If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.
Interpretation
Taking time to pause and reflect can lead to personal understanding and realization.
In this quote, Pablo Neruda reflects on the profound impact of stillness in our lives. He suggests that in our relentless pursuit of activity, we often overlook the deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. By embracing moments of silence and inactivity, we may discover insights that reveal life's underlying truths, much like how nature can surprise us with life even after apparent dormancy.
In practice
This quote could be used in a mindfulness workshop to emphasize the importance of introspection.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
Your mind is the knife that cuts the continuum of space and time into neat slices of linear experience.
If I want to be free from any other man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
Know that when you seek anything of your own, you will never find God, because you do not seek God purely. You are seeking something along with God, and you are acting just as if you were to make a candle out of God in order to look for something with it. Once one finds the things one is looking for, one throws the candle away. This is what you are doing.
The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered... This is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust and this is the lesson which Auschwitz taught us.
You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.
Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.