From Ram Dass, who passed away just a few days ago
Now the whole idea of a meditative practice is the process of very simply extracting awareness from the identification with thought and sensation
Purpose
The post-Christmas sales are in full flow… A lot of the activity in the modern celebration of this season comes from the lack of an ability to rest in how we are or where we are, right now, in our lives. When there is a sense of “not enough”, there is a tendency to seek more or other, through things or comparisons.
There is nothing accidental about the fact that we in the West are starved for some real sense of meaning and crying out for something that, in spite of all our apparent sophistication and material success, we are no longer even able to name. This western civilization of ours was created for a purpose. Until we start to discover that purpose again, our lives will be meaningless. Unless we touch our roots and make contact again with the essence of our past, we can have no future
Peter Kingsley. 1953 – Author, early Greek Philosophy scholar.
Quiet in heart
And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
Wendell Berry
Becoming love
If you want to know God,
become love. If you want
to know others, become love.
If you want to know yourself,
become love. And if you want
to know love, forget all you
thought you knew or needed
to know, and become love.
Meister Eckhart
The word in the silence
Serene light shining in the ground of my being,
draw me to yourself.
Draw me past the snares of the senses,
out of the mazes of the mind,
Free me from symbols, from words
that I may discover the signified:
the word unspoken in the darkness
that veils the ground of my being.
Byzantine Hymn
Light and darkness
Go slowly
Consent to it
But don’t wallow in it
Know it as a place of germination
And growth
Remember the light
Take an outstretched hand if you find one
Exercise unused senses
Find the path by walking it
Practice trust
Watch for dawn.
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, What to do in the Darkness
Mindfulbalance 