Uncovering strength, here, within

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I have discovered, just as my teachers always told me, that we already have what we need. The wisdom, the strength, the confidence, the awakened heart and mind are always accessible, here, now, always. We are just uncovering them. We are rediscovering them. We’re not inventing them or importing them from somewhere else. They’re here. That’s why when we feel caught in darkness, suddenly the clouds can part. Out of nowhere we cheer up or relax or experience the vastness of our minds. No one else gives this to you. People will support you and help you with teachings and practices, as they have supported and helped me, but you yourself experience your unlimited potential.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap.

Different worlds within

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If we become addicted to the externals our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of your inner world. This wholesomeness  is natural; to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.

John O’Donohue, Anam Chara.

Under the snow

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DSCN0239Since we have our first snow and our first hard frost, and the seeds within the hardened earth lie and wait:

In fall the cricket beneath the rose bush
watches as the roses fall to the very ground that is his kingdom also.

So they’re neighbors, one full of fragrance,
the other the harper of a single dry song.

 We call this time of the year
the beginning of the end of another circle,

a convenience and nothing more.

For the cricket’s song
is surely a prayer,
and a prayer, when it is given, is given forever.

This is a truth I’m sure of, for I’m older than I used to be,

and therefore I understand things
nobody would think of
who’s young and in a hurry.

The snow is very beautiful. Under it are the lingering
petals of fragrance, and the timeless body of prayer.

Mary Oliver, The Cricket and the Rose