Archive for Austin Domain Properties
Chapter 4 | The Sorrow | The Invitation | Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Posted by: | CommentsChapter 4 | The Sorrow from The Invitation
If we are strong enough to be weak enough, we are given a wound that never heals. It is the gift that keeps the heart open…
Knowing how to do this (getting my heart broken over and over again), finding the courage to take another breath and not close my heart to myself or the world where there is pain, is what I seek to learn – how to love well…
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. Life becomes less, and if we are even slightly numb, it is hard for us to find the wisdom we need in our lives and in our world…
I cannot save myself, nor those I love, from the sorrow that is part of life. Knowing this, it is tempting to protect myself from pain by simply closing a little to life, especially in the areas where I have been hurt, in the ares that matter most…
And the moment it (knowledge) is revealed, we become aware of a need from something else: for the wisdom to live with what we do not know, what we cannot control, what is painful — and still choose life…
“Do you choose to rise above your sorrow?”
When we learn to be with our pain, we retrieve the parts of ourselves we have attempted to leave behind, and we are able once again to love those parts of ourselves. We find our wholeness and leave behind the impossible ideal of perfection that keeps us from the wisdom we need to live fully and compassionately with our humanness and the world…
Chapter 4 | The Sorrow
Chapter 2 “The Longing”
Posted by: | CommentsChapter 2 “The Longing” from The Invitation
I HAVE FAITH IN LONGING, wherever it finds me…
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…
It is not the being, no even the doing that exhausts. It is the trying: trying to be present, to be awake, to hold the whole world, to be better, more self-aware, more conscious. My hopes for us are real: I want to help create a world where the very idea of toxic waste would raise such a cry of anguish from the people as to make it unthinkable: where we would move, pulled by the heart, to care for the poor, the ill, the dying and despairing without debating where they are deserving, without fear of contamination, seeing ourselves in each person…
I want to quit running from my own tiredness. I want to be willing and able to move only as fast as I am capable of moving while still remaining connected of the impulse to move from deep withing, stopping when I have lost that slender thread of desire and having the courage and faith to wait, in stillness, until I find it again…
“What are you longing for?”
This is what I ache for: intimacy with myself, others, and the world, intimacy that touches the sacred in all that is life. This ache, this longing is the thread that guides me back through the labyrinth of compromises I have made, back to my soul’s desires. And sometimes I am afraid of my desires – afraid of that they will ask of me, what vision of myself or the world they will offer that may demand a sacrifice of my carefully cultivated way of seeing. If we are never consumed by the transforming fire of our desires, we risk falling in love with the sweet ache of longing, the daydream of “what if…” or “some day…”
Chapter 2 “The Longing” from The Invitation
Original content posted at http://austinrealestateandloans.wordpress.com
Chapter 3 | The Fear | The Invitation | Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Posted by: | CommentsChapter 3 | The Fear from The Invitation
All my usual cautions about how fast and how far to open my heart and my life to any man evaporated in the heart of desire that reached for him, both hands open, whispering, “Live.” I held nothing back. I risked it all. I let myself love and be loved, deeply…
I had shown the depth of my hunger. I was revealed to the world as a woman of deep, untidy passions that could override my usual ability to be an astute judge of character and to make carefully thought-out decisions. I was the fool. And I would do it all again. I would not trade one moment of the loving for the assurance of a predictable outcome or protection of my pride. For I learned to discern between heat and the warmth of the real intimacy between power and passion, between intensity and love. I discovered the wholeness of my longing for a mate – the need for a friend, brother, and partner where I had sought only a lover…
But the longing is larger than the fear, the desire more fierce than the pain. My second husband is a good man; we did not have a bad life. It was simply not my life. I had to leave the life I had built and go forward to meet the life for which I longed…
And sometimes, although we may ourselves hold these values , their dominance in our lives in a particular form does not allow us to live our other aspects of what we love and who we are…
“What do you fear?”
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…
Sometimes, when I see others follow their desires, I am surprised to find myself not only unsupportive but angry, threatened. If I have convinced myself that lack of money and the needs of those dependent upon me are the reasons why I cannot risk doing work that is more consistent with my soul’s desires, the woman or man who makes such a change and finds ways to meet obligations similar to mine, without the financial resources beyond mine, challenges my certainty that I have no choice. Ironically, I find myself, at moments, clinging to a belief in my own powerlessness, a belief that will let me off the hook of responding to my soul’s desire. Those who chose a different response threaten the seamlessness of my self-deception…
Chapter 3 | The Fear from the The Invitation
Chapter 2 | The Longing | The Invitation | Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Posted by: | CommentsChapter 2 | The Longing from The Invitation
I HAVE FAITH IN LONGING, wherever it finds me…
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…
It is not the being, no even the doing that exhausts. It is the trying: trying to be present, to be awake, to hold the whole world, to be better, more self-aware, more conscious. My hopes for us are real: I want to help create a world where the very idea of toxic waste would raise such a cry of anguish from the people as to make it unthinkable: where we would move, pulled by the heart, to care for the poor, the ill, the dying and despairing without debating where they are deserving, without fear of contamination, seeing ourselves in each person…
I want to quit running from my own tiredness. I want to be willing and able to move only as fast as I am capable of moving while still remaining connected of the impulse to move from deep withing, stopping when I have lost that slender thread of desire and having the courage and faith to wait, in stillness, until I find it again…
“What are you longing for?”
This is what I ache for: intimacy with myself, others, and the world, intimacy that touches the sacred in all that is life. This ache, this longing is the thread that guides me back through the labyrinth of compromises I have made, back to my soul’s desires. And sometimes I am afraid of my desires – afraid of that they will ask of me, what vision of myself or the world they will offer that may demand a sacrifice of my carefully cultivated way of seeing. If we are never consumed by the transforming fire of our desires, we risk falling in love with the sweet ache of longing, the daydream of “what if…” or “some day…”
Chapter 2 | The Longing from The Invitation
“The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Posted by: | CommentsIt 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 hit or fade it of 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 buried 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.
“The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Original content posted at http://austinrealestateandloans.wordpress.com
