If we open our hearts, we will also find open hearts – it is always mutual.
~ Abbot Leo von Rudloff
… love is at the core of our being, and yet we search for it everywhere, so often causing our self pain in the process, losing our way, becoming entangled in our desires and all our images of love. Then, one day, something makes us turn away from the outer world to seek this truth within us…..
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done — then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
That’s what causes all the pain on this earth, including the fact that the ecosystem is turned upside down. All of that comes from people not making friends with themselves and never being willing to communicate with the one they consider to be the troublemaker. That’s how we stay caught in this battleground, this war zone.
~ Pema Chödrön
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
There is no need to choose between science and spirituality.
But there is certainly a need, as there has always been, to choose between materialism and spirituality.
~ Mario Beauregard
Times are difficult globally; awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal. It’s becoming critical.
Photo: Lara Kearns
We don’t need to add more depression, more discouragement, or more anger to what’s already here.
It’s becoming essential that we learn how to relate sanely with difficult times.
The earth seems to be beseeching us to connect with joy and discover our innermost essence.
This is the best way that we can benefit others.
~ Pema Chödrön
Photo: Lara Kearns
Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.
~Eckhart Tolle
If we can stay true to the sacred substance and sacred meaning of the seed, it will help us to be a place of rebirth: a place where the inner and outer worlds meet, where real nourishment can once again be born and flower.
Working together with the Earth, with its wonder and mystery, we can help in its healing and regeneration.”
After moving for the first time in 35 years, and accompanying my mother-in-law during the final days of her life over these last weeks, I hit a wall.
It was a big one, a hard one. And I hit it hard.
Photo: Kathy Gilman
My heart — Spirit’s intended home, by Divine design — felt … adrift. Muffled or, much as my mother-in-law had been, knowing what it wanted to say, but unable to make her mouth say it. When she worked very hard to get the words out, you often had to practically have your ear against her lips to hear it. This is something like what my heart was feeling, too.
Along came heartfelt words from Pema Chödrön to the rescue:
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
And, a longer read, but right to the heart of the matter:
“We are told about the pain of chasing after pleasure and the futility of running from pain. We hear also about the joy of awakening, of realizing our interconnectedness, of trusting the openness of our hearts and minds.
“But we aren’t told all that much about this state of being in-between, no longer able to get our old comfort from the outside but not yet dwelling in a continual sense of equanimity and warmth.
“Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It‘s the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid. Becoming intimate with the queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere only makes our hearts more tender. When we are brave enough to stay in the middle, compassion arises spontaneously. By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
“Yet, it seems reasonable to want some kind of relief. If we can make the situation right or wrong, if we can pin it down in any way, then we are on familiar ground. But something has shaken up our habitual patterns and frequently they no longer work. Staying with volatile energy gradually becomes more comfortable than acting out or repressing it. This open-ended tender place is called bodhichitta. Staying with it is what heals. It allows us to let go of our self-importance. It’s how the warrior learns to love”. ~ Pema Chödrön
The Earth and your own soul require you to live magnificently and fiercely; it is time for a new story.
~ Mary Reynolds Thompson, author, Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness
In the morning when you wake up, reflect on the day ahead and aspire to use it to keep a wide-open heart and mind.
At the end of the day, before going to sleep, think over what you’ve done.
If you fulfilled your aspiration, even once, rejoice in that.
If you went against your aspiration, rejoice that you are able to see what you did and are no longer living in ignorance.
This way you will be inspired to go forward with increasing clarity, confidence, and compassion.
~ Pema Chödrön
Seneca Grandmother Twylah Nitsch
One of the first things Seneca children learned was that they might create their own world, their own environment, by visualizing actions and desires in prayer.
The Senecas believed that everything that made life important came from within. Prayer assisted in developing a guideline toward discipline and self control.
~ Twylah Nitsch, Seneca
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.
What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
“We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this.
Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility is the foundation of all learning.
So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.”
Quote of a grandmother explaining The Great Mystery of the universe to her grandson.
~ Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse
The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world.
Only then is life whole.
~ Carl Jung
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
~ G. K. Chesterton
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. Because in relationship with others … the other is nothing but a mirror.
~ Osho
One of the first things Seneca children learned was that they might create their own world, their own environment, by visualizing actions and desires in prayer. The Senecas believed that everything that made life important came from within.
~ Twylah Nitsch
In the morning when you wake up, reflect on the day ahead and aspire to use it to keep a wide-open heart and mind.
~ Pema Chödrön
When, however, thou dost contemplate the innermost essence of all things, and the individuality of each, thou wilt behold the signs of thy Lord’s mercy in every created thing, and see the spreading rays of His Names and Attributes throughout all the realm of being …
not an atom of all the atoms in existence, not a creature from amongst the creatures but speaketh His praise and telleth of His attributes and names, revealeth the glory of His might and guideth to His oneness and His mercy …
If we open our hearts, we will also find open hearts – it is always mutual.
~ Abbot Leo von Rudloff
… love is at the core of our being, and yet we search for it everywhere, so often causing our self pain in the process, losing our way, becoming entangled in our desires and all our images of love. Then, one day, something makes us turn away from the outer world to seek this truth within us…..
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Photo: Nelson Ashberger
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done — then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
That’s what causes all the pain on this earth, including the fact that the ecosystem is turned upside down. All of that comes from people not making friends with themselves and never being willing to communicate with the one they consider to be the troublemaker. That’s how we stay caught in this battleground, this war zone.
~ Pema Chödrön
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
I cannot rid the entire world of noxious problems, but I can patiently cultivate the good earth around my own two feet and grow what I wish to see in my own back yard.
~ Jacob Nordby
Walking the walk means you’re very genuine and down to earth. You take the teachings as good medicine for the things that are confusing to you and for the suffering of your life.
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
During the weeks I spent in Europe last spring, I got reacquainted with the power of the natural world to quiet my mind in order that my heart will be able to hear at all. For the voices that assist and guide it are soft and subtle, and are drowned out by the din of life and the world.
Because of the wide-open nature of so many European settings, the sky is a constantly-changing panorama I found myself stopping to watch like a movie, and there was always something on the horizon that I would set out on a long walk simply to see up close.
Photo: Kathy Gilman
Ironically, more often than not I never made it there because I was waylaid by something magnificent along the way.
It could be the slant of the light on a field; the shape of a lone tree in the midst of hectares of rolling hills; one small, stunning blossom on a branch that brushed me as I walked past, like a woods creature trying to get my attention.
“To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience,” wrote Saint Teresa of Avila
Astray from what? I wonder.
My preconceived notions? Insistent, certain ideas or opinions?
When I leave room for wonder or miracles, it leads me back to something Pema Chödrön has summarized beautifully in her book,
Practicing Peace in Times of War:
“If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it.
We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility.
And Pema has also captured the very fulcrum of living:
“Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.”
Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong.
At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.
~ Pema Chödrön
An attitude of gratitude comes from an understanding that we may all have problems, but we don’t have all the problems.
Painting: Judy Wright
~ Yehuda Berg
We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity.
Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
Leaf of the Tree 