My Own Utopian Experiment #35: Sharing Quotes from Thomas Moore to contemplate and reflect together for soulful life.
I dedicated the whole month, the previous 4 posts on taking care of soul. Even though I do not mention the topic literally, my posts somewhat contain many related ideas, thoughts and reflections. This topic is personally the most important mission since everything gravities to my sense of being, how the soul is doing. Our entire existence and experiences are from the soul. If I compare the time that I was less aware of my soul, I am a completely different person in the sense of being and ultimately who I am. My daily life experience is much deeper with awareness. Taking care of soul should a life-long mission.
I often mentioned the most important job to myself is knowing myself. Knowing myself, authentic life, gratitude, contentment, live the life we want, creating my own culture, making conscious decisions, having hobbies that provides deep connection and many other nice magical things are all intertwine with taking care of the soul. I truly believe we all have common purpose in this life to know who we are and live as who we are. I know I can’t get there without soulful life which is my personal goal in life. Everything is connected and manifest to our own sense of being. It creates the world around us and our experience in the world. What’s more important than this?
I have a few favorite authors depending on the topics. For soulful life, spirituality, healing, Thomas Moore is my favorite. His artful writing so match with my personal goals and values. His writing feels like he knows me well. There’s no better teacher and another kindred soul. I would love to share some of his quotes. I put categories with intention to help you read but you may feel a bit differently. That’s good evidence that we are all individuals with unique souls. Please have a moment to contemplate and reflect on his words. Quotes are great since we can relate to it in our own terms. Please pay attention to your immediate thoughts without judging and processing. Have fun on another soulful day. Sending my love as always.
The Logic and Language of the soul
“Observance of the soul can be deceptively simple. You take back what has been disowned. You work with what is rather than what you wish were there.”
“In order to tab the soul’s power, one has to be conversant with its style, and watchful. The soul’s indications are many, but they are usually extremely subtle.”
“We could learn from its qualities and follow its lead, becoming more patient in its presence, lowering our excited expectations, taking a watchful attitude as this soul deals with its fate in utter seriousness and heaviness”
“But in care of the soul there is trust that nature heals, that much can be accomplished by not-doing.”
“Soul doesn’t necessarily benefit from long, hard work, or fairness of any kind. Its effects are achieved more with magic than effort.”
“How many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to final solution without pausing to savor the undertones? …. Use our intelligence and skill to preserve the mysteries.”
“If we do not claim the soul’s power on our own behalf, we become its victim. We suffer our emotions rather than feel them working for us.”
“Spirituality does demand attention, mindfulness, regularity, and devotion. It asks for some small measure of withdrawal from a world set up to ignore soul.”
Soul in ordinary everyday living
“Care of the soul requires ongoing attention to every aspect of life. Essentially it is a cultivation of ordinary things in such a way that soul is nurtured and fostered.”
“All of these ordinary things have a great deal to do with the condition of the soul. If we do not tend the soul consciously and artfully, then its issues remain largely unconscious, uncultivated, and therefore often problematic.”
“One of the most unconscious of our daily activities from the perspective of the soul is work and the setting of work, office, factory, store, studio or home. I have found in my practice over the years that the conditions of work have at least as much to do with disturbances of soul as marriage and family.”
“It is tempting simply to make adjustments in response to problems at work without recognizing the deep issues involved. Certainly we allow the workplace dominated by function and efficiency, thereby leaving us open to the complains of neglected soul. We could benefit psychologically from a heightened consciousness about the poetry of work – its style, tools, timing and environment.”
“Simply taking a special look at the house in order to glimpse signs of the soul that lies hidden in the everyday and commonplace.
“The home is a place of daily work, whether or not one has an “outside” job. If you were to read your own house, at some point you would find yourself standing before the tools of house work: Vacuum cleaner, broom, dustmop, soaps, sponges, dishpan, hammer, screwdriver. These things are very simple, and yet they are fundamental to the feeling we have of being home.”
“Housework a path of contemplation”
“We all know that at some level daily work affects character and the overall quality of life, but we usually overlook the way soulfulness can adhere to ordinary housework and the gift it can bring to the soul. If we let other people do our ordinary work for us, or if we do it ourselves without care, we might be losing something irreplaceable and eventually experience that missing element as a painful sense of loneliness or homelessness.”
“Care of soul concentrates on everyday conditions of live. If an emotional problem presents itself, the real issue may not be some single trauma or troubled relationship. Maybe the issue is a life set up in such a way that soul is neglected habitually. Problems are part of every human life, and they do not necessarily wither the soul. The soul suffers more from the everyday conditions of live when they do not nourish it with the solid experiences it craves.”
“Growing old is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention to the spiritual aspect of life.”
Individuality
“Repression of the life force is a diagnosis I believe would fit most of the emotional problems people present in therapy. … When we allow ourselves to exist truly and fully, we sting the world with our vision and challenge with our own ways if being.
“Throughout human history the expression of individuality has been felt as a threat to the status quo. For all its expressed championing of the individual, our culture in many ways favors conformity.”
“As psychoanalysis says, repetition is death. Repetition defends against the rush of individual life. It seeks the deadly peace of a culture that has banished surprise.”
“Power incubates within the soul and then makes its influential move into life as the expression of soul.”
“The most obvious cause of the need for separation in a marriage like Marianne’s (an example in the book) is the lack of differentiation of the two individuals. When two people fall in love, come together, and make a household, their deep fantasies sometimes mesh, and then each lives out his or her own myth through the other. In such a situation, it can be difficult to feel one’s own individuality.”
“We can all create sacred books and boxes – volume of dreams, a heart-felt diary, a notebook of thoughts, particularly meaningful album of photographs – and thus in a small but significant way we can make the everyday sacred.”
True Self-love
“Narcissism is a condition in which a person does not love himself. This failure in love comes through as its opposite because the person tries so hard to find self-acceptance.”
“It robs the soul of its attachment to the world.”
“The result is the love of self that engenders a sense of union with all of nature and things.”
The power of histories, stories and arts
“In many traditional cultures a person becomes an adult by hearing the secret stories of community that have been handed down over generations. Elders give instructions, teaching of ritual and art. … The point is to stir the young person so deeply that he or she experiences a major transformation of character.”
“Education in history and literature, when done with sufficient depth, can make good fathers.”
Economics of soul
“If a person’s attitude toward money is essentially a defense against poverty, then this person may never fully experience wealth.”
“From the perspective of soul, wealth and poverty come together in responsible use and enjoyment of this world, which is only leased to us for the period of our tenture.”