Don’t be confused by the nature of solitude, when something inside of you wants to break free of your loneliness.~~~Rainer Maria Rilke Solitude is space large enough to contain everything. Is that why we fear it? Why we cling To bodies, bottles, and illusions? Solitude is the mirror, clear, the actor’s stage after the curtain is lowered, the theatre, empty. Solitude excludes nothing, tests our reliance on memories, our resistance to the present. But solitude is where awareness lives, and invites, one seeker at a time, to visit where music is heard before it is played, and poems are composed before words appear, where self finds the true self. Solitude is the open hand, and cleared vision, a field of possibilities, the endless vista.
Tag: Rainer Maria Rilke
Acceptance
“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
~~~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The middle of the night
he returns
to leave you again
as he did long ago.
Let it happen
let it happen again.
Rilke is right
you know
against reason.
But first you fight
fate, karma
bad luck
all the
invisible
opponents
you turn your face into the pillow
from blows
the subconscious lands
at last,
like a boxer on the bloody floor,
you resort
to prayer
whispered
into the pillow.
sleep returns only
upon surrender
as illusions depart,
and childhood longings,
do the same.
It is morning.
Solitude
“…love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance…”
“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Solitude
Some say
aloneness
and its quietude
is a nightmare of isolation,
the opposite of love,
that an empty room
is not filled by their own body
only by others.
Some hide under crowd-cover
or run from themselves to another.
Solitude might be cherished
even more than a lover.
What else but solitude
nourishes your poems like rain on wildflowers,
grows your songs, flows your art?
What else
opens to the vista beyond your confines,
returns you to yourself,
honors your silence,
makes space for your tears,
and a place to rest.
What else
leaves room for your questions
is the dawn for your answers
reminds you of the warp and weave
connecting the universe,
the unconditional oneness.
What invites you to meditation,
brings you to your spirit,
leads you to prayer?
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