Inhabited Simplicity
"Holiness is reached not through effort or will, but by stopping; by an inward coming to rest; a place from which we can embody the spirit of all our holy days, a radical, inhabited simplicity, where we live in a kind of ongoing surprise and with some wonder and appreciation."
~ David Whyte
To Broaden And Deepen Your Own Sense Of Presence
"I began to realize that the only place where things were actually real was at this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you."
~ David Whyte
The Hidden Discipline of Familiarity
"Half of what’s about to occur is unknown, both inside you and outside you."
~ David Whyte
Tired of Yourself
"A lot of the poetic discipline boils down to getting tired of yourself, and I really believe that. When you get tired of yourself, then you change."
~ David Whyte
Feeling Slightly Out of It Most of the Time
"actually, it may be that just being yourself as a human being means feeling slightly out of it most of the time. And that a form of enlightenment is to understand that you'll never feel quite at home in the world and you're not meant to, because your sense of compassion for the rest of creation and for others depends on your understanding of exile — how far a creature, especially a human creature, can feel from true parentage, from their true inheritance, from their true home."
~ David Whyte
Nourishing Surprise
"The conversational nature of reality means that whatever you want from life will not occur in exactly the way you’d like it to. But, also, whatever life wants from you – society wants from you, your parents want from you, your partner wants from you, your children want from you – will also not occur. And that what occurs is this third quality which is more like a meeting and a dynamic of the two, a conversation between the two."
~ David Whyte