selfhood and being

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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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

Macmurray writes:

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

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

The direct experience of the Imaginal is a cornerstone in Jung’s work, he considered image the language of Soul and a deep voice or force within us to bring the unconscious more conscious and embodied.

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

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.

In Zen and The Birds of Appetite, a collection of essays on the relationship between Zen Buddhism and Christianity, Thomas Merton writes that “openness is not something to be acquired, but a radical gift that has been lost and must be recovered.” That’s what people want from pop stars and spiritual frameworks right now — to be shown how to feel... See more

To live with consciousness is to own all the parts but not be owned by any of them, to choose with clarity and composure which ones to act from. To love fully — oneself, or another — is to accept all the parts and cherish the totality.