When you relate to thoughts obsessively, you are actually feeding them because thoughts need your attention to survive. Once you begin to pay attention to them and categorize them, then they become very powerful. You are feeding them energy because you are not seeing them as simple phenomena. If one tries to quiet them down, that is another way of feeding them.

– Chögyam Trungpa -

To love is not to possess the other person or to consume all their attention and love.

To love is to offer the other person joy and a balm for their suffering.

 This capacity is what we have to learn to cultivate.

- Thich Nhat Hanh -

Painting: © Anna Silivonchik

For things to reveal themselves to us,

 

 we need to be ready

 

 to abandon our views about them.

 

- Thích Nhất Hạnh, Being Peace-

 

 

 

Ring of Brodgar, Orkney, Scotland

The splendid thing
about falling apart
silently...
is that
you can start over
as many times
as you like.

 

  Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

 

 

 

Owning your story

is the bravest thing

you will ever do.

- Brené Brown -

I like the scars because I like the stories.

 Bravery, stupidity, pain

- none of them come free.

- Jessica Martinez, Virtuosity -

 

 

 

I will listen deeply to you, yes, but I will never try to fix you, save you, mend you, stop you feeling what you are feeling or give you second-hand, memorized answers. I will never pretend to be ‘the one who knows’, 'the enlightened one’, 'the guru’ or some missionary for a conceptual truth so far removed from real-time, immediate, first-hand present experience. I will not indulge and feed your stories and mental conclusions and projections, I will not get into drama with you, I will not mistake you for my story about you, my dream of who you are.
But friend, I will speak the truth to you, even if the truth triggers great pain. I will not spare our love from truth. I will meet you in the fires of hell. I will hold your hand there, I will walk with you as far as I can walk with you today, and bless you as we part. For in the deepest recesses of our experience we are intimately each other, and we cannot pretend otherwise.
Love is not a dream, love is not even a promise, it is the willingness to burn the false, the courage to meet in the fire.

- Jeff Foster -

I don't think about time.

 

 You're here when you're here.

 

 I think about today, staying in tune.

 

- John Lee Hooker -

 

NITCH

 

 

Bedankt Frieda!

Language has been called an instrument, a tool, an art, a symphony, a game, a city, a social force, a force for humanization. 

 

Roland Barthes called it a skin, 

 

Anthony Burgess ‘a mouthful of air.’

 

 For Ralph Waldo Emerson it was both ‘fossil poetry’ and the ‘archives of history’.

 

 For Max Müller 'the autobiography of the human mind’.

 

 For Martin Heidegger, it was 'the house of being’.”

 

 

— “Just a Phrase I’m Going Through: My
Life in Language -

Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road.

 Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment.

 She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. 

 She helps us to discover what matters most.

- Frank Ostaseski -

Relationship is an art.

 The dream that two create

 is more difficult to master

 than one.


- don Miguel Ruiz -

I smell the WEEKEND !!!

 

 

Night bamboo ~ by Ryusuke Komori

Toute véritable transformation 

sera précédée

d'un grand moment d'inconfort,

c'est là le signe 

que vous êtes sur le bon chemin.

- Ajahn Chah - 

I have come to believe over and over again

that what is most important to me must be spoken,

made verbal and shared,

even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

- Audre Lorde -

What are you tolerating

 that drains your energy?

I love people. Everybody. 

 

I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. 

 

Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me...

 

 I would like to be everyone...a cripple, a dying man, a whore,

 

 and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person.

 

-  Sylvia Plath -

 

NITCH

 

 

 

YOU CAN BE ANYTHING YOU WANT

JUST DON'T BE "UNGRATEFUL"

BLIJF DICHT BIJ JEZELF 

Eddy Stone Rock - Tasmania coast, Australia .. By © Jimmy Emm 

 

 

Our usual attitude is of ‘I am this’… 'I am that'...

 Separate consistently and perseveringly

 the 'I am’ from 'this’ or 'that’,

and try to feel what it means to be,

just to be,

 without being 'this’ or 'that’…

 - Nisargadatta Maharaj -

We must have reasons for speech

but we need none for silence…

- Proverb -

If you add to the truth,

you subtract from it.

- The Talmud -

When you welcome your emotions as teachers,

 every emotion brings good news,

 even the ones that are painful. 

 

- Gary Zukav -

 

 

 

Vanuit het dal 

gaan alle wegen omhoog.

- R. Bal - 

 

I was thought to be 'stuck up.' 

 

I wasn’t. I was just sure of myself.

 

 This is and always has been

 

 an unforgivable quality to the unsure."

 

-  Bette Davis -

 

NITCH

 

Eilandliedjes: Spinvis - Kom Terug

HET LEVEN...

HET GAAT VERDER

Worrying

 is using your imagination

 to create something

 you don’t want.

- Abraham -

Je leert meer van je nederlagen, 

 

dan je ooit zal leren

 

 van je overwinningen.

 

 

 

Bedankt Diana!

The best way to find yourself

is to lose yourself 

in the service of others.

- Mahatma Gandhi - 

Practice

 

 creates

 

 the master

 

 

 

There is peace

 

 even in the storm.

 

- Vincent van Gogh-

 

 

 

De wijze houdt zich op de achtergrond,

maar in werkelijkheid 

staat hij vooraan.

- Lao Tzu - 

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be…

 This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages…the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide…

 Far too many people misunderstand what “putting away childish things” means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup.

- Madeleine L’Engle -

YOUR STRUGGLE 

IS PART OF YOUR STORY

I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe... 

I wouldn't be surprised if poetry...

in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes and designs...

is how the world works. 

The world isn't logical, it's a song.

- David Byrne -

 

NITCH

 

There’s never an ending. 

There’s just a place

 where you stop the story… 

- Frank Herbert - 

Be soft.

 Do not let the world make you hard.

 Do not let the pain make you hate.

 Do not let the bitterness

 steal your sweetness.

- Iain S Thomas -

The truth 

is rarely pure

 and never simple.

- Oscar Wilde -

Everything passes.

Everything.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life

but my life was never ordinary.

I had simply failed to notice

how extraordinary it was.

- Ransom Riggs -

Don't be so excited

 in getting where you're going to

that you're missing

 the fun of going there.

Midlife crisis begins sometimes in your 40s,

 when you look at your life and think, ‘Is this all?”

 And ends about 10 years later, 

when you look at your life again and think,

 ‘Actually, this is pretty good.”

 

 - Donald Richie -

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. 

 

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

 

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -

Merci Lut!

Je weet niet wacht lucht is, toch adem je.

Je weet niet wat slaap is, toch slaap je.

Je weet niet wat nacht is, toch lig je erin.

Je weet niet wat een hart is, 

toch klopt het regelmatig in je borst,

dag en nacht, dag en nacht, dag en nacht.

Hoe is de wereld voor een pasgeboren kind?

Licht, donker. Koud, warm. Zacht, hard.

- Karl Ove Knausgård - Lente -

Don’t be mean to yourself.

 

 Please.

 

 Make sure your inner voice is kind and compassionate.

 

 Don’t berate yourself.

 

 You’re learning and growing.

 

 

 

What wisdom can you find

 

 that is greater than kindness?

 

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -

A walk with silence in mind .. By © Nelleke Pieters 

It’s not the future you’re afraid of. 

It’s repeating the past

 that makes you anxious.

- Unknown -