WHAT IF our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water — the rivers, lakes and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.
GANGA WHITE
WHEN I LISTEN TO OLD MUSIC, that’s one of the few times that I actually have a kind of love for humanity. ROBERT CRUMB
HOW CAN ONE RESPECT, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do or the way they say they should? JAMES BALDWIN
LEO TOLSTOY: THERE IS NO GREATNESS WHERE THERE IS NO SIMPLICITY, GOODNESS AND TRUTH.
MUCH UNHAPPINESS HAS COME FROM THINGS UNSAID.
JUST AS ONE CANDLE lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.
HAPPINESS IS IN YOUR ABILITY TO LOVE OTHERS.
PERHAPS it’s because I appreciate all I have so much that I don’t worry about what I haven’t got.
LEO TOLSTOY
WHEN another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. THICH NAHT HANH
MARY OLIVER 1935-2019. “WILD GEESE” “”DEVOTIONS”.
I DON’T ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING A LIFE. Pay attention. Be astonished. tell about it.
IT IS A SERIOUS THING // JUST TO BE ALIVE / ON THIS FRESH MORNING / IN THIS BROKEN WORLD.
EVERY DAY I walk into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
KEEP SOME ROOM IN YOUR HEART FOR THE UNIMAGINABLE.
AS LONG AS YOU’RE DANCING, YOU CAN BREAK THE RULES.
YOU HAVE TO BE IN THE WORLD to understand what the spiritual is about and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH. 1943——-“Conversations With God”.
ENLIGHTENMENT is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you have to be except exactly who you’re being right now.
TRUE MASTERS are those who’ve chosen to make a life rather than a living.
DO WHAT YOU DO for the sheer joy of it. Do what you choose, not what someone else chooses for you.
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE is to know yourself, create yourself, experience yourself as who your really are. There is no other reason to do anything.
THE SECRET OF LIFE is not to have everything you want, but to want everything you have.
THERE IS A LIGHT which cannot ever be extinguished. It is inside of you . . . it is you.
WE ARE aspects of Divinity, in the process of knowing ourselves experientially.
THERE IS always something to celebrate, so long as life is being lived.
WHAT IS IMPORTANT in your life is what you decide is important — and this decision will indelibly create who you are.
MARY OLIVER: I SAW that worrying had come to nothing and gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning and sang.
THE SOUL EXISTS AND IS BUILT ENTIRELY OUT OF ATTENTIVENESS.
SO COME TO THE POND, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
YOU TOO CAN BE CARVED ANEW BY THE DETAILS OF YOUR DEVOTION.
THOUGHT I PLAY AT HE EDGES OF KNOWING, TRULY I KNOW OUR PART IS NOT KNOWING, BUT LOOKING AND TOUCHING AND LOVING.
I BELIEVE in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
THE DREAM OF MY LIFE is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees — to learn something by being nothing.
YOU MUST not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
AROUND ME the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.
EXPLODE WITH JOY!