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A Bridge of Epigraphs
Toward an Archetypal Heart
C. Michael Smith
The Need
…we are bereft in our culture of an adequate psychology and philosophy of the heart….
-James Hillman
Core of Aliveness
…the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most fully alive.
-Christopher Alexander
Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life.
-Proverbs 4:23
Let yourself by silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
-Jellaludin Rumi
One develops when the desire to live and do things stirs deep down, when one’s own hopes and desires stir, when one’s own perceptions and evaluations carry a new sureness, when the capacity to stand one’s ground increases, and when one can consider others and their needs.
-Eugene T. Gendlin
If Eros draws people together to build communities and cities, he is a god who inspires interest and passion, who gets us involved, who reveals to us the emotional value and meaning of the enterprises that engage us.
-John Ryan Haule
Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in the heart, the devil in your body?
-Josephine Baker
Search and discover the root of your soul, so that you can fulfill it and restore it to its source.
-Kabbalah
Center
“Our world” is always situated at the center.
-Mircea Eliade
The center of the world is everywhere.
-Black Elk
Just stand in the center of the circle and let all things take their course.
-Lao Tzu
I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the center. The center is the goal, and everything is directed toward that center.
-C.G. Jung
When I am in my own center of stillness, then my soul is at her source.
-John S. Dunne
As the ultimate is the Ground of everything that is, so ultimate concern is the integrating center of personal life. Being without it is being without a center. …The center unites all the elements of…personal life, the bodily, the unconscious, the conscious, the spiritual ones.
-Paul Tillich
The Buddha is as near to you as your own heart.
-Ayya Khena
Where is God? In the heart of every seeker.
-Abraham Ben Samuel Chasdai
Path
This is the Grail center. …to become…individuated, to live as a related individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various roles….the aim of individuation requires that one should find and then learn to live out of one’s center.
-Joseph Campbell
I have to find my way back to my center to find my way.
-John S. Dunne
The shaman individuates by living from the heart.
-Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue
…we must attend carefully to childhood to catch early glimpses of the daimon in action, to grasp its intentions and not block its way. The rest of the practical implications will swiftly unfold: (a) Recognize the call as a prime fact of human existence; (b) align life with it; (c) find the common sense to realize that accidents, including the heartache …the flesh is air to, belong to the pattern of the image, and are necessary to it, and help fulfill it.
-James Hillman
…when a person’s central core or inward self expands (i.e. in a direction) it strengthens and develops, the “I” becomes stronger. The person—I mean that which looks out from behind a pair of eyes—comes more into its own.
-Eugene T. Gendlin
Beauty before me; beauty behind me.
Beauty to the right of me; beauty to the Left.
Beauty below me; beauty above me.
I am on the pollen path.
-Pawnee chant
For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking, breathlessly.
-don Juan Matus
Mind and Heart in Balance
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
-Robert Browning
We cannot solve our problems by the same consciousness which created them.
-Albert Einstein
“ In this life, it is important to combine the gifts of the Eagle with the gifts of the Condor. We need both powers: the power of the Eagle---which is the power of the mind, including the gifts of science and technology, and the power of the Condor—which is the power of the heart, including the gifts of feeling and connection with the elements of the earth.
These two powers…mind and heart, --Eagle and Condor—are also inside us. They need to fly together inside each one of us. The power of the Eagle is to think and to plan. The power of the Condor is to feel and connect.
The sky is our daily lives. To fly is to enjoy each moment of our life, and from this experience of life, to continually and spontaneously express gratitude. “
-don Alverto Taxo, Kichwa Shaman
Listening to the Drum [of the heart] requires you to be present in the now. The space between the beats is where one listens in respect. …people try to get to the spirit world mentally. You can’t get here from there. …in fact the longest distance in the Universe is from the head to the heart.
-Blackwolf Jones, Ojibway Healer
There are besides the gifts of the head, also those of the heart, which are no wit less important, although they may easily be overlooked because in such cases the head is often the weaker organ
-C.G. Jung
The universal function of feeling is to bind together. It connects what knowledge divides; it binds me to things, to beings, to Being.
-Paul Ricoeur
One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.
-Friedrich Nietzche
The thanc, the heart’s core, is the gathering of all that concerns us, all that we care for, all that touches us insofar as we are human beings. …in giving thanks, the heart in thought recalls where it remains gathered and concentrated, because that is where it belongs.
-Martin Heidegger
Spaciousness,: Presence, & Person
The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.
-Joseph Conrad
Nobody has ever measured, even the poets, how much a heart can hold.
-Zelda Fitzgerald
The soul should always stand ajar.
-Emily Dickinson
Who am I really? Without the messages from society, from church, from family---what is my true nature? What if I could operate outside of my complexes, outside long …patterns that diminish and obscure my true self? Then I would be able to begin to know my essential self.
-Tess Castleman
You could not find the boundaries of the soul, even by traveling along every path; so deep is its measure.
-Heraclitus
The face [of the other] resists possession, resists my powers. In its epiphany, in expression, the sensible, still graspable, turns into total resistance to the grasp.
-Emmanuel Levinas
Who looks back is not the person’s traits or experiences, not the felt sense either. …The person looking at you is none of the content. Content does not look at you.
-Eugene T. Gendlin
Dwelling Place of Spirit
The true Mosque is nothing but the heart…
-Jellaludin Rumi
Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house. This house has the shape of a lotus and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realized.
-Mundaka Upanishad
Our heart is the sanctuary where the Lord of the Universe…dwells…in all glory.
-Swami Ramdas
The human heart seeks the infinite because that is where the finite wants to rest. In the infinite it sees its own fulfillment. …The ultimate concern gives depth, direction, and unity to all other concerns, and with them, to the whole person.
-Paul Tillich
The height of the feeling of belonging to Being ought to be the feeling in which what is most detached from our vital depths—what is absolute…becomes the heart of our own heart.
-Paul Ricoeur
It traces a way or path which is potentially, reflected in each individual being. To be ‘in’ Tao or connected to Tao is to experience meaning and move with the energy of life. ….The ideogram to go, straight and heart…acquiring that which makes a being become what it is meant to be.
-Rudolf Ritesma & Stephen Karcher
Internal Guidance System
Go to thy bosom and knock there and ask what it doth know.
-William Shakespeare
We think with the heart.
-Ochwiay Biano, Pueblo Medicine Man
It lets you know when you are on the beam; or off the beam.
-Joseph Campbell
Wakan-Tanka and the Helpers taught me how to see with the mind, touch with my eyes, and decide with my heart.
-Old Fools Crow,
Teton Sioux Ceremonial Chief
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly…
-Saint Exupery
The heart has reasons which reason doesn’t know.
-Blaise Pascal
Insight occurs as the reasons of the heart become known to the mind.
-John S. Dunne
There are two kinds of intelligence; one acquired.
As a child in school memorizes
Facts and concepts.
….There is another kind of tablet, one
Already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its spring box.
A freshness in the center of the chest.
This other intelligence
Does not turn yellow or stagnate.
-Jelalludin Rumi
The rain has stropped, the clouds have drifted away
And the weather is clear again.
… the moon and flowers will guide you.
-Ryokan, Zen poet
in the night…my heart instructs me.
-Psalm 16:7 |
