We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

​~ MARCEL PROUST
​

“Don't worry about anything at all.
You are not here by accident.
This form is just a costume for a while.
But the one who is behind the costume,
this one is eternal. You must know this.
If you know this and trust this,
you don't have to worry about anything.
This world is so full of love.
And your heart, your being,
is so full of love, so full of peace.
You don't have to go
to some place else to find peace.
It is right where you are.” 
― Mooji

​

TODAY
​
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

- Mary Oliver
​
​

“What would happen
if we removed the word ‘anxious’
​and just paid attention
to these flickering sensations in the belly?

What would happen
if we took away the concept ‘lonely’
and simply became fascinated
with this heavy feeling in the heart area?

What would happen
if we deleted the labels ‘sick’ 
or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’
and just got curious about
the tightness in the throat
the pressure in the head
the ache in the shoulders?

What would happen
if we stopped looking for solutions
and checked to see
if there was actually a problem here?

Let’s come out of the exhausting storyline.
It’s not true. It was never true.
Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment.
Come closer to yourself, Now.
Bring warmth to the tender places.
Infuse sensation with the light of attention.

It’s never as bad 
as we think.
And always,
always more alive”
​
 - Jeff Foster
​

​'Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.'

​- Henry James

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 16



​JUST FOR NOW
​
Just for now
without asking how,
let yourself sink into stillness.
Just for now,
lay down the weight you so patiently bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive you, and the infinite expanse of the sky grow even wider as your awareness reaches up to meet it.
Just for now,
allow the wave of breath to enliven your experience.
Breathe out whatever blocks you from the truth.
Just for now,
Be boundless, free, with awakened energy tingling in your hands and feet.
Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are-
so fully alive that the world looks different, newly born and vibrant,
Just for now...

-  Dana Faulds
​

​"You need not leave the room
Remain sitting at your table and listen
You need not even listen,
simply wait,
just learn to become quiet
and still and solitary
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has not choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." 

- Franz Kafka


​“Throw everything away, forget about it all! You are learning too much, remembering too much, trying too hard . . . relax a little bit, give life a chance to flow its own way, unassisted by your mind and effort. Stop directing the river’s flow.” 
the voice that calls you is true, and where you are being called to is real and true. Heaven is inside your own heart. This is why I am here. 
​
- Mooji
​

Astronomers today believe there are perhaps 140 billion galaxies in the visible universe ... space scientists have discovered ten billion trillion or so planets that are thought to be out there.
Of every 200 atoms in your body, 126 are hydrogen, 51 are oxygen and 19 are carbon ... of the remaining four, 3 are nitrogen and the remaining atom is divided among all the other elements ... about half the chemical functions that take place in a banana are fundamentally the same as the chemical functions that take place in a human being ... all life is one .... We are 98.4% genetically indistinguishable from a modern chimpanzee ... there is more difference between a zebra and a horse than there is between human beings and the furry creatures that our ancestors left behind.

​ - Bill Bryson

​NO WAITING ROOM

What if you didn’t wake up tomorrow and your soul is watching down thinking of all the things you didn’t get to do yet because you were too scared, or too shy, or too worried about money. And all the things you told yourself you weren’t good enough for, swam in front of your eyes, fighting for a place in the line, beside the words you didn’t say and the joy you forget to have. 
My friend, there is absolutely no room for anything in your day, other than acceptance. You will never have enough money, or time, and you will certainly never have that perfect body the world told you you need to be happy.
And before you say it’s too late to embrace this thing we call life, no it is not. You can do it right where you are. Right this minute. Get outside, breathe, look at the trees, put your bare feet on the grass - hand on your heart to feel that pulse - and that’s it.
You’re living.
Keep that up.
Wait up for the moon sometimes or get up early to see a sunrise, juts because. 
Jump in the lake. Run and skip.
The things you need to feel alive are free and all around my friend. 
You just have to see them.
Let in opportunity and say yes to the invitations that scare you a little, in a good way.
Say no to some of the things you force yourself to do, knowing they rinse you of your peace.
Life was never supposed to be a waiting room, it was supposed to be a hillside, with paths leading in every direction and mountains as far as the eye can see, hiding adventures and new friends behind them.
Don’t let yourself get to the end of this ride without having stopped to smell those beautiful roses.
That’s the only thing you need to fear in this life.
Everything else is all part of it.
It’s all just a messy, complicated, beautiful and terrifying part of it.
Chin up, throw your arms wide open and let it be so.
​
​- Donna Ashworth

Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half the way will get you no where
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life. 
​
~Khalil Gibran

​REST IN EVERY STEP

Have patience.
Slow down.
The gap between
'Where I am'
and
'Where I want to be'
is full of possibility.
So don't rush through it.
Take time.
Find the dignity in slowness.
Learn to love the gap.
Grace it with your presence.
It is bursting with life, and creativity,
and it holds unexpected treasures.
Have patience. Slow down.
Life is only Now.
In Presence, there are no gaps.
Find rest in every step.

​- Jeff Foster


Now I become myself
​
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
​
— May Sarton ​

​SWEET DARKNESS

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
​There you can be sure
​you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

​- David Whyte
​

​It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river cannot go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

 - Khalil Gibran


'The real key is to perceive what you’re doing. I really can’t teach you, but I can help you focus on your awareness so that you can discover what you are doing. Then you have choice.'


- Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen