COMPLACENCIES of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
–Wallace Stevens

“I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there’s no way to say it all. Saying it all is materially impossible: words fail. Yet it is through this very impossibility that the truth holds to the real.”-Jacques Lacan

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect – you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break – her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.”
–Bob Marley

All around the world
Everywhere I go
No one understands me
No one knows what I’m trying to say
Everywhere I go no one understands me
They look at me when I talk to them
And they scratch their head
They go “what’s he trying to say?”
But you… you speak my language

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling

“Move within, but not the way that fear makes you move…

Keep walking though there’s no place to get to,
Don’t try to see through the distances – that’s not for human beings to know..”

“Commit yourself to a daily practice,
your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking
and eventually the joy
that lives inside
will look out to see
who’s there!”
–Rumi

via Integral Options Cafe – also via WH:

Chogyam Trungpa: Meditation practices have nothing to do with the value of the techniques as such, but are based on simplicity as a whole. They (students) shouldn’t regard the technique as magical power at all. I should warn everybody that meditation has no magical power as such, but everybody has to work on themselves. Having used the technique diligently, from that point, people begin to develop. There is simplicity in the technique; they don’t have to strive for it. The technique becomes part of themselves, (the) same as drinking a cup of tea, that becomes very close to it. So the technique should be referred to as part of the daily life situation, rather than medicine or a sedative as such.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
–W.B. Yeats