How far I have to go to find you
in whom I have already arrived
Thomas Merton
photo mtaylor848
Difficult moments
I am not suggesting that everything bad that happens to us is sent directly by a knowing hand — cooked up specially for our personal development…What I do mean is that you can use anything — everything — as a wake-up call; you can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain, you will be given the key to a more truthful — and therefore a more joyful — life.
Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open : How Difficult times can Help Us Grow
Becoming still
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen,
we can hear the whisper of the heart
giving strength to weakness,
courage to fear,
hope to despair.
Howard Thurman, American Author, pastor and civil rights leader
photo bananenfalter
Freedom is possible
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance
Not fixing into right or wrong
Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself
when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong.
At that point, you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those,
a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.
Pema Chodron
What really satisfies
What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: to sit here,
To take no part, to be called away by the wind…
Robert Bly, The Call Away
photo Glendalough by neutralgrey
