Number Thirty Two

Our will is fragile.  It resists facing pain.  The will wants relief, satience.  It tends to seek what's immediate; within reach.

Two things strengthen the will: clarity about what is good, and willingness to have pain for the sake of what is good.

True choice grows from holding an enduring image of our highest value.  Even in pain.  Even when afraid.

True choice comes from making friends with pain, knowing it will show up with each real step in the direction of what matters.

Number Thirty One

Time is loss.  Grief depends on believing we can keep what we have; on believing that we have anything.  We lose everything.  Threaded into the weave of love is losing everything.  In time.  Love holds what has been, what will be taken.

Number Thirty

What is the truth?  Each of us holds a piece of the truth.  And although the "truth" of two people may seem to contradict, it is usually a dialectic.  And each truth becomes a surveyor's stake that we sight along, to see at a distance where the lines intersect.  And where they intersect is a gathering of all human awareness, a place where the truth of each individual experience becomes a wellspring.  Where it is becoming god.