The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton
photo bea represa
Category: Be fully present
Time passing
Everything comes down to time in the end – to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn’t it all based on minutes going by? Isn’t happiness expecting something that time is going to bring you? Isn’t sadness wishing time back again? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.
Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
photo by Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Not caught up in ideas
Among the sixteen types of meditation,
the baby’s practice is the best.
Yuan Wu, Chinese Chan monk, 1063–1135
photo zivya
Stillness
To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness. … Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being – completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.
Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks
photo jarno
Always here…
It takes three things to create a sense of significant being:
God,
a soul,
and a moment.
And the three are always present.
Rabbi Abbrahm Joshus Heschel
photo jack lea
It better happen this way
Every day, we give precedence to our mind’s thoughts over the reality unfolding before us. We regularly say things like, “It better not rain today because I’m going camping” or “I better get that raise because I really need the money.” Notice that these bold claims about what should and shouldn’t be happening are not based on scientific evidence; they’re based solely on personal preferences made up in our minds. Without realizing it, we do this with everything in our lives — it’s as though we actually believe that the world around us is supposed to manifest in accordance to our own likes and dislikes. If it doesn’t, surely something is very wrong. This is an extremely difficult way to live, and it is the reason we feel that we are always struggling with life.
Michael SInger, The Surrender Experiment
photo Irish Defense Forces
