To look at something that can gaze back at you

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“To look at something that can gaze back at you, or that has a reserve and depth, can heal your eyes and deepen your sense of vision.”
― John O’Donohue

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One of the questions which the previous owner of my new home kept asking me, as we were going through the process of transition, was about the changes I would make to the house once I moved in.

I did not have an answer for them, I really didn’t know… I hadn’t crossed that threshold.

I’m not sure if I’ve yet crossed it even though I have been living here for a few weeks.

I’ve never owned a home of my own before, and if truth be told I never thought I would. I have desired this experience for so long that desiring it has become my home.

The unrequited dream was my abode.

Now that it has become real… I’m not sure how to feel, think, be… or what to do with such a new experience other than to just let things evolve naturally, gradually, respect the flow of what is, and see what happens.

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“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”
― John O’Donohue

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I can feel a difference in myself emerging within because of the shift on the outside, but I’m not sure what is growing… perhaps it is just that my roots can finally settle, and all that was held back due to my wandering can now unfurl.

The gypsy trail has been my path since I came into this world.

It can be fun, an adventure, a continuous journey of discovery, new people, new places, new ways to go, new things to learn, adapting, adjusting, always aware that it is all transient, a moment here and now between many there and then’s…

but if it’s all you’ve ever known it can be tedious…

Never being able to settle, your roots never nourished by the earth, feet never firmly planted on stable soil… you grow up to be a very strange tree, one which other trees don’t know how to deal with because they don’t recognise your species, they don’t feel comfortable about what they view as your Triffid ways.

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“If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light and beauty will become blurred, awkward, and ugly. Your sense of inner beauty has to remain a very private thing.”
― John O’Donohue

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It just occurred to me that in some way the previous owner of this house and I have swapped homes in more ways than the obvious…

The photograph with this post is of a meeting between my cat (top of the stairs) and the previous owner’s cat who we have adopted into our family while its human goes wandering gypsy style…

Watching these two beings getting to know each other is an intriguing lesson about life and its transitions.

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“Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself.”
― John O’Donohue

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