John O'Donohue
John O'Donohue
John O'Donohuewas an Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher. He was a native Irish speaker, and as an author is best known for popularising Celtic spirituality...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 January 1956
CountryIreland
home elements achieve
As you grow, you develop the ideal of where your true belonging could be - the place, the home, the partner, and the work. You seldom achieve all the elements of the ideal, but it travels with you as the criterion and standard of what true belonging could be.
destiny awkward depends
So much depends not on how awkward destiny is, but rather on how openly it is embraced.
world mortals eternal
The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused.
self ego identity
The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness.
progress linear
When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence.
self light infinite
The infinite is a light sleeper. The moment the self awakens, the force of the infinite begins to stir.
death journey people
Sometimes people are very worried about dying. There is no need to be afraid. when the moment of your dying comes, you will be given everything that you need to make that journey in a graceful, elegant, and trusting way.
anchors ideas water
Sometimes ideas hold us down; they become heavy anchors that hold the bark of identity fixated in shallow, dead water.
imagination mind wish
When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish to refurbish yourself with living thought so that you can begin to see.
strong prison invisible
Habit is a strong invisible prison.
freedom order needs
In order to inherit your freedom, you need to go towards it. You have to claim your own freedom before it becomes yours.
creativity unexpected tradition
Creativity is rich with unexpected possibility. Know-how is mere fragmented mechanics which lacks tradition.
dream swans mirrors
I have never seen white so absolute / And alone, glistening in awkward form / Dreaming across the water a bright path. / As it stirs and changes I see what it is: / Two swans have found the mirror in the lake / Where a V of horizon lets light through / To make them light-source and light-shape in one. / Now they swim and fade through windows of reed / And disrobe the lake of apparition.
ocean vision littles
Celtic spirituality is awakening so powerfully now because it illuminates the fact that the visible is only one little edge of things. The visible is only the shoreline of the magnificent ocean of the invisible.