In Venezuela 🇻🇪 my home country we have lived under two dictatorships one after the other for more than 25 years, long before that I knew increasingly so that nothing is stable, in fact I learned it as a child but when I got married first time pregnant with my 1st. child, we were woken after midnight by a Coup D'état whose leader was Hugo Chávez the murderer of our country, I was 4 months into my pregnancy, started having contractions for many days I thought that I would loose my child you can't imagine the anguish desperation of those days. Why a group of deluded men would feel free to kill people democratically elected is beyond understanding (of course in Latin America democracy is weak) but none the less it was going against the institutions with full force. I knew as a child and I knew then that nothing should be taken for granted in life. Nowadays my girl Mariana is a wonderful mom of two, Elisa is 6 yrs.old and Felipe turned 1 last January 21st. 2025. Just be grateful for everything everyday, shifting the view has worked for me whenever I see the state of things in the world.
Just be grateful every day. yes. don’t let fear and anger keep you from sunrises and sunsets and friends and gratitude for just being alive. i learned that from my Brazilian friends.
Reading this reminded me of the idea of being in the throes of world collapse. When everything that grounds disappears and what becomes visible isn’t easily grasped.
Yesterday I had one of those "temporary enlightenment" experiences of weeping, as you referred to them in last 3 Sundays. And now here I am drawn to the groundlessness, and the blanket over the head images you offer. Too much was moving. Fires in our area, storms in the forecast, grown children too needy or too cut off, depending on their natures. And here, aging, illness, unknowns. How you frame these universal experiences is helpful for me in finding something under my feet again. Grateful.
thank you for this piece ~ i see/feel myself in it. as i wend my way along the broken journey, your writing helps broaden my awareness, a compass for reopening into wholeness. 🙏
@David Whyte just came across your most insightful video on ‘the path’ and knowing you’re on it when it disappears and the poem ‘Lost’ and it’s inspired me to write a whole piece on ‘The path’ and my limited understanding of it
Yes, continued brilliant and deeply moving insights, David. No one in the world can write with your particular eloquence in ways that reach into the deepest parts of us and help us, in mysterious ways, to feel the sense of relief that we are heard - and that we are, apparently at least, truly alive. Thank you.- Erie
No disrespect. David is of course pure Gift to us all in his written and spoken expression.….. and yet all of us, each and every single one of us-is fully equipped to write to express verbally to a standard to inspire others… We have been educated not to see the infinite limitless beings we all truly are….
Now we are in the midst of awakening as is the greater World….
Remarkable time to be here on Terra…. Victory beyond our conceivable wildest dreams is the other side of challenges we face now and in the near future…….
Know we are equipped and move on forward regardless…. I am so grateful knowing this!
Excellent...so blatantly true as to being bereft, isolated and having lost ground with what we didn't know at the time, was treasured so deeply and in such, taken for granted, as it were so intrinsicly instinctive and intuitively our very being, such as dear, true friendsxwho knew us, our parents' understanding, truth and consistency which became, suddenly ❤ eroded, debased along with what I had believed, was there wglhike being part of a 'family'.. that being even a modicum of filial respect from either sister, and the loss of employment, sense of being's worth, dignity in earning one's own way and income in life, loss of confidence having been placed all too trusting gly in folk who I had believed at "face value', never dreaming they held another darkened and darker face - so common, I have since discovered, sadly, loss and identity in place of being atvthe family home and subsequent loss of 'home' as I had grown up knowing it as a place of security, refuge, sacred place until older sisters decided otherwise...but then,...they had already chosen to flee the nest for their own selfish lives, pursuits, families, friends, phone buddies, gossips and other club members of their personal cliques so who mattered?
The loss of self-esteem and even being able to reach oneself, impossible as it was due to the constantly prescribed mind-numbing, mind-altering, constantly circling effects of decades of medication, mostly directed by those who were being paid a lucrative wage, by the government, either to keep as many folk ' on their books'...( hardly so, ), or to fulfil their own self-righteous and uncaring role in wielding the heavy hand against trusting clients who appealed for help and a little understanding, decade after decade, rather than to receive further destructive potions prescribed, as these, aforesaid clients no longer had a voice to speak up for themselves, having tried against odds for so very long and the interferes whose patronising pretense to 'care' for such a pathetic family member, of whom, not only did they despise but were smugly delighted to keep the other oppressed and down in their absent lost void of nothingness 'depression' that should, the members hoped, keep them suitably out of the way for sufficiently long enough to never recover from that absent space and place in mind to which the client was reluctant to succumb,and in doing so that the light nor truth would, nor should ever be shone abroad or even dare to have a steady glimmer let alone of hope.........that lasts...and grows....as...so very and most thankfully, having been blessed, this time, by a previously despondent hospital stay, one more time to be in hospital was the last straw to annihilate remaining hope...and yet,...this time....a present doctor, available, wide-awake! Caring! Intelligent! Open-minded! Curious! Willing to push back previous barriers! Listening! Interested! Hard-wkrking for many at one time, to help alleviate current time pressures...cut thro' all the previous years' ridiculous, ❤ assumption, far-fetched and untrue presumptions, to see the person, until then and since long years, lost within me, to lighten up my life, grant big hope that I wasn't the ogre described by many, or called worse, as I had been so often, by granting me freedom and human kindness, understanding along with a prescription, correct for me, and miniscule in comparison to the far off forty-six years' of soul-destroying, life-stealing, opportunity- damning, ostracising , pariah-making, creativity- killing, implications and vain promises that one would 'get-well', and even reach 'a level of functioning' which did not ever sound too inspiring tho' being thankful for small mercies, gave hope that life might even, some day improve, somewhat,...and with the wonder of this wonderful, true, delightful human Doctor with life, kindness, care and zest in his heart, with reality and unflinching, exacting truth......he has rendered to me ,my life restored, returned, redeemed, recovered to remember who I was back then by finding glimmers, this time with steady, growing confidence beginning, not faltering or flailing, glimmers and sparks of life and love and creativity and hope and joy and laughter once again, simply because this doctor accepted me as I was allowed me to be, heard me and helped me by his diligent, loving, caring outlook on life and by using the great talent bestowed on him in which he has obviously willingly pursued in contemporary role and occupation, calling and excellence as a consultant psychiatrist within the vastly, under-appreciated, by some, National Health, for which we are truly grateful 🙏.
All things work together for good.....
.Romans 8 v 28
....and.....never to be forgotten nor ignored..........
This somehow gives what may follow loss and trauma, a sense of 'place' , a country of Unknown- could become, yes, a door into the 'Cloud of Unknowing', even...
Your choice of excerpt is deeply confronting the groundlessness whilst I image for others the ground for taking. The human condition is in the taking up the very ground of our first step . Into the invisible and all the help that arrives for our 2nd step . Then can we cultivate eyes in the dark as the questions arise and we become the invitation to our one life here on a new path. I am living my answer and feeling the seeds sprout beneath my path .
Your words always seem to find me at exactly the right moment — not with answers, but with a deep echo of something I already know, yet so often forget.
The Pathless Path speaks to the place in me that has long stopped striving for certainty. I no longer seek the “right” way forward, but rather the real one — the one that asks for presence, for surrender, for listening more than leading.
There is a quiet courage in walking without a map. Your writing doesn’t romanticize that — it honors the beauty and the ache of it. And for that, I am deeply grateful.
Thank you for reminding me (again and again) that the conversation itself is the path.
In Venezuela 🇻🇪 my home country we have lived under two dictatorships one after the other for more than 25 years, long before that I knew increasingly so that nothing is stable, in fact I learned it as a child but when I got married first time pregnant with my 1st. child, we were woken after midnight by a Coup D'état whose leader was Hugo Chávez the murderer of our country, I was 4 months into my pregnancy, started having contractions for many days I thought that I would loose my child you can't imagine the anguish desperation of those days. Why a group of deluded men would feel free to kill people democratically elected is beyond understanding (of course in Latin America democracy is weak) but none the less it was going against the institutions with full force. I knew as a child and I knew then that nothing should be taken for granted in life. Nowadays my girl Mariana is a wonderful mom of two, Elisa is 6 yrs.old and Felipe turned 1 last January 21st. 2025. Just be grateful for everything everyday, shifting the view has worked for me whenever I see the state of things in the world.
Just be grateful every day. yes. don’t let fear and anger keep you from sunrises and sunsets and friends and gratitude for just being alive. i learned that from my Brazilian friends.
Thank you for sharing your real experience and triumphs over adversity you accomplished with love and community.
Reading this reminded me of the idea of being in the throes of world collapse. When everything that grounds disappears and what becomes visible isn’t easily grasped.
Yesterday I had one of those "temporary enlightenment" experiences of weeping, as you referred to them in last 3 Sundays. And now here I am drawn to the groundlessness, and the blanket over the head images you offer. Too much was moving. Fires in our area, storms in the forecast, grown children too needy or too cut off, depending on their natures. And here, aging, illness, unknowns. How you frame these universal experiences is helpful for me in finding something under my feet again. Grateful.
David, your message profound on occurrences in life. Some hard truths, some disheartening, yet there are many victories too. Life is like that.
thank you for this piece ~ i see/feel myself in it. as i wend my way along the broken journey, your writing helps broaden my awareness, a compass for reopening into wholeness. 🙏
@David Whyte just came across your most insightful video on ‘the path’ and knowing you’re on it when it disappears and the poem ‘Lost’ and it’s inspired me to write a whole piece on ‘The path’ and my limited understanding of it
Yes, continued brilliant and deeply moving insights, David. No one in the world can write with your particular eloquence in ways that reach into the deepest parts of us and help us, in mysterious ways, to feel the sense of relief that we are heard - and that we are, apparently at least, truly alive. Thank you.- Erie
No disrespect. David is of course pure Gift to us all in his written and spoken expression.….. and yet all of us, each and every single one of us-is fully equipped to write to express verbally to a standard to inspire others… We have been educated not to see the infinite limitless beings we all truly are….
Now we are in the midst of awakening as is the greater World….
Remarkable time to be here on Terra…. Victory beyond our conceivable wildest dreams is the other side of challenges we face now and in the near future…….
Know we are equipped and move on forward regardless…. I am so grateful knowing this!
What a thoughtful piece, David. What helps me the most during low points is intentionally serving others, even when I don't feel like it.
Excellent...so blatantly true as to being bereft, isolated and having lost ground with what we didn't know at the time, was treasured so deeply and in such, taken for granted, as it were so intrinsicly instinctive and intuitively our very being, such as dear, true friendsxwho knew us, our parents' understanding, truth and consistency which became, suddenly ❤ eroded, debased along with what I had believed, was there wglhike being part of a 'family'.. that being even a modicum of filial respect from either sister, and the loss of employment, sense of being's worth, dignity in earning one's own way and income in life, loss of confidence having been placed all too trusting gly in folk who I had believed at "face value', never dreaming they held another darkened and darker face - so common, I have since discovered, sadly, loss and identity in place of being atvthe family home and subsequent loss of 'home' as I had grown up knowing it as a place of security, refuge, sacred place until older sisters decided otherwise...but then,...they had already chosen to flee the nest for their own selfish lives, pursuits, families, friends, phone buddies, gossips and other club members of their personal cliques so who mattered?
The loss of self-esteem and even being able to reach oneself, impossible as it was due to the constantly prescribed mind-numbing, mind-altering, constantly circling effects of decades of medication, mostly directed by those who were being paid a lucrative wage, by the government, either to keep as many folk ' on their books'...( hardly so, ), or to fulfil their own self-righteous and uncaring role in wielding the heavy hand against trusting clients who appealed for help and a little understanding, decade after decade, rather than to receive further destructive potions prescribed, as these, aforesaid clients no longer had a voice to speak up for themselves, having tried against odds for so very long and the interferes whose patronising pretense to 'care' for such a pathetic family member, of whom, not only did they despise but were smugly delighted to keep the other oppressed and down in their absent lost void of nothingness 'depression' that should, the members hoped, keep them suitably out of the way for sufficiently long enough to never recover from that absent space and place in mind to which the client was reluctant to succumb,and in doing so that the light nor truth would, nor should ever be shone abroad or even dare to have a steady glimmer let alone of hope.........that lasts...and grows....as...so very and most thankfully, having been blessed, this time, by a previously despondent hospital stay, one more time to be in hospital was the last straw to annihilate remaining hope...and yet,...this time....a present doctor, available, wide-awake! Caring! Intelligent! Open-minded! Curious! Willing to push back previous barriers! Listening! Interested! Hard-wkrking for many at one time, to help alleviate current time pressures...cut thro' all the previous years' ridiculous, ❤ assumption, far-fetched and untrue presumptions, to see the person, until then and since long years, lost within me, to lighten up my life, grant big hope that I wasn't the ogre described by many, or called worse, as I had been so often, by granting me freedom and human kindness, understanding along with a prescription, correct for me, and miniscule in comparison to the far off forty-six years' of soul-destroying, life-stealing, opportunity- damning, ostracising , pariah-making, creativity- killing, implications and vain promises that one would 'get-well', and even reach 'a level of functioning' which did not ever sound too inspiring tho' being thankful for small mercies, gave hope that life might even, some day improve, somewhat,...and with the wonder of this wonderful, true, delightful human Doctor with life, kindness, care and zest in his heart, with reality and unflinching, exacting truth......he has rendered to me ,my life restored, returned, redeemed, recovered to remember who I was back then by finding glimmers, this time with steady, growing confidence beginning, not faltering or flailing, glimmers and sparks of life and love and creativity and hope and joy and laughter once again, simply because this doctor accepted me as I was allowed me to be, heard me and helped me by his diligent, loving, caring outlook on life and by using the great talent bestowed on him in which he has obviously willingly pursued in contemporary role and occupation, calling and excellence as a consultant psychiatrist within the vastly, under-appreciated, by some, National Health, for which we are truly grateful 🙏.
All things work together for good.....
.Romans 8 v 28
....and.....never to be forgotten nor ignored..........
....
.Acts 17 v 28..
..................mmm..m.......Yippeeeee!!!!!!!!!
We all need good friends to lean on.
This somehow gives what may follow loss and trauma, a sense of 'place' , a country of Unknown- could become, yes, a door into the 'Cloud of Unknowing', even...
Thank you.
What a wonderful classic is the book The Cloud of Unknowing”. Read that from time to time all my life🔥
This meditation on depression is very helpful. Thank you
I read this this morning as the cover was over my head. Literally and figuratively. A timely piece and reflection.
Your choice of excerpt is deeply confronting the groundlessness whilst I image for others the ground for taking. The human condition is in the taking up the very ground of our first step . Into the invisible and all the help that arrives for our 2nd step . Then can we cultivate eyes in the dark as the questions arise and we become the invitation to our one life here on a new path. I am living my answer and feeling the seeds sprout beneath my path .
Much of this hit home painfully as if you had written it for me.
Dear David,
Your words always seem to find me at exactly the right moment — not with answers, but with a deep echo of something I already know, yet so often forget.
The Pathless Path speaks to the place in me that has long stopped striving for certainty. I no longer seek the “right” way forward, but rather the real one — the one that asks for presence, for surrender, for listening more than leading.
There is a quiet courage in walking without a map. Your writing doesn’t romanticize that — it honors the beauty and the ache of it. And for that, I am deeply grateful.
Thank you for reminding me (again and again) that the conversation itself is the path.
Warmly,
Nicole
I had just written my comment when I read yours which, very swiftly, eased my suffering and helped me see things the correct way. Thank you, Nicole.
You are so welcome Hazel. I wish you a blessed day