Love is not a matter of getting what you want.
Quite the contrary.
The insistence on always having what you want,
on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled,
makes love impossible.
Thomas Merton
Relationships as one way
When we have achieved the stature of solitude, namely achieving a conscious relationship with ourselves, then we are freer to share with others, freer to receive their gifts in return and not be infantalized by the mutual archaic agenda of childhood, the agenda that covertly uses the other to provide for us….Intimate relationship, when it is in service of the summons of the soul, is only one of the many engagements we have with the mystery. Relying on it to replace the many other realms we, as spiritual beings, are meant to travel will not only burden the other with our unlived life, but will keep us from the appointment which the soul consistently solicits for us.
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Really seeing the person today
The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention.
Daniel Goleman
Trust in a fundamental order
From the ego’s point of view, the unknown is frightening. It is threatening and it responds to that threat by clinging to a belief as a way of dispelling it. But from the point of view of the heart, the unconditioned mind, the unknown is mysterious . . . but it is beautiful. You don’t have to fill up the unknown with a belief or a concept or idea. You can leave it as mysterious because 99% of it will be mysterious anyway. There is no way that we can understand it all. So the heart’s response to that mystery is faith – a trust in the fundamental orderliness of the universe.
Ajahn Amaro
Surviving life, with its ups and downs
We just need to remember to practice relaxing into our life, in all its joys and sorrows, and to relinquish the need to know what’s going to happen next. The third element of patience is acceptance of the truth, meaning that we accept our experience as it is – with all its suffering – rather than how we want it to be. We recognize that because our experience is continually changing, we don’t need it to be different than it is. This acceptance of “things as they are” requires profound wisdom and compassion, which takes a long time to evolve; we must therefore develop a long-enduring mind that will enable us to understand time from a radically new perspective.
Michele McDonald, Finding patience
Bring your mind to the present moment
I think the most important thing is to consciously choose to bring your mind to the present moment. How do you do that? You decide that you’re going to see what your eyes are looking at; you bring your consciousness to the present moment. When you are going up the stairs, you look at the steps, you look at the handrail. Most of us unconsciously climb the steps, never think about the steps, can’t even say what the color of the carpet is, if there is a carpet, because we’re somewhere else.
Pay attention to the present moment. Bring your mind, bring your ears to the present moment, start savoring the awareness of the information you perceive in the present moment, and let that grow. And it’s like with any circuitry: the more you concentrate on it and experience it, the more it will develop itself.
Jill Boite Taylor
