I feel it now: there's a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has need me.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that our perception shapes reality and that we have the power to influence our world.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote reflects the philosophical idea that our understanding and perception play a pivotal role in the creation of our experiences. By stating that nothing has ever been real without being beheld, Rilke emphasizes the interconnectedness of the observer and the observed, suggesting that reality is not merely a given but something that is actively shaped by our awareness and engagement with it.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality, this quote can illustrate how perception shapes our existence.
Spring has again returned. _x000D_ _x000D_ The Earth is like a child that knows many poems._x000D_ _x000D_ Many, O so many. For the hardship_x000D_ _x000D_ of such long learning she receives the prize._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ Strict was her teacher. _x000D_ _x000D_ The white in the old man's beard pleases us._x000D_ _x000D_ Now, what to call green, to call blue,_x000D_ _x000D_ we dare to ask: She knows, She knows!
Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.
a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.
The only journey is the one within.
And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been
I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.
In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.
Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.
The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it's beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.
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