Friday, May 10, 2013

power



“You have power over your mind - not outside events. 
Realize this, and you will find strength.” 

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations


10 comments:

  1. I want to care about the quote but i can not.

    and can you imagine, nature causes this to happen casually?!!! this.simply.happens. this terrible and perfect complexity that the mind can barely consider.

    yes, yes, yes to your photograph. this is, yes)))

    xo
    erin

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    1. :)

      I am interested, very interested, in what you say. Imagine the differences in our lives, our walks, and how one thing matters to one person, and not to another! (Or so it seems from what you say.)

      As someone who has come to see that my problems are in my head, this quote means a lot to me. How I perceive what I encounter makes all the difference. It's taking me a lifetime to learn to be at peace with many things, to not be oversensitive, or protect myself from certain pains in life. This is the sort of power over mind that I experience.

      And then I think about you, and the power of light in your life, and the great effort you make to embrace what is around you, and I want to know where we overlap. I know that we do, in such deep and loving ways. But how to put it into words??

      We are each reaching, in many directions, like these leaves. [Grateful for you!]

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    2. Another way of saying what is in this quote is "To change the world, start with the world in your head."

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  2. These are possibly the most helpful, important and true short sentences ever to have been written...

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  3. Ditto to the comment of Robert.

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  4. ah, but this is not why i could not consider the quote, not for any word or meaning inside the quote. in fact, i simply can not engage in the act of physically reading it. i am struck dumb by your photograph. it is a difficult thing to put words and photographs together. each are important and while they speak to one another, sometimes they cancel one another out. this photograph is...well, i have been unable (and unwilling) to go beyond it because it deserves us all to stop.

    but on i go. (i scroll back up to the top to read:)

    :) and now i smile. yes. yes, of course. and it is so easy, isn't it? and yet it is not. it.is.not. (and yet again, it is.)

    when i was a teen i remember hanging out in a kitchen of a young friend. her family was so different from mine. her mother said such a statement then, casually while opening the refrigerator door, and in that i was such soft tissue, unformed in these ways from my own family, it entered me then and stayed in me, waiting to grow. in this way we have such power over our realities, but really our only and greatest power (besides love) is based in acceptance, not in swinging perception.

    and yet it comes upon us from the inside and from the outside, biological shifts, biochemical sways, changes of light and/or environment and for one reason or another the ability to perceive in lightness gets torqued. i go through what i know is a brief period of darkness and i even understand why. i let it happen. i allow it. it is painful and that is all, it is painful, but i accept that i must go throw this pain and i know that i will pass out into the other realm again. there is something to be learned here.

    yesterday at work there was a small infant in a seat being carried about. i saw the shock of black hair as the parents sat it on the floor in the seat to pay for something at cash. the infant was crying inconsolably. it was three days old. as the cry entered me so these words came out of my mind, "i am so sad you were born into such pain. you did not ask for this. no one does." i continued on and exchanged a few words with a co-worker. i told her that if my tubes were not tied james and i would already be pregnant. this is sure and true. and we would be joyous and we would bring into this difficult world a child who did not ask to be born. my joy is every bit as real and true as my pain, but my pain is also every bit as true as my joy.

    what does all of this mean? i don't know but i think it is not my mind's work to prevail over my pain, but something different. i wake and soon i will go for a run to the woods, i think, and then get ready again for work. i am alive. there is love. there are miracles. there are unspeakable violences. man is so busy f'ing things up and yet in glowing moments being painfully redemptive. (both of these gestures are painful.)

    and yes, ruth, we meet in beautiful places.

    xo
    erin

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    Replies
    1. Ahhh. I see. :)

      These stories are life, your life. Yes to all you have said. I think of who we are as children, babies at the start, then children growing in consciousness. Society shapes us, then we become conscious sometime that we want it not to (if we are lucky). But we can't help who we have become, our story is there behind us, inside us, and we accept it (if we are lucky). It is learning to let go of all the pain and all the joy that matters, I think. If we hold onto joy, we will be disappointed. If we hold onto pain, we will close in our hearts. Every encounter comes, we touch it, and it passes. I am learning to love and understand this.

      Thank you for these gifts, and your love. Love to you.

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