Resumo de The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart?s longing.
It is with this basic question that Oriah Mountain Dreamer invites you to your own heart. This is not an invitation to take a risk to the cold icy mountains, but just courage enough to be with yourself, to be alive. Oriah Mountain asks modest questions; ?I want to know if you can risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive?.
?Once in a while?, she says, ?we are given moments of real grace,?. I am filled with compassion for the part of me that is always trying, always organising, problem solving, anticipating?. A great tenderness for myself and the world opens inside me, and I know I belong to this time, to these people, to this earth, and to something that is both within and larger than all of it, something that sustains and holds us all.?
The honesty with which Oriah Mountain opens up her mind gives us the courage to accept her invitation into self-exploration and acceptance. The strength of her invitation lies in her sincerity. It is as if she exposes herself on a TV screen. She wrrites; ?I want to live with deep intimacy everyday of my life?. Mountain declares plainly the raison d?etre of her invitation, ? a map into the longing of the soul, the desire to live passionately, face to face with ourselves and skin to skin with the world around us, to settle for nothing less than what is real?.
The ability to love is at the centre of Mountain?s argument. ? When I imagine myself as an old woman at the end of my life, and ask myself how I will evaluate my time here, there is only one question that concerns me. Did I love well? There are thousand ways to love other people and the world- with our touch, our words, our silences, our work, our presence. This is my hunger. I want to make love to the world by the way I live in it, by the way I am with myself and others everyday?.
The Invitation is a pricking challenge. Mountain seems to understand that we are too busy to be with ouselves and the world around us. ? And sometimes I allow myself to imagine that each moment in which we love well by simply being all of who we are and being fully present allows us to give back something essential to the Sacred Mystery that sustains all life?.
Beyond loving ourselves and the world around us, Mountain understands a bigger challenge that assails our daily lives. She asks a basic question, ? I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life?s betrayal or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.. Mountain?s challenges are simple, plain and real. She touches the heart like she lived in every heart and in every life. ? If we are strong enough to be weak enough, we are given a wound that never heals. It is the gift that keeps the heart open?. We are afraid of pain ? emotional or physical- and we want to believe that there is a way around experiencing our own sorrow, that can avoid the pain and lose nothing of the fullness and joy of living. It?ssimply not true?.
Mountain offers the invitation with little or no hypocrisy. One can reach out, touch and feel her heart. We can feel the woman and human she is. She honestly accepts ? but it?s hard to move away from pain. ?. Often, we are afraid that if we touch our pain, we will drown in it. We fear that once we?ve opened our hearts to wounded parts, of ourselves and the world, we will be unable to function normally, because we will be so overwhelmed with grief that all that is good in life will be inaccessible to us. These fears pull us away from the one thing that can unfold the meaning in our sorrow or simply make it bearable to live with it: intimacy ? being fully with ourselves, another and the world?.
To her, the issue is not just being alive, but to be true to ourselves. ? I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul?. Mountain?s philosophy is to be human, to live with her own self with all sincerity. And to her, being alive takes more than just living. ? I have put great faith in knowledge. Beneath all of my fears for the future, I?ve wanted to believe that knowledge would save us from destroying the planet or each other, from medical disaster and natural catastrophes, from the emptiness and grief that is often buried at the centre of our busy lives. And I?ve learned a great deal as I?ve reached for the hoped ? for- salvation informed by books, educated by schools, guided by gurus, and assisted by surfing the internet. The luminescence of knowledge floods our lives like spotlights in night stadiums, illuminating every corner, every blade of grass and molecule of Astroturf?.

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