#david whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama  as if you were alone. As if life  were a progressive and cunning crime  with no witness to the tiny hidden  transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny  the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,  even you, at times, have felt the grand array;  the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding  out your solo voice. You must note  the way the soap dish enables you,  or the window latch grants you freedom.  Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.  The stairs are your mentor of things  to come, the doors have always been there  to frighten you and invite you,  and the tiny speaker in the phone  is your dream-ladder to divinity. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the  conversation. The kettle is singing  even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots  have left their arrogant aloofness and  seen the good in you at last. All the birds  and creatures of the world are unutterably  themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Let The Forest Find You - David Whyte, 1994

Seeing Through the Forest of Consciousness

“What should I do if I’m lost in the forest?

The Yellow Cape — Odilon Redon Posted by Biblioklept

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“Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through […]. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is [an] essence and emblem of care… [W]e use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.”