“You need something to which you can give your full powers. The swan doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, my moving faster, or by trying to organise himself better. How does it by moving towards the elemental water where he belongs. You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters and that may be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.
“It takes courage. The word courage comes from the old French word coeur ‘heart’. You must do something heartfelt and you must do it soon. Let go of all of this effort, and let yourself down awkwardly into the waters of the work you want for yourself. Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. You are beginning, ever so slowly, to rot on the vine.”
~ Benedictine Monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast
“Let the Beauty we love, be what we do”
~ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
From: Standing At the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet by Joan Halifax
Roshi Joan Halifax PhD is a Buddhist teacher, Zen Monk and Anthropologist who explores the edges of human experience and writes incredibly compelling books about the intersection of spirituality, psychology and human consciousness.
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