Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.
And there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving.
D. H. Lawrence, Studies In Classic American Literature. With thanks to Whiskey River.
I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me.
That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly,
and my blood is part of the sea.
There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.
D. H. Lawrence. Thank you, Love Is A Place.
Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,
But there is also a third thing, that makes it water
And nobody knows what that is.
D. H. Lawrence, The Third Thing (Thank you, buffleheadcabin & blueheron)

(Source: blueheron)

When

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,

and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,

we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,

we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,

we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.

~D. H. Lawrence

Thanks again to, Love Is A Place

And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes toward us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.
D. H. Lawrence, “Moonrise” (from Whiskey River)
However smart we may be, however rich and clever or loving or charitable or spiritual or impeccable, it doesn’t help us at all. The real power comes in to us from the beyond. Life enters us from behind, where we are sightless, and from below, where we do not understand. And unless we yield to the beyond, and take our power and might and honor and glory from the unseen, from the unknown, we shall continue empty.
D. H. Lawrence (from Whiskey River)