Wednesday, December 22, 2010

For a New Beginning - John O'Donohue

Art by Deborah Koff-Chapin

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Change - Ellen Bass



This is where I yank the old roots
from my chest, like tomatoes
we let grow until December, stalks
thick as saplings.

This is the moment when the ancient fears
race like thoroughbreds, asking for more
and more rein. And, I, the driver,
for some reason they know nothing of
strain to hold them back.

Terror grips me like a virus
and I sweat, fevered,
trying to burn it out.

This feat is so invisible. All you can see
is a woman going about her ordinary day,
drinking tea, taking herself to the movies,
reading in bed. If victorious
I will look exactly the same.

Yet I am hoisting a car from mud ruts
half a century deep. I am hacking
a clearing through the fallen slash
of my heart. Without laser precision,
with only the primitive knife of need, I cut
and splice the circuitry of my brain.
I change.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

How to Be Free of Guilt - David R. Hawkins

Thursday, November 04, 2010

David R. Hawkins on Integrity

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Dalai Lama at Stanford

Recorded Webcast of "The Centrality of Compassion in Human Life and Society" 
Thursday, October 14, 2010, 9:30-11:00 am PDT.
A public talk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Pull - Rumi


Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. ~Rumi

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

Friday, October 01, 2010

One Day - Matisyahu

Matisyahu - One Day from 100% on Vimeo.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A Spell to Re-Genius Yourself - Rob Brezsny








Although we are all born geniuses, the grind of day-to-day living tends to de-genius us. That's the bad news. The good news is that you have the power to re-genius yourself.

I'm going to give you a ritual you can use to jump-start the process.



The Greek philosopher Plato long ago recognized that in addition to eating, drinking, sleeping, breathing, and loving, every creature has an instinctual need to periodically leap up into the air for no other reason than because it feels so good.

      Please face south, leap up in the air, and say these words: "From the south, I purify, electrify, beautify, and fructify this sacred space."

+

When I was a kid I used to love to go out in the middle of a meadow and whirl around in spirals until I got so dizzy I fell down. As I lay on the ground, the earth and sky and sun kept reeling madly, and I was no longer just a pinpoint of awareness lodged inside my body, but rather I was an ecstatically undulating swirl in the kaleidoscopic web of life. I invite you to feel that way right now.

      Spin yourself around until you topple over. And while lying on the ground, face west and say these words: "From the west, I sanctify, unify, clarify, and intensify this sacred space."

+

The people I trust the most are those who are always tenderly wrestling and negotiating with their own shadows, making preemptive strikes on their personal share of the world's evil, fighting the good fight to keep from spewing their darkness on those around them. I aspire to be like that, which is why I regularly kick my own ass. Will you try that right now wherever you are?

      Jump off the ground and snap your heels up against your butt. Then face north and say these words: "From the north, I immunize, psychoanalyze, satirize, and exorcise this sacred space."

+

In one sense each of us is an intriguing, intricately unique individual, justifiably proud of and in love with our own personal story. In another sense, we are all one body, descended from the same primordial mother and made of identical stuff -- the calcium in all of our bones and the iron in all of our blood originally forged in a red giant star that died billions of years ago.

      Rotating slowly in a clockwise direction, look down at your belly as you imagine that at this moment, everyone in the world is breathing along with you. Then face east and say this: "From the east, I lubricate, pollinate, consecrate, and emancipate this sacred space."

Now it's time to confess the truth about who you really are.

      Gaze upward and stretch your arms out high. Say the following: "I am a genius."

      And say this: "I am a lucky, plucky genius."

      And say this: "I am a lucky, plucky, good-sucking genius."

Thank you for finally confessing the truth. It's about time you admitted that you are a miraculous work of art.

You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.

I'm not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, "Be yourself," I don't mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the self that says "Thank you!" to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the rebel creator who's longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the dissident bodhisattva who's joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.

When I say, "Be yourself," I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who's scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.

Now let's move on to the next stage of your confession.

      Squat. While patting and massaging the ground or floor in front of you, say this: "I am insane."

      And say this: "I am an insane hurricane."

      And say this: "I am a highly trained, entertainingly insane hurricane."

Thank you for finally confessing the truth, which is that you are constitutionally incapable of adapting nicely to the sour and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." You are too amazingly, blazingly insane for that.

You are too crazy smart to lust after the stupidest secrets of the game of life. You're too seriously delirious to wander sobbing through the sterile, perfumed labyrinth looking in vain for the most ultra-perfect mirror. Thank the Goddess that you are a fiercely tender throb of sublimely berserk abracadabra.

You will never get crammed in a neat little niche in the middle of the road at the end of a nightmare.

You refuse to allow your soul's bones to get ground down into dust and used to fertilize the killing fields that proudly dot the ice cream empire of monumentally demeaning luxuries.

You're too brilliantly cracked for that.

You're too ingeniously whacked.

You're too ineffably godsmacked.

      Now stand up and make a series of small jumps, rotating a quarter turn in a clockwise direction with each jump. And as you do, say this: "I am a lucky, plucky, good-sucking genius and a highly trained, entertainingly insane hurricane."

+

Monday, September 20, 2010

Driver's Ed - An Exercise



From On Becoming an Alchemist: A Guide for the Modern Magician
by Catherine MacCoun, p. 135



"I've recently discovered a quick way back to the driver's seat when I fall into passenger mentality.  Maybe it will work for you, too.

A year ago I found myself embarking on an enterprise that scared me.  I wasn't at all sure whether I really ought to be doing this thing, and my desires were equally murky.  "Destiny," though, was acting very sure of itself, maneuvering me through an uncanny series of coincidences into what "they" had planned for me.  (Who "they" might be was undefined, as it so often is in passenger thinking.)

While describing my predicament in a letter to a friend, I found myself listing the events leading up to it in chronological order.  The narrative was in passive voice, i.e., sentences that describe what is being done without naming the doer.  Since good writers frown on passive voice, and I like to think of myself as a good writer, I thought I'd better correct this.  Then I got the bright idea of recasting each of the sentences with myself as the doer.  I described the entire sequence of events as if I were the mastermind behind each and every step.  'First I arranged to be out of work.  Then I arranged to own more taxes than I had funds to pay. Then I prompted so-and-so to phone me with a job offer...' Ten steps later, the sequence concluded with, 'And that's how I tricked myself into doing exactly what I want to do.'

I suspect it's no coincidence that, immediately after I had edited my way into driver mentality, circumstances changed for the better.  The doubtful enterprise took off, and I felt a lot more confident about my decision.  You might want to try this technique the next time you're feeling jerked around by fate, destiny, karma, or whatever else you happen to call your passenger vehicle."

Sunday, September 19, 2010

From Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology

In his book "The Medusa and the Snail," science writer Lewis Thomas said that the word "error" developed from a root meaning "to wander about, looking for something." That's why he liked Darwin's idea that error is a driving force in evolution. "The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA," said Thomas. ..."Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music."

What Makes Us Human?

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Meaning and Choice

The meaning of life is not a fact to be discovered, but a choice that you make about the way you live.

– Hilda Bernstein, anti-apartheid activist, quoted in The Washington Post.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Book Recommendation: The Soul of Money - Lynne Twist


I am reading an amazing book called The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist.  This morning it is this quote that resonates with me the most:

We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity.  Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency.  By sufficiency, I don't mean a quantity of anything.  Sufficiency isn't two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance.  It isn't a measure of barely enough or more than enough.  Sufficiency isn't an amount at all.  It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough."

I think of what I wrote last week...the part about one of my limiting beliefs about myself that I'm paying attention to: Who I am is not enough. I love that just a few days later, I found this book.  Sufficiency, indeed! ;-)

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Mother Teresa's "Anyway" Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Listen to your life...

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

~FREDERICH BUECHNER

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Martin Luther King "I have a dream"

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Zen Meditation Chimes

Sunday, August 22, 2010

There is a Brokenness

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness out
of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief that leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside which is unbreakable
and whole,
while learning to sing.

Rashani

Friday, August 20, 2010

God Speaking - Hafiz

Everyone
Is God speaking.
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Throwing Away - Breaking Free - Susannah

I'm going through old stuff while the kids are in Florida visiting their dad. It's some stuff I've been dragging around with me for years: journals, college notebooks, old letters. I'm filtering through pretty quickly - tossing a lot...I just don't feel the need to lug it around anymore, yet it feels a little painful and "a lot scary" to let go of it. I consider what this letting go means to me right now...and I notice that it depends on what I'm putting in the throw away box.

Many of the journals make me cringe from the cotton candy, overly emotional writing .... and I am gladly getting rid of them. I am not a great writer of journal entries. I know this about myself: I write much better when there's a real person on the other end who will be receiving my words. (In fact, as I write this entry, I occasionally have to pretend that I'm writing to Bob or Devon or Mari or Aaron or Ann or Tammy....) In my box of papers, I found a letter from David Rossburg...this guy I had a huge crush on when I was a camp counselor in NJ the summer of 1987... Even David wrote, "You are an awesome letter writer!" .... Still, I may keep a few of these embarrassingly dull journals - like the one I took with me to Europe in 1990 after I graduated from University of Cincinnati. Despite its cringe factor, that journal is priceless for what it represents to me - something along the lines of the bliss of breaking free.

