Oriah Mountain Dreamer Quotes

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Do not touch me and keep your soul out of your fingertips... Die into me or don't come to me at all.

And I found that I can do it if I choose to - I can stay awake and let the sorrows of the world tear me apart and then allow the joys to put me back together different from before but whole once again.

Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go.

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

I want to know if you've touched the center of your own sorrow, if you've been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

Every act I live while I am fully awake can not help but be both prayer and lovemaking.

Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

When we surrender when we do not fight with life when it calls upon us we are lifted and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

THE INVITATION by Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "yes!" It doesn't interest me who you know, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with your and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

I can make whatever choices I want in my life, and I will live with the consequences of those choices. But if I want to live a life close to my deepest desires, I have to risk knowing who I really am and have always been. Knowing this, then I can choose.

What if the task is simply to unfold, to become who you already are in your essential nature—gentle, compassionate, and capable of living fully and passionately present? How would this affect how you feel when you wake up in the morning?

You cannot trade the courage needed to live every moment for immunity from life's sorrows. We may say we know this but ours is the culture of the deal-making mind. From infancy, we have breathed in the belief that there is always a deal to be made, a bargain to be struck. Eventually, we believe, if we do the right thing, if we are good enough, clever enough, sincere enough, work hard enough, we will be rewarded. There are different verses to this song - if you are sorry for your sins and try hard not to sin again, you will go to heaven; if you do your daily practise, clean up your diet, heal your inner child, ferret out all your emotional issue's, focus your intent, come into alignment with the world around you, hone your affirmations, find and listen to the voice of your higher self, you will be rewarded with vibrant health, abundant prosperity, loving relations and inner peace - in other words, heaven! We know that what we do and how we think affects the quality of our lives. Many things are clearly up to us. And many others are not. I can see no evidence that the universe works on a simple meritocratic system of cause and effect. Bad things happen to good people - all the time. Monetary success does come to some who do not do what they love, as well as to some who are unwilling or unable to see the harm they do to the planet or others. Illness and misfortune come to some who follow their soul's desire. Many great artist's have been poor. Great teachers have lived in obscurity. My invitation, my challenge to you here, is to journey into a deeper intimacy with the world and your life without any promise of safety or guarantee of reward beyond the intrinsic value of full participation.

Where I had felt a victim, I had become a determiner by recognizing I had choices. When considering a purchase, I stopped saying, "I can't afford it," and started saying, "That's not where I want to spend that amount of money.

Somewhere along the road many of us have picked up the belief that to change we must suffer. Some things are earned with work. But work is not suffering. Work is just work.

A wound not fully felt consumes from the inside. We must run very hard if we want to stay one step ahead of this pain. Exhausted, we try to bury it with drugs, alcohol, overwork, television, physical activity. We are a very creative species—we can use just about anything to anesthetize ourselves. But in doing so, we also remove ourselves from feeling the joy.

I want to live with deep intimacy every day of my life. I am guided, sometimes driven, by an ache to take the necessary risks that will let me live close to what is within and around me. And I am sometimes afraid that it will be too much, that I will not have, or be connected to, whatever it takes to be with it all, to bear the exquisite beauty and bone-wrenching sorrow of being fully alive.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul’s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

The world offers itself to me in a thousand ways, and I ache with an awareness of how infrequently I am able to receive more than a small fraction of what is offered, of how often I reject what is because I feel it is not good enough.

If I want to live my ability to be fully present and compassionate, my ability to be with it all—the joy and the sorrow—I must find the ways, the people, the places, the practices that support me in being all I truly am. I must cultivate ways of being that let me feel the warmth of encouragement against my heart when it is weary.

I have faith in longing, wherever it finds me. And often it finds me at unpredictable and inconvenient moments. It's like a door that suddenly opens. I am never prepared. There is no preparation for the way it takes me and leaves me, for the fierceness of the ache. It is the voice of the parts of myself I have left behind in the deals I have tried to make with life, trying to trade pieces of my dreams for promises of safety.

