How many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to final solutions without pausing to savor the undertones? We are a radically bottom-line society, eager to act and to end tension, and thus we lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets.
Interpretation
We often rush to solve problems without fully understanding ourselves or the situation.
In this quote, Thomas Moore reflects on our society's tendency to seek quick solutions and avoid the discomfort of introspection. He emphasizes that this eagerness to 'bottom-line' conflicts and challenges prevents us from engaging in deeper self-discovery and truly understanding our motivations and inner complexities.
In practice
During a workshop on personal growth, this quote can serve as a reminder to take time to reflect.
When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.
Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.
Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.
And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.
Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.
To err is nature, to rectify error is glory.
Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.
They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.
Come, live with the doors of the senses guarded, diligent and mindful, vigilant and mindful, with the ways of the mind well watched, possessed of a mind that is awake and observing.
The Voice There is a voice inside of you That whispers all day long, "I feel this is right for me, I know that this is wrong." No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What's right for you--just listen to The voice that speaks inside.
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