I love it when lines from a book or show captivate my attention; they are like little flashes of awareness gifting themselves to me. I typically jot the words down right away, because though their essence integrates instantly into my energy, I still need to translate their meaning into my understanding.
Last month I watched the show Foundation, based on the Isaac Asimov book series of the same name. I’ve got sticky notes of about five or six quotes that directly spoke to me from the season, offering themselves as pure manna. It helps to be immersed in the dialogue and plot, of course, but I still think these are delicious even on their own:
It’s confusing not to commit to one reality.
That prayer can’t endure without you.
A theorem so abstract, it might as well have been a prayer.
History isn’t fact; it’s narrative.
Here’s the one, however, that made the biggest impact:
The weight of traditions protects us; they can be a comfort in making a journey others have made before. Once I prayed in the words of my parents, but then my world expanded and the words fell short of my reality. I pray in a different language now.
When I heard the character Gaal Dornick utter those words, I flashed on a quote from the poem Ulysses, where Tennyson describes experience as being an archway wherethro’ gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades for ever and ever when I move.
As we evolve in consciousness, it is each step from the past that carries us forward. Traditions don’t leave us; they expand us.
Finding the Write Words 