Renewed Desire for Life

There will be a time, not so far from now, that you will look back on this phase of your life and instead of condemning it or beating up on it... Instead of blaming or guilting, you will feel appreciation for it, because you will understand that a renewed desire for life was born out of this time period that will bring you to physical heights that you could not have achieved without the contrast that gave birth to this desire.

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Boston, MA on Saturday, October 4th, 1997

Adversity - Shakespeare

“Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head.”

—As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Alvin Ailey's Revelations - Section 1: Pilgrim Of Sorrow

Last Night As I Was Sleeping - Antonio Machado

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
Water of a new life
That I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

(TRANSLATION BY ROBERT BLY)

Quote from "Letters to a Young Poet" - Rilke

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and...try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

The Holy Longing -- Goethe

Tell a wise person, or else keep it silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have been begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you are the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.