A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted by John O'Donohue,For a New Beginning by John O'Donoue,Inspiring Soul quotes by John O'Donoue

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
John O'Donohue
Music:
Omar Akram-Last Dance

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

For a New Beginning
John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Gaspard David Friedrich Painting

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,
may your perspective be larger than the view from
the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times
of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to
evoke horizons.
John O’Donohue

Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never
go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special
longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands
of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes
you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat
of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit
of fulfillment.
John O'Donohue

You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth
of your soul, there will be a youthfulness in you that no one
will be able to take away from you.
John O'Donohue