It hurts, all this. ~ Sherlock Holmes

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All this hurts. ~ Sherlock Holmes, Elementary

All this hurts.

On the TV series, Elementary, Sherlock Holmes explains to Agatha why he cannot donate his sperm so she can have a baby with his DNA and, hopefully, his gifts.

Sherlock: You’re right. I am… remarkable. That’s precisely why I can’t help you.

Agatha: What does being amazing have to do…

Sherlock: No no. I didn’t say I was amazing. I said I was remarkable.

The things that I do, the things that you care about, you think I do them because I am a good person. I do them because it would hurt too much not to.

Agatha: Because you’re a good person.

Sherlock: No, it hurts, Agatha. All this. (points outside, to the world) Everything I see, everything I hear, touch, smell; the conclusions that I’m able to draw, the things that are revealed to me…
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Your truth is your truth

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Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. ~ Mahatma Ghandi

The truth is the truth.

Even if you are
A minority of one,
The truth
Is the truth.

Still, you cannot create a world
In which others will not impose

Their truth
Upon your truth
While imposing yours
Upon theirs

One truth there may be
But many ways to speak it truly
The master seeks the truth beneath words
The fool imposes words upon the truth

Love, faith and compassion: unconditionally

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I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Love, faith and compassion

I don’t care whether someone
Believes in God, or not
Whether they have faith
In science or metaphysics
Reason or religion
Or some mish-mash of them all.

What I care about is if they believe in love
Have faith in themselves, and others
Compassion for others, and themselves

Unconditionally

Un.con.di.tion.al.ly

Because that is the only way
We will ever escape
All this strife
And suffering

It’s even OK if there are conditions
All that’s really necessary
Is to believe in the possibility
And work to make it real

On the Timefullness of Beauty and Annie Lennox

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There's this youth culture that is really, really powerful and really, really strong, but what it does is it really discards people once they reach a certain age. I actually think that people are so powerful and interesting - women, especially - when they reach my age. We've got so much to say, but popular culture is so reductive that we just talk about whether we've got wrinkles, or whether we've put on weight or lost weight, or whether we've changed our hair style. I just find that so shallow. ~ Annie Lennox

Annie Lennox

Timefull Beauty

Some say
beauty fades with time.

Not at all.

The Wisdom, insight and presence
we earn with the practice of living
are beauty’s greatest markers.

Close your eyes
and listen for the radiance,
Open your eyes
and see the true nature of beauty.

The connection to something deeper which often inspires poems is itself inspired by insights connecting to something deeper. Here, a Facebook post celebrating the 60th birthday of Annie Lennox.

There’s this youth culture that is really, really powerful and really, really strong, but what it does is it really discards people once they reach a certain age. I actually think that people are so powerful and interesting – women, especially – when they reach my age. We’ve got so much to say, but popular culture is so reductive that we just talk about whether we’ve got wrinkles, or whether we’ve put on weight or lost weight, or whether we’ve changed our hair style. I just find that so shallow.

Annie Lennox

The Speck Becomes the Sea

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We are, each of us, a speck,
living on a speck,
rotating around a speck
which is just one of billions of specks
clustered in a speck.

Here am I
experiencing my own
infinitesimal significance.

I realize: I am a miracle,
infinite in my miraculousness.

In all the uncountable experiential specks
that are consciousness in this vastness,
there is but one that is me.

Only one listening
to gulls cry
from this apartment,
tapping this experience
into a keyboard.

One conscious being
in an endless sea of consciousness.

And so the speck
becomes the sea.

Liberty, Intelligence and Courage ~ Mastery

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Liberty, intelligence and courage.

Liberty, intelligence and courage.

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

~ Emma Goldman

Mmmmm… perhaps, but I think not.

People have only so much liberty as their mastery of themselves. No matter the strictures of state, or community, or friends or family … the surest bonds are those we unwittingly wind about ourselves. Such bonds muddle our intellect, and mis-direct our courage, so that with the very best intentions we make slaves of ourselves, and of others.

What is not Love; What is not Light

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What love is not

What Love is Not.


False: It is possible to work against ideas and actions which run counter to your own without hating the people who espouse and act upon them. For example, I can love and feel compassion for the person who created this meme, even though I feel its underlying philosophy is generally responsible for all violent conflict and the fear and hatred it engenders is routinely used to drum up support for war mongering.

What is not possible is to bring light and love into this world under the guise of hatred, intolerance or a self-aggrandizing sense of moral superiority.

hurt fail lose; grow succeed gain: lessons & pain

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hurt fail lose; grow know gain; lessons & pain

hurt fail lose; grow know gain; lessons & pain

Sometimes we must be hurt
in order to grow.

Sometimes we must fail
in order to know.

Sometimes we must lose
in order to gain.

Because some lessons in life
are best learned through pain.

A wise friend on a spirit quest of her own posted this meme on her FB profile. I commented with the bit below.
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Perceiving Spirit

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close both eyes - see with the other one

close both eyes – see with the third eye

Close both eyes;
See with the
Other one.

Cover both ears;
Hear with the
Other one.

Quiet my mind.
Open my heart.
Peer into infinity.
Listen to my body.

These senses
Perceive my spirit,
The true nature of self.

Spirit is in all things.
I look for it there.
Its voice resonates in my body.
I listen for it there.

When I see it, there is no I.
When I hear it, there is no not I.
Awakened to Oneness.

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