As we grow we tend to increasingly live in the future, and what “may” happen.
A baby smiles between fifty and seventy times a day
and a toddler six hundred times, according to research.
I’m sure some of us have asked ourselves where that smile goes.
What robs us of it?
Goldie Hawn, 10 Mindful Minutes
The natural mind is already complete, like the sky -limitless and unconditioned.
The practice is not to acquire but to uncover, to relax into what has always been.
Anne C. Klein, professor of religious studies at Rice University
“Not knowing is most intimate”.
It is a place of genuine meeting, where life is not obscured by our ideas about life. When you don’t know, you are free to discover. The mind that doesn’t know is open, curious, and ready for surprise. It doesn’t rush to conclusions or cling to old stories. Instead, it allows the world to speak in its own voice.
We often think of not knowing as a weakness, but it’s a kind of strength – a willingness to encounter reality without armor. When you admit you don’t know, you step into a space where something new can happen. This is where creativity begins, where love flowers, where the deepest insights arise.
John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life
Freedom is not getting what you want;
it’s wanting what is here now.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special: Living Zen
The highest state you have ever experienced is the state of bliss – an expansive sense of oneness with all that is. You didn’t have to earn it. It was your natural state of being, and it came up inside of you when you weren’t blocking it.
The problem is that your mind is not interested in bliss. Your mind is interested in control, in security, in knowing. Bliss is not known – it is felt. It is beyond the mind. The mind cannot grasp it, so it resists it. It distracts you with thoughts, fears, and desires, pulling you away from the present moment where bliss resides.
If you want to remain in bliss, you must stop allowing the mind to dictate your experience. You must stop identifying with the voice in your head that says, ‘I need this’ or ‘I’m afraid of that.’ Bliss is already here. It is the energy of the universe flowing through you. But you must be willing to let go of the thoughts, the tensions, and the resistance that block it.
Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
Wu Wei is like sailing a boat: you don’t push the river, you let it carry you. The skilled sailor adjusts the sails to the wind, but does not try to command the wind itself.
So too in life – true mastery comes not from struggle, but from harmonizing with the way things naturally unfold.
Alan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way
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