Ne zanima me od čega živiš. Želim znati za čim žudiš i imaš li hrabrosti snivati o ispunjenju želja srca svoga. Ne zanima me koliko ti je godina. Želim znati jesi li spreman riskirati ispasti budala zbog ljubavi, zbog svojih snova, zbog ove pustolovine koju nazivamo životom. Ne zanima me koji planeti djeluju na tvoj mjesec. Želim znati jesi li stigao do središta vlastite boli, jesu li te životna razočarenja otvorila ili si se skrutio i zatvorio od straha da ponovo ne osjetiš bol. Želim znati jesi li u stanju trpjeti bol, moju ili svoju, a da je pritom ne moraš skrivati ili ublažavati ili izbrisati. Želim znati znaš li se radovati, zbog mene ili sebe, i možeš li divlje zaplesati i pustiti da te ekstaza preplavi sve do vrškova prstiju, a da nas pritom ne upozoravaš neka budemo pažljivi, realni, svjesni ljudskih ograničenja. Ne zanima me je li priča koju mi pričaš istinita. Želim znati jesi li spreman razočarati drugoga kako bi bio iskren prema sebi; jesi li spreman podnijeti optužbe za izdaju, a pritom ne iznevjeriti sebe: možeš li biti izdajica i samim time vrijedan povjerenja. Želim znati jesi li u stanju vidjeti ljepotu, pa i ako nije lijepa, svakoga dana, i možeš li svoj život nadahnjivati Njezinom prisutnošću. Želim znati jesi li dovoljno snažan živjeti s neuspjehom, svojim i mojim, i da svejedno stojiš na rubu jezera i ushićeno vičeš prema srebrnom punom mjesecu: "To!" Ne zanima me gdje živiš i koliko novaca imaš. Želim znati jesi li sposoban ustati, nakon noći ispunjene tugom i očajem, umoran i do kostiju izubijan, i učiniti sve što je potrebno kako bi nahranio svoju djecu. Ne zanima me koga poznaješ i kako si dospio ovamo. Želim znati hoćeš li i dalje sa mnom stajati u žaru vatre i ne posustajati. Ne zanima me gdje si ili što ili s kim si studirao. Želim znati što te u tebi samom gura naprijed u trenucima kad se sve ostalo ruši. Želim znati možeš li biti sam sa sobom i voliš li uistinu osobu koja jesi u trenucima praznine.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be…someday. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next… Here is the question: Are you willing to be completely at peace with how things are right now in your life? Are you willing for just one moment to let go of all your dissatisfaction, of all your suffering about how things are? Are you willing to let go of all the worry and tension in your body and simply breathe? I think of happiness as the delight I have when I am aware of being completely at peace and fully present with myself and the world just the way it is in this moment. It is a lack of suffering plus a self-reflectivity that makes the peace I am feeling a conscious state of awareness. I am not simply at peace, I am aware that I am at peace—happy. So, are you willing to be happy?

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

I want to know what your life is dedicated to. What do you love more than your own happiness or your own pain?

-It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing The Invitation by Oriah

Quiero saber si puedes decepcionar a otra persona para ser fiel a ti mismo; si podrías soportar la acusación de traición y no traicionar a tu propia alma...

Once in a while, we are given moments of real grace.

If we have based parts of our lives on lies, or truths that no longer hold, however well intentioned or unconscious, the changes that deep intimacy evokes can look very dangerous.

Every day, sometimes when I am doing my meditation practice and sometimes when I am working at my computer or sitting in my car waiting for a traffic light to change or sharing a meal with friends, I turn my attention to my breath and visualize myself on some inner plane of the imagination turning my face toward that which is larger than myself—the Great Mystery. I only have to turn my face toward it. I become aware of the temperature of the air touching my cheek. I imagine the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen and carbon dioxide colliding in exuberant activity, caressing the skin of my face. And I become aware that these molecules are alive with a vibration, a presence that is there also in the cells of my skin and in the molecules of those cells and in the atoms and subatomic particles of those. Slowly I turn my attention to an inner view of the landscape around and within me, and I become aware of this presence, like the hum of a great song constantly reverberating throughout and emanating from my body, the chair supporting me, the ground beneath me, and the people around me. And I know this presence as a whole that is larger than the sum of the parts and yet inseparable from the parts—including me—which are in a state of constant change. And I experience this presence, this bloodred thread of being that runs through the dark tapestry of daily life, as that which gives me the ability to truly know each other as another myself—as compassion.

But often we have inherited someone else’s view of who we are or who we should be. And sometimes, although we may ourselves hold these values, their dominance in our lives in a particular form does not allow us to live out other aspects of what we love and who we are. The deepest desires of the soul are rarely concerned with the practical details of mortgage payments, pension plans, prior commitments, past honours, or others’ opinions.

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Recently, two young boys in the United States gunned down classmates at an elementary school. Less than twenty-four hours after the incident, leaders in the community were calling on residents to “begin the healing process” and “move on with life.” This is how afraid we are of the pain. Children had killed children. It was hard even to take it in. The loss was hardly felt, the pain barely acknowledged, and these men and women wanted to move around the grief and sorrow directly to the healing. It won’t work. There is no way out but through. A wound not fully felt consumes from the inside.

