In our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self
and encouraged to look for answers,
instead of listening to the questions.
Henri Nouwen, Reaching out: the Three movements of the Spiritual Life
Tag: Awareness
Keeping space between
When we watch football, we don’t watch it from the field. We are in the stands watching from a distance.
The players are running around but we are stable; there is a space between us and the game.
Similarly, at a concert, we watch the band from our seats. We do not take the stage. There is a distance between us and the performance. We are merely the watcher.
This is how we should watch our feelings – from a distance.
We should not slip down and cling to them
Ajahn Pramote, To See the Truth
What changes
Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty,
it means a change in how those difficulties are met
Marl Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life
photo chris gunns
Sunday Quote: the little things
The little things?
The little moments?
They aren’t little
Jon Kabat Zinn
Thousands of voices
Do you bow your head when you pray
or do you look up into that blue space?
Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.
And don’t worry about what language you use,
God no doubt understands them all.
Even when the swans are flying north
and making such a ruckus of noise,
God is surely listening and understanding.
Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn’t the return of spring
and how it springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks,
but is that really a problem?
There are thousands of voices, after all.
And furthermore, don’t you imagine (I just suggest it)
that the swans know about as much as we do
about the whole business?
So listen to them and watch them,
singing as they fly.
Take from it what you can.
Mary Oliver, Whistling Swans
In our hands
What we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. It is only because so many people have not absorbed and transformed their fates while they were living in them that they have not realized what was emerging from them; it was so alien to them that, in their confusion and fear, they thought it must have entered them at the very moment they became aware of it, for they swore they had never before found anything like that inside them. Just as people for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun’s motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still but we move in infinite space.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Photo arnold paul
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