Like a plant

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more @gardenstudiogram | click to enlarge

As I thought more about this, it became clear why this deep transformation we seek remains beyond our reach despite our best efforts. We wait for it to come from outside of us. We want others to give it to us. Unfortunately, real self-transformation defies teaching. It makes all teachers ultimately irrelevant. For its nature is to be grown, like a plant. It wants to arise spontaneously. Only then is it real.

Amit Pagedar
Finding Awareness:
The Journey of Self-discovery

What a wide firmament of experiences, images and words live in the depths of us! I’d want to suggest to Amit Pagedar that teachers contribute to our inner lives and are not therefore ‘ultimately irrelevant,’ whilst understanding the thesis that self-development absolutely arises from and is processed within – and deeply appreciating the ‘like a plant’ imagery.

Almost every outward encounter I have invites me to contemplate the rooted plant that is perpetually growing within me – fed and watered by everything I’ve ever known – by ‘both sides now.’ And the silence heard in such watchfulness counters – or balances – external cacophany and generates hope, for me, for humankind, and for the world.

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A cloud of interests

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There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart

as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters

that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.

Mary Oliver
From ‘Patience’
New and Selected Poems
Volume Two

Happy September! I’m having a quiet evening and feeling peaceful and mellow.

I’ve been thinking, too, about my automatically generated ‘tag cloud’ here, and of how it gives a pretty good account of some of my chief interests … inner life, contemplation, Edinburgh, poetry …

Autumn and winter will be warmed by an array of interests and occupations like these.

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I will leave the light on

Photo by ROHAN KULKARNI on Unsplash

I will leave the light on

Tom Walker

I think this is a wonderfully striking photo. It immediately reminded me of Tom Walker’s image of a house on a hill ‘guiding like a lighthouse’

The light left on here is probably accidental – but a happy one in terms of imagery. Which car are you drawn to? Which appears to have some life about it? Which might you expect to be warm inside?

Can we leave our personal light on? On purpose?

If

Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Pexels.com

If you were able to find what your precious heart most loves and reaches out to; your boundless soul most aspires to and takes delight in; your extra-ordinary mind most often returns to and celebrates; and your beautiful body most yearns for – glowing with health and joy and connected profoundly: where (and maybe with whom – known or imagined) would you be?

Observed

photo at pexels

I am glad to have been described
as ‘always enthusiastic’
by an energetic nine year
old who observes and then reflects
with her keen and critical care –
perhaps she has noticed that I
enthusiastically find
life-enhancing gifts in cupboards
drawers and nooks and crannies and
answers and more questions to my
frequent asking ‘why?’ – and in the
wondering I’m encouraged to
journey into heart and mind where
reminded of countless graces
I touch core spirit and soul in
all of us – infinite and kind