What Matters Most


Sitting in my Wetherspoons pub, reading chapter one of James Hollis' What Matters Most speaking of Blake and Jung and Eliot and Nietzsche and beloved Rilke, and a moment long ago leaks through psyche's floorboard into conciousness. 

I am on page four, with two hundred and fifty-two to go. The scales are falling from my eyes, the shield wall round my heart is fracturing. The alcoholic medication is no longer sufficient to stem the flood. So, let slip the moorings of my little ship. There is no time, only now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Letter to a friend

Image
A very good day to you R. It was great to see your smiling face and hear your voice in your video message. It took ages for me to finish What Matters Most, but James Hollis' astonishing way of sharing his insights, and the amazing weekend I shared with you, dear and lovely H, and the other super participants, remain most welcome companions on my path of self-discovery. I have attended four funerals in the last three months, including the parents of a good and constant friend, and my daughter's Nanny . Kate's tribute to an extraordinary woman on the day was simple, beautiful, powerful. So too were my friend's moving tributes to his parents a few weeks ago. Today, another goodbye - to my friend of 55 years. It is a day that I find some words from the new model helpful. "Every moment matters, every interaction matters ... When someone has a relationship with your soul, the impact never leaves you." I have gratitude for the impact of my friend in my
Read more

Nightmares

Image
And what of the shadow ... invisible in the absence of a window or door to let in a quantum of light. There are no bars, no cold, stone, impenetrable walls. They're merely poetic metaphors. What terror in the mind of a child locked up the pristine unitary ego so utterly that the rescue note bobbed up only at the full half-life of human decay? An infant can bear most things if not abandoned.  But for the not so lucky, for survival? The projection of external demons into nightmares and the Marvel world - the summoning of gods and heroes, Holmes and Moriarty, Arthur and Mordred, Michael and Diabolus - distractions, avoidances. But also signposts to the task that the Golden Child awaits - the grail quest of a Galahad to release the binding fascia memory of the lost years. In the half light of the city streets, the rage of the beast is ale-numbed, though sometimes the grief breaks through. For another night the child must wait. But didn't someone say tomorrow is anoth
Read more