Leo Tolstoy

"If you want to be happy, be."

Raku Kichizaemon

"Not to narrate, nor express
Neither to be concerned about being traditional or contemporary
Nor again to strive for originality
What matters is to drop a plumb-line into the depths of my being
And grope my way downward
Into the cave of my existence, crammed with the totality of
Past, present and future."

The Terma Collective

"What in your life is calling you?
When all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside,
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls on your soul?

In the silence between your heartbeats
hides a summons.
Do you hear it?
Name it, if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?"

dwelling

house
friends
heart
feeling
happiness
fears
hope
family
healing
faith
home

adapt

refine
ideas
change
dreams
restart
acceptance
remorse
grief
growth
change

creature

wild
running
breathing
eating
spirit
searching
seeking
light
meaning
birth

acceptance

life
movement
positioning
growth
rebirth
directing
orchestrating
building
new life

Agathon

"Even God cannot change the past."

Leonard Cohen

“Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, expecting victory after victory and you understand deeply that this is not paradise. Somehow, especially the privileged ones that we are, we somehow embrace the notion that this veil of tears, that it’s perfectible, that you can get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. When you understand that, you abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece.”

Rumi

“You are not a drop in the ocean but the entire ocean in one single drop”

God Seed

"The seed of God is in us. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seeds into God." ~ Meister Eckhart

Elbert Hubbard

"The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. … A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying."

Gandhi

"In a gentle way, you can shake the world."

Shawshank Redemption

"Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying."

Sarah

"I am always provided with everything I need in life."

Alan Watts

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float."

Anne Lamott

"No" is a complete sentence.

Buddha

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."

Hippocrates

“The soul is the same in all living creatures although the body of each is different”

William Shakespeare

"This above all:  to thine own self be true"

St Francis of Assisi

"Not to hurt our humble brethren, the animals, is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever they require it... If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."

Landslide

"I took my love and took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Till the landslide brought me down

Mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too

I take my love, take it down
I climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Will the landslide bring you down
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Will the landslide bring you down,
The landslide bring you down"

 ~Stevie Nicks~

Rudyard Kipling

"For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."

St Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
 For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

A Gift

Your Erroneous Zones

"Take a look at the way the world works.  To put it succinctly, you can never please everyone.  In fact, if you please fifty percent of the people, you are doing quite well.  This is no secret.  You know that at least half of the people in your world are going to disagree with at least half of the things you say.  If this is accurate (and you need only to look at landslide elections to see that forty-four percent of the population still voted against the winner), then you will always have about a 50-50 chance of getting some disapproval when you voice an opinion.

Armed with this knowledge, you can start to look at disapproval in a new light.  When someone disapproves of something you say [do], instead of being hurt, or instantly shifting your opinion [behaviour] to gain praise, you can remind yourself that you've just run into one of those folks in the fifty percent who don't agree with you.  Knowing that you'll always get some disapproval for everything you feel, think, say or do is the way out of the tunnel of despair.  Once you expect it, you won't be inclined to hurt yourself with it, and you'll simultaneously stop equating the repudiation of an idea or a feeling with the repudiation of you."

~ Wayne Dyer ~

The Bhagavad Gita

"Oh, Krishna, the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding.   I consider it as difficult to subdue as the wind."

t.s. eliot

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

"If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy."

it's all irrelevant

"Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know."

~Lao Tzu~