Self- Reliance

“I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing. "
~Emerson~

Again...

~Tolstoy~

"I often lie awake at night from happiness, and all the time I think of our future life together. I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate."

Be Yourself

Always Emerson...

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

Newell

“The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask.”

Strayed

"It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”

st. augustine

"you pray to what you love; for true, whole prayer is nothing but love!"

ram dass

"Did you ever have a bad day?  Everything seems to go wrong and you are completely lost in anger, frustration, and self-pity.  It gets worse and worse, until the final moment when, say, you have just missed the last bus.  There is some critical point where it gets so bad the absurdity of it all overwhelms you and you can do nothing but laugh.  At that moment you up level your predicament, you see the cosmic joke in your own suffering."

Gandhi

"My commitment is to truth as I see it each day, not to consistency."

John Tarrant

"Meditation is just showing up for what we have, and there is joy in that.  It's different from the kind of happiness that comes from getting what you wanted.  It's a joy that doesn't have a good reason.  It's a joy that allows you to be sad or upset, because you're alive in the midst of it."

Karmapa

aloud...

"all is calm.  how can we describe the indescribable?  can we say like this, like that?  things are or are not.  there is an unreality, an emptiness, a supernatural power of everything that is, like the sky that covers all.  past, present, future, are the same, beyond thought.  how can we explain?  is or is not?  not like this nor like anything else.  away even from transcendency.  emptiness and the cosmic nature are not different.  beyond all signs whatsoever.  beyond communications.  different.  nameless.  sudden like lightening.  with a meaning beyond thought.  therefore there is no meaning.  now it's all finished.  words are liars."

Frank O'Connor

"All I know from my own experience is that the more loss we feel the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose.  It means we had something worth grieving for.  The ones I'm sorry for are the ones that go through life not even knowing what grief is."

Thoreau

"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails... If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains.  If the bell rings, why should we run?...  I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born."

Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves."

Fasting 2

“Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.”  ~Hermann Hesse~

“Fasting, when combined with a properly selected diet, is the nearest approach to a ‘cure-all’ that is possible to conceive– profoundly simple and simply profound!” ~John Tilden~

"The light of the world will illuminate within you when you fast and purify yourself." ~Gandhi~

Fasting 1

"A little starvation, can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors." ~Mark Twain~

"Fasting is the first principle of medicine; fast and see the strength of the spirit reveal itself." ~Rumi~

"Fasting is a natural method of healing. When animals or savages are sick, they fast." ~Yogananda~

"The best of all medicines is resting and fasting." ~Benjamin Franklin~

Leonardo da Vinci

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

Joshua Loth Liebman

"We should learn not to grow impatient with the slow healing process of time.  We should discipline ourselves to recognize that there are many steps to be taken along the highway leading from sorrow to renewed serenity... We should anticipate these states in our emotional convalescence: unbearable pain, poignant grief, empty days, resistance to consolation, disinterestedness in life, gradually give way... to the new weaving of a pattern of action and the acceptance of the irresistible challenge of life."

M.A. Kelley

"Watch your way then, as a cautious traveller; and don't be gazing at that mountain or river in the distance, and saying, "How shall I ever get over them?" but keep to the present little inch that is before you, and accomplish that in the little moment that belongs to it.  The mountain and the river can only be passed in the same way; and, when you come to them, you will come to the light and the strength that belong to them."

Twelve

"We learned that there were pangs too sharp, griefs too deep, ecstasies too high for our finite selves to register.  When emotion reached this pitch the mind choked; and memory went white till the circumstances were humdrum once more." ~T.E. Lawrence~

"give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o'er wrought heart and bids it break" ~Shakes~

"Remember - What do you remember? Do you remember too much? Or not enough? Remember. What don't you want to remember? What is is like to remember?" ~Shakes~

Rilke

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Yoga

"As we begin to re-experience a visceral reconnection with the needs of our bodies, there is a brand new capacity to warmly love the self.  We experience a new quality of authenticity in our caring, which redirects our attention to our health, our diets, our energy, our time management.  This enhanced care for the self arises spontaneously and naturally, not as a response to a "should."  We are able to experience an immediate and intrinsic pleasure in self-care."

~Stephen Cope~

Rumi

"This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival.  A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor... Welcome and entertain them all.  Treat each guest honorably.  The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.  Be grateful for whoever comes, each has been sent as a guide from beyond."

Pema Chödrön

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

Anthony de Mello

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”

John O'Donohue

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”

Navajo Prayer

"Happily may I walk.

May it be beautiful before me.

May it be beautiful behind me.

May it be beautiful below me.

May it be beautiful above me.

May it be beautiful all around me.

In beauty it is finished."

May Sarton

"She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome."

Emily Dickinson

"Hope, is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul...
And sings the tune without words
And never stops... At all"

plato

"one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

sing

~Lennon~ "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people, Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries, It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too, Imagine all the people, Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will be as one...

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people, Sharing all the world...

~Osbourne~ "Gazing through the window at the world outside, Wondering will mother earth survive, Hoping that mankind will stop abusing her sometime...

After all there's only just the two of us, And here we are still fighting for our lives, Watching all of history repeat itself, Time after time...

I'm just a dreamer, I dream my life away, I'm just a dreamer, Who dreams of better days...

I watch the sun go down like everyone of us, I'm hoping that the dawn will bring a sign, A better place for those Who will come after us, This time...

Your higher power may be God or Jesus Christ, It doesn't really matter much to me, Without each others help there ain't no hope for us, I'm living in a dream of fantasy...

If only we could all just find serenity, It would be nice if we could live as one, When will all this anger, hate and bigotry, Be gone?"