We might at first label the body’s simple need to focus inward depression. But as we practice going inward, we come to realize that much of it is not depression in the least; it is a cry for something else, often the physical body’s simple need for rest, for contemplation, and for a kind of forgotten courage, one difficult to hear, demanding not a

It seems that to find the real path we have to go off the path we are now on, even for an instant, and earn the privilege of losing our way.

If we are suffering the consequences of asphyxiation from the smouldering fuel inside us, we are at least aware there is a fire and fuel there to find and breathe on.

ENOUGH Enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to the life we have refused again and again until now. Until now.

The first step to preserving the soul in our individual lives is to admit that the world has a soul also, and is somehow participating with us in our work and destiny. That there is a sacred otherness to the world that is breathtakingly helpful simply because it is not us; it is not defined by our human worries and preoccupations, and it never will

It is everything we were afraid could be true about existence, and astonishingly, and despite everything we would wish to the contrary, it seems to be an energy without which we cannot appreciate the gift of the light-filled, ordered world; remove it, and our soul life becomes puzzlingly empty and impoverished.

As T. S. Eliot wrote, in a brilliant and painstaking way: I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing: wait without love for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

THE LEADEN EYED Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world’s sore crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden eyed. Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but they seldom reap. Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve Not that

This summoning of internal imagery may seem like the description of miraculous oracular powers, but it is really the simple process of uncovering something our deeper psyche already knows. The deep psyche or soul, left to find its way, will offer up or recognize in the outer world the images germane to its place on the path of life.