To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow our selves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious worried self...the vulnerability of happiness felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source, the claiming of our place in the living conversation.

David Whyte

Categorized in : Joy Doorways Self

What if the world is holding its breath -

David Whyte

what-if waiting world

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.

David Whyte

heartfelt courageous community

Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking.

David Whyte

real inspirational thinking

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.

David Whyte

journey self sight

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

David Whyte

darkness suffering sweet

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest.

David Whyte

wholeheartedness antidote inspirational

We withdraw not to disappear, but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear, rested, embodied voice we begin to remember again as our own.

David Whyte

voice different way

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

David Whyte

gratitude arise attention

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. Pay attention to everything in the world as if it's alive. Realize everything has its own discrete existence outside your story. By doing this, you open to gifts and lessons that the world has to give you.

David Whyte

stories attention giving

Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.

David Whyte

sailing discovery life

To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

David Whyte

persuasion triumph world

As human beings we have this immediate gateway - you’ve just to articulate exactly the way that you’re exiled, exactly the way that you don’t belong, exactly the way that you can’t love, exactly the way that you can’t move ... and you’re on your way again. You’re on your way home. If you can just say exactly the way that you’re imprisoned - the door swings open.

David Whyte

swings home moving

I want to know

David Whyte

heat want fall

Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you.

David Whyte

one-line lines heaven

Enough.

David Whyte

few-words sitting mindfulness

Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.

David Whyte

soul journey world

Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born.

David Whyte

waiting joy inspirational

Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom.

David Whyte

silence struggle work

What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

David Whyte

vitality enough sleep

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future.

David Whyte

heartfelt participation community