Most spiritual practises have been developed - and, in the past, were sustained - in community. But most of us do not live in community. Although my students and friends and I share many of these practices, we are only occasionally in proximity to one another. Doing a daily practice alone is difficult. It requires not so much a heroic discipline as a deep commitment to life, a willingness to dedicate our lives to something larger than ourselves.

The personal stories I share here are not important in themselves. We all have a thousand stories, and my life has had no more or fewer than others. But stories, carefully chosen and shaped by both the teller and the listener, can open gateways into our interior landscape, can reveal the meaning in our lives and enfolded in the details and unfolded in the telling and conscious contemplation. I promise that I will not pretend to know something I have not experienced. Nor will I try to increase our comfort with each other by feigning confusion where I have knowledge.

I am not interested in spirituality that cannot encompass my humanness. I find little comfort or guidance in traditional dogma or unqualified New Age optimism. Because beneath the small daily trials are harder paradoxes, things the mind cannot reconcile but the heart must hold if we are to live fully: profound tiredness and radical hope; shattered beliefs and relentless faith; the seemingly contradictory longings for personal freedom and a deep commitment to others, for solitude and intimacy, for the ability to simply be with the world and the need to change what we know is not right about how we are living.

I’m all for these moments of impossible joy – whether they come in the course of an ordinary day or in an extraordinary ecstatic experience. There are some who would have us believe that we have to choose - warning us away from the ecstatic rush of feeling that comes in moments of real magic, admonishing us to focus only on the joy found in ordinary moments. Their warning is understandable. Moments of mystical union can tempt us to spend our life searching for those peak experiences and leave us unable or unwilling to receive the same joy where it is offered in simpler experiences, and the taste of a ripe mango eaten slowly or a moment of quiet stillness. But I am a greedy woman. I want it all. I want a small daily joy. I want to celebrate the birthdays, the graduations, and the days well lived, and I want to experience the ecstasy, the vision of wholeness that dissolves my boundaries and let me taste the God that lives within and around me. I am a blessed woman, for I have had both.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ate for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you still risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

It was as if I had stepped outside something of which I had always, unconsciously, been a part of and was seeing it for the first time – this stream of life, this cycle of ordinary living that goes on within and around us all the time. I knew that in a moment, when I went through my parents’ door, I would become a part of it again and lose this acute sense of being a witness, alone and completely with myself and my own thoughts. I knew I would be swept up in the hugs and exclamations of surprise and greetings, the sharing of news and the sounds and smells of bacon and eggs and coffee – the irresistible tide of living in the world. But for this moment, I was with the world, watching it but somehow not in it. I was alone with myself. I paused on the patio outside the back door, prolonging the moment. I was alone, lost to everyone and yet not lost but there, on the doorstep. I knew that home was as much in the slow walk alone through the quiet streets as it was in the arrival at the store. Home was in the taste of being with myself, walking next to what was familiar, toward what was cherished. Then I open the door, cross the threshold with conscious deliberation, and called out, “Isn’t anyone in here up yet?” As my mother came into the kitchen, I glanced back outside, and in my mind’s eye I saw that other young woman standing there - backpack on, watching us and grinning at me. I knew I would get back to her. I had met myself walking home in the dawn, and I liked the company I kept in those empty moments. Tell me, have you met yourself? Have you been able to step outside the business of life for just one moment and look in from the outside, feeling yourself whole and separate and yet with the world?

Living with hope is living with anticipation of what can be. Living with faith is relaxing into what is that cannot be changed by our will, and knowing that life in its fullness is good. And sometimes, neither hope nor faith can find me and there’s nothing to hang onto. When this happens, the late night hours are the worst. I watch TV, work at my computer, or clean the house, wanting to exhaust myself so that when I stop I will fall into a dreamless sleep, bypassing the ache that leaves me staring blindly into darkness. In these moments, all that buoyed me up in more hopeful times seems colorless, flat, not worth the trouble. Food loses its taste. I take no pleasure in my home, which suddenly seems too familiar – just so much stuff arbitrarily collected and waiting for the garbage heap. My relationships with friends and family are suspect, and I long to disappear. The ideas that normally stimulate and excite me seem meaningless, remote from anything that matters – my writing, petty self-indulgence. My dreams are full of ambivalence: reluctant lovers, confused decisions, and endless tasks that leave me exhausted. At these times I have no faith, no knowledge that this too will pass, that who we are and how we live matters at all.

How would you know?” I snapped at him, and we both looked to the midwife. When she assured us that everything was fine and reminded us both to breathe, we listened. She knew. She had been there many times before. It was her knowledge, born of experience, that we trusted.

