Aperī oculōs meōs

Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur

Cicero

Art: Jean Giraud Moebius

If they avoid you,
set them free.
Let them go without bitterness,
for not everyone is meant to stand beside you
when the road turns heavy.

A man who knows his worth
does not chase fading footsteps
or plead for borrowed attention.
He stands firm, even in silence,
even when it costs him someone he cared for.

Walk away with your head held high,
with honor in your heart and fire in your spine.
For you know who you are,
at the core.

— Chamod Senevirathne

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”

Alexandre Dumas.

What It Means to Care

To care is not to hold tightly,
but to stay near.
To notice when the light shifts,
when a voice grows tired,
when silence asks for company.

To nurture is to tend
what is still becoming.
To offer patience instead of pressure,
warmth instead of answers,
space where something fragile
can learn it is safe.

To protect is not always to shield from pain,
but to stand as witness,
to say with your presence,
you are not alone in this.

These acts are done without being named.
They leave no trace, only a difference.
They mend the world quietly,
one heart at a time,
teaching us how to belong.

Rivers in the Ocean

Non, un lien d’âme n’est pas forcément quelque chose de fluide au départ. Ce n’est pas toujours un chemin pavé de douceur, où tout est rose, affriolant et sans embûche. Parfois, c’est même tout l’inverse : une rencontre qui secoue, qui déstabilise, qui met face à des parts de soi que l’on préférait ignorer.

Un lien d’âme arrive souvent comme une révélation inattendue, belle mais brute, lumineuse mais crue. Il bouscule les repères, ouvre des portes qu’on n’avait jamais osé toucher, réveille des mémoires, des désirs, des peurs enfouies. Ce n’est pas la simplicité qui le définit, mais la vérité.

Parce que ce type de connexion vient toucher quelque chose de profond, là où les façades ne tiennent plus. Il demande du courage, de la patience, parfois du silence et parfois des tempêtes. C’est une danse où l’on apprend à se connaître autant que l’autre. Une alchimie qui ne se révèle qu’avec le temps, la confiance, le dénudement de l’ego.

Un lien d’âme n’est pas parfait. Il n’est pas toujours confortable. Mais il est réel.

Et ce qui n’est pas fluide au début peut devenir, avec le temps, une source d’ancrage, de guérison et de lumière plus puissante que tout ce qu’on aurait pu imaginer.

Charlotte Cellier

To avoid you in my reality,
oh, I tried in many ways.
I kept myself busy, changed my routines,
told my heart to be stronger than my memories,
but nothing ever really worked.

Somehow, you always find a way to appear,
in quiet moments, in passing songs,
in places that no longer belong to us.
You show up between breaths,
between thoughts I didn’t invite.

I tried distance, I tried silence,
I tried convincing myself that time would erase you.
Oh, I tried all the known ways…
yet you return, softly and endlessly..

— Chamod Senevirathne

Consciousness is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.

-- Roger Penrose

One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light.
It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light.
What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.
This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

~James Baldwin

art: Survivors by Markusz Lewandowski

Sometimes you have to close the door
to protect the peace inside.

The hardest pill
I had to swallow
this year

I mistook being used
for being useful
for far too long

A good heart
still needs
a gate

Not everyone deserves
acces

art: Taryn Knight - There there little friend

The art of peace does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead, we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term samurai is one who serves and adheres to the power of love.

Morihei Ueshiba

When someone harms us, they create the cause of their own suffering. They do this by strengthening habits that imprison them
in a cycle of pain and confusion. It’s not that we are responsible for what someone else does, and certainly not that we should feel guilty.
But when they harm us, we unintentionally become the means of their undoing. Had they looked on us with loving-kindness, however,
we’d be the cause of their gathering virtue. What I find helpful in this teaching is that what’s true for them is also true for me.
The way I regard those who hurt me today will affect how I experience the world in the future. In any encounter,
we have a choice: we can strengthen our resentment or our understanding and empathy.
We can widen the gap between ourselves and others or lessen it.

- Pema Chödrön

»When you come home to yourself your intention will change. You come to a new level of reality, a new consciousness. Your intention changes and then the world will change. You will follow your intuition without a doubt. Many people in the West have lost their intuition. Bringing you home to yourself so you can follow your intuition, that is the work of a Shaman.« Angaangaq

We do not become healers.
We came as healers. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become storytellers.
We came as carriers of the stories that
we and our ancestors actually lived. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become artists. We came as artists. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become writers.. dancers.. musicians.. helpers.. peacemakers. We came as such. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not learn to love in this sense. We came as Love. We are Love. Some of us are still catching up to who we truly are.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

WHEN YOU ARE SILENCED

Being silenced by someone,
or by a group, hurts.
A lot.
It sends a brutal message:
You do not matter.
You are worthless.
You are nothing.
Your opinion is invalid.
This is where your protest begins.
Protest does not have to be loud.
It does not have to be violent.
You can protest from presence.
From a grounded, calm place.
Yes, you can protest from peace!
You can have a voice,
even if you have been denied one.
Protest does not have to be a grand gesture.
It might mean taking one tiny step.
Saying the thing you have been avoiding.
Asking for support.
Making even a small wave.
Friend, do not disappear
when they try to make you disappear.
Do not silence yourself
when they try to silence you.
Find a way to speak.
Even quietly.
Even without words.
You are here.
You matter.
You are worthy of having a say.
Your perspective counts.
When you are silenced,
make waves.

- Jeff Foster

Art: Charlie Cattrall

“Ge moet nooit voor uzelf de zon gaan zoeken in de boeken of op de kermis, in de kerk of onder de rokken van een vrouw, in het diepste van de zee waar veel geld moet liggen of in de verte waar misschien een luilekkerland is, maar ge moet met liefde arbeiden aan het werk waarin ge het handigst zijt, en beseffen dat uw werk, hoe simpel het ook is, deze en de komende geslachten helpen zal. Over uw eerlijke arbeid in dienst van de gemeenschap zittend, zult ge ontdekken
dat ge nergens de zon moet gaan zoeken, want zij zit binnen in u.”

- Louis Paul Boon

“It's not a crime to love too much,
to overload your soul with pure bliss,
to love with maddening abandon.
The crime is in holding back,
barricading your heart, preventing
the natural flow of love, life.
Freedom is in removing the barriers
and allowing yourself to become
vulnerable, to feel at the very
depths of your core.
Sure, love is a risk, but isn't it better
to risk and find life, than to become
numb and find death?
Without love, life is meaningless.
This is the magic and the
not-so-secret secret of the
Universe."

~ Melody Lee
Art: Manka Kasha

風林火山 (Fūrinkazan)

As swift as the wind
As silent as the forest
As fierce as the fire
As unshakable as the mountain.

The Art of War
Sun Tzu - 5th century BCE

It will come to pass that your good heart will not always be taken care of. That your kind soul will not always be kept well by others. That your acts of love will be twisted into ugly stories, tales in which you are the villain. And it will hurt this good heart of yours, to hear that such mistruth exists, that there are those who will turn pure intentions into plots and selfless into subterfuge.
But when this sadness comes about, as it must, be brave. You know this heart of yours and all the care it holds for our world and all in it. You know what you did not do and what you did do, so beautifully. And those who can see, do see you. Or they will, very soon. The others, may never be able to. And that, my friend, is a sad tale much bigger, than any they have set out to create.

- Donna Ashworth

EOM

• Let's talk about your comeback. All the times you fell and got back up.
• Let's talk about the lessons. All the hurt you turned into healing.
• Let's talk about the version of you that you haven't met yet, and all the versions of you that helped you get to where you are now.
• Let's talk about your survival, all the things that were sent to break you, and you barely even flinched.
• Let's talk about how beautiful it is that the ugliest parts of your story are what taught you grace.
• Let's talk about all of the times you doubted yourself, how you used the pieces of those moments to build yourself back up into the most certain thing you've ever known.
You didn't break. Let's talk about how far you've come and how you're still standing.

— James Polynice

Art : Jean Giraud Moebius

“It takes guts, care and heartfulness to journey into self discovery. To make your darkness felt, to touch your wounds with balm. Embracing your heart, speaking with your soul and tenderly caring for every inner inch of you; allowing your energy to flow snake like inside, unblocking and encouraging the shedding of old ways, takes bravery and courage.
And yet doing it, brings your body power, knowing and self love. I will always choose this, over the dull ache, the gnawing at my bones and the terror in my heart that comes from self avoidance.”

- Brigit Anna McNeill

“Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there”.

David Bowie

"Grandfather, how long it took me too understand you used light to celebrate creation."

What you refuse to feel will rule you.
Every ending is an initiation in disguise.
If you’re not changing, you’re hiding.
What you worship is what you become.
Freedom begins where obedience stops.
Pay attention: this moment is recruiting you.
You are the question wearing the mask of an answer.
Your wound is your passport.
The universe is improvising you right now.
No one is coming to save you—except you, arriving now.
Your attention is your most powerful currency.
The future listens to how you speak today.
What you love trains your courage.
The body remembers truths the mind forgot.
You are already inside the transformation.
Reality responds to sincerity, not credentials.

Rob Brezsny

"...in this kind of achievement artists are supremely important. A creative artist is a person who, in spite of the pressure of education and the need to adapt to society based on focused consciousness succeeds in never losing his contact with the field of diffuse awareness where the unbroken connection of all growing things still reigns.
This explains the artist's state of continual conflict, and his often strange behavior. His art is not the result of a one-sided development, as has often been suggested, but of a greater capacity to live the whole of his personality; and whether his art sees the light of day or not, he had done something of immense significance, not only for himself for society as a whole".

On the importance of artists // Irene Claremont de Castillejo – In Knowing Woman – A feminine Psychology

Art: Moebius

She had a theorem for devotion,
a syllogism for the heart—
Love must follow her notation
or it wasn't love, for a start.

She parsed each gesture, weighed each word,
cross-referenced them with her texts,
Found the friendship somehow blurred,
insufficient, too complex.

"This isn't Love," she declared one day,
consulting her internal chart,
"It lacks the properties I say
are necessary for the part."

The friend, who'd been there all along,
who'd listened, laughed, and stayed,
was categorized as simply wrong—
a filing error, mislaid.

She killed it with her careful hands,
dissected it with pristine thought,
dismissed what she couldn't understand
as something lesser, overwrought.

Now she sits among her definitions,
her frameworks polished, sharp, and sure,
surrounded by her clear positions,
her loneliness exquisitely pure.

She has her truth, precisely hewn,
her principles that never bend—
and congratulates herself that soon
she'll recognize a proper friend.

But love, that wild and messy thing,
that refuses to be defined,
had already spread its unruly wing
and left her theory behind.

Claude-AI

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

Satori (Japanese: 悟り) is a Japanese Buddhist term for "awakening", "comprehension; understanding". The word derives from the Japanese verb satoru.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to a deep experience of kenshō, "seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature" or "essence".

Satori and kenshō are commonly translated as "enlightenment", a word that is also used to translate bodhi, prajñā and Buddhahood.

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

W.H. Auden