Around about the year you were born, a group - Sly and the Family Stone - sang, "I wanna thank you falettinme be mice elf agin." No; really! A deliberate strategy to get folks to listen perhaps. And today, a few years later, your writings are helping me do just that. Not always comfortably but what is the down side?
Offering up a fragment (spark) from Sly and the Family Stone, while Bruce referenced a Rilke spark, is the beauty of the Born Free Newsletter. Far from claiming to make it so, I'm content to collect Sparks at every opportunity.
Love the reference to Rilke "The Swan" In one of the translations "gaily descends into the water and condescends to glide". I can't help but think, as contrarian, that being who you are is less about practice and more about letting go into the now. Does right now take practice? Isn't the way we came into the world fully innocent who we are... doesn't everything we've learned make us less like the swan? Does a swan know itself as a swan? Just is! What would condescending to glide feel and be like for we humans? You?
On another note, while I'm on a roll.. in Jewish mystical tradition the fragments as your describing are named "sparks". It is thought the role of humanity is to gather the sparks into "One".
Oh, and yes, it seems the poetry is just so perfectly you.
Maybe instead of practice, a better word is remembrance. You might have heard me parrot my yoga teacher who often says, "It is in our nature to forget."
Over time, I have become better at staying present, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
Yes--as we pile on the knowledge we become less like the graceful swan. We're like swans on land carrying fully loaded packs.
When I chose the name Born Free for this letter, that was what I had in mind. What if we could set down all of our knowing and just be?
Around about the year you were born, a group - Sly and the Family Stone - sang, "I wanna thank you falettinme be mice elf agin." No; really! A deliberate strategy to get folks to listen perhaps. And today, a few years later, your writings are helping me do just that. Not always comfortably but what is the down side?
Offering up a fragment (spark) from Sly and the Family Stone, while Bruce referenced a Rilke spark, is the beauty of the Born Free Newsletter. Far from claiming to make it so, I'm content to collect Sparks at every opportunity.
Thanks Bruce, thanks Gail!!
I think I've heard the song--and had no idea! I thought the words were something about "letting me be your friend--again!" haha!
I am glad to know BFN gives you pause to think. As Brene Brown taught me--Courage Over Comfort! :)
Thanks Gary!
Love the reference to Rilke "The Swan" In one of the translations "gaily descends into the water and condescends to glide". I can't help but think, as contrarian, that being who you are is less about practice and more about letting go into the now. Does right now take practice? Isn't the way we came into the world fully innocent who we are... doesn't everything we've learned make us less like the swan? Does a swan know itself as a swan? Just is! What would condescending to glide feel and be like for we humans? You?
On another note, while I'm on a roll.. in Jewish mystical tradition the fragments as your describing are named "sparks". It is thought the role of humanity is to gather the sparks into "One".
Oh, and yes, it seems the poetry is just so perfectly you.
Yes!
Maybe instead of practice, a better word is remembrance. You might have heard me parrot my yoga teacher who often says, "It is in our nature to forget."
Over time, I have become better at staying present, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
Yes--as we pile on the knowledge we become less like the graceful swan. We're like swans on land carrying fully loaded packs.
When I chose the name Born Free for this letter, that was what I had in mind. What if we could set down all of our knowing and just be?
"leave everything you know behind" is a line from one of David Whyte's poems, I believe.
That's the one about walking El Camino de Santiago? Sounds familiar...no, I don't think that's it...
Here's the link anyhow....https://vimeo.com/251995359