And sometimes, when I find that sweet solitude, I hear warnings about isolation. Some summers, when I was alone in the wilderness, content in my tiny trailer at the edge of the lake, I would not speak to or see another human being for weeks. There, I could slow it all down. I felt the power of life being lived around and within me. I became like a sun warmed rock in the centre of the stream. The water parted around me, eddied in spirals, and flowed on, gently wearing away all my sharp edges. Once, a man who is my lover and friend, I wanted to be more, came to see me there unexpectedly. I had just split an arm load of wood and was carrying it into the trailer as he appeared. He stayed only briefly. Later he told me, “When I came down the driveway and saw you standing there with the wood in your arms, your face glowing from the wind off the lake and the effort of chopping wood, I thought, ‘She belongs to this place. She’s at home here, alone in the bush. She’s not missing me, doesn’t need me here.’ I felt like an intruder.” His observation surprised me. I heard the voice of my mother warning, “You are too independent. Don’t get too good at being alone or you’ll end up by yourself. Everyone needs someone.” Her fear finds a small corner in me, but I resist the idea that I will be with another only to avoid being alone. Surely, the ability to truly be with myself does not exclude the willingness to fully be with another. I do not seek isolation. The longing for another remains even when I am able to be with myself, although it is smaller, a whisper that tugs at me gently. Even there, in my place of solitude in the wilderness, I found myself at moments wanting to turn to someone and share my awe at the brilliance of the full moon on the still water, the delight of watching otters playing at the edge of the stream. But the loneliness was bittersweet and bearable because I knew myself and the world in a way I sometimes do not when I let my life become too full of doing things that do not really need to be done.

It was the same attendant, and somehow, in the busiest parking lot in the city of over 2 million, he had recognized me and remembered my story. Our brief exchange affected me deeply. As I drove away, I felt an impossible sense of hope. This man’s willingness to extend himself to a stranger sustained me in a way I could not have anticipated. My usual defences of self-sufficiency, my wariness about receiving from someone I did not know, fearing something might be wanted in return, had been dissolved by weeks of stress and need. The truth is, I only have to receive and give what I am able. There is no risk. The intimacy, the interconnectedness of all life that is the love to which we all belong, can only be given and received. It cannot be taken. And when it is given and received, we are sustained.

And sometimes, I allow myself to imagine that each moment in which we love well by simply being all of who we are and being fully present allows us to give back something essential to the Sacred Mystery that sustains all life.

What is difficult to acknowledge is that I saw this mistake coming and second-guessed myself, went against my own intuitive judgment. It wasn’t that I had not seen the truth. I had. But I failed to find the courage to act on it. Of course, my intuition can be wrong. But making a wrong decision, acting on an intuition that is inaccurate, is a real mistake, one I can live with more easily than the mistake of failing to act on what, to the best of my ability, I know.

The universe is not twice given. The split between Spirit and matter is in our thinking, our way of speaking of it. I touch God when I caress the face of a lover, hold the Beloved when my son’s hand is in mine, breathe in Spirit when I catch the scent of the sun on the breeze. The world offers itself to me in a thousand ways, and I ache with an awareness of how infrequently I am able to receive more than a small fraction of what is offered, of how often I reject what is because I feel it is not good enough.

If we in the West, where so much of the world’s political and economic power reside, are going to find a way to make the changes that are necessary to ensure that our children’s children can live on this planet, we have to learn how to participate fully in our own lives, how to remember and experience the interconnectedness of all spirit and matter. I seek wisdom in a life that combines contemplation and action.

We are afraid that our failures will mean that we will not be loved. But we don’t earn love. How we treat others does, of course, affect our relationships. I do not want to be near the man who beat me. I do not trust a friend who has repeatedly lied to me. But we are loved for who we are, not for what we do. Love is larger than what we do. Love moves through us, if we let it. One day I realized that I could love someone and still decide to separate myself from them if our behaviour together was repeatedly damaging to each other. I did not have to stop loving him. And if I love another for who she is, not because she earns my love with her actions, and the same must also be true for those who love me. This isn’t a license to treat those who love us badly, but it helps us step off the endless treadmill of doing for others, trying to be what we think they want us to be, in an attempt to earn their love. It doesn’t work: we can’t earn love.

The truth is that some days I feel I am ready for freedom and other days I am so tired I don’t want the responsibility it brings into my life. I want a rest from choosing, from trying to increase my ability to choose wisely. And then, in a moment of grace, I am given a certainty: if I never did one more meditation, ceremony, workshop, therapy session, course, or cleansing diet, never attended one more meeting or participated in one more community cause, never wrote another line... it would be okay. It would truly be okay. For a moment, as I fully feel this revelation, I am free to move toward what I love.

I am not interested in a spirituality that cannot encompass my humanness.

When I told my first husband I was leaving, he didn’t believe me. He could hardly be blamed. Neither one of us had acknowledged that his violence was a betrayal of our marriage. He wanted to believe that things could stay the same, and we had made a silent agreement to pretend they were. He looked at me in all sincerity and said, “You can’t leave. We’re married. You’re my wife.” And I said, “Watch me.” Leaving, breaking my promise, betraying his trust that no matter what happened I would not leave – this cost me. Something inside of me was damaged, as I broke faith with our believe in unconditional commitment. Rationally, I can argue as well as anyone that has violence nullified our agreement, and that I would never advocate that a man or a woman stay where their body or soul is at risk. I have never been sorry I left. But none of this changes the fact that when we break an agreement we are deeply affected, wounding ourselves even as we wound another./ Years ago, counselling a woman whose husband had begun a relationship with another woman during the marriage and consequently left, I heard, beneath her understandable rage, the story of a man unable to face his own need to change past agreements. When he finally left, he told her that for two years before the breakup, each night returning home from work, he had driven around the block for ten to fifteen minutes before he had been able to pull into their driveway. In this same period, much to her surprise, he had insisted on cooking all the dinners when he arrived home. It was only as he left that he told her he had done this because he literally couldn’t swallow the food that she prepared. If we cannot live with our need to renew agreements we have made, we break the only promise we really owe each other - to be truthful. This means finding both the courage to be truthful with ourselves and a way to live with how our actions affect others, even when there is no ill intent and no one to blame.

My parents did their best to feed their children’s bodies, minds, and hearts, every day, whether they felt like it or not. Now that I have had children, I am in awe of how consistently they did this at such a young age, without complaint. They made a commitment to each other and to my brother and myself, and they kept it. I do not know what this cost them. I may never know. But having had children of my own, I know how hard it is some days to do what has to be done. Many of my parents’ generation were raised with a belief that was both curse and blessing: commitments were to be fulfilled, duties carried out. There was no choice. When we are convinced there is no choice, we waste less energy on wondering what to do and railing against that which needs to be done. This is the blessing we have when the rules are clear, the duties delineated. But there is another side to the ease we feel when our duty is laid out for us. If the strict parameters of what is expected do not fit us, we must shape ourselves to meet them, regardless of the costs. My mother, if she did not by nature fit the role of full-time homemaker, successfully managed the Herculean task of bending to meet it, without losing her enthusiasm for life, her ability to experience joy. Other women and their children were not so fortunate. Behind closed doors, within spotless rooms, many of my friends mothers drowned the pain of not living who they were with alcohol and prescription drugs, and they sometimes descended into illness and suicide. Many of the women of my generation are torn apart daily by the choices available to us, choices I am nevertheless grateful to have. When I went to work, I felt worried and guilty about leaving my children at daycare. When I stayed home I thought I would go out of my mind with the mental boredom, the struggle to live without enough money, and the worry that I would never be able to go back into the workplace and make a living. I had inherited my parents’ values in a world with so many more choices and demands, plus my own expectations that I could, and should, develop my own interests and talents. So, I tried to do it all - to keep a house and care for my children according to the standards required of a full-time homemaker, to attend classes to develop my skills, and to work to provide money and financial security. And I got sick – very, very sick. One of the gifts of lying on the floor too ill to get up with two young children to look after is the ease and clarity with which you know what really does have to be done. No, when I work with men and women who are worn out with too much work and worry, you tell me all the things they have to do, I tell them, “You know, very little actually has to be done.” I found out when I was ill that cookies do not have to be baked, floors do not have to be spotless, PTA meetings do not have to be attended, the dish drainer does not have to be emptied, meals do not have to be exotic and innovative. Too ill to do anything that did not have to be done, I did the impossible: I lowered my standards.

There is no place for this story in our culture, no easy and acceptable way to acknowledge the man who loves and cares for his disabled wife while loving and living with another woman with whom he wants the full and committed relationship of husband and wife. There is no point in saying that there should be a place for this story – that in another time or culture there might have been. The individuals involved, and their friends and families, our part of this culture, here and now. Most important, there is no place for the story within Roger, and trying to live it is tearing him apart; it may well result in a breakdown from which he cannot recover.

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

But if we are open to sorrow as well as joy, we can expand our ability to hold ourselves and the world in our own hearts.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for – and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool – for love – for your dreams – for the adventure of being alive.