"To thine own self be true..."

Saint Gabriel, at Brown Memorial Church Baltimore Maryland

"By thine own soul's law learn to live. And if men thwart thee, take no heed. And if men hate thee, have no care; Sing thou thy song, and do thy deed, hope thou thy hope, and pray thy prayer."
 

"... Keep thou thy soul-worn steadfast oath,
  And to thy heart be true thy heart;
What thy soul teaches learn to know,
  And play out thine appointed part,
And thou shalt reap as thou shalt sow,
  Nor helped nor hindered in thy growth,
To thy full stature thou shalt grow.

Fix on the future's goal thy face,
  And let thy feet be lured to stray
Nowhither, but be swift to run,
  And nowhere tarry by the way,
Until at last the end is won
  And thou mayst look back from thy place
And see thy long day's journey done.- Pakenham Beatty

"The realization was that the self is the goal of individuation and that the process of individuation was not linear, but consisted of a circumambulation of the self."

"... he highlighted the significance of the midlife transition. He argued that the first half of life could be characterized as the natural phase, in which the prime aim was establishing oneself in the world, gaining an income, and raising a family. The second half of life could be characterized as the cultural phase, which involved a revaluation of earlier values. The goal in this period was one of conserving previous values together with the recognition of their opposites." This meant that individuals had to develop the undeveloped and neglected aspects of their personality. The individuation process was now conceived as the general pattern of human development. He argued that there was a lack of guidance for this transition in contemporary society. "

excerpt from The Red Book , Jung

As I said these words he grew wings on his back...

Where the
Tinkers quarrel I went down
With my horse, my soul.
I cried, ‘Who will bid me half a crown?’
From their rowdy bargaining
Not one turned. ‘Soul,’ I prayed,
‘I have hawked you through the world
Of Church and State and meanest trade.
But this evening, halter off,
Never again will it go on.
On the south side of ditches
There is grazing of the sun.
No more haggling with the world….’

As I said these words he grew
Wings upon his back. Now I may ride him
Every land my imagination knew.

From Pegasus , by Patrick Kavanaugh

Pegasus and Bellerophon, Odilon Redon

THE World is too much with us; late and soon,    
  Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:    
  Little we see in Nature that is ours;    
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!    
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,             5
  The winds that will be howling at all hours    
  And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,    
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;    
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be    
  A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,    

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,    
  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;    
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;    
  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. 

 - Wordsworth  
 

Blue Skies and Lullabies...

"As I contemplate the blue sky I am not set over against it as an acosmic subject: I do not possess it in thought, or spread out toward it some idea of blue... I abandon myself to it and plunge into this mystery, it thinks itself within me,"I am the sky itself... drawn together and unified... my consciousness is saturated with the limitless blue."

from Alchemical Psychology, James Hillman

Head in the Clouds series H.C.Love

Lets allow our feeling to drink fresh air...

Let’s not shut the door to living speech of destiny which we hear from behind the hedges of sound

Let’s remove the curtains
Let’s allow our feeling to drink fresh air...

Let’s allow instinct to play
Let’s allow all it to take off its shoes and leap over the flowers following seasons
Let’s allow solitude to sing a song
To write something
To go to the street

Let’s be plain
Let’s be plain whether in front of the teller’s window or under a tree

Excerpt The Waters Footsteps, by Sohrab Sepehri

Plain and simple... hmmm what do you say?
 

"Sacred Cracked Voice & the Jingle Jangle Morning..."

"Go on flutter ye mystic ballad - ah haunting & Tokay jittery ye be like the mad pulse - the mad pulse of a child - the children of ring around the rosy & wandering poets over India - the jugglers who call you by the wrong name & title you wounded kitten - it is that easy for they know no fairy tales..."

Excerpt Tarantula, Bob Dylan

When it comes to speaking to others, the poet hesitates, he doesn't read well his poem. Or he reads it as if it were another's. He reads it without comprehending it. Thus Claudel when he puts on his glasses and acts just like a notary when he reads his great works... Some other makes of his poems, by his hesitations, something shredding. Must we distrust the poets who read their works too well? No; I know of some who can restore about their work the Atmosphere from which it was born... But owing to certain realist tendencies I feel in me, or to a certain incapacity, I would hesitate to define poetry as a "creation of the world". of course the idea of the world is the effect of an illusion, at once retrospective and totalizing. Poetry is rather the creation of a language or a music, of a language which is a music.

Excerpt from translation 'La Poesie comme Exercise Spirituel, from Poesie, Pensee, and Perception, by Jean Wahl

"Often it is not the meaning of a verse that grabs and holds us, but something else, the interior accompaniment and care it brings up within us."

          In the dark of night this flame holds the promise of the coming light.  - H.C.Love

Do you know how to shine? You are like a flame in the absence of a blow of breeze. The flame stands still only when there is no breeze. Now you stand in your own form. - 6-19 Master E.K.