#David whyte

[firstfullmoon]

David Whyte, “Self Portrait”

[julesofnature]

“Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things must come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape…. Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.” by David Whyte (From Whyte’s Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

[saintsebastiensbf]

David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Yellow Cape — Odilon Redon Posted by Biblioklept

* * * *

“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.”

— David Whyte, Consolations

[dk-thrive]

to just sit and feel

I discovered the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and dove into his writings. Soon thereafter, the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and David Whyte. The words of these men ignited a fire in me to feel, to just sit and feel, for how beautifully they articulated the art of leaning into the darkness of being alive, instead of denying it.

— Laura Delano, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance (Viking, March 18, 2025)

[mooneyedandglowing]

[litverve]

"I want to know if you know how to melt Into that fierce heat of living Falling toward the center of your longing."

David Whyte, from " Self Portrait"

[hiraeth-e-saudade]

[lil-devill]

You Darkness, Rainer Maria Rilke - translated by D.W, Fire in the Earth

[mcdirty]

each line

a path that leads

where I can’t go,

so that I read her palm

not knowing

what I read

-David whyte

[innervoiceartblog]

We shape our self to fit this world and by the world are shaped again. The visible and the invisible working together in common cause, to produce the miraculous. I am thinking of the way the intangible air passed at speed round a shaped wing easily holds our weight. So may we, in this life trust to those elements we have yet to see or imagine, and look for the true shape of our own self, by forming it well to the great intangibles about us.

~ David Whyte

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

(Art: Photograph by Eduardo Gageiro)

* * * *

To want to run away is an essence of being human, it transforms any staying through the transfigurations of choice. To think about fleeing from circumstances, from a marriage, a relationship or from a work is part of the conversation itself and helps us understand the true distilled nature of our own reluctance. Strangely, we are perhaps most fully incarnated as humans, when part of us does not want to be here, or doesn’t know how to be here. Presence is only fully understood and realized through fully understanding our reluctance to show up. To understand the part of us that wants nothing to do with the full necessities of work, of relationship, of loss, of doing what is necessary, is to learn humility, to cultivate self-compassion and to sharpen that sense of humor essential to a merciful perspective of both a self and another.

~David Whyte

(Book: Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

(Philo Thoughts)

[poetdaughter]

from "The TrueLove" by David Whyte

[litverve]

"You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."

David Whyte, from "Sweet Darkness"

[menikmati]

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner (1999)

[kamala-laxman]

Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us. David Whyte