When I toss the old college papers, I'm tossing out validation from professors who wrote nice things about me and my writing, and throwing them away is a little unnerving. It still feels really good to read those comments from 22 years ago! But with each paper I pick up, it gets easier to put it in the cardboard trash box. (My friend Tammy is my personal bonfire coordinator. In fact, she just wrote me an email which ended, "Start piling the fodder for the bonfire!")

I did find a paper I'm saving, though. It's one I wrote for Professor McEvoy's Ed Psych 300 course in 1991 when I was a grad student at WVU. It's called "Reflections on Ballet and Jung." Here's a quote: "I am still in the process of "coming to selfhood," and this process deals with bringing what is in the unconscious to the conscious level of the mind" [Dr. McEvoy added "and expressing it in some form of identity.] God! Even then I was introspective and interested in living the symbolic life, curious about the subconscious and unconscious patterns that might be playing out in my life. In the paper I consider my relationship with myself about ballet and wonder "why I had to break away from something I loved." I share that "quitting ballet was a trauma in my life, but it stirred me up enough that I began confronting not just the 'dance issues' within myself, but many other issues within my psyche which I had yet to realize existed." I could have written that...like....um....a minute ago....replacing the words "ballet" and "dance" with words like "divorce" and "bankruptcy."

I cried when I read Dr. McEvoy's comment to me: "I find this paper remarkable - you have taken great jumps and are well on the way to fullness and individuation - there are many expressions of the self and dance still may remain one for you (but it should be this - an expression of the self), but if not you will realize others - as Campbell would advise - follow your bliss!" Of course, the comment, itself, is so kind and personal....so "unprofessorlike," but more than that, I noticed that I simultaneously felt awe and sadness for the young woman I was...awe at what I knew and felt intuitively even then, and sadness that I was the last person on Earth who thought this was "remarkable."

So...I'm 43 and at another breaking free moment in my life, and I've been feeling some very familiar feelings... feelings that result from the universe pretty much prying the death grip off some of the things I have held on to so tightly...and really they're not things as much as they are what those things represent to me -- it usually comes back to some sort of limiting belief I have about myself ... usually along the lines of "Who I am is not enough."

So this breaking free and throwing away...yeah...it is freaky...

and it is freeing...

and it is absolutely remarkable ...

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Watch a Panda Grow















Love - Buddha



Sunday, August 15, 2010

2010 Predictions from ... Beyond.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Andrew Solomon: The Refugees

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

One Love!

Monday, August 09, 2010

Inner Gold - Join the Conversation

Jung Documentary







Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Fear vs. Intuition - Rob Brezsny

Click here to listen to a short audio of Rob Brezsny sharing how to tell the difference between fearful fantasies and true intuition...

Monday, August 02, 2010

Footsteps - Thoreau

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deeper physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Apocalypse - Rob Brezsny

But it’s nothing like the end of the world visualized by any of the usual suspects. It’s different in four ways.

1. THE APOCALYPSE IS HAPPENING IN SLOW MOTION.

It has been going on for decades and will continue to unfold for many years. Sudden, sensational punctuations arise now and then to expedite it, but for the most part it ferments continuously in the background. Most days bring no emergency that is beyond our capacity to bear, but the cumulative effects of the transfigurations that relentlessly weave themselves into our lives have turned every one of us into heroes whose courageous endurance dwarfs the valor of legends like Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Arthur, and Joan of Arc.

2. THE APOCALYPSE IS FOR THE MOST PART INVISIBLE.

Here’s the most extreme evidence: Few of us have registered the fact that we’re in the midst of the largest mass extinction of life on Earth since the demise of the dinosaurs. This is the conclusion of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, a professional society of 5,000 scientists. Think of it: About 40 animal and plant species are dying off every day–a rate unmatched in 65 million years. Shouldn’t this be a recurring headline on the front page of every major newspaper?

But the work-in-progress that is the apocalypse is not always cloaked. Now and then a riveting event transfixes our collective emotions, driving millions of us deep into a visceral encounter with the ongoing collapse. For a brief interlude, the covert, slow-motion upheaval explodes into plain view. In recent years, no event has done that more dramatically, at least for Americans, than the mass murder on September 11, 2001.

3. THE APOCALYPSE IS AS MUCH ABOUT REBIRTH AS BREAKDOWN.

The English word “apocalypse” is derived from the Greek word for “revelation.” In the esoteric spiritual traditions of the West, “apocalypse” has also come to denote a great awakening.

The apocalypse we’re living through can be described by all three meanings of the word: as the end of the world, a revelation, and an awakening. Disintegration and renewal are happening side by side; calamity and fertility; rot and splendor; grievous losses and surges of invigorating novelty. Yes, the death of the old order is proceeding apace; but it’s overlapped by the birth pangs of an as-yet unimaginable new civilization.

The devastation and regeneration often have no apparent link. But in the case of 9-11, they seemed to be meshed. I received many e-mails from people testifying about how the terrorist assault was a weird kind of gift. In the aftermath, their petty worries evaporated and they stopped wasting time on low-priority, dead-end desires. Roused by an electrifying clarity of purpose, they began to live the life they’d previously only fantasized they wanted. And they had direct perceptions–gut-level, intuitive gnosis–that We Are All One.

It’s as if millions of people had a simultaneous Near Death Experience and harvested the epiphanies that typically come to those who have peered over to the other side of the veil.

Here’s another example of catastrophe and regeneration arising from a single set of events, suggested by Caroline Myss in her book Energy Anatomy. China’s invasion and occupation of Tibet in the 1950s resulted in the exile of the Dalai Lama, which ultimately brought that great soul’s influence, along with his elegant brand of Buddhism, to the entire world with a breadth and depth that would never have happened otherwise.

4. MOST OF THE TIME WE EXPERIENCE APOCALYPSE NOT THROUGH BIG, BAD EVENTS LIKE THE SEPTEMBER 11 MASSACRES, BUT THROUGH THE DETAILS OF OUR PERSONAL LIVES.

The sweeping but gradual revolution, the agonizing decay of the old order and breathtaking bloom of the new, are framed in the storylines of your most intimate dramas. Again and again over the years, you’re pushed to a brink that challenges you to either rise to the occasion or else surrender to demoralizing chaos. The crises may come in the form of divorce or illness or job loss, or even in less dramatic events like a misunderstanding with a friend or the inexplicable waning of a once-passionate dream.

Seeded inside each of these personal turning points is the crux of the evolving global apocalypse: You get to choose whether you’ll adjust by taking a path that keeps you aligned with the values of the dying world or else a path that helps you resonate with what’s being born. In effect, you get the chance to vote, with your entire life, for which aspect of the apocalypse you want to predominate.

* * * *

The apocalypse is being brought to you by the time you dreamed you signed the Declaration of Independence with your non-dominant hand as you ate fresh Peruvian figs flown to you on the backs of albatrosses.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Amazon Exclusive: A Personal Note from Gary Zukav

I wrote Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power to try to get out of my own cage. I wanted, and needed, to connect with people, not just reach them, but really connect for my own well being and hopefully for theirs as well.

I have learned that the difficult times in my life are not because of other people, they are because of me. They occur because of parts of my personality that are painful to experience. When I am with someone who brings them up in me, that is a painful time, but I know that it is not about the other person when I feel angry or impatient or irritable. It is about me, and so I am intent to use my experiences with others to learn about me so that I can change me because I am really tired of trying to change other people. And not only am I tired of it, I don't want to. It doesn’t feel good. I know deep in me that it is a wrong path for me to take, and I feel that it is a painful path for anyone to take.

Spiritual partnership is a partnership with another person or other people who feel the same way. It is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. So when my spiritual partners and I have difficult interactions, we do not point fingers at each other, we try our best to respond instead of react, and to support one another in doing that also. Spiritual partnership is a new kind of relationship, a different kind of relationship. We do more than talk about hair styles, life styles, car styles, children, and work. We do all those things too but those conversations take on a different meaning. While I am having them, I am noticing what I am feeling. I'm noticing if anything gets triggered in me and if it does, I pay attention to it, especially if I am becoming upset because those are the experiences that keep me from loving. They keep me apart from people.

For a long time I thought that if I could change people enough, and get some that were just right around me, it would be easy to be loving, but it doesn't work like that because everybody has parts of her or his personality that are loving and also parts that are not loving. I would say the not-loving parts are the frightened parts of the personality, the parts that are angry, jealous, vengeful, feel superior, feel inferior, etc. And when these parts become active, and this always happens sooner or later, that's when the learning potential begins. Of course, it also begins when the loving parts come out, the parts that are grateful, patient, appreciative, content, etc. Being a spiritual partner means really wanting to support people because you see when they are in pain how they might learn from their pain, too, if they're open. If they’re open.

My focus is on changing myself because I know that other people can’t change me, but I also know that each of my spiritual partners wants to change himself or herself, too. He wants to find and challenge the painful, destructive parts of his personality and cultivate the constructive, blissful parts of his personality, and so I assist him whenever I think I see that they might be active. I don';t just say "This is what is happening in you, and this is what you ought to do." I ask her if she is open to looking at something that I think I might be seeing. For example, some parts of my personality that I have become very familiar with over years feel superior, entitled, impatient, and don't really care about the needs of others, but not everybody is like that. One of my spiritual partners feels a need to please other people when a frightened part of her personality is active; to see them smile or value her because of what she can do or give. So when I see that part come out in her behaviors and thoughts and attitudes, if she is open I will help her see them. And there are specific ways, very helpful ways that we can assist one another. This book gives them to you.

Once I started this book I kept writing because it felt so good. I love it when creativity begins to flow and I can think of a better way to express something--a story, or a metaphor, or a process. I love that experience of sharing. The more I stretched myself to think, "How can I say this in a way that is not by rote? How can I not take refuge in what I know how to say but really communicate in an even more meaningful way?" the deeper my understanding of spiritual partnership became and the stronger my ability to share it. One idea lead to another, one chapter lead to another, and after a few chapters I began to see an outline for the book, and that outline became WHY, WHAT, HOW, and WHO. That';s how this book unfolded.

There is a saying that people teach what they really need to learn. Doing this in a heart-felt way has worked well for me. I can tell that I am becoming more able to connect with people because to my surprise I have become interested in them. Let me put it this way, I am aware now, much more aware of how important people are to me than I have been in the past. I like hearing their stories. I like hearing what is happening in their lives. For example, Linda Francis, the spiritual partner I live with, and I met a couple on a plane and found them to be wonderful. He told me that he has pancreatic cancer and that he and his wife were going on a cruise to Mexico. When he learned that his illness was terminal, he realized that he could spend his last days in a hospital, but that didn't sound inviting to him. Or he could spend them really living his life, and that invited him. That is what he is doing. What I really like about him is his aliveness, his interest, his interest in me and his excitement for what I am doing. He is as grounded as he is delightful and vibrant. He said, "I am a little afraid of what it will be like to die. I am not sure about that. I know I am going to get sick. I have done my homework on pancreatic cancer. It is an ugly way to die, but I feel so alive and so grateful for every moment." In the little time we were together, I learned about myself as well as about him, but mostly I enjoyed myself and I enjoyed him, and I feel that he enjoyed himself and he enjoyed me.

So those are the kind of experiences that are coming into my life now. And I also know that when it comes to spirituality, I am not special. If I can create authentic power and spiritual partnerships, you can. If I can make the journey from an angry, drug-using, sex-addicted, motorcycle-riding, angry--did I mention angry?--young man to someone who is now enjoying becoming an elder, anyone can. As I began to open my heart up many wonderful role models came into my life over the years, men and women who have opened their hearts or are opening them, and they are still coming. Perhaps I can be one of those role models for you, and you can be one for someone else. We are all opening our hearts, but it is not a matter of opening your heart and, there, that's a done deal. It is a matter of continuing to open your heart moment by moment. This book is about that, and how to do it.

Love,

Gary Zukav

It is Through Them

Whenever I catch sight of others,
By thinking, "It is through them,
That I will reach awakening,"
I'll look with sincerity and love.

- Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva

Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Great Turning - Joanna Macy

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Becoming Ourselves...

"The whole point of Jesus's life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great example."

Jung

Monday, June 14, 2010

Contradictions - Walt Whitman


Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

~Walt Whitman

Friday, June 11, 2010

YouTube - RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Our Journey

Monday, June 07, 2010

Rainy Mood

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Infinite Patience - Wayne Dyer

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Ram Dass on Attachment and Addiction

Friday, April 09, 2010

Amazing Grace - Wintley Phipps

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Receive

"Receive instead of plan."

A Course of Love

Friday, March 19, 2010

Bennacht (Blessing)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

John O'Donohue, from Echoes of Memory)

Quote from "Self-Reliance" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."

Monday, March 15, 2010

God and Reality - from Love Without End

You can see that it would be a mistake to look for your purpose outside yourself. Your purpose will not be at the end of a long adventure. It will be found in the way you engage with the adventure. Your purpose will not be found at the end of an inspiring seminar. It will be found in that which drew you to the seminar in the first place and the way in which you made a contribution to it.

p. 307

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Knowing - Lao Tzu



Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Knight of Water - from Osho Zen Tarot