a-h-mad-hish

[a-h-mad-hish]

“The majority of initiatory ordeals more or less clearly imply a ritual death followed by resurrection or a new birth. The central moment of every initiation is represented by the ceremony symbolizing the death of the novice and his return to the fellowship of the living. But he returns to life a new man, assuming another mode of being. Initiatory death signifies the end at once of childhood, ignorance, and the profane condition.”

― Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth

[a-h-mad-hish]

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

[a-h-mad-hish]

“One should not seek anything behind phenomena: the phenomena themselves are the teaching. In the presence of ‘ur‑phenomena’, when they are revealed to our senses, we feel a kind of awe, even fear…”

„Man suche nur nichts hinter den Phänomenen: sie selbst sind die Lehre. Vor den Urphänomenen, wenn sie unseren Sinnen enthüllt erscheinen, fühlen wir eine Art Scheu, bis zur Angst…“

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, No. 488 & commentary on Urphänomen concept

[a-h-mad-hish]

“One should seek nothing behind phenomena: the phenomena themselves are the teaching. Before the ‘ur‑phenomena’, when they are revealed to our senses, we experience a kind of awe, even fear… When at last I calm myself before the ur‑phenomenon, it is still only resignation; yet there remains a great difference between resigning oneself at the limits of humanity and within the hypothetical narrowness of my own bounded individual.”

„Man suche nur nichts hinter den Phänomenen: sie selbst sind die Lehre. Vor den Urphänomenen, wenn sie unseren Sinnen enthüllt erscheinen, fühlen wir eine Art Scheu, bis zur Angst… Wenn ich mich beim Urphänomen zuletzt beruhige, so ist es doch auch nur Resignation; aber es bleibt ein großer Unterschied, ob ich mich an den Grenzen der Menschheit resigniere oder innerhalb einer hypothetischen Beschränktheit meines bornierten Individuums.“

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, No. 488 & Urphänomen commentary

[a-h-mad-hish]

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“... only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers--perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation... Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

[a-h-mad-hish]

“The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant...”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[a-h-mad-hish]

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet