Hi Anita

It seems to me you have been touching on something “just out of the corner of the eye” that resonated with my own ponderings. That word Loneliness associated with darkness, how it colors life and that ache. I do not wish to say to much more as it feels like space to hold for a while.

I will share an accompanying thought that has been arising as I’ve sat in T.S Eliots words and that you also echo in your last respnse. And “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

Mary doesn’t rush to interpret or act. She doesn’t try to control or explain. She simply holds with reverence, the unfolding of life, even when it’s confusing or painful. The feminine wisdom of contemplation, of allowing meaning to ripen in the heart over time.

In Jungian terms “Mary” the ‘sacred container’, the vessel of the Self that holds paradox, uncertainty, and transformation. A reminder that not all truths are meant to be solved or spoken. Some truths grow stronger in stillness. Some healings need to happen in the quiet. Some are meant to be pondered, lived with, and slowly integrated.

In a world filled with troublesome stories I find myself returning again and again to this “container”. Not to name the ache and understand, but to feel and find rest in it.

Hi Anita

I wish there were words that would help reduce fear and anxiety. I know how quickly the work we have done to move past our hurts can be undone by outer events we have no control over, and we find ourselves in old familiar unwanted territory.

I can’t say I understand the world seeming constant need to hurt one another. (Perhaps a fear of ‘not enough-ness’ a topic for another day.) How this moment the happenings of the outer world triggers uncertainty, anxiety and fear. Then I hear your cry, “I think of letting go of any love for my mother.” the heart breaks, love so entangled with pain, obligation, betrayal and survival. (Is this the cry of current world affairs? Are we letting go of love…)

Over the last few months, I feel you standing at a threshold, not just of letting go of a relationship that has hurt you, but of something deeper: a way of seeing, feeling, and being. The words of the Heart Sutra come to mind – into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond, the other shore, awaken.

Today I started my day reading the meditation from Acton and Contemplation. It spoke of contemplation as “a long loving look at the real.” That line stayed with me. Because maybe what you’re doing now, facing the truth of your experience, your pain, your history… as a kind of contemplation. And maybe love, in this context, isn’t about closeness or forgiveness or even warmth. Maybe it’s about seeing clearly and choosing peace.

You said you might be letting go of love for your mother. I wonder if what you’re really letting go of is the version of love that hurt you, the one that demanded silence and the sacrifice of self as the price for survival. That’s not love you need to keep. Love can be fierce. Love can walk away. Love can protect.

“There’s a kind of joy that comes not from things going well, but from being real, from standing in truth, even when it hurts. And there’s a kind of sadness that’s not weakness, but wisdom. Both can live in you at once. That’s not contradiction, that’s depth.” after Richard Rohr

Hi Anita
Sounds like you had a night 🙂

“I used to think in black-and-white terms—all-or-nothing”

Sadly, the digital age, especially with algorithm-driven platforms reinforces and amplifies our tendency to either-or, all or nothing, binary thinking.

Regarding the second half of life transition, the digital culture does make it harder to slow down and listen inwardly. On the other hand, it can be a great resource to explore the wisdom traditions and such.

I wonder what role AI will play? Will we use it to amplify the noise and distraction and quick fix. Or could it become a companion for reflection, ask better questions, and access deeper knowledge. LOL – I implied a ‘either or’ when the its going to be both.

Skillful discernment something the we will all need to develop… I hope society will be up to the task.

I was recently asked what I thought was the best advice the bible had to offer and the first thought that came to mind – “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

In a culture of instant reactions the advice to step back to ponder, observe, absorb, and reflect. Her response to the miraculous a profound inward stillness, fully present to the moment. Such pondering isn’t passive; it’s thoughtful engagement. She’s not simply feeling her faith, she’s examining it, cherishing it, and contemplating its meaning, a invitation to blend heart and mind.

Hi Everyone

“thoughts on the later half of life:”

Jung once said it takes a healthy ego to let the ego go, a truth I’ve come to embrace. I see letting go as the work of life’s second half.

Like the Hindu notion of Vanaprastha, once a literal retreat into the forest—it now symbolizes a journey into the inner forest, a conscious turning inward that rest in the heart chakra. A time when one begins to relinquish control, status, and possessions, and instead seeks wisdom, contemplation, and spiritual depth.

On my path, I began noticing a tension between duality (the river) and non-duality (the ocean), and with it, the assumption that such an experience must be one or the other. Perhaps, in hindsight, this assumption revealing a desire to escape life (suffering).

It was through ballroom dancing that I encountered stillness within movement, a paradox that began to shift my perspective. Over time I suspected that duality and non-duality (subject, object, particle wave) aren’t opposites to choose between, but partners in a quiet dance. Not two sides of a coin, but the coin itself. A coin that no matter how you divide it, all are always present.

And so, as the second half of life dawns the realization: the paradox isn’t something to resolve, but something to hold. Paradox softening into integration. It’s here, in this stillness, that ego loosens its grip, not in rejection, but in reverence. The experiences of life, deeply felt and lived, resting quietly in the heart, no longer seeking to be understood, only held.

Hi Anita and Alessa

I has been a while, busy at work and I noticed I was repeating myself.

Feels like were saying the same thing – Life worth living is one were we breathe, and breathing don’t get wrapped up in our measures – constructs.

A thought occurred to me while addressing the topic. It struck me that most self-help and self-care practices are heavily centered on the first half of life: achievement and identity, on becoming more efficient, confident, and successful, managing and repairing the past. And that these self care notions don’t prepare us well for passing the baton to the second half. Failing to prepare us for the inward journey where the focus shifts from building the self to releasing it, from striving to surrendering, from doing to being.

The image that came to mind was of a river carving its way though rock and ambition meeting the estuary, the river meeting the tide of the sea where the waters churn and identities blur. The turbulence a sacred dance of transformation, river surrendering to the ocean, remembering it was always water.

Perhaps Anita you could turn the image into a poem.

Hi Anita

Healing: the strange, quiet grief of leaving behind a painful but familiar identity, and the courage it takes to step into a new, uncertain, but healthier way of being.

“The bridge behind me, burned not in anger, but in grace…. There is no fairy tale here, no gleaming ever-after. Just this:
a quieter self, a steadier breath, a life that is new, not because it is perfect, but because it is mine.” – anonymous

Hi Anita

So, what is love? I like how you focus kindness, goodwill, and unconditional acceptance.
I would challenge love as a feeling or attitude. Emotions, feathers caught up in the wind, Feelings become a state of mind defined by thought and mind.

Life hurts, Love doesn’t hurt? I used to wonder about this and today would argue that Life is Love. Life hurts when be measure “love” and entangle it with attachment, fear, and dependency. Perhaps a ‘cosmic’ view… I’ve argued before that I convinced myself that Love has no opposite. Its is, and we are that. A “cosmic” view I trust that isn’t disconnected from the personal, but its source?

“Where there is love, there is no pain, no conflict. Pain arises when love is entangled with the self.” – Krishnamurti
I don’t take that to mean we should avoid engaging the self in life, life is movement were the self plays a important role. But I do think life calls us to awaken to the reality that engaging the self opens the door to pain, and not a flaw. Pain not the failure of love, but rather an attribute of love and an open heart.

As you have hinted its possible, if not likely, I hide behind behind the comic view to avoid pain of vulnerability… Yet since engaging with the question ‘What’s love got to do with it’ (referred to in other posts) I haven’t escape pain and in some ways feel it more deeply if… different.

Hi Anita

How interesting, how you phrase it.. our parents templates for understanding the sacred, or templates for understanding the unholy?

Of course templates work both ways, thus the challenge. Relating to the Jungian path of integration of the mother and father complexes/archetypes where the to good mother dies to be replaced by the stepmother representing the shadow side of the mother archetype. The nurturing force turned cold, jealous, or punishing. How love can wound and protection become control…. The “evil stepmother” not just a villain but a symbol of the inner work required to reclaim nurturing on one’s own terms. To become one’s own mother, one’s own source of care and compassion.

As to the desire to hear my Voice… my first thought is that what I have been sharing on this site hasn’t come across as my voice. That may be… I might say posting on this site is a attempt to find my voice – to “discover” what I believe and live it.

Expressing ourselves is of course okay and right. I am sorry if I disappoint but feel strongly that in the forth quarter I am called to the “path of going into the woods”.