Doctor Who quote

"The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and... bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things."
The Doctor - Vincent and the Doctor

Friday, August 26, 2016

Day of Delirium #339 - The Rabbit and the Garden

"The real voyage of discovery
consists not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes."

~ Marcel Proust


In the movie PHENOMENON, John Travolta's character has done everything he can think of to keep this pesky rabbit out of his garden. He's even put in fencing that goes three feet underground, and still everything he plants is nibbled through.

Suddenly one night he wakes and realizes he's been going about this all wrong. In the moonlight, he quietly goes to his garden and opens the gate, then sits on his porch and waits.

To his surprise, as he begins to fall asleep, the rabbit scurries out the gate. While he'd been trying to keep it out, the rabbit was trapped in his garden, and he was inadvertently keeping it in.

How often do we barricade and fence up our lives against hurt and loss, thinking we're keeping the painful things out, when they're already trapped inside us eating at our roots, and what we really need to do is to open the gate and let them out?

  • Center yourself, and consider what you are currently trying to keep out of your heart. It might be a fear of what's to be, or a memory of what has been, or the truth of a situation you are living right now.
  • Close your eyes and open the gate to your heart and wait. Breathe and wait.
  • Breathe slowly and give the rabbit a chance to leave your garden.


-- Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

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