New Year

"Affirming the Good

Fun becomes fun, love becomes love, life becomes worth living. And we become grateful.

Wait, and expect good things—for yourself and your loved ones.
When you wonder what is coming, tell yourself the best is coming, the very best life and love have to offer, the best God and His universe have to send. Then open your hands to receive it. Claim it, and it is yours.
See the best in your mind; envision what it will look like, what it will feel like. Focus, until you can see it clearly. Let your whole being, body and soul, enter into and hold onto the image for a moment.
Then, let it go. Come back into today, the present moment. Do not obsess. Do not become fearful. Become excited. Live today fully, expressing gratitude for all you have been, all you are, and all you will become.
Wait, and expect good things.
Today, when I think about the year ahead, I will focus on the good that is coming."

~Melody Beattie~

The Dark Side

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
– Yoda

Peace

"Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.  We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends.  We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes."

~Jack Kornfield~

Indifference

"Indifference pretends to create peace, but it is based on not caring, a silent resignation.  It is a movement away, a separation fed by a subtle fear of the heart.  We pull back, believing that what happens to others is not our concern.  Our courage leaves us.  Indifference is a misguided way of defending ourselves."
~Jack Kornfield~

John Gato

"Think of the things that are killing us as a nation: drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all - lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a religion."

Health & Healing

"To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear." ~Buddha~

"The wish for healing has always been half of health." ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca~

"Every time you eat or drink you are either fighting disease or feeding it." ~Heather Morgan~

Pablo Picasso

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

J. Krishnamurti

"If you look into your mind, you will see it's like thousands of butterflies whirling about!  You can hardly trace a single idea in this complexity.  A way to bring clarity to the mind is to write down your immediate thoughts and feelings in response to the events of the day, and then ponder them.  If you emphasize one particular problem in this writing, it will gradually lead to all others."

Stevenson

"Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm."

I'm Waiting For The Sweet One

"One day Mullah Nasrudin was sitting in the market in front of a big basket of red hot chili peppers.  With tears streaming down his cheeks, eyes bloodshot, face red, and nose running, he kept eating one after another.  Every now and then he let out a big howl they were so hot! One of his students approached him and asked, 'Mullah! What on earth are you doing? Why do you keep eating them?'

'I'm waiting for the sweet one,' he replied."

~Idries Shaw~

Jane Dobisz

"It occurs to me in this vulnerable state that regardless of the practice, the teachings, or what I attain or don't attain, I can't control this body.  It will get sick, grow old, and die whether I like it or not, whether I am enlightened or not, and, most especially, whether I am ready or not."

Seung Sahn

The Human Route

"Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?"

Dhammapada

"Hostilities are not stilled
     Through hostility, regardless.
Hostilities are stilled
     Through Non-hostility:
This, an unending Truth."

Dr King

"The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.  Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.  We have guided missiles and misguided men."

Chinul

"Strengthen your will; reprimand yourself; reprove your own laziness.  Know your faults and turn toward what is good.  Reform and repent your bad conduct; train and control your mind.  Cultivate earnestly and the power of contemplation will grow; train continuously and your practice will become increasing pure."

Geri Larkin

"I've discovered a secret about this nowness.  In this place we can clean up our karma, the muck we've created in our lives that needs scrubbing.  When we see clearly we don't need to whine about anyone else, to blame them, or to run away.  We just need to see.  And then start scrubbing."

Yoda

"Size matters not.  Look at me.  Judge me by my size, do you? Hmmmm? Hmmmm.  And well you should not.  For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.  Life creates it, makes it grow.  Its energy surrounds us and binds us.  Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.  You must feel the force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.  Even between the land and the ship."

Bernie Glassman

"We cook, eat, and appreciate the meal, whereas if we just sit around bitching about all the things we don't have and not eating anything, we'd starve.  And that goes for life, too.  Look at the ingredients you have, make the best meal possible, and offer it.  Don't forget to offer it.  If you make the meal just for yourself, you don't get the same pleasure."

Jeanette Winterson

"I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place.  That is what Jung was explaining of course - as the chaos of our unconscious contents drive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness."

"I was going to be away, free, or so it seemed, but you always take it with you.  It takes much longer to leave the psychic place than the physical place."

Buddha Smiles

I have no idea.
     Truth.
          Complexities.
Seven Chakras.
Twelve Steps.

Questions.
     Discoveries.
          Acceptance.

If I listen to you,
     Can you hear me?

Enlightened!
     Enlightened to What?
          Enlighten Me.

Reality Is Enlightenment.

Accepting Self.
Accepting Others.

So simple.
No mystery.

Nothing to learn.
Nothing to teach.

Matter is neither created nor destroyed.

I matter.
You matter.
All matter.

What is here now
     has always been.

Big Bang!
Let There Be Light!

All is created from the same.

God.
     You.
         Me.

The Earth, Sun and Moon.
The Dirt, Trees and Water.

When I die
I become
What I once was.
     What I still am.
          What I will always be.

I am you
and
You are me.

God.  Light.  Love.  All.

You cannot create me.
I cannot destroy you.

Linked. Bound. Tied. All.

DO YOU KNOW HOW GOOD YOU SMELL?

Movement in the mind
Conscious shift
Conscious split.

Split from the lies,
Dust removed from the eyes.

Unblocked: From the Lies we tell ourselves.

The lie of separation.  Differentiation.

Words.  Thoughts. Actions. Voice.

The throat is unblocked by the Truth.
The light moves up and through and out.
into...

Reality is Heaven.
Heaven is Bliss.
Bliss is Real.
Real is now.

There is no pie in the sky.

Suffering is the human condition.

Can you suffer
     and accept?

Buddha Smiling.

Knowing how precious
this moment is.

This moment is reality
and we will never exist again.

The me that started does not finish.

My two year old Me,
does not exist.
That person does not exist.

The Me of yesterday does not exist.

Only me, now, this moment.
Only you, now, this moment.

Enlightenment is not an opening
of the seventh chakra to the cosmos.

It is not floating on the ninth cloud.

You cannot be Saved,
from yourself.

Exist. Now.  In This Moment. Only Once. Forever Gone.  Forever More.

Accepting
Smiling

Alice Walker

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

Think Less... Do More

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." ~Steve Jobs~ 

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." ~William Shakespeare~

 "When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem." ~Joyce Meyer~

Cherokee Legend - Two Wolves

"An old Cherokee is teaching her grandson about life... "A fight is going on inside me," she said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. "One is evil - it is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego. "The other is good - it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, gratitude, trust, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. "This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandmother, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee smiled and said, "The one you feed."

Decisions

Every decision is the wrong decision and the right decision at the same time depending on who is looking at it.

Acceptance

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."
~Melody Beattie~

"Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human."
~Albert Ellis~

"Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology that you never got."
~Robert Brault~

"I'm not ok - And you're not ok - And that is ok."
~William Sloane Coffin

Dada Vaswani

"Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy."

Jampolsky

“Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change others.”

Tao

“The best fighter is never angry.” ― Lao Tzu

love

"The people who love you for who you are and not for what you can do for them are the best kind of people."

Brigitte Nicole

wake up

"Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be."

~Alan Watts~

freedom

“Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.” ~Stephen Covey

Groucho Marx

"I find television very educational.  Every time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a good book."

Suffering

"When another person makes you suffer, it is because they suffer deeply within themselves, and that suffering is spilling over.  The do not need punishment; they need help.  That is the message they are sending you." ~Thich Nhat Hanh~

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering.  Out of fear of the unknown they prefer suffering that is familiar." ~Thich Nhat Hanh~

"No one saves us but ourselves.  No one can and no one may.  We ourselves must walk the path." ~Buddha~

Contentment

"No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place."

The Sun

"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun."
~Pablo Picasso~ 

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
~Buddha~

 "When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome."
~Wilma Rudolph~

Tucson

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you."
~Charlotte Whitton~

Twain

"In twenty years, you will be more disappointed by what you didn't do than by what you did."

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."

Grow

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” ~Alice Walker

Acceptance

“Accept, then act. Whatever the present moment contains, embrace it as if you had chosen it. This will miraculously change your whole life.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Who you Truly are

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~Carl Jung

Simple

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ~Confucius

Anaïs Nin

“When one is pretending the entire body revolts.”

Sylvia Plath

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.”

Chinese Proverb

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

Steve Maraboli

“Don’t look for society to give you permission to be yourself.”

Morissette

"I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance, if you want it.

I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want, if you need it.

You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs, and I'll hold it.

You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life, and I won't judge it.

And, there are no strings attached to it.

You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself, and I'll grant it.

You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel, and you'll have it.

You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else, and I'll support it.

You can ask for anything you want anything at all, and I'll understand it.

And, there are no strings attached to it

I bet you're wondering when the next payback shoe will eventually drop.

I bet you're wondering when my conditional police will force you to cough up.

I bet you wonder how far you have now danced you way back into debt.

This is the only kind of love, as I understand it, that there really is.

You can express your deepest of truths even if it means I'll lose you, and I'll hear it.

You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss, I'll empathize with.

You can say that you have to skip town to chase your passion, and I'll hear it,

You can even hit rock bottom have a mid-life crisis, and I'll hold it.
And, there are no strings attached

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving, it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return."

Smith

"Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too."

Hate

"Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law." ~James Baldwin~

James Baldwin

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

Socrates

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

Ram Dass

"The quieter you become, the more you can hear."

Rumi

"Whoever is calm and sensible is insane!"

Jung

"The basis of all neurosis is the avoidance of legitimate suffering."

Anniversary

"You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free" ~Thich Nhat Hanh~

William Blake

"Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

Maya

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

clever

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~Rumi~

Forget Safety

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.” ~Rumi~

Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”

Rabi'a

"I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason: What is inside me, I don't let out; What is outside me, I don't let in. If someone comes in, he goes right out again-- He has nothing to do with me at all. I am a doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay."

R Emerson

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment"

proverbs 22:7

"Just as the rich rule the poor, 

so the borrower is slave to the lender."

Rumi

"The cure for pain is in the pain"

Plato

"...we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know…"

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!" "Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Chodron

"It's like being in the ocean when the waves are really rough and high. They knock you over and you find yourself on the floor of the ocean with your face in the sand. The sand is getting in your nose and your mouth and your eyes and the waves are holding you down. But then the wave recedes and you stand back up and you walk until the next waves comes in and knocks you down and the same thing keeps happening. And each time you just stand back up and after awhile it seems to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller."

Rumi

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray."

generations

I am You

and

You are Me

and 

Today we are 

Three

Joseph Sizoo

"If we could untangle the mysteries of life and unravel the energies which run through the world, if we could evaluate correctly the significance of passing events; if we could measure the struggles, dilemmas, and aspirations of mankind, we could find that nothing is born out of time.  Everything comes at the appointed moment."

Pema Chodron

"You are the sky.  Everything else is just the weather."

Lao Tzu

"Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?  Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?"

Ralston

"Mountains are the means, the man is the end.  The goal is not to reach the top of the mountains, but to improve the man."

Paulo Coelho

"Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once."

break through

"Sometimes we have to have a break-down to have a break-through."

Buddha

"In the end, only three things matter:
how much you loved,
how gently you lived,
and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you."

Thich Nhat Hanh

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering.  Out of fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."

Daphne Rose

"Holding on is believing there is only a past; letting go is believing there is a future."

MLK JR

"If you can't fly, then run
If you can't run, then walk
If you can't walk, then crawl
But whatever you do,
You have to keep moving Forward"

an open letter...

"There comes a time in life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it.  You surround yourself with people who make you laugh, you forget the bad, and you focus on the good.  You love the people who treat you right.  And, you pray for the ones who don't.  Life is too short to be anything but happy.  Falling down is part of life, getting back up is living."

Lao Tzu

"If you are depressed,
you are living in the past.
If you are anxious,
you are living in the future.
If you are at peace,
you are living in the present."

Catherine Burke

"Anxiety is your soul jumping up and down inside your heart screaming, 'I'm not happy'"

Chogyam Trungpa

"You are absolutely comfortable and happy the way you are, yet at the same time you find it excruciatingly painful.  You are not certain whether you want to stay the way you are, which is very pleasurable, or not stay the way you are, because it is very painful at the same time.  That kind of pushing and pulling happens all the time.  That seems to be the motivation and the contagious quality of Buddha nature, which is trying to shine through all the time."

Harriet Tubman

"Every great dreams begins with a dreamer.  Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars and to change the world."

A Time For Everything

"There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak." ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Dalai Lama

"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others, and if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them."

Mark Twain

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover."

Paul Shepard

"To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles.  Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality."