“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot
Stillness…
mind keeps circling
stillness
until a thought comes along
centring
What was that about my dream last night?
clearing
Did he mean what I thought he did?
Ommmmmm
I’m sure I fed the dogs tonight
Ommmmmmm
breathing in and out
Ommmm
shoulder is itching
and so it goes..tho eventually if I let whatever wants to come up come up without fighting it…eventually I find myself stilling..the whole trick is to go with what comes…
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-size
Leopard Peace by G A Rosenberg
Slippery Lizard Mandala by G A Rosenberg
i just love the quote so much ..nice post.
Thank you and thanks for coming by 🙂
Very moving poem.
Warm wishes.
to you as well, thanks for coming by 🙂
ts eliot! a great quote – thank you!
In everyone is God. Everything else is but dream, an illusion.
When the mind is intent on discovering as one becomes aware at the conscious level, one also begins to discover the envy, the struggles, the desires, the motives, the anxieties that lie at the deeper levels of consciousness. When the mind is intent on discovering the whole process of itself, then every incident, every reaction becomes a means of discovery, of knowing oneself. That requires patient watchfulness -which is not the watchfulness of a mind that is constantly struggling, that is learning how to be watchful. Then we will see that the sleeping hours are as important as the waking hours, because life then is a total process. As long as we do not know ourselves, fear will continue and all the illusions that the self creates will flourish.
Self-knowledge, then, is not a process to be read about or speculated upon: It must be discovered by each one from moment to moment, so that the mind becomes extraordinarily alert. In that alertness there is a certain quiescence, a passive awareness in which there is no desire to be or not to be, and in which there is an astonishing sense of freedom. It may be only for a minute, for a second – that is enough. That freedom is not of memory; it is a living thing, but the mind, having tasted it, reduces it to a memory and then wants more of it. To be aware of this total process is possible only through self-knowledge, and self-knowledge comes into being from moment to moment as we watch our speech, our gestures, the way we talk, and the hidden motives that are suddenly revealed. Then only is it possible to be free from fear. As long as there is fear, there is no love. Fear darkens our being and that fear cannot be washed away by any prayer, by any ideal or activity. The cause of fear is the ‘me’, the ‘me’ which is so complex in its desires, wants, pursuits. The mind has to understand that whole process, and the understanding of it comes only when there is watchfulness without choice.
I like the slippery lizard Mandala.
So glad you do and thank you for coming by and commenting
I remember loving T.S. Eliot back in high school senior English.
Me as well…I was lucky enough to be allowed to tag along with the theatre program when we went to a performance of The Cocktail Party. It cast a strong impression .