The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

The Real Work

 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

 

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

 

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

If you want to surrender to creativity, surrender to creation.

Art is what we call . . . the thing an artist does. It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the  . . . eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist.

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

You simply cannot learn and know at the same time, and this is a frustration all artists must bear.

But just when the worst bears down you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon, and outside at work a bird says, "Hi!" Slowly the sun creeps along the floor; it is coming your way. It touches your shoe. 

There may be intention but it’s easily abandoned when what started as a ladder becomes a torch or what started as a swimming pool becomes a camp fire and what started out as a lifeguard becomes a caveman.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don't claim them. Feel the artistry
Moving through.
And be silent.

Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road
for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
perhaps you have been on it since you were
born and did not know.

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.

Find meaning or don't find meaning but "steal" some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self.

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else. - Isaac Asimov

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always
known in thought . . .
Say not, “ I have found the truth,” but rather,
“I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.”
Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.

He who does not really feel himself lost, is lost without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.

We exist as phantom, monster, miracle, each a theme park all one's own, and mainly unknowable in the end, not just to others, but to ourselves as well.

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Either you will go
through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your positions
to die bravely

But much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself makes no promises
It is only a door.