Soul Matters

18/07/2023

Leonard Cohen said his teacher once told him that the older you get the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. This is because, as we go through life, we tend to over-identify with being the hero of our stories.

This hero isn’t exactly having fun: he’s getting kicked around, humiliated, and disgraced. But if we can let go of identifying with him, we can find our rightful place in the universe, and a love more satisfying than any we’ve ever known.

People constantly throw around the term 'Hero’s Journey' without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. But that’s not the real hero’s journey.

In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.

If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning.

But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. This is where your transcendent life begins.

So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault.

Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall.
Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you.

- Paul Weinfield

05/05/2023

Check out my blog post

As I have been launching my new website I have been going through old blogs and decidingb which of those blogs are still relevant and timely and worth brining over to my new site. This one from February 2, 2009, is one of my favorites: In a workshop in Portland I attended the late Irish poet John O'...

05/05/2023

Here is a new blog post. Check it out.

17/04/2023

Check out my blog post

What does it mean to be a mindfulness-based therapist, to put mindfulness at the center of my practice. Mindfulness is often defined as paying attention non-judgmentally, moment-to-moment to the unfolding life process. It is a way of being more alive and embodied and awake; a way of not being on aut...

10/04/2023

"If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time."

- Thich Nhat Hanh -
No Mud, No Lotus

21/03/2023

“Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.” Rumi

12/03/2023

"You look around and you see a world that is impenetrable, that cannot be made sense of. You either raise your fist or you say 'Hallelujah.' I try to do both."

Leonard Cohen

12/03/2023

Lie Down

By Nancy Paddock

Lie down with your belly to the ground,
like an old dog in the sun. Smell
the greenness of the cloverleaf, feel the damp
earth through your clothes, let an ant
wander the uncharted territory
of your skin. Lie down
with your belly to the ground. Melt into
the earth’s contours like a harmless snake.
All else is mere bravado.
Let your mind resolve itself
in a tangle of grass.
Lie down with your belly
to the ground, flat out, on ground level.
Prostrate yourself before the soil
you will someday enter.
Stop doing.
Stop judging, fearing, trying.
This is not dying, but the way to live
in a world of change and gravity.
Let go. Let your burdens drop.
Let your grief-charge bleed off
into the ground.
Lie down with your belly to the ground
and then rise up
with the earth still in you.

04/03/2023

If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.

- Leonard Cohen

19/02/2023

The difference between a good life and a bad life is how well you walk through the fire.

~ Carl Jung

06/02/2023

The difference between fear and awe is a matter of our eyes adjusting.

Terry Tempest Wiiliams

03/02/2023

If you don't find joy in the snow, you have less joy in your life, And just as much snow.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

24/01/2023

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.” ― Mary Oliver

09/01/2023

Love this!!

Thank you Emily McDowell 💜

06/01/2023

African Proverb:

When death finds you, make sure it finds you alive.

02/01/2023

On the stroke of midnight tonight, you can resolve to be better, if you like…
to be fitter,
to eat cleaner,
to work harder.

On the stroke of midnight tonight,
you can resolve to become a whole new you,
if you so choose.

Or, you can take a moment to acknowledge, all you already are.
Because it’s a lot.
You’re a lot.

And you deserve to be commended.

On the stroke of midnight tonight, perhaps you could congratulate yourself, for coping.
For breaking, again,
and for rebuilding, again.

For catching the stones life has thrown at you,
and using them to build your castle that little bit stronger.

You have endured, my friend.

And I don’t see the need to resolve to become a whole new you,
when you are already so very much indeed.

Happy new year.

You made it.

Now let us face another 365 day-turn, arms wide,
accepting, embracing and ‘seeing’ each other,
for all we are..💝

Donna Ashworth

31/12/2022

"You are the Big Bang--the original force of the universe manifesting as whoever you are in the moment.”

—Alan Watts

29/12/2022

Whether we consider ourselves artists or not, the deeper we go into the creative process, the more attuned we become, and the more we join with everything around us. Whether your writing is published or not, your music is recorded or not, your art is in a gallery or not, or your garden is given a prize or not—inhabiting a personal life of expression is its own reward, by which we strengthen our connections and find our way.

Mark Nepo

27/12/2022

26/12/2022

As 2022 comes to a close…

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver

24/12/2022

Creative rest is not you creating something; it’s letting what’s already been created, whether it’s nature or art, create something inside of you.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith

24/12/2022

Rest is a sacred way to rejuvenate during the holidays. Allow yourself time to rest.

24/12/2022

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

—Hans Hofmann

22/12/2022

"Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement…get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed."

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

17/12/2022

It is braver to be Clark Kent than it is to be superman.

--Glennon Doyle.

16/12/2022

Leonard Cohen said his teacher once told him that, the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. This is because, as we go through life, we tend to over-identify with being the hero of our stories.

This hero isn’t exactly having fun: he’s getting kicked around, humiliated, and disgraced. But if we can let go of identifying with him, we can find our rightful place in the universe, and a love more satisfying than any we’ve ever known.

People constantly throw around the term “Hero’s Journey” without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. But that’s not the real hero’s journey.

In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.

If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning. But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. This is where your transcendent life begins.

So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall. Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you.

~ Paul Weinfield

16/12/2022

Every storm runs out of rain.
—Maya Angelou

14/12/2022

The world and the gods are dead or alive according to the conditions of our souls.

—James Hillman

04/12/2022

Boredom is the hatch bird of the imagination. —Walter Benjamin

24/11/2022

The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
― Brother David Steindl-Rast