You will pay for your life with your life. However you decide to live, whether you decide by deciding or by not deciding, will cost you everything you have— thoughts, feelings, arms and legs, consciousness and dreams and your slice of eternity. What you get for your life is your life. Be a jiffy shopper.
Tag Archives: psychotherapy
Emblem 012: Glow stick
You’ve seen these? Perhaps you’ve had a few of your own. Or maybe you really like them and seek them out whenever possible. Contents that are inert when kept separate, when brought together produce light by which you can read.
Emblem 018: Through all the colors
In alchemy the peacock represents the phase of the work in which all the phases have been realized. The maxim is, “You must pass through all the colors.” No skipping the ones that aren’t appealing, no pretending you’ve done ones you haven’t, and ignorance of a color doesn’t excuse you from making its acquaintance. It speaks to recollecting all the scattered elements of personality from projection and fitting them into a conscious sense of identity. It also speaks to the aging process, letting each age have its turn—blissful youth, overworked midlife, elder who knows how things turned out. Through all the feelings, through all the stages of life, through all the components of personality, through all the experiences of your lifetime, skipping nothing, refusing nothing, denying nothing. Put another way, you’re encouraged to collect the whole set.
Emblem 015: Saint Brendan
Brendan is all at sea. That happens sometimes, when we find ourselves confused by sudden events, reversals or losses. The sea catches him in its current and runs with him. Once dry land drops below the horizon he comes to the islands no one has discovered. On one there’s a small boy who works magic and lives with birds. On another a teenager dwells who hasn’t fallen in love yet. Past that lie the islands of the hermit, of the cave of the winds, of the dog-headed people. Paradises on some, others not so pleasant. The result of the voyage is that by its end the islands have all been visited and gathered. They’re no longer lost but exist in relation to the mainland. The mainland benefits from this, regaining what was forgotten, exiled, never. And of course the islands have always wanted to be known.
Emblem 009: Rumination
It comes around again and again. I wish it would stop but it won’t let me. My thoughts go in circles by themselves. What’s hidden in the center?
Emblemata 