#rebirth

If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren't yet operational.There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible. ↗

— Mary Karr

#rebirth #resurrection #death

In fact, since the accident, Mom doesn't love anyone. She is marble. Beautiful. Frigid. Easily stained by her family. What's left of us anyway. We are corpses. At first, we sought rebirth. But resurrection devoid of her love has made us zombies. We get up every morning, skip breakfast, hurry off to work or school. For in those other places, we are more at home. And sometimes we stagger beneath the weight of grief, the immensity of aloneness. ↗

— Ellen Hopkins

#grief #rebirth #resurrection #zombies #beauty

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24) ↗

— Stephen Levine

#death #joy #life #mindfulness #rebirth

Life is an endless cycle of souls, swirling along the path of the universe, being reborn, but never truly dying before being reborn again. As long as this cycle continues, we will never really die. ↗

— Ameila Wolfe

#rebirth #souls #life

The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward. ↗

— Aberjhani

#determination #dreams #inspiration #metaphysics #motivation

Hope drowned in shadows emerges fiercely splendid–– boldly angelic. ↗

— Aberjhani

#angels #courage #faith #haiku #haikus

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven’s mouth. ↗

— Aberjhani

#dignity #faith #haiku #heaven #human-mortality

Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one. . . . Let’s take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted. (132) ↗

— Stephen Levine

#born #life #living #rebirth #reincarnation

A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation. ↗

— Stanislav Grof

#cycles #death #describes #determines #incarnation

I have been reading Plotinus all evening. He has the power to sooth me; and I find his sadness curiously comforting. Even when he writes: “Life here with the things of earth is a sinking, a defeat, a failure of the wing.” The wing has indeed failed. One sinks. Defeat is certain. Even as I write these lines, the lamp wick sputters to an end, and the pool of light in which I sit contracts. Soon the room will be dark. One has always feared that death would be like this. But what else is there? With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of time’s mystery and a man’s love of life. ↗

— Gore Vidal

#death