Once the Soul Awakens

“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. When this spiritual path opens, you can bring an incredible generosity to the world and to the lives of others. Sometimes, it is easy to be generous outward, to give and give and give and yet remain ungenerous to yourself. You lose the balance of your soul if you do not learn to take care of yourself. You need to be generous to yourself in order to receive the love that surrounds you. You can suffer from a desperate hunger to be loved. You can search long years in lonely places far outside yourself. Yet the whole time, this love is but a few inches from you.”

This quote is from the incomparable book, Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue. There are almost no words to describe the poetic and soul-lifting words of John O'Donahue. Every sentence, paragraph, page and book he has written is imbued with wisdom and beauty. His grasp of Celtic spirituality, coupled with his background as a scholar and former Catholic priest, conveys a unique viewpoint about life on earth and our relationship to the universe. For more information about his life and work, go to www. johnodonohue.com.