Listening with new ears

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It seems to me of the utmost importance that we  listen in order to learn.  Most of us listen with the background of what we know, of what we have experienced. Perhaps you have never noticed the difference between the mind that really learns and the mind that merely accumulates, gathers knowledge. The mind that is accumulating knowledge never learns. It is always translating what it hears in terms of its own experience, in terms of the knowledge which it has gathered; it is caught up in the process of accumulating, of adding to what it already knows, and such a mind is incapable of learning.
J. Krisnamurtu
photo: lazylightening

Resting the mind

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All mental activity, all these choices and possibilities, is confusing and even exhausting. Just as the body needs regular rest, so does the mind. To rest the mind in complete stillness, in pure awareness, is to return it to its original nature, its natural state. We don’t need to narrate all the events of our life. We don’t need the mind to comment internally on everything and everyone we encounter. This narration, these comments, separates us from just experiencing life as it is.

Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elephant

Paying attention to our work….

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The peculiar grace of a shaker chair is due to the fact

that it was made by someone capable of believing

that an angel might come and sit on it.

Thomas Merton

photo carl wycoff, Shaker Village,  Pleasant Hill.

Sunday Quote: Seeing…..

field of barley june 22

The invariable mark of wisdom

is to see the miraculous in the common.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, chapter 8

A way of being present

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Most people think of love as a feeling,

but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present

David Richo

Life as it is

Those who don’t love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat  ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength and greatness.

Rachel Naomi Remen