Darkness

“Relationships with negative people are simply tedious encounters with porcupines. You don’t have the remote knowledge how to be close to them without quills being shot in your direction.” ~  Shannon L. Alder

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” ~ Carl Jung

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." ~ Andrew Carnegie

Birthday

"The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes." ~Frank Lloyd Wright

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm." ~Henry David Thoreau

“Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Adventure

"Take only memories, leave only footprints." ~ Chief Seattle

"It is not down in any map; true places never are." ~ Herman Melville

"Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn.  Climb that goddamn mountain." ~ Jack Kerouac

Rumi

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.  I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass, 

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense."

Og Mandino

I will love the light, for it shows me the way.  Yet, I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars."

Alan Cohen

"Fixing yourself is a task you will never complete because your quest is founded on a faulty premise. You cannot fix yourself because you are not broken."

2019 Goals

“Be a good animal and move freely, unencumbered with thoughts about where you should be and how you should be acting. For instance, imagine yourself as an otter just living your “otterness.” You’re not good or bad, beautiful or ugly, a hard worker or a slacker… You’re simply an otter, moving through the water or on the land freely, peacefully, playfully and without judgments. When it’s time to leave your body, you do so, reclaiming your place in the pure mystery of oneness.”
~Wayne Dyer 


“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself... For I am large and I contain multitudes.”

~Walt Whitman

Pema Chödrön

"Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it."

Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

Dalai Lama

"With the realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world."

barrier

Rumi - "Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

Alan Cohen - "Fixing yourself is a task you will never complete because your quest is founded on a faulty premise.  You cannot fix yourself because you are not broken."

Nietzsche - "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

Ram Dass

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.” 

“If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.”

“The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.” 

Brad Warner

"Your own shit, when used wisely, becomes the fertilizer of your enlightenment."

Brad Warner

“Rather than face what really is, we prefer to retreat and compare what we're living through with the way we think it oughta be. Suffering comes from the comparison between the two.”

Brad Warner

“You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.”

Lao Tzu

"At the center of your being you have the answer;
you know who you are and you know what you want."

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.”

Lao Tzu

"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."

Wayne Dyer

"Whatever you feel within you as your calling -- whatever makes you feel alive -- know in your heart that this excitement is all the evidence you need to have your inner passion become reality.  this is precisely how creation works... and it's that energy that harmonizes the tao."

ownership of self

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." ~Viktor E. Frankl~

Meditation

"...the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. ... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence."  ~William James~

Albert Ellis

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Tom Preston-Werner

“When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say, ‘Wow, that was an adventure,’ not, ‘Wow, I sure felt safe.'”

W. Dyer

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”

Ann Bradstreet

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

Sophie's World

“Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.”

2018

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

~ T.S. Eliot~

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” 

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something." 

~ Neil Gaiman ~

Andrew Solomon

“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.”

Søren Kierkegaard

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Thay

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."

"You carry Mother Earth within you.  She is not outside of you.  Mother Earth is not just your environment.  In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer."

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

~Thich Nhat Hanh~