i read somewhere... 23 august 2016...

i read somewhere:

Whatever you choose to focus your attention on, you will get more of it. If you dwell on the good things you have already had the privilege to experience, you will expand your appreciation for their blessings, which in turn will amplify their beneficent impact on your life. You will also magnetise yourself to receive further good things, making it more likely that they will be attracted into your sphere. At the very least, you will get in the habit of enjoying yourself no matter what the outward circumstances are.

Bear in mind that you are a great wizard. You can use your powers to practice white magic on yourself instead of the other kind. The most basic way to do that is to concentrate on naming, savouring, and feeling gratitude for the blessings you do have—your love for your kid, the pleasures of eating the food you like, the sight of the sky at dusk, the entertaining drama of your unique fate. Don't ignore the bad stuff, but make a point of celebrating the beautiful stuff with all the exuberant devotion you can muster.

Speak the following lines out loud:
I love everything about me
I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain
I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing
I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself.

and remember:

"Every act of genius, is an act contra naturam: against nature." Indeed, every effort to achieve psychological integration and union with the divine requires a knack for working against the grain. Carl Jung

The great secret to becoming enlightened, is "to walk in all things contrary to the world." Jacob Boehme

"The basis of the spiritual approach to life, the foundation of the everyday practice of a person who lives the life of obedience to esoteric law, is the reversal of the more usual ways of thinking, speaking and doing." Paul Foster Case

have a great week, full of focus, gratitude and love. 

i read somewhere... 8 may 2018...

today's mood.
i read somewhere...

love rules - the love rules - the rules of love (some)
from vincent, leo, emily, sark, rainer, blaise, erica, frederick and mary, pablo, emma, anais.

"I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

"Everything I understand, I understand only because I love.
Everything exists, only because I love."

"Until you have loved, you cannot become yourself."

"Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love
ideal."

"For one human being to love another is the most difficult
task. It is the work for which all other work is mere
preparation."

"If you do not love too much, you do not love enough."

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. It really is worth
fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the
trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more."

"Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family,
your neighbours, your enemies, and yourself. And don't stop
with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies."

"To love is to tilt with the lightning, two bodies routed by a
single honey's sweet."

"The most vital right is the right to love and be loved."

"Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an
inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a
strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as
you wish without having to step outside it."

"There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way
of the
imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't
work."

experiencing aloneness, i discover connection
turn to face my fear, i meet the warrior in me
open to my loss and pain and ignorance, i remind me of myself and purpose
surrendering into emptiness, I find endless fulfillment
if i flee, I am pursued
if i welcome, i am transformed

"I do want to create art beyond rage. Rage is a place to begin, but not end.
"I do want to devour my demons—despair, grief, shame, fear and use them to nourish my art. Otherwise they'll devour me."
Sandra Cisneros

be alert for creative inspiration that strikes you in the
midst of seemingly mundane circumstances.
do not believe what your read in sold out to greed and immorality, papers.
trust your gut.
do your thing.
be thankful. be grateful.
and breathe.
the sun is shining, times are challenging; stay safe.

the art of losing

2.

i read somewhere:

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master; 
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop

always...

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Controversial Love Letters to Lorena Hickok

by Maria Popova

“You have grown so much to be a part of my life that it is empty without you.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884–November 7, 1962) endures not only as the longest-serving American First Lady (1933-1945), but also as one of history’s most politically impactful, a fierce champion of working women and underprivileged youth.

But her personal life has been the subject of lasting controversy.

In the summer of 1928, Roosevelt met journalist Lorena Hickok, whom she would come to refer to as Hick. The thirty-year relationship that ensued has remained the subject of much speculation, from the evening of FDR’s inauguration, when the First Lady was seen wearing a sapphire ring Hickok had given her, to the opening up of her private correspondence archives in 1998. Though many of the most explicit letters had been burned, the 300 published in Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters Of Eleanor Roosevelt And Lorena Hickok (public library) — at once less unequivocal than history’s most revealing woman-to-woman love letters and more suggestive than those ofgreat female platonic friendships — strongly indicate the relationship between Roosevelt and Hickok had been one of great romantic intensity.

On March 5, 1933, the first evening of FDR’s inauguration, Roosevelt wrote Hick:

Hick my dearest–

I cannot go to bed tonight without a word to you. I felt a little as though a part of me was leaving tonight. You have grown so much to be a part of my life that it is empty without you.

Then, the following day:

Hick, darling

Ah, how good it was to hear your voice. It was so inadequate to try and tell you what it meant. Funny was that I couldn’t say je t’aime and je t’adore as I longed to do, but always remember that I am saying it, that I go to sleep thinking of you.

And the night after:

Hick darling

All day I’ve thought of you & another birthday I will be with you, & yet tonite you sounded so far away & formal. Oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it & think “she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it!”

And in yet another letter:

I wish I could lie down beside you tonight & take you in my arms.

Hick herself responded with equal intensity. In a letter from December 1933, she wrote:

I’ve been trying to bring back your face — to remember justhow you look. Funny how even the dearest face will fade away in time. Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just north-east of the corner of your mouth against my lips.

Granted, human dynamics are complex and ambiguous enough even for those directly involved, making it hard to assume anything with absolute certainty from the sidelines of an epistolary relationship long after the correspondents’ deaths. But wherever on the spectrum of the platonic and romantic the letters inEmpty Without You may fall, they offer a beautiful record of a tender, steadfast, deeply loving relationship between two women who meant the world to one another, even if the world never quite condoned or understood their profound connection.