David Whyte in conversation with Krista Tippett, On Being [transcript in ALT]
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anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
— David Whyte, from “Sweet Darkness” from The House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press, December 1, 1997)
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(Art: Photograph by Stanley Kubrick)
* * * *
One of the difficulties of leaving a relationship is not so much, at the end, leaving the person themselves — because, by that time, you’re ready to go; what’s difficult is leaving the dreams that you shared together. And you know that somehow — no matter who you meet in your life in the future, and no matter what species of happiness you would share with them — you will never, ever share those particular dreams again, with that particular tonality and coloration. And so there’s a lovely and powerful form of grief there that is the ultimate of giving away but making space for another form of reimagination. ~David Whyte
(Source: One of Whyte's talks/Consider one of Whyte’s most famous books: The House of Belonging)
[Philo Thoughts]
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the truelove by David Whyte
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NOT TAKEN
…But you never turned to cross,
and you never found a bridge,
and you never took that other way,
and you stayed on this path to the end,
recalling the other way you did not take
as you would a close and loving friend
who had left you not to leave you but simply
to go on with their life, so that you carried
their memory through the years that passed
as you would a beautiful and worthwhile burden,
growing with them as they grew,
walking with them as they walked,
until one day it was just as if that someone
you had come to love at a distance,
and that someone who had walked with you
always on the other side of the stream,
had passed away, but in your mind you were
still speaking to them and still walking with them
and still carrying them onward, but now
just a short way to a place you would lay them down,
under the trees, and in a way in which memory
and every day presence stop living in separate worlds,
and the calm, death-still image of every disappearance,
renews itself in some extraordinary beginning again,
and you realize, sitting by their side, saying goodbye,
that you took no separate path at all,
neither this nor that, neither the one you loved
nor the one you did not want, that you had after all,
always held them generously together
by not choosing this side of existence or the other.
You were in the end,
never just looking on,
but always the river moving between
and the song of the water,
holding the flowing of ways together.
~ Excerpt from “NOT TAKEN”
From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte: (Special Edition)
©2013 David Whyte
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David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You
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Blessing for Unrequited Love
A blessing for the way you will not know me...
“A blessing on the eyes that do not see me as I wish.
A blessing to the ears that can never hear the far inward
footfall of my own shy heart. Blessings to the life
in you that will live without me, to the open door
that now and forever takes you away from me,
blessings to the path that you follow alone and blessings
to the path that awaits you, joining with another.
A blessing for the way you will not know me
in the years to come, and with it, a blind outstretched
blessing of my hands on anything or anyone
that cannot ever come to know me fully as I am,
and therefore, a blessing even, for the way I will
never fully know myself, above all, the deepest, kindest
wishes of my own hidden and untrammeled heart
for what you had to hide from me in you.
Let me be generous enough and large enough
and brave enough to say goodbye to you
without understanding, to let you go
into your own understanding, may you always
be in the sweet central, hidden shadow
of my memory without needing to know who you were
when you first came, who you were when you stayed
and who you will become in your freedom
now that you have passed through my life and gone.”
~ David Whyte
Artwork: Forever Love by Raine © Inner Voice Art
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W uczuciach, w rodzicielstwie, w pracy - ilekroć jesteśmy oddani i głęboko zaangażowani, czeka nas ból, frustracja, smutek. I to nie jest nic złego. To oznaka szczerości i oddania sprawie.
David Whyte
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David Whyte, on the death of his friend John O’Donohue, in conversation with Krista Tippett, On Being [transcript in ALT]
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Por vezes a simplicidade surge
como um botão de fogo
vindo da seda branca da tua própria pele.
Você estava lá no início
você ouviu a história, você ouviu as implacáveis
e ternas palavras dizendo a você onde você tinha que ir.
O exílio nunca é fácil e a jornada
em si deixa um gosto amargo. Mas aí,
quando você ouviu aquela voz, você tinha que ir.
Você não podia sentar ao pé do fogo, não podia viver
tão perto da chama viva daquela compaixão
você tinha que ir para o mundo e torná-lo seu
para que pudesse voltar com
aquela chama na sua voz, dizendo escute...
esse calor, essa luz insuportável, este amor temeroso...
Está tudo aqui, está tudo aqui.
— David Whyte, em "No início". Tradução da casa
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Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection …of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.
—David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (Many River Press, 2015 (via Alive on All Channels)
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Saul Leiter
* * * *
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
~ David Whyte
[alive on all channels]
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Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
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Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us.
David Whyte
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THE EDGE YOU CARRY WITH YOU
What is this
beguiling reluctance
to be happy?
This quickness
in turning away
the moment
you might
arrive?
The felt sense,
that a moment's
unguarded joy
might after all,
just kill you?
You know
so very well
the edge
of darkness
you have
always
carried with you.
You know
so very well,
your childhood legacy:
that particular,
inherited
sense of hurt,
given to you
so freely
by the world
you entered.
And you know
too well
by now
the body's
hesitation
at the invitation
to undo
everything
others seemed
to want to
make you learn.
But your edge
of darkness
has always
made
its own definition
secretly
as an edge of light
and the door
you closed
might,
by its very nature
be
one just waiting
to be leant against
and opened.
And happiness
might just
be a single step away,
on the other side
of that next
unhelpful
and undeserving
thought.
Your way home,
understood now,
not as an achievement,
but as a giving up,
a blessed undoing,
an arrival
in the body
and a full rest
in the give
and take
of the breath.
This living
breathing body
always waiting
to greet you
at the door,
always
no matter
the long years
you've been
away,
still
wanting you
to come home.
-- David Whyte, from Still Possible
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