Found Mosaic
Waste no more time
I’d ask you to read slowly. Imagine reaching under shallow water to pick shells out of the mud — slow enough to keep the water clear, unmuddied.
How little we still commit ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life.
— Carl Jung, The Red Book
In a living process, what is always happening is that every step is done in such a way as to increase the beauty — the life — of the whole. — Christopher Alexander
You have to make up your mind irremediably. To live fully is to be something irrevocably. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Marcus Aurelius, in the Meditations: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”
[Sir Albert Howard] realized that responsibility required him to take his own advice before offering it to other people. — Wendell Berry
Mary Midgley wrote “People often ask me why I did not start to write the books and articles for which I am now known until I was over fifty. The answer is simply that I needed time to think.”
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. — Thoreau
Eventually I decided to give my thoughts a form, to put them into practice, and so to determine whether my understanding was right or wrong. — Masanobu Fukuoka
Fukuoka again, “Instead of offering a hundred explanations, would not practicing this philosophy be the best way?”
“People are deeply nourished by the process of creating wholeness.”
— Christopher Alexander
“I think love is fostered by a capacity to experience cosmos,” — M.C. Richards
“If the body is the carrier of consciousness, it too must be altered.” — James Hillman
“Consciousness is made of the same tissue as the cosmos.” — David Hinton
It cannot be too often repeated: from intuition one can pass on to analysis, but not from analysis to intuition. — Henri Bergson
The more precise anything is, the less content it has: ‘the more certain our knowledge the less we know.’ — Iain McGilchrist
James Hillman, commenting on Gopi Krishna’s kundalini memoir: “How much depends upon the quality of the person and the way he grapples with the integration of his experience.”
…Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that.
— Rilke
Train yourself for that.
Waste no more time, River. Commit yourself to living, to becoming something irrevocably. Instead of offering a hundred explanations, practice nourishing processes. Live everything, and train yourself in increasing the beauty — the Life — of the whole.
Don’t search for answers; the more certain your knowledge, the less you know. No one can pass from analysis to intuition, only the other way; tenets don’t lead to blessed living, only the other way. Intentions — or I would say, agendas — are the limitation and exclusion of Life.
Love the experience of cosmos; be nourished by creating wholeness. The body is the same tissue as cosmos, the cosmos is the same tissue as consciousness. To alter consciousness is to alter the cosmos; to nourish the body is to nourish consciousness; to love cosmos is to create wholeness. Perhaps, here, it’s possible to train an especially blessed and pure way of living. So much depends on the integration of experience. So much depends on committing irremediably to Life and Beauty.
Responsibility requires you to to take your own advice before offering it to other people. You need time to think, time to stand up and live without prematurely sitting down to offer a hundred explanations. Waste no more time arguing what a good life should be — live one.