In Quietness the Soul Expands
I sat watching the water flow, feeling the sweet caress of the gentle breeze at night, and had this strange urge to just sit there and enjoy time flowing by. It had been an exceptionally hot and dry day filled with activities and emotions.
“These are the times in life — when nothing happens — but in quietness the soul expands.”
– Kent
As we grow older, I find we need to fight for those moments in life. Find those quiet moments in which to let the soul expand. My mind wandered to what I had read about Keats and his Cave of Quietude as he calls the quiet and expansive moments of our lives.
They say of books, that each book appears at a particular moment in your life. I was reading the book, The Great Work of our Lives – By Stephen Cope, recommended to me by a good friend. I shall be ever grateful – it was marvelous and precisely the sort of book I required to read.
The Great Work of Our Lives – Our Dharma
I see this is the sort of book that I shall be giving to people who find themselves at the cross-roads. I have always thought that concepts like Dharma have a certain weighty interpretation. But to have them handled in the skillful hands of a writer like Stephen Cope makes all the difference. In a lucid style, he talks about the important concepts of the Gita and compares and contrasts them against the life of well-known poets, naturalists, and writers. He also draws parallels of the teachings against real-life people (with their names changed of course)
Excerpt:
“ Keats, in a brilliant intuitive move, now attempted to work out the problem of grasping through the protagonist of the poem he was writing.”
“How does Endymoin work it out? He enters what Keats called “The Cave of Quietude’, a retreat into the depths of consciousness. In quiet retreat and contemplation, Endymion realizes that success and failure are not the measure of life. He sees the way in which both light and shade, success and failure, and praise and blame, are all parts of life.”
When you wonder which pieces to highlight in the book, and think you shall have to re-read multiple sections because it resonates with you, it is a good book, wouldn’t you agree?
May we all find our Caves of Quietude and find moments of calm and peace in which nothing happens, and the soul expands.
Nourish-n-Cherish 