Though the human body is born complete in one moment,...
the human heart is never completely born.
It is being birthed in every experience of your life.
Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you. It brings to birth within you new territories of the heart.
Against the infinity of the cosmos and the silent depths of nature, the human face shines out as the icon of intimacy. It is here, in this icon of human presence, that divinity in creation comes nearest to itself. The human face is the icon of creation.
Each person also has an inner face, which is always sensed, but never seen. The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come out to your self. When you learn to love and let yourself be loved you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging. In that growth and homecoming is the unlooked-for bonus in the act of loving another. Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting.
This is the condition in which we grow.
Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing, which will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving to the summit of fulfillment. When this spiritual path opens, you can bring an incredible generosity to the world and to the lives of others.
You can suffer from a desperate hunger to be loved. You can search long years in lonely places, far outside yourself. Yet the whole time, this love is but inches away from you. It is at the edge of your soul but you have been blind to its presence.
“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beat of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it”
If you have everything the world has to offer you, but you do not have love, then you are the poorest of the poor of the poor. Every human heart hungers for love. If you do not have the warmth of love in your heart, there is no possibility of real celebration and enjoyment. No matter how hard, competent and self respected you are, no matter what you think of yourself or what others think of you, the only thing you will always long for…
Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you. It brings to birth within you new territories of the heart.
Against the infinity of the cosmos and the silent depths of nature, the human face shines out as the icon of intimacy. It is here, in this icon of human presence, that divinity in creation comes nearest to itself. The human face is the icon of creation.
Each person also has an inner face, which is always sensed, but never seen. The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come out to your self. When you learn to love and let yourself be loved you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. You are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging. In that growth and homecoming is the unlooked-for bonus in the act of loving another. Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting.
This is the condition in which we grow.
Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing, which will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving to the summit of fulfillment. When this spiritual path opens, you can bring an incredible generosity to the world and to the lives of others.
You can suffer from a desperate hunger to be loved. You can search long years in lonely places, far outside yourself. Yet the whole time, this love is but inches away from you. It is at the edge of your soul but you have been blind to its presence.
“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beat of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it”
If you have everything the world has to offer you, but you do not have love, then you are the poorest of the poor of the poor. Every human heart hungers for love. If you do not have the warmth of love in your heart, there is no possibility of real celebration and enjoyment. No matter how hard, competent and self respected you are, no matter what you think of yourself or what others think of you, the only thing you will always long for…
Is love.
john o' donnohue - Anam Cara
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