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[teawiththehermit]

Thanatos is the will to death as Eros is the will to pleasure. In this sense eros is life-force energy - the energy through which creation emerges and thanatos is the energy in which creation returns. They are equal parts of the cycle. 

Death is inseparable from pleasure, and Thanatos is the shadow of Eros.

Octavio Paz, The Double Flame

[teawiththehermit]

7/1/21

It’s 7.22am in the morning and the light is pouring in. I can’t fathom how this moment exists, but how many valleys were carved out of sorrow before I came upon this meadow of solitude emanating its own heartbeat somewhere from within?

Peace is a station - its liminality lives in the bones of its structure - solid and temporary - necessary and like the seasons, come often to visit and just as soon departs. 

Experiences exist somewhere in the liminal... even if the liminal appears infinite at times. Even memory evolves with time and experience. There is the beauty of cycles and seasons, of temporality, fragility and liminality. Sadness can seep out of beauty and out of sadness even more wonder, depth and illuminance. Seek the first-hand art of your own life. 

[teawiththehermit]

The wildness of God is the sensuousness of God. Nature is the direct expression of the divine imagination.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

The most exuberant expression of the body is in dance.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

Heidegger said very beautifully that we are custodians of deep and ancient thresholds. In the human face you see that potential and the miracle of undying possibility.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

A strange dynamic comes alive in the soul if you make something into an issue. It becomes a habit and keeps recurring in a pattern. Frequently it is simply better to acknowledge that there is a wound there but then stay away from it. Every chance you get, shine the gentle light of the soul in on the wound.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

A clay creature is always a mixture of light and darkness. The beauty of Eros is its passionate thresholds where light and darkness meet within the person.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

The mystics never preach a denial of the senses, rather they speak of the transfiguration of the senses. They recognise that there is a certain gravity or darkness in Eros that can sometimes predominate. The light of the soul can transfigure this tendency and bring balance and poise. The beauty of such mystical reflection on Eros reminds us that Eros us ultimately the energy of divine creativity. In the transfiguration of the sensuous, the wildness of eros and the playfulness of the soul come into lyrical rhythm.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

When you give in to creative passion, it will bring you to the ultimate thresholds of transfiguration and renewal.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person's individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

Possibility is the secret heart of time.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

The urbanisation of modern life has succeeded in exiling us from this fecund kinship with our mother earth. Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form. We need to remain in rhythm with our inner clay voice and longing. Yet this voice is no longer audible in the modern world. We are not even aware of our loss, consequently, the pain of our spiritual exile is more intense in being largely unintelligible.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

Time is veiled eternity.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

[teawiththehermit]

Words are like the god Janus, they face outward and inward at once. If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person, or deed can still. To  be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No one else can undertake this task for you.

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara 

[teawiththehermit]

Through a Dark Forest: Fairy Tales as Women’s Stories, Mary Sharratt

[teawiththehermit]