But listen to me.
For one moment quit being sad.
Hear blessings dropping their blossoms
around you.
Rumi
photo synyan
Tag: Awareness
Swings
Don’t define your essential self in terms of a feeling. Don’t say, “I am depressed.” If you want to say, “It is depressed,” that’s all right. If you want to say depression is there, that’s fine; if you want to say gloominess is there, that’s fine. But not: I am gloomy. You’re defining yourself in terms of the feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, there are hurt feelings there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass. Everything passes, everything. Your depressions and your thrills have nothing to do with happiness. Those are just the swings of the pendulum
Anthony de Mello sj
photo clementina
Moments are all we have
Small moments or days are enough to see the richness of life, if we are able to pay attention and give ourselves fully:
What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.
Mary Oliver, Hum
Not holding on
We can sometimes make our experiences very solid and permanent. This gives them more importance and increases our tendency to become identified with their energy, and get stuck in the story, causing more suffering in this way.
Transience is the force of time that makes a ghost of every experience. There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night.
In this way transience makes a ghost out of everything that happens to us.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara
All is grace
When you are no longer preoccupied with asking for more and more stuff, then you just take what is given and give what is taken. Life is simple again. A farmer explained it to us this way: “You cannot make the clouds rain more, you cannot make the sun shine less. They are just nature’s gifts — take it or leave it.”
When the things around you are seen as gifts, they are no longer a means to an end; they are the means and the end.
Nipum Mehta Paths are made for Walking
photo Purple Sherbet Photography
Everyday epiphanies
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world
John